Foreign Exchange Students

Hello, everybody!

Today I am going to post about two foreign exchange students that are living at our house right now. Laura and Solen (Spanish and French) came on a bus on Tuesday.

It's definitely different for them here. We've been doing a few things, but mostly we just stayed around the house.

It's fun to try to communicate with them. They both know English fairly well, but sometimes things are tricky to get them to understand.

I've really been enjoying having them here. We all get to learn. In fact, while I speak they're showing us pictures of where they live.

We're getting two more girls at the end of 3 weeks.

And that's what I've learned. Basically what I've been up to. Sorry I didn't post yesterday, and I don't have time to post a very long post today, but I'm glad I could get this out.

Please follow me by email if you liked the post. Thanks for reading! Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

How To Start a Fire Using Flint and Steel

Hello, all! Here is the post I promised. How To Make a Fire Using Flint and Steel.

So, I'm not actually sure these are flint and steel. I got this at walmart, and it was some fire-starting device, but I threw the box away so I can't check to see what it's called. But it works like a flint and steel. Strike one against the other.

They slide into one another for easy storage.

Okay, so I had my tinder. A bunch of random stuff I hoped would catch a spark. I had twine; crushed dried leaves; teeny wood shavings; and ripped up paper towel, all in an old receipt. Honestly, guys, I was trying my best.

And then I got started. I arranged all the wood around it to be prepared, put the tinder in the middle of my wood triangle and tried to arrange it. Then I began striking. And striking. And striking. And striking and striking and striking.

After a bit I sort of figured out the best way to do it, and I had sparks flying everywhere. But time was going by, and all I had were a bunch of little burnt spots on all the tinder. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, and then . . .

My tinder burst into flames, right by my hands. I screamed in delight, and started shouting at Noah (my cameraman for this little escapade) to grab more leaves, or anything flammable, and tried to make sure it didn't die.

Everything was burning after that one piece lit, but, alas, it burnt my tinder away and I was left with a bunch of black ashes and barely heated logs.

I tried to bring it back to life, to bring anything back to life, but it was over. My one chance. I hadn't been prepared. I should have had sticks there instead of logs, I should have been ready.

I gave up on my flint and steel, figuring I had at least made flames with it, and went to matches.

I tried to work around my 17 month old brother as I tried to get this fire going. But nothing was burning, and match after match the logs refused to light.

I had to make dinner somehow, so I finally gave up when I was absolutely out of time.

Timmy shared in my pain.

We went back inside to cook hot dogs and hamburgers on an embarrassing gas grill, and had dinner ready in 15 minutes.

On Independence day I started a fire easily with those annoying matches, like a slap in the face. But I will not give up, and someday I will have it mastered. 

I'm glad I could share with you all, and I'll be back next week with another thing I learned.

Please follow me by email if you liked the post. Thanks for reading! Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

Stringing A Longbow

Hello! So, here's the post I promised. How to string a longbow.

Here's the wooden non-stringed longbow I started with. It was in the garage, until one of the kids found it and took it out to play around with. So I decided, since I've been wanting a longbow for a while, I would string it. So I looked up ways to string a longbow, and chose one. Unfortunately, I didn't have any bowstring. So . . .

I found some paracord.

 (There were actually seven of these strings, but this picture was taken after the bow was made.)

I pulled the guts out, and Sarah bundled all the strings up into cute little bows.

 I measured the bow . . .

Cut a string three times the length of the bow, and folded the string over three times.

Then I tied the ends into loops . . .

And hooked the loops over the ends, and pulled tight.

Then I had to wrap the string. I took one of the other strings from the innards of the paracord casing, and started wrapping it. I went on and on, until I ran out, which was unfortunate. After a bunch of trial and error, I melted another string to the end of the first one, and continued wrapping. It left a bump there, and I couldn't get rid of it. But later I just used it as the nock, and it worked out.

The finished bow! It was far too loose, so I had to bend the wood, and wrap the string around the ends as tight as I could.

I wrapped a little camo duct tape around for the grip, because the old grip was falling off. Doesn't it look awesome? But the wood cracked a little. It looks completely cracked in the picture, but it isn't actually that bad.

As you can see by the picture, the bow is not very good quality. It bends too far at the top and not far enough at the bottom. I'm planning on stringing another bow we have in place of this, because this was my first attempt.

I used one of the arrows I use for my compound bow for this. The arrow I accidentally lost in the woods when I shot an apple (it went straight through!!!) and the tip rusted.

This is me drawing the bow. Yes, my form is terrible. This picture was last minute, and I was just trying to get it down. Please no comments on that.

Well, that's all I have. Next week, I plan to do a post on starting a fire using flint and steel (if that works) so stay tuned!

Comment if you have any suggestions for something I can learn.

Please follow me by email if you liked the post. Thanks for reading! Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

The Bow Saw

So, my first learn-something-new post. As you can see by the name of this post, I learned how to use a bow saw this week.

(I know I look sort of like my face is made of hair, but I was looking to the left. I promise.)

Okay, so this week I also learned something else: how to string a bow. Buuuut, then we had some storms. We had trees down everywhere. And since it was more recent, I figured I could wait until next week to talk about the bow.

Maybe some of you heard about the tornadoes around southwest Wisconsin this week. We've had a storm every night since Wednesday.

While the tornadoes missed us, we got high winds, lots of thunder and lightning, and lots of rain.

I woke up with my mother telling my a tornado hit my brother's college, 20 minutes away, and that some of the students lost everything they had in their dorms.

We went outside to survey the damage. It was pretty bad, but it could have been a lot worse. There were trees down all over the woods, and even more branches snapped. One tree was completely uprooted. Two trees were on the driveway, and this tree fell down right in front of the expedition:

The leaves were touching it. We had already cleared the branches touching the car before I remembered the camera.

And this is when I learned how to use a bow saw. I know what you're thinking. What is she talking about? Anyone can use a bow saw! Well, that's true. Anyone can use a bow saw. But how many people have? Good for you if you have! Also, when you're cutting logs like this:

It gets a lot more difficult. Now after a bunch of cutting:

And a few breaks for strawberries from the garden:

We got the tree in front of the expedition down to . . .

That. Short enough to drive past, which was good enough for us. And we used the chainsaw to finish it. Then there was the yard:

I wish you could see it better, but there were leaves, branches, and twigs all over the yard. This is only a small portion of it. Thankfully, I had my older sister and brother, Sarah and Ben, to help clean it all up. Since the little kids stopped working when it started to get boring:

(Noah)

Well, that's what I learned! I'll post again next week about how I learned to string a longbow!

Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

The Reason For This Blog

Hello, everybody!

This is me, and in this post I'm going to let you know the reason for this blog.

One of my favorite hobbies is researching, learning new things, and doing new things. I decided I want to learn as much as I can in this life. So each week, I'm going to learn how to do something new. Anything new.

So to keep myself dedicated, I made this blog. Every Saturday, I'll post what I learned over the week.

I look forward to sharing my adventures and knowledge with anyone who wants to hear about them.

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri