To Blog or Not to Blog

                “The time has come” the walrus said, “to talk of many things.”

It is time to talk about blogging. All my life I never really thought much about blogging. All I knew was that people who had too much time doing nothing liked to write about doing nothing on the internet so that all the other people doing nothing could read it. Then the movie “Julie and Julia” came out and I realized that sometimes people blog to talk of things that they like or that are important to them. Though it wasn’t exactly my idea to start a blog, it has been interesting thinking of things that I want to write about. The only problem is that there are things that I cannot write because I know people will be seeing them. A blog is not a personal thing, but some people put their deepest darkest secrets onto public internet sites. I need to remind myself that there are ways to conceal ones identity when writing, but personally I don’t want the world knowing my every thought.

I have been told by countless people to write every day. Some say that I don’t need to write about my day detail for detail but as long as I write at least a sentence I’ll be better off.  Blogging is different than keeping a journal or a diary. Some people can write every day, but I can’t. I probably could find time to write 200 word posts each day, but at the moment I am more concerned with sleep. Blogging to me is not an everyday thing. I will try and do it if there is something exciting going on, but even then it doesn’t work out so well. It seems like when something exciting does happen, I will be out there telling people about it in person, rather than to a computer screen. Nevertheless when I do get down to blogging, I can usually pull something together. I have tried countless times to start a journal, but none of them have more than a month worth of entries. Maybe for this reason blogs are a better solution.

One good thing about blogs is that you can never lose them.

One bad thing is that you can’t wright unless internet or a computer is present.

Good thing: Very easy to post.

Bad thing: Not easy to personalize too much.

Good thing: The blogs display can be whatever way I like it to be.

Bad thing: Typos.

Good thing: Spell check.

It seems that blogging has ups and down, but then again everything does. And I must admit that my blogging has turned out much more successful than my journal writing.

                                                                                                                                                                      

Little Brother

                I am an older sister. People say that older siblings have a lot of responsibility regarding younger siblings. This is usually true, except for the fact that I have an older sibling as well. My older sister is the one who looks out for me and my younger brother. Usually this is a good thing, but not always. I love my siblings dearly, but it’s not always a happy Brady Bunch family around here. When my sister and I were younger we used to fight all the time. My brother was just a baby and hardly able to talk, but we would fight over which one of us he liked more. It seems silly now, but at the time it was a big blow to me when I realized that he learned how to say my sisters name before mine. My two siblings would like to gang up on me at times. My sister was the older “responsible” one, and my brother was the baby, so he is pretty self-explanatory. They were an unbeatable team. My sister would do something bad and blame it on me; of course when she was blaming me she was holding our innocent younger brother. My parents usually gave into the “bread” of the sibling sandwich. But like all sandwiches it is the middle filling that matters most right? Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself.

                Now my sister and I hardly ever fight, but that just makes it so there is more time to pester my little brother. I am not the finest example of an older sibling. There are always times when I decide that there are no recorders playing rules that must be enforced. Occasionally I slip in a little nudge to him here and there, but I would never actually hurt him. Maybe it’s all little siblings (and if that’s the case I have a greater respect for my dad who has 11 younger ones) but is seems like every little thing that they do is the most annoying thing in the world. Every time he hums a song or makes race car sounds or plays that… *Shudder* …..recorder, I can’t seem to ignore it. He in return treats me like I’m younger than him and is always trying to find ways to prove me wrong. I have to hand it to him for being smarter than I was at his age; all I did to my sister was bite her and that didn’t help with anything. Even if we do have our down times, there are a lot of ups.

                Lately our parents have been going to banquets and dinners to honor my soon to be graduate sister and her classmates, which leaves the two youngest at home. We have fun not doing our homework and watching movies.  When the time comes for him to go to bed I will read him a story. Usually it is one of the classic Dr. Seuss books, they never get old.

