I've always enjoyed drawing, so when my school began a high school art acadamy, I decided to sign up. I was in middle school at the time, and even though I couldn't make the high school class the next year, they offered a middle school "Pre-Acadamy" which I wanted to take. After competing against several students that weren't able to make the class, I made it in to the pre-acadamy. At first, I was taken aback. I really had no idea what "professional" art was about. I had previously considered art to be sketches on a sheet of paper. At the end of the eighth grade, I applied to enter the high school Acadamy of Art and Digital Animation. At the present time, I have just begun my Senior year of high school. One of the reasons I feel this art program is so good, is it gives you experience in a broad range of media. Throughout the course of the four years, students have worked with pencil, colored pencil, graphite, acrylic paint, watercolor, photography, digital image manipulation, digital animation, 3D computer graphics, graphic design, presentation preparation and design, perspective, realistic drawing, creative drawing, figure drawing - and so much more.

Trains are another, rather large, interest of mine. My interest in trains started back in 1998, with a summer trip to Dunsmuir. I had been on vacation with family at Lake Tahoe, and my parents wanted to spend the night in a caboose hotel in the city of Dunsmuir, California. At this unique hotel, you sleep inside cabooses that have been rebuilt to modern hotel standards- complete with full size beds, air conditioning, TV, and shower. We spent a few days in Dunsmuir and Mt. Shasta. Dunsmuir is a small town, but it has a large railroad presence. Old railroad semaphore signals decorate street corners, and there are two hobby shops in the city alone - which is quite a bit for a town as small as Dunsmuir. We visited the Dunsmuir Amtrak station, where I gained my first real interest for prototype trains. The sight and sound of locomotives struggling to keep their train going up the grade. Soon after arriving back home, I visited a local hobby shop, The Hobby Warehouse. There I bought a small N scale train set, and from then on I was set. I met one of my good friends who worked at the Hobby Warehouse, and we got to talking. One of the things that he has done a lot of is "railfanning" (Unofficial Definition- The act of going to railroad tracks for the purpose of photographing or watching trains.) On March 11, 1999 (The day before my birthday), I my parents took me out to the Cajon Pass, a famous railfanning location. Here, I met two more railfans. I can still remember their names-Ed, and Floyd (I thought of it as an interesting name combination). Throughout the course of the day they showed me pictures they had taken over the years, and told me a lot about Cajon Pass and the trains that rode over it. I have met many people railfanning, some of which have turned out to be great friends. Right now, I am working at the Hobby Warehouse, the same store I went to that began my interest in trains, and model trains. I am working on building a some HO scale modules for a local train club (much to my N scale friend's dislike), and have fun meeting with friends and running trains.