Always Sick

Everyone hates being sick, right? Well, me too. I hate it more than anything, especially during the holidays. Me, I always get sick and its very annoying. For example, last year; we were in Belgium for the Christmas holidays and I got sick the day after Christmas. I was sick the whole week my cousins were there and all I got to do was lay in a couch all day.

This year I'd hoped I wouldn't be sick again, what was I thinking? The day we left my Grandparents's house, (my dad's parents) I got a stomach ache. We left to go visit my other Grandparents (my mom's parents). I thought my stomach ache would go away after a while, but it didn't. I then hoped that it would go away after I ate lunch, but I couldn't even finish and my stomach ache got worst. That night I threw up. The next morning I still felt sick and I didn't do much except watch everyone else have fun since two of my cousins were here. The day got worst before it got better, my mom and grandma made pancakes! They made alot too, and I couldn't eat any. Okay, I ate like two peices just to taste how good they were. Luckily there were a few leftover for the next day. The day finally got better as my stomach ache wasn't as bad anymore. I spent the last few hours of the day playing Wii with my cousins and other games. We also played with my grandparents' new cat, Tisha. I got much better and I was really happy about it because we were going to celebrate Christmas in two days and I really didn't want to be sick for that.

Just a Little Snow

Starting the winter holidays without snow, for me, that doesn't  really describe winter.

On Thursday, december 15th, we take off from Panama on a hot day, we fly to Atlanta and in just four hours the temperature drops 15°c. After waiting four hours in the airport, we finally take off to Belgium. We arrivde on Friday and to my disappointment there was no snow. My grandparents greeted us at the airport and my grandma accompanied us to visit our new house. When we were done looking around the house and the huge garden, we went to my other granparent's house and stayed there for 5 days. In the meantime we visited our cousins, we fell asleep at 2am for the first three days because of the time change, and we woke up with the surprise of a little snow for three days in a row. When the snow melted away, the feeling of christmas and winter almost left me, but the cold temperature, the family and the Christmas tree made it all better.

It Takes a Strong Teacher to Help Make Improvements, Confession Tuesday

Dedicated to Mrs Meadows.

I confess that Mrs. Meadows is the best English teacher ever, even though some people might say that this is not a confession because its very obvious and I don't believe anyone can disagree. In just one semester, I feel like I've made more improvements with her than with other teachers in two years.

Here is my actual confession though. Okay, well, everyone disagrees with some kind of project that a teacher gives, right? Well that's the same with me. In this English class, a lot of the writing pieces we are assigned to write, I don't see the point in them. Like, one of the last ones we had to do, Should The Catcher in the Rye be banned, or not? My question, when we were assigned this, was, Why? What's the point in this? I really didn't understand. Now, I think back to all of the projects I disagreed to and then look at how much I've improved. I realize that that's how we make improvements. Even though we feel like there's no point in doing things, once we've done them, we realize our writing has improved a whole lot.

 To make improvements, you need a strong teacher that knows what she's doing, you need a teacher that doesn't listen to what the students want, but to what she believes will help us do better. Mrs. Meadows is like that, some people may disagree and say so themselves but that doesn't matter, she won't stop doing it because some people think differently, and that's what makes her a great teacher.

For more confessions click here.

The Best Present is Your Friendship

A year ago, I played secret Santa for the first time with my friends. We decided to play the game during P.E and we used paper towel to pick out our secret Santa at random. I picked out one of the crumbled pieces and opened it up to find a name written right in the middle. That day after school, one of my friends invited all of us to go ice-skating, but only two of us could come. As we were walking around the mall to find some place to eat, she started talking her native language with her mom. As they talked, I heard two words that I understood, “secret Santa” and “Gaetane”. That made it seem really obvious that she was my secret Santa.