Through good and bad he is still my brother, I didn’t get to pick him, but if I could I wouldn’t choose anyone else. 

http://cdn.babble.com/famecrawler/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/green-eggs-and-ham1.jpg

3 Weeks Left

                There are currently three weeks left of school. This means that all the teachers will start piling on everything that they can in order for us to learn all that they had attended by the end of the year. In my school the second to last week of school is “dead week”. During dead week teachers are not supposed to give any new assignments. All that the students are supposed to do is study for each and every one of their final exams. It may seem like a nice break, but it is not. We are supposed to have finals at the end of each semester. Last semester however there was a bit of a hold up.

                A couple weeks before we were all going to leave for Christmas break, it started raining. It rained so much that most of the local schools were cancelled in order to provide shelter for those who had lost their homes in the floods. Our school was cancelled as well. This cancellation meant that we had no dead week. Teacher and students were all kind of thrown off course, and it was difficult to get much of anything done. We were able to come back for final exams, but some teachers decided to cancel them, or make them less significant in our overall grading process.

                This semester we have all been high and dry, so it seems as if school will continue as planned. There is only one more week of learning left. But the density of what teacher will give us will amount up to much more than one week. At least there will be more structure at the end of semester exams this time, but for now I have to go continue doing the mountain loads of homework which I have been assigned. 

Awaiting Vacation

                Spring break only comes once a year. I know that there are many other school vacations, such as Christmas Break, Thanksgiving weekend and of course, summer. Spring break is different from all the others. There is no holiday (except sometimes Easter) that is during this time, and it happens to fall right before the end, and hardest part, of the school year. Spring break is exactly the “break” that students need in order for them to have the proper motivation to finish the end of the year. This spring break I will be going back home.

                I have two homes. One of them is Salt Lake, and the other is Los Angeles. I only lived in LA when I was little, but my family and I visit frequently. I grew up in Utah, all my friends and the majority of my family live there as well. Luckily on this vacation, I will be able to go to both places.

The plan is to leave Friday morning at 4:30am to go to the airport. This means that I will miss out on a day of very precious school, but it seems that no teachers will actually be assigning anything the last day anyway. My flight heads to LA via Atlanta. Just as it turns out one of my friends will be on this flight as well, what are the odds? After arriving in LA, we head to my family’s best friend’s house in Beverly Hills. It has been a few years since we last saw them, so we are all very excited. Saturday my sister will most likely go and visit some of the colleges that she was accepted to, and that means I am free to wander LA and do as I please. Sunday my best friend of 13 years is flying from Salt Lake to come stay with my family, while her parents leave at the same time, but are going to be heading to California in their car. Monday and Tuesday will probably pass similar to Saturday, but Wednesday night my parents and siblings get on a plane and head for New York. On the east coast my sister will be looking at more schools, while I get to stay and have fun on the west coast. My friend’s parents will arrive in their car around that time my parents leave, and I will stay with them for a night or two in LA, until we head on a road trip back to Utah. Her parents will be spending a long time in the car, but they love road trips, and driving in their suave new Subaru. In Utah the only plan that I have is to visit my sick Grandmother, and everything else will just have to be spontaneous.

 I am so excited for this spring break! 

Sisters' Surprise

                              My sister is currently a senior in high school. As is the custom the seniors apply for college and hope to get accepted. I have lived through the stress of my sister interviewing, applying and writing essays for multiple different colleges. Due to the fact that we do not live in the states and all the schools where she applied are, indeed, in the states, some of the application process is a little more difficult.

                Colleges are advancing every year with technology. Through the computer my sister was able to find out almost everything that she needed for each of her choice colleges. The applications are 100% online so that makes thing easier. One of the hardest things about living away from the US was the interviews (so she says). If we were still living in the states and she was asked to interview with a college advisor, my sister would probably go to lunch with a real persona and discuss things about her and the school there. Here it is not the case. Only a few alumni from the schools live where we do. So in order to solve this problem she had her interviews over the phone. Time differences interfered and made some things difficult for her, but after a few months all she could do was wait for the results.

                It took months before she heard anything. The first schools to make their decisions were the UC schools in California. Of course she got into all of those that she applied to, not such a big surprise considering that she is a good student and all. She was really happy.

