It's Not Faith if You Use Your Eyes

Random title for today's blog. It's just a line from one of my favorite songs by Paramore. It's called Miracle!. Check it out sometime. It's a good song.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about tonight is a quote that I saw in Spanish today. See, my Spanish teacher is also an English teacher so she has bulletin boards with quotes about reading and writing in one corner of her room. It just so happens that she has put me in that corner for second term, so at the end of class today I was reading them. They're all really good quotes and maybe as the year goes on I'll write about more of them, but tonight I wanted to talk about the one that caught my attention today.

'A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.'

~Mark Twain 1900

I really like this quote. Mainly because I think it has a lot of truth to it. It makes me think of last year, and even just this summer. When Mr. T would assign us a book for Honors English (classics that is) people would complain. They'd complained no mater what we had to read, but classics were worse. I think that it's mostly because they are usually older books and therefore in a language that is harder to understand because it has different slang and different words. It makes it harder to read.

There are things that language doesn't change, though. I mean, even though a book is hard to read and understand it doesn't mean that said book is not a good book. Even impossibly difficult reads can have great stories to them. That is why I think that Mark Twain's quote works. I think that people really do want to know the stories as they are written, but it becomes such a hard thing to do (oh my, we really have to think?!?) that people don't actually want to read them.

I cannot really deny that this is true to me as well. Not in all circumstances, but with some classics I honestly don't want to start reading even though I absolutely love the story. It just gets to the point where I would like to read something that doesn't take as much thought. I can't read a classic when I'm tired or I've been in school all day/doing homework all night. I have to read them when I have time and patience enough to reread passages and contemplate things. I absolutely love a lot of classics though. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are two of the ones that I read last year that have ended up being two of my favorite books ever (although even that is a very long list with like... 100 books or more).

Anyway, I just really wanted to share that quote with some of you and explain why it stuck with me today and why I like it. So that's it for tonight.

Hasta luego!

Majorly Proud of Myself

Today I found a good blogger template and then kind of made it my own. I am so proud of myself for figuring it out and I think it looks way awesome.

I just thought I would share that accomplishment.

Yay.

Plus I GOT A 4.0 GPA for first term! Eeee!

Haha.

National Novel Writing Month...

Started on November 1st. I am taking part in it this year and have a goal of 50,000 words to write by November 30th. That means that I have to write an average of about 1,700 words a day. So far my grand total would therefore need to be 5,100. Well I wasn't so into writing on Saturday. So I'm not that far yet... I'm actually not even to two days worth of writing that much yet. But I'm getting really close. My total right now is 3,062 words. Yay me. Haha. So before I go to sleep tonight I have just under 350 words to write. I am confident that I will do so.

Anyway the point of this blog, other than introducing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, nanowrimo.org) is to show you a little bit of what I have been writing. I'm proud of it. It's just a prologue so you don't really get any real plot from it, but I think it's a good way to grab attention I think. I don't think I'll be posting the whole thing here, but if you're really interested I can send you what I have at the end of the month. So here it is:

Prologue

Come on Mike! Get up! Hurry, they're right behind us!" A tall and lanky red haired woman yelled to the dark haired man who was lying on the ground ten yards away from her. They were being chased by the police. They were in trouble. Together they had done something neither of them could ever have imagined and they were going to pay the price with their lives. Now they were on the run and Mike, the clumsy guy that he was, had fallen down. She ran back over to help him.

Mike was slowly getting to his feet. The woman grabbed his hand and pulled him up and forward. "Laura," Mike gasped. "They can't be that far behind us. I can't run anymore Laura. Maybe we can't get out of this." He was breathing heavily and limping as he ran. He figured he must have pulled a muscle in his right leg when he feel, the knees of his jeans were torn and the skin of his palms were scraped raw.

“We have to keep going Mike,” Laura, who was in much better shape, breathed. Her voice was not more than a whisper; it was as if she was trying to keep the brick walls on either side of the street from hearing them. “Giving up would here, now, would be giving up on our lives. I’m only nineteen Mike! I’m not ready to give up.”