            The next week on Tuesday, some of us gave our presents to the teachers and told them to give it to the person they had. It was really fun. I hid my present in the locker of the person I had gotten, because I knew her combination. When she opened it, the smile on her face gave me the clear message that she liked it. Happy that she had appreciated my present, I went to my next class. The whole day I waited to find the present from my secret Santa somewhere around the school. Since I knew who was my secret Santa, I finally went over and asked her where it was because I had looked everywhere. She just pointed up and I asked her if she meant the bathroom. She just continued pointing up as we entered Mrs. Valdes’ room.

            When the bell rang, I asked her one more time. She pointed up once more and I told her I really didn’t understand what she meant. “Here, I’ll give you another hint…” this time she made a flushing noise. “So it is the bathroom!” she just looked at me as if it was nowhere near the bathroom. “So where is it?!” Frustrated, I decided to leave. I thought it was really unfair that she wouldn’t just tell me. I looked back one last time to see her face still looking at me and then continued.

            I went home and realized that she was not even going to be there the next day because she was going to a Tai Kwan Do competition and she would not be here for the rest of the week. I thought about the way she had looked at me when I’d left. I thought about the way I’d snapped at her. Had I overreacted? All she’d done was made it more fun for me to find the present and I’d snapped at her like all that mattered to me was what I would’ve gotten. The thought haunted me the rest of the week until she came back. As soon as I saw her, I gave her a big hug and apologized. She did the same and I told her it was not her fault. She gave me the present before going to Mrs. Trius’ and I kept it next to my bag. As soon as I got to my next class I opened it and found a SpongeBob snow cone machine. I thanked her and gave her another hug, knowing that I didn’t deserve the gift, after all.



Everyone's Opininons are Different

Many parents think that The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, should not be read in schools and discussed with their children, although it interests the minds of many teenagers (Chasan 2). So, the question on our hands is, should it or should it not be banned? In my opinion, the book should not be banned. People say the book should be banned for the following reasons: mocking of religion, bad language and parts that are not appropriate for small children.

            I believe that the book should not be banned because it shows us what bad behaviors can lead up to. Holden never does his work and then he plans on getting a job on a farm because that’s the only job he can get without good education. Because of that he won’t be able to get a lot of money. This teaches people that read the book, that if you fool around all day and you don’t take school seriously, then you won’t get a good job and you won’t get a lot of money.

            I don’t think that the book should be banned because of the use of bad language such as: Goddam, phony, hell, son of a bitch, snob and ass. They are bad words, but some books use a lot more of these. A lot of people use bad words everyday so why would that be bad in the book?

I don’t think it should be banned because of religion and how it could hurt someone that is very religious. If it does hurt you than stop reading, it’s your choice, but don’t ruin it for someone else. Just because it hurts some people, that doesn’t mean it should be banned for everyone else.  

I understand why some people would like to ban the book because it’s a bit inappropriate for small children, but I think that as long as they are almost the age thirteen or above, then there should be no problem.

I really don’t think it should be banned because of small things like bad language because The Catcher in the Rye is a great book and the writing is amazing. Everything is basically about understanding the deeper meaning of things in the book. I agree that Holden Claudfield is a really annoying character and that sometimes the book got a little boring, but all the description and the meaning of things made everything seem so realistic. I think that there is no reason in banning a book that good, if some people disagree, fine, that’s their problem, but like I said, there is no need in ruining it for everybody else.    

One Child, by: Torey Hayden

One Child

Torey Hayden

            In One Child, Torey Hayden Talks about her experience teaching in a school for emotionally disturbed children. She tells about a girl that arrived in her class and that seemed much harder to teach than the other kids. Even though it sometimes got out of control and it sometimes seemed like she couldn’t do anything to help her new student, Torey doesn’t lose faith and helps Sheila achieve many things that her previous teachers had given up on. Throughout the rest of the school year she continues to help her new girl and discovers the many talents hidden beneath the abandoned child.

Torey Hayden starts of a school year teaching in a school for severely retarded children. Her small classroom is filled with eight emotionally disturbed kids and the help of Anton, a 29-years-old Mexican-American, and Whitney, a junior high student.