                Around a week or so later the Ivy League college decisions came out.  I came home from school as always with my sister, and then I went into my room.  A few minutes later I was just sitting in my room when I heard a scream come from the living room. I thought maybe there was a big bug or something so I decided not to let it bother me. Then there was a louder scream, it sounded like my mom’s this time.  In order to find out what all the fuss was about I decided to go out and see what the matter was. The first thing that I saw was my sister crying…that wasn’t a good sign. The second thing I saw was my mom (still screaming) jumping up and down with a huge smile on her face. As you can imagine I was really confused at this point. I kept asking what was going on, but they were both too preoccupied to reply. Finally my sister blubbered that she had heard from Harvard University and had been accepted!! Way to go sis.

                She was crying tears of surprise and joy. 

Sick

This morning I woke up feeling terrible. My throat feels like tiny elves are inside hammering away in search of jewels or something that they will never find. My ears feel like a balloon has been expanded inside my head and is pushing them out. My head hurts, my nose won’t stop running and don’t get me started on how much my entire body aches. Seems like the flu season is coming around again.

                I remember when I was little and I told someone about flu season, but they just laughed at me and said that there were only four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter.  But the truth is, whenever the flu comes around, it is usually around the beginning of fall or spring, so this virus does come in “seasons”. Another thing about the flu is that it can take over everyone. Slowly, every year I watch as seats empty around flu season, one day only 2 people will be gone, but by the end of the week half the school is missing. The difference this year is that I was one of the first victims.

                Another thing that seems strange now is that kids used to fake having the flu, or try to get it in order to miss school. I know that I would always complain to my parents when I was in 1^st and 2^nd grade that everything was too hard, and it was making me “sick” so that I had to stay home and watch cartoons. Boy do times change. Now I dread getting sick. Being sick in high school means more work, not less. For the next week I will probably be seeing all the teachers whose classes I missed and trying to find a time during, before, or after school to make up any tests.  I have to figure out what the teachers did during the classes that I can only find out through other peers…work work work…no play when someone is sick.

                Being sick sucks! I can’t see my friends, I’m loaded with making up work, and all I actually feel like doing is going to bed and sleeping for 3 weeks straight. 

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/tissubox.gif

International Fair

At my school, the families and teachers make up the community. Due to the limited activity provided by the place we live in, the school tries to compensate by incorporating fun activities and get togethers. The biggest get together of the year is International Day. This year I was lucky enough to be the daughter of the woman in charge…then again, come to think of it, I don’t think lucky is exactly the right term to use. For moths I have been hearing the planning and organizing that is put forth in the effort to make the fair run smoothly. At the dinner table we hear the latest updates and catastrophes involved as well. I watched as my house filled up with shipments of American food that were to be sold at the event. So many people contributed so much to the fair, and I believe that it was completely worth it.

                I will try to summarize what the fair is like. Since I go to an international school, there are many different citizens from all over the world. At the fair the country groups join together to honor their country. Booths are set up that are decorated accordingly and filled with food and goodies that are native to those places. Most everyone comes from my school to eat and socialize. The food is one of the biggest attractions, but also there are the games and sports that are played as well. Some of the teachers are sadly the victims of some adolescent fun with the pie throwing.  Teachers are either forced or volunteered (not sure which) to be targets for pies. This year it seemed as if the “pie” was just flower and water, and instead of throwing the whole tin, the kids would throw the mush with their hands. Along with pie, there were balloons too; the one problem was that the balloons were not fully inflated. I watched as one teacher god slapped in the face with a water balloon that didn’t pop, but left a nasty looking smack mark on their cheek…ouch teachers, sorry about that.

                The international fair lets people see aspects of other countries that they normally wouldn’t be able to see. People can praise their country and feel at home, even while living thousands of miles away from where they are from. Walking amongst the different booths made it feel like walking through different parts of the world. It makes living abroad better, and lets everyone have some fun. 