Mike often thought that Laura was over dramatic, but of course an actor would be. Now though, he was sure she was speaking the truth. To stop running, to hand themselves over to the police would mean a lifetime in jail for both of them. He couldn’t deny that he did not want that for himself, but to say that he had what it took to run from the law would be the biggest lie anyone on the west coast had ever heard.

Suddenly it seemed as if there were a thousand noises around them. Police sirens and the roar of car engines were coming on their backs rapidly. Mike could also hear the voice and running steps of the police men who had begun chasing them on foot a quarter of an hour ago. ‘This is it.’ Mike thought, ‘we’re as good as dead now.’ He didn’t know why they were still running even. The cars would catch up to them any second, the men on foot not long after that, and then it would be suicide to keep going.

There was an ally just ahead of them and Laura pulled Mike’s arm as she turned into it. They flattened themselves against the wall and Mike thought that he might laugh if the situation wasn’t so serious. It was just like being in a movie. People always said not to trust movies because they were inaccurate but being chased by the cops was just like it was on the big screen, minus the helicopters.

They were both breathing heavily, their chests moving up and down faster than either could have ever imagined possible. They were safe. They had managed to find a hiding place where they could watch as the police ran right past them. Mike looked at Laura and saw the relief in her eyes. “I guess we won’t have to give up today, Laura. You were right. We did it.”

And they had… Almost. The cops were just about to go running past the ally when Mike’s watch alarm went off. Twelve o’clock midnight. It was an appropriate time, he thought, a great time to be caught. The dawn of the new day would see two criminals to jail, already the day was proving to be a safer one.

Laura’s eyes were squeezed shut as tight as they would go and tears were streaming from them. Mike was looking frantically around the ally for an escape. Laura had gotten them this far; it was his turn to make a move. Toward the end of the ally there was a door. He couldn’t be sure it went anywhere but he did know that if they got there fast enough the cops might just think that they had gone out the back, it was dark after all.

Mike shook Laura’s shoulder to get her attention. He pointed toward the door and watched as she looked from his face to wall he pointed at. She seemed to be confused for a moment before realization lit up her eyes. She nodded; all hope that they would live through the night had come back to her in a split second, making Mike feel very accomplished. He had managed to save her, or at least came up with a plan to do so.

At the same time they pushed off from the wall and sprinted toward the door. He could hear the police behind him but kept going anyway. “Come on, Mike.” Laura whispered, “We can do this!” They were only ten to fifteen yards from the door and getting closer with every second. ‘We can do this,’ Mike echoed in his head. ‘We are strong and we can do this.’

Laura reached the door slightly ahead of him and grasped the metal handle as if her life depended on it, which it did. She grabbed Mike’s hand with her free one before shoving the door open. One more second and it would be too late. They had to get out of sight now. She yanked him inside and slammed the door shut leaning against it with her eyes closed and trying to catch her breath.

Mike was sitting on the floor. He couldn’t quite tell what the room was because his head was swimming and he wasn’t really paying attention. He placed his palms flat against the ground on either side of him and found something that he had definitely not been expecting. Grass. His eyes flew to Laura at the door and found her looking around wide eyed and shocked. She was no longer against the door, but feeling it with her hands. It was wood. Not cold metal that it had been on the other side.

Mike looked to other side of himself and found that he had to squint because of the bright light. He shook his head slightly and looked around again. They were in what appeared to be a field that went on and on forever. Laura was leaning against the door of a small shack or a shed that looked more than abandoned, but not necessarily old.

“Where the hell are we?” Laura asked quietly. Mike had stood up and was coming to stand beside her.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

And on a side note: The October issue of the newspaper came out last week. I am very proud of it. My very favoritist twin did some art for the center page and it looks amazing. Plus I have two less than amazing articles. Woot!

Who am I?