             Before being offered the job, Torey had come across a newspaper article about a 6-year-old girl who had abducted a neighborhood child. On that cold November evening, she had taken the three-year-old boy, tied him to a tree and burned him. Never would Torey have thought that that same girl would come to her class.

            Her name was Sheila and she arrived on January 8^th. She was almost six and a half and looked so innocent it was hard for Torey to imagine that that girl had abducted the 3-year-old. Along with her dirty and old looking cloths, Sheila had a very bad odor, which struck most of the other kids in Torey’s class.

            Sheila would not speak, wouldn’t do as she was told and would always stay in a small chair in one of the corners of the room.

            With her patience, skill and love, Torey does her best to teach the girl.

            Torey soon found out a whole bunch of things about Sheila, like how she could do math problems that were difficult even for her age and her ability to read better than anyone in her class. She also started paying attention to her accent and how she always used “be” and “do”.

            One day, Torey decided to read a book called “The Little Prince” to Sheila. The story told about the little prince, who came across a fox that asked him to tame him. When the fox had to leave, the little prince asked him why he had asked him to tame him if he was just going to leave in the end. The fox simply told him to go to look at the roses and then come back. When the little prince returned, the fox told him that he would remember him as one of the roses and that the fox would remember the little prince by the wheat field because it was like the prince’s hair color.

            When Torey finished the book, Sheila asks her if that’s what she did with her, tame her. Torey was amazed by what she had told her because she hadn’t even thought of it. She agreed and Sheila asks her why Torey cared for her when she could just leave her. Torey tells her that she didn’t have a good reason that it just felt like the thing to do.

           

“Why you tame me?” Sheila asked.

            I did not know what to say. Her water blue eyes rose to me. “Why you care? I can’t figure that out. Why you want to tame me?”

            “Well kiddo, I don’t have a good reason, I guess. It just seemed like the thing to do.” (pg. 144)

            Sheila kept on making improvements and everything went well until Torey found out that she would have to leave when the year was over to go get full certification for teaching special children. The class would no longer be there and the children had already made arrangements, all of them except for Sheila. Torey eventually found a place to put her in. Torey’s friend, Sandy, was a teacher for third graders and since Sheila was advanced in reading, writing and math she would probably be able to make it to third grade the coming year.

At the end of the year they both walked over to the bus together. They said one last goodbye and hugged each other before Sheila got into her bus and left with the memory of Torey, who she would always remember her as her own rose.

Some lines I liked from the book were:

“And I realized sadly, that we never do understand what it is like to be someone else” -Torey (pg. 179) I like this line because it proves that we never know what someone else thinks and that everyone thinks differently.

            “She looks like a spirit, doesn’t she? Like if you blinked too hard, she’d be gone.” –Anton (pg. 312) I like this line because it shows how much she changed and how free Sheila seems now. It shows that anyone can change no matter how difficult it seems.

            When I first started reading this book, One Child seemed like an obvious title for a girl that was different from a lot of other children because she was emotionally disturbed. But as I got through the book, I learned about Sheila’s many talents in math, reading and writing and I discovered an innocent girl that had been abandoned by her mother. Reading about how much she improved in a little more than half a school year, it made it seem amazing that that same girl had abducted a small boy before coming to Torey’s class. When the year ended and she had to leave, she did it with just a few protests and threats that she would be a bad girl when she started school again, but ended up going and admitting that she hadn’t really meant it, proving that she truly was one child.

While working with Sheila, who seemed almost impossible to be taught, Torey found out that it mostly takes patience to help someone change. She realizes that she can’t always solve everything by herself and that it’s important to count on others for help.  