127 Hours

Growing up in Utah there are some experiences that most people don’t have, one of which is hiking in southern Utah. Unless you have actually been hiking down in the Zion slot canyons, or walking along the great red rocks hunting for Moeraki Marbles, you have no idea what it’s like. Let me try to explain what it is to be a southern Utah hiker.

                For one, there is hardly anyone living near the slot canyons. Sure there are hikers going in and out frequently, but it would be a killer place to actually live. The heat is intense. It’s not a humid heat like in most Caribbean places, but heat from the sun heats the red rocks and can overcome the hiker in heat waves and sweat. There is a reason the slot canyons are named as they are, and that is because they actually look like cuts or slots in the middle of a great big rock. If one was looking at the slot canyon from a bird’s eye view, it would look something like a waterless river flowing through a huge empty rock. My dad (a frequent hiker) always told me the two most important things about hiking in southern Utah were: First, NEVER go off by yourself.  Most trails aren’t marked and it is easy to get lost. Second, ALWAYS have enough water. If someone is caught in the middle of the red rock desert without water, they would most likely die of dehydration in about a day, and if you’re lucky, two.

(Me rock climbing in Zion)

                Keeping all this in mind, imagine what it would be like to be hiking alone, with one water bottle, in the off hiking season, in the southern Utah slot canyons….Most people would never take the risk, but one man did. Aron Ralston went hiking by himself and found himself “stuck between a rock and a hard place” literally.

                Everyone in Utah grew up hearing about this man. He was, as I previously said, hiking alone when he got into a narrow gap in the canyon. What basically happened is that it was a tight squeeze; there was a rock, and a man.  While the man was trying to get over the rock and through the gap, the boulder moved and rolled onto his arm, trapping him. Running low on water, and his arm dying under the weight of a huge boulder, there was nothing that Aron Ralston could do. He waited for other hikers to pass, so they could go get help, but no one came. At this point in someone’s life, most people would just give up, and say that they were done, but not him. He had with him a Swiss-Army-knife, and with that he cut off the dying trapped arm. Someone has to have a lot of motivation to live in order to cut off their own arm. But now, he lives on. He managed to hike the rest of the way out of the canyon with only one arm. His story is legend, and now a movie.

http://www.empiremovies.com/_word_press/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/127-Hours-Poster.jpg

                127 Hours is the story based on this event in Aron Ralstons’ life. James Franco plays Ralston, and does a fantastic job. This film moves everyone, but especially those that know this story, and have been to the same place where Aron Ralston was stuck.

                I would like to remind you all to be safe hikers and explorers. I would also like to recommend to everyone to check out the movie 127 hours. 

Enjoy 

Soccer

                This past weekend there was a small soccer tournament between my school and a few other schools in nearby districts. It was a tournament for girls’ soccer and boys’ basketball. The tournament consisted of high school and middle school students. There were only four girls’ soccer teams in the high school division, but it was only 6 a side when normally soccer is 11 a side.

My schools girls soccer team was split up into an A and B team.  The first game that we played happened to be against the other half of our normal team (A vs. B). I was playing for the A team, and after a while and many goals our coach told us to stop scoring and take it easy on the B team. For the rest of that game we tried just passing the ball around to the other players on our team, but the B team did put up a good fight. The second game for the A team was against the team hosting the tournament. That team was very feisty, and since I was playing defense I got some hard blows. One of the opposing teams’ giant forwards came running at me at full speed and then knocked me to the ground. I felt sort of like one of those movies where a person waking up looks above them and sees people standing around them swirl and fog up and then eventually clear up. I never got knocked out, but things definitely were spinning for a while.

On the second day of the tournament there were 2 or 3 players who didn’t show up. My coach came up to me 2 minutes before the B teams game started and informed me that I would be playing for the B team as well as the A team. All the games I played with the B team we lost, and all the games with the A team we won. So it all seemed to work out pretty well. In the end our two teams got 1st place and 4^th, the boys basketball team got 1^st as well, and the two middle school teams received 2^nd in their divisions. Overall it was a successful tournament, and I have the bruises and turf burns to prove it. 

PIRATE-ed

I have lived all but 3 years of my life in the U.S.  A fraction of that time was spent living in the biggest movie producing city in the world, Los Angeles. I was raised being told that copyright laws were serious and strict. Anyone who makes a pirated movie is stealing. Every time I think about someone copying a movie a flash of a commercial comes into my head saying that movie plagiarism is illegal. The ad states that “you wouldn’t steal a car” and “you wouldn’t steal a handbag” then “you wouldn’t steal a movie.”  This all adds up to the fact that buying or making a pirated movie is stealing and “Stealing is against the law!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

                My dad worked in the movie business for a few years and many of our family friends are still very successful writers/directors and such. The way that these people make their money is through other people going to the theater and or purchasing the movie which they have created. It seems unfair that all the hundreds of people who spend their whole life creating movies will not be compensated for their works just because some people won’t bother to pay $5 at the theater or $10 at a movie store. It’s not just the actors, writers and directors who are affected, but anyone who has a job relating to movies. All the janitors and custodians at the theaters, the camera crew, the costume and makeup artists and basically everyone on the never-ending credit role at the end of a movie want to be paid for their job.  

Until moving overseas I never saw a stand selling pirated movies.  In many countries, it’s almost impossible to find a movie that is NOT pirated. I remember being in the Cook Islands the day that a law was passed banning all pirated movies.  It’s just harder for places far bigger to make laws that will raise such protest. The Internet is another way to watch movies illegally. Sometimes there are legitimate sites that aren’t seen as illegal to watch movies or T.V. shows, but then there’s the 3 million other sites that will play a movie online that came out in theaters the day before.

                I have gone to a few movie premieres, and during all of them I was asked to have my bag checked before entering the theater; now I know why. People will film the movies with video cameras and post them online.  Occasionally there is an audience member who stands up and is able to be seen walking towards the aisle (kind of ruins the movie experience).

Some people say piracy isn’t bad when its legal in the country, however,  it is Illegal everywhere, but some places aren’t as strict on the rules. No percent of pirated movies goes to those that made the movie. Do the movie makers a favor by going to the theater or purchasing their movie, and do yourself a favor by watching a high quality picture. 

City of Bones

                There are so many teen fiction novels that are being read nowadays. I have tried to stay away from the addiction of all the vampire and dead zombie cheerleader princesses that all books seem to be about. Yes, I did read all the Twilight books, but I didn’t become obsessed with them, and as for whether I’m team Edward or team Jacob, I could care less…there both secretly vicious killing-capable beasts right? After all the Twilight drama I decided that I didn’t really like those types of books; I started reading classic novels like Catcher in the Rye and Jane Eyre, until I ran out.

                I was looking for a book to read when a friend recommended reading a new series called “The Mortal Instruments”. The  first book is called City of Bones.  When reading the beginning of the book I realized that it seemed like a little clichéd teen love story with the magical characters thrown in.  I kept reading but I tried not to become attached to it; that didn’t last long.

                The Mortal Instruments ended up being NOTHING like what I was expecting it to be, and I’m glad that I kept reading. It may have vampires, werewolves, and demons, but it’s not really centered on that sort of thing. This book, along with being very descriptive (sometimes overly descriptive) incorporates a greater meaning of humanity. Whether or not what we all know is real, or whether we humans are just weak animals that need protection.

                Clarissa Fray is the main character in the book. She lives in a small apartment in New York with her mother and has been told that her father died before she was born. She’s a normal person (or at least as normal as people seem to start out in books) until she’s at a party and she witnesses a murder that nobody else can see. No one would believe her if she went to the police, because she was the only person who could see the murderer.  The only person she can convey her trust to is her friend Simon.  Clarissa is sucked into a world of shadowhunters and demons, and now that she’s in, there’s no way to get back out….dun dun duuun.

                It does sound kind of lame, and that’s what I thought when my friend explained the plot line to me before I read it, but books can grow on you. This one isn’t part of the “teen madness program,”  Maybe that’s why I hadn’t heard of it before, but so far it’s a good start to a new series.