A friend of mine, who goes by the name of PasoFreak, wrote in her blog today telling her friends a little bit more about her. When I read it I felt like it was something I might want to do. But then I thought about why I don't tell people more about me. What is there that people don't know? I am a nerd. I love reading, writing, learning. I am smart. I've been doing Science Olympiad since seventh grade and I have six state level medals and two national level medals. I have six sisters. My twin sister and I look nothing alike. My absolute favorite thing to do is to hang out with my mom and my sisters. I'm good at math and I like math. I'm not LDS and I don't have a religion. That seems to be the simplest facts about me. Is there more? Yes. I believe there is. Probably even a lot more that you all know about me.

I'm sure there are things you don't know as well, but what are they?

Well, the first I guess might be that I have no idea what I believe in. I don't know what to think and I believe that the ideas of the universe are just way to big to be picked out and deciphered. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out what I believe. I know a little bit about Christianity but I learned most of it before I was 8 when I went to an LDS church with my parents every Sunday. I know that I can't honestly see myself as ever being part of an organized religion because I feel that when you are part of something like that you should honestly believe every part of it is true and I don't know if there is a religion out there that could sum up everything that I think and feel.

Something that I've only discovered recently, and therefore not many people know about me, is that I've decided that I don't want to be a scientist. I would much rather spend my life learning about people, both past and present, reading, or writing. I would also like to use my ability to understand things easily. I don't know for sure what I'm going to end up doing with my life, but I would really really love to teach English or be a journalist. I don't know if this surprises some of you or not, but I realized last year that I cannot see myself spending my life doing the types of things I do at every Science Olympiad meeting.

Other than that, though? I don't really know. What else is there about me that other people don't know? What is there about me that people want to know? Anything?

Should there be more that I should want you to know about me? I don't know. I have no idea what I should I know about myself. Is there something wrong with that? Do I need to know exactly where I want to go to college right now? Do I need to know where I want to be right after I graduate? What else should I know about myself?

I don't know. Have any ideas?

In the Computer Lab Again...

And I found an amazing new template! Guys, I absolutely love it! I didn't know that there were blogger templates out there that were this cool. The only problem is that the date of my posts don't show anymore. But whatever. You can always look over at the archive thing on the side.

Anyway, I just thought I would share my excitement with you all.

Eee!

My blog looks amazing. AMAZING!!!

Plus, the first issue of the school newspaper with my cover article is being distributed today!

I am sooooo happy!

Woot!

Mandala Essay

So for one of my classes I had to create a mandala and write an essay on it. I decided that I would post it here because... Well mostly because I posted almost every essay I wrote last year on here. Or at least I think I did. Anyway, here it is:

Mandala Essay

A mandala by definition is a geometric design which symbolizes the universe. While mine symbolizes something far smaller than the universe it is a design which symbolizes something. My life can be represented by six simple symbols that represent something far more complicated. The center of my mandala is a polar bear that represents family. The outside edge of the mandala is a series of linked circles that represent friendship. On the inside there are four symbols that each represent a very significant part of my life. The first is a path to represent progress. The second is a book showing my love for writing, reading, and history. The third is two mountains creating a canyon with a bird flying through it. The last symbol is a group of music notes that represent music. Each of these sixth things are very important to me in different ways.

The polar bear represents my family. For a few years now my five sisters and I have been calling my mom ‘Mama Bear’. The story of how this came to be could be an essay in itself, but the reasoning behind the nickname is that my mom takes care of us. We are a close bunch, my girls and I. It’s almost like we have a language of our own. Words like ‘yuffa’ are not something you’d find in a dictionary. I am so lucky that my best friends are my family, but I have other friends too and they’re very important to me as well.

The interlinking circles that create the outside border of my mandala represent my friends. The circles are supposed to show that my friends and I come from all different social areas. We do many fun things together but there’s more to my friendships than just socializing. Throughout the good and the bad times of the last few years my friends have been there. Whether I needed to complain, vent, or ask for advice they were always there to talk to me and they’ll continue to be there for a long time. Sometimes there are things that I can’t tell my family, and when I come across those things I am happy to have someone else to talk to. Not only do my friends help me when I am down, they share my interests as well.

The dirt path on my mandala represents progress. Progress is an important part of my life because I think that the only way for someone to really fail at something is for them not to learn from it. School is the place where I’ve done most of my progressing in my life. I love learning and I think that progress through knowledge is one of the best possible. There is no such thing as useless knowledge. In my life I hope to progress to a place where I can be doing what I want to do and be happy doing it. To learn, though, you have to read and be literate.

On my mandala is a picture of a book with different symbols and letters on it. The first is stick figures that represent cavemen and the first writings. The second and third are symbols showing the beginning of language. The fourth are letters, the fifth sentences, and the sixth is a keyboard which leads into modern technology. This book represents my love for reading, writing, and history. Learning is a big part of my life and I love to learn about history. What better way to live a good life than studying the mistakes of others and learning from them. I love to think about how people lived before technology. Back when people had to live in nature.

The second to last symbol on my mandala is a canyon with a bird. This symbol is supposed to represent my love for nature. I don’t think I could live without plumbing and hot water, but I love to sit out in a peaceful place outdoors and think or read. The best moments I’ve ever spent alone were in Flaming Gorge away from camp on a rock ledge. I listened to the birds and the river and everything around me. The most peaceful places on earth are in nature and I think that by listening to the ‘music’ of nature you can learn more about the world around you.

The last symbol on my mandala is a group of music notes. I often find myself remembering sections of my life by the music I listened to during that time period. I also play both the guitar and the viola, albeit badly. I started playing the viola in sixth grade knowing nothing about orchestra other than that my older, half sister played the violin. I’ve wanted a guitar since before I can remember and I got one for my fifteenth birthday. Music inspires me and helps me get through all periods of my life. I have certain music that I listen to when I’m sad, different music when I’m happy, and so on. Music is as much a part of my life as friends and family are.

There are so many things I could use to represent my life, but the six I used on my mandala are some of the most important. My family is represented by the polar bear. My friends are represented by the circles. On the inside of my mandala used the path, the book, the canyon, and the music notes to symbolize my love for progress, reading and writing, nature and music. So although my mandala does not symbolize something so colossal as the universe, I think it’s pretty big and important.

Lacking Inspiration

So, I'm taking this class called AVID. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but it's a class that I will take all through high school that will basically help me get better grades and get ready for college. It's a great class and already it's helping me. I've only missed one assignment so far this year and the circumstances behind that weren't so great. But anyway, AVID is a class where smart students get the skills they need to be successful. One of those skills is writing.

Last week we were given an assignment to create a mandala about ourselves (what things are most important to us) and then write an essay to explain the symbols we used to represent us. Today we are in the computer lab for class to work on these essays. It's only the second time I've written an essay since the end of ninth grade and I'm finding that I'm having problems getting started. It sucks, because by then end of the year in ninth grade I was able to write a decent essay in under twenty minutes. I was able to get a topic, brainstorm, and start writing so easily that it hardly took any thought at all. It was almost like blogging. Sit down in front of a computer or a notebook with a pencil and just let the words spill out.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that this isn't a hard topic at all. Maybe I'm just having a bad day, maybe I spent all of my creativity on my cover article for the Centurion (Layton High's school newspaper) last week, but whatever it is I just can't seem to be able to think about how to creatively, and interestingly write this essay. The first thing I tried was starting it with a question 'How do you choose what symbols represent your life? How can you pick the five most important things that represent you?' but after I wrote that down it did not sound right. I could not figure out how to lead in to the symbols I have chosen for my mandala to represent my life.

So I don't know. How do I come up with the inspiration for this first real essay of my sophomore year? How do I decide what is neccessary to put into this essay? How do I explain to my teacher, my classmates, etc. that my life is amazing because of the five or six symbols I've chosen? Right now I'm not sure, but I'm thinking and when I know I'll put it up here, and when I'm done with my essay I will make sure that I post it as an entry on this blog for anyone who wants to read it.

The Beginning of Something Great

So I've survived a week and a half of high school! Yay! And I'm actually finding that I absolutely love it. Main reason being that I don't have to do all of my homework in one night. With the workload I have, that would absolutely freaking kill me. Haha. I like all but two of my teachers. My English teacher is extremely boring and the class is even worse (But who can compare after having Mr. T last year?) and then I really don't like my Health teacher. It might just be the subject, but I absolutely dread that class every other day. :(

There are so many things to love about high school. The thing that I look forward to every day, though, is lunch. I think that it is so awesome that we have only one lunch and that we have a whole hour to hang out with friends. It's awesome.

I miss Fairfield though. I had planned on going to visit Friday because we have late-start but I don't think I'll have a way to get over there. I went after school last week but the one teacher I had gone to see, Mr. T, was not there by the time I managed to get from Layton to Fairfield on foot. So I am definitely going to have to find another time I can get down there when I know that I'll be able to see him. I got to talk to some other teachers though and that was cool. I saw some of my younger friends that I won't be going to school with anymore because they'll be going to Davis in a year or so. It was great. The whole thing reminded me of when I'd stay after school last year and I'd be waiting outside for a ride almost everyday. Mr. T said that I was going to have withdrawls from the school. I kinda think I am (On a very small scale). Haha. :P

Anyway, I don't think this blog has really said anything, and I have a huge amount of reading to do for AP European History tonight so I better leave this off here. :P

The End Is Here

So school starts in a week. It's time to get the dusty calculator and bookbag out for a new year. I've picked up my schedule and I've checked it with my friends' and we are all just excited that in a week we will get to see each other every day again. There are differences though. This year isn't just like we're used to. We're entering a brand new world and we all know it. High school is a territory so far unknown to us and we're ready to explore.

Haha. That was fun to write. But really, since registration on Thursday I've been talking to various people about school starting next week and it's interesting to see everyone's opinions about the upcoming school year. Some are scared that they're going to get lost. Others fear that the material is going to be to hard. Some are excited to get back into seeing friends everyday. There are even a few (like me) who just want to get back into the school work. Summer is great, but eventually I start to miss the thinking that I do during the school year. I miss the challenge of learning and testing and trying to keep grades up.

There was a time when I never would have admitted this. Back then I hung out with girls the size of twigs who didn't really like me because I was bigger than them. They never invited me to hang out with them and I never really understood why they put up with me at school in the first place. Probably because I was smart and could "help" them with their work.

Not anymore, though. Now I hang out with a group of girls (I don't have many (if any) guy friends) who are just as smart as me. They might not enjoy school as much as I do at times, but they aren't like most people who dread school just because that's what teenagers do. No, me and my friends are the kind of people who hang out at school long after the last bell rings just because we can. I don't know if we'll do that much (if at all) in the next few weeks, though. We don't know any of the teachers and we obviously aren't involved in any after school activities. There will be time to recreate those connections that we had at FFJH, but we'll probably want to get past the first few weeks of class first.

I am excited. High school is the beginning of so many things. I already have met new people and hopefully new friends. Block schedule is a new thing too and I think that it will actually be a lot better.

But anyway...

This will probably be my last blog for the summer but I know that I will blog again in the next week or so. I'm going to keep up this blog. It's one of my goals.

I hope everyone had a great summer and I hope that you'll all have a great first few days of school!

The Vitamin String Quartet

The Vitamin String Quartet Tribute is a series of string quartet tribute albums, released by Vitamin Records and performed by several different groups of musicians. These string quartet tributes are commonly referred to as "VSQ," or "Vitamin String Quartet" by fans. Albums generally focus on one band per record, and perform classical versions of that band's songs, generally note for note. They use a wide array of instruments but primarily use violins, violas, and cellos.

That is Wikipedia's definition of this awesome music which I have fallen in love with in the course of an hour. Haha. They are completely amazing. It makes me want to get my viola out and play. It's been so long since I have (all summer) and I wasn't planning on playing again for quite a while.

They do all kinds of stuff. Most of it is music that I already love. I think it is so awesome to see my favorite music go classical-ish? Haha.

So check them out. They are freaking awesome.

My Secret

Earlier today I posted a blog about a website called PostSecret.com. My mom and I both said that we often find ourselves making our own secret postcards in our heads. I can think of so many things that people don't know about me (and most of them are things I won't mention on this blog because of the people who read it). There are some of them that I wouldn't mind putting up here (I fear that if some of my friends knew everything about me and then viewed me beside one of my other friends (or sisters for that matter) they wouldn't want to be friends with me anymore) because I know that the people who read this will either not care (as most won't have anything to do with anyone who reads my blog) or they'll just deny it (whether or not it's true).

Tonight I am going to take my blog off of search engines. That way only people with the direct link to my blog can read it. The reason is because there are some people that just have very little to do with my life that I don't think I want reading this blog anymore. I am pretty sure that one of the people I am thinking of has only found my blog by search engines so far and has not actually saved the page so that they can come back to it.

But back to the point of this blog entry.

I wanted to post one of my secrets tonight. I've spent all day thinking about events that revolve around this secret and I would really like for someone to know why I've been upset all day (I don't know if anyone who has seen me today will actually read this, but whatever). This secret is something that I think about often and usually gets me very upset. It's very personal and it has caused me a lot of heartache.

I wrote a paper in my eighth grade Creative Writing class about my relationship with my dad. At the end of the paper I had written a letter to him that said that I was pretty positive I would never show him what I had written. When I got the paper back my teacher told me that it had made her cry and I got one of the highest scores in the class. I was extremely proud of the paper and I thought that the feeling I got from having someone else praise my writing was worth the pain that it caused to write it. A few months later I got up the nerve to show the paper to my dad. I emailed it to him as a father's day present and told him to read it. He did and then called me. I can't really remember what he said about it. I know that reading it had affected him but I don't know why.

I thought that showing my dad my thoughts and my pain from the past few years might make things better. Maybe he just didn't know how much I was hurting. Maybe he just didn't know how much he was hurting me. When he called me I was hopeful. He'd had to leave his office after reading the paper and that was when he had called. I thought that maybe it had made a difference. Maybe things were finally going to get better. Maybe they were going to be the way they used to be. I was hopeful that day. I was so happy. It made things even better that we were going to my dad's house for the weekend. It was to be the start of something good. My new relationship with my dad.

I don't know how I could have thought any of those things now. I'm over a year older and a year wiser. It's surprising just how much has happened in the last year. I won't go into detail but I will say that I discovered a lot about myself and the people around me.

Needless to say my paper didn't change anything. My dad had read how I felt. My deepest thoughts and unguarded emotions had been shown to him on paper. He just didn't care, whether it was purposely or not. Things didn't change at all. We didn't talk about it other than that one phone call. It was as if someone had completely erased his memory about it. I should have known enough about him by then to know that anything I said would not make any difference. He couldn't change. He still can't change.

Since then I have pretended that nothing is wrong. I don't talk to him much anymore. I never say much more than "nothing much", "yup", or "nope" to him anymore. He doesn't know me. I doubt he ever will. He knows what I look like and he knows what my interests were up to about the middle of eighth grade, but he'll never know how much the past year and a half has changed me. He'll never know what my true hopes and dreams are. And, though he may know that I'm hurt because of it all, he'll never know just how much I hurt inside. He'll never know how much I wish things were different.

When I showed my dad that paper I was hoping that things would go back to the way I thought they had been. What I didn't realize at the time was that things never were the way I saw them. It was inevitable that one day I would realize that, even though I was so happy with the way things had been with my dad, it hadn't really been a happy situation.

I don't tell people things like that anymore. I don't talk to people when I have problems with them. I try not to hope that something I might say will change things. That's my secret.

I can't say that writing this has eased the pain at all. I can't say what purpose writing this blog actually had, but it took up some time. Maybe it will help some people to know me a little better. Maybe not. Oh well. I just decided that I would write about one of my more meaningful secrets and here it is. Maybe someday I'll actually get up the nerve to make and send one of the secret postcards I have visualized in my head, maybe not. Maybe. . .

Maybe it doesn't matter.

PostSecret.Com

Some of the secrets are really horrible. Others are cute or sad. I find myself thinking of secrets I could send in more and more of the time. People send them in on homemade postcards. I have actually created one and would send it in if my mom and my sister didn't know about it too.

Personality Disorders and Nerd Type

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	Low
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Science/Math Nerd (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) Well, maybe you aren't this extreme, but you're in league with the crazy scientists/mathmeticians of today. Very few people have the talent of math and science is something takes a lot of brains as well. Thank whosever God you worship, or don't worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people! Most of us would have died off without your help.
Literature Nerd
Musician
Social Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Drama Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

A Summer Full of Change

Something Mr. Thompson said at the end of third term came to mind today. That day we were talking about how we were so close to being done with junior high. He said that from then on time was going to fly by. At the time I was thinking 'Well yeah. We've all heard that before. And I know it's true.' But it surprises me now just how fast things seem to be happening lately. It feels so strange to think that I am not a student at Fairfield anymore. I think of my last day there and I think how normal it seemed. It didn't feel like an end. I knew it was, but it didn't feel like it.

That day was different though. As I went through all of my classes for that final time, I had to hold back tears. All day I was thinking about how I might not see some of these people ever again. Realizing that some people that I had become friends with that year were going to different schools next year was hard. My really close friends will keep in contact with me, but the ones that weren't as close.... Well.... I don't know when, or if, I will see them again.

Needless to say, this summer has been a time of change in my life. It all started with Washington DC and the amazing experience I had there. I realized, while in that amazingly beautiful place, that I had no idea what I really want to do with my life. I had put all of my time and effort into Science Olympiad for three years and now I didn't know if I would really want to go into science at all. I love it. That much I'm sure about, but I don't know if I really want to be doing that stuff for the rest of my life. I also realized that I would love to live in DC. It is an unbelievable place and I fell in love with it while I was there.

I also started driving about three weeks ago. I took a Drivers Ed class out at Fremont High School. My grandma works there and my cousin was taking the class, so Izzy and I decided we would take it there too. We got our permits about a week into the class and we have been driving to the store and other places when our parents have to go somewhere. I am way nervous behind the wheel. When I'm thinking about driving I'm fine. I think I'm a pretty good driver so far. However, something happens when I turn the key and start moving. I am so afraid that I'll get into an accident that I can't relax. I know that once I have enough experience it will be a lot easier, but it's impossible for me to know how much experience I'll need to be able to feel comfortable driving.

Another thing that has gotten me to realize how fast things are changing is my older sister, The Wendy Bird (haha). Anyway, Wendy lives in Ohio. In past years she has come out here to visit my dad and we'd see her when we went to his house on the weekends, but my dad moved to California this year and so we didn't know what was going to happen. All summer we asked our dad to have her come out and stay with our grandma or her grandpa. It got to the point where I didn't think she'd come. We only have so much summer left and I had no idea what Wendy was going to be up to for the rest of the summer.

For the last week Wendy has been staying with her grandpa who lives down the street from us. It has been an awesome week. I've gotten to know my sister more and we've had the most amazing time ever. It's so weird to think that she is almost 18 though. I remember when we were little and she still lived here. There was a year when she lived with us and it was great. Back then we knew each other. We saw each other more than once a year. We talked to each other more than once every few months. I didn't have to wonder how life would be if she were around back then.

I wrote a blog at the beginning of the year about change. I said that I didn't like change and that I wished things wouldn't ever change. Another thing I've realized this summer is that I don't mind the way things are changing now. Sure, not all of the changes are good but I can live with it. Without some change life would be incredibly boring. People would stay the same and things would stay the same and nothing would ever be. . . Different. I like that I get to go to a new school come August 25. I like that I'm going to meet new people and have new teachers. I can't wait to see what high school will be like. I can't wait to see how this summer has changed my friends because I haven't really hung out with them at all. I can't wait to see how the changes of this summer will effect my life. I'm glad that things are changing.

Some things just can't be said.

Have you ever wanted to tell someone something but known you didn't have the courage to actually say the words? Have you sat alone reciting what you would say to yourself only finding that, when the opportunity arose, you were too scared to say what needed to be said? Then, a month