I thought this book was amazing in the way that just a small girl can change so much in just a short time. I also thought about how Torey hadn’t given up on any of her students no matter how impossible the task that lay ahead of her seemed. When you ask small kids what a hero is to them, most of them would say someone that has superpowers or that saves the earth. If you really think about it, those kinds of heroes only exist in comics or on television and not in real life. A hero in real life, though, is someone that makes a difference. It doesn’t matter how many people are affected by that difference, as long as it’s good. Torey made a difference herself, she didn’t give up on the children that many other teachers had given up on and managed to change their lives by making them more normal. She didn’t give up on Sheila because she knew that she wasn’t really crazy, she just had to make her believe that she wasn’t. Just by not giving up on those children, Torey managed to change their lives and that’s why she is someone that can be considered as more than a hero.

I'm the One They all Want

They all look at me with these enchanted eyes, the ones that seem to only focus on one particular thing. Many of them have entreated me to marry them, but it almost too easy to tell that they mostly want my money. It seems like there is no one there for me, for my love and personality, or even my singing talent. The one person that seems to appreciate me is my singing teacher, Mr. Ichabod Crane, an affable young man; always giving me sage advice and helping me do better.

            Like all others, he stares at me with his enchanted eyes, but he is different. He looks straight into my face with a profound gaze and not with a ‘hungry for wealth’ stare. He listens to my singing with interest and admiration as my voice reverberates. When I’m with him, I feel like I can just be me, although there is this other man, Brom Bones, handsome and tall, that looks at me the same way.

            They both seem to abhor each other due to their mutual desire for my affection. Only I can choose which man is the right one. But who? They were both so dreamy and organized, well; Ichabod was until about two days ago.

            As I walked into the school, I smelled an unusual smell, like something was burning. I walked to my music classroom and realized where the smell was coming from; the class was filled with smoke. I looked around, but saw no one. There was no one to see what was happening. What was I supposed to do? Just as I started to turn around I heard a noise from the other side of the corridors, Mr. Crane ran over and impelled me outside without even saying anything or asking me to do so.

            Then there was the time when singing class had just ended and as he got out of the building a dog started chasing after him.

            I sent a letter to Ichabod and Brom to invite them for a party at my house to learn more about them. They came, but both of them still seemed irascible with each other. They stare at me once again with their dreamy stare. As the night moves on I look more closely at Ichabod and see something that I hadn’t noticed before, something in his eyes, like a sparkle of innocence and love. I couldn’t help but stare back at him, but he looks away for the first time and turns around. After he leaves me in the living room he disappears into the crowd. The feeling like I did something wrong to disappoint him haunts my mind.

            When I try to find him again, I can’t. I realized he’d probably left and there was no need to keep looking, so I go back and find someone to talk to. The next day, when I try to send him a letter he doesn’t respond and when I go to my music class he isn’t there. I never saw him again, he’d left my house and never came back.

Reflection for: Just Listen

In Just Listen, Annabel Greene is a girl that seems to have everything, at least that's what you'd think if you'd think if you didn't know her and you just saw her on TV and on the front covers of magazines. At home Annabel's life isn't as easy. Although her parents are really nice, she just can't get all her courage together and tell them things that happen to her in the past, at shool or at modeling.

At school, Annabel has no friends. After the fight she had with her first best friend and then her second best friend turning against her and acusing her of something she never even did, she ends up alone.
Then she meets Owen Amstrong, who teaches her to stop lying and shows her the beauty of music. Annabel manages to tell him things, that she has trouble telling other people, like her sister's lack of food and her desire to quit modeling.

I really enjoyed this story and I really liked how at the end of the book, Annabel has a character change. At the biggining of the book she was really shy and didn't tell the truth that often and at the end of the book she manages to answer back and not act like a cowerd and barely lies to anyone.

The title of the book, Just Listen, is actually the name of one of the CDs that Owen gave Annabel to listen to. I think that what the author was trying to tell through this title was that Annabel had to just listen to herself and do what she thought was right, she had to listen to her heart and make choices in life without needing everyones opinions.

I think the main thing the writer was trying to say was that you shouldn't do things depending on what the rest of your family, friends or other people think. I liked how the writer kept on going back to what happened to Annabel in the past, it helped me understand the story better...

This book is definetly one that most girls would enjoy reading and a great story that makes you want to keep reading until the end.