I have an explanation!

My lovely, lovely readers,
I sincerely apologize for not posting a real post in... how long has it been now???... nearly two months? Wow, I am a horrible blogger. But.... I'M BACK!

Actually, I do have a reason for my prolonged absence, and to me, it's a valid one. Right after February 24, on the last days of February, I had my first robotics competition, and that's when I took my break from blogging. Just last weekend, my team had our last competition which explains my return.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't intend to leave you guys without warning, it just sort of happened as I got busier and busier with robotics and making up homework. So once again, you have my deepest regrets.
Let me give you a few drama-free updates on my life since you haven't heard from me in what seems like decades!

Let's get started!

As I said, about sixish weeks ago, I had my first robotics competition that was about four hours away from my house, and since it was week one (the first week of competitions around the world), everyone was expected to play horribly while getting used to the game/working with alliance partners. Well, by some miracle, we actually won! For the first time in nine years.... our team won a competition. Woowoo! After this competition, we had almost enough points to qualify for the state competition already.

Then about two weeks after that, we drove eight hours up to our next competition. Actually, that was an interesting situation. Since it was such a long drive, my team left on a Thursday so they could get there by Friday when the competition started, but I didn't go with them because I had tickets to watch a singing group at my school for the next day (Friday). For a while, it looked like I was going to have to skip that competition, but we found out that someone on the team's dad was going to drive up for the day on Saturday and make it a "day trip." So, after I got home from the show, I got about two hours of sleep before we left at 1:00am. We got there just in time for competitions to resume again on Saturday morning. I'm sure you're all wondering how we did at that competition! Well, I'm please to inform you that we were first seed (which has never happened before) that we also took home first place at that competition. Yay us! Haha. After this, we officially qualified for state!

Then came the short three week break. In that time, I mostly caught up for all the school days that I missed and got reconnected with friends at school. Finally came time for our home competition at a local college. Because they're not meant to last forever, our robot broke at this competition after another robot high speed rammed us :( But.... we still took home a second place medal at that competition.

Just this past weekend, we attended the state competition which is the hardest competition in the world by the way. Our robot played AMAZINGLY but every single one of our alliance partners stunk. Yes, we were ranked 52 out of 64. Every team at the competition knew what we were capable of though, so it was ok. We were part of the fifth seeded alliance in elimination rounds there which was good.
We made it to the semifinals at state. I'm sorry if you don't think that's good, but we've never even been picked to play in elims at state before, so I'm really proud.

Ohhhhh! And, my brother asked a girl from another team to go to prom with him at state! She's from an hour and half away from where I live, but awwwww cute :)

Speaking of my brother, it's his birthday today and we're going out to eat soon!
Comment "OH MY WORD I CANT BELIEVE THAT!" if you're still reading this ;)



What's next, you say?

We qualified for worlds. Yes, you heard right. My team qualified for Worlds! Wow. That sounds amazing to say. Sadly (to my dismay) we, as a team, decided not to go for various reasons such as prom is the same weekend and my team's head mentors have a daughter graduating from college this weekend. Also, it would cost us over $12,000 to go. That's a lot. The world competition is this week, I think it actually starts tomorrow and another team from our city qualified, so I'll be rooting for them instead.

So that's the drama-free version of my past two months, maybe I'll post the drama-filled version later if you guys want me to. I've had a pretty interesting time lately with friends/teammates.

Anyway, I'll try to post more quality stuff from now on. I'm terribly sorry for leaving you guys hanging here for the past while!
Oh, man, have I missed you guys!
Hugs,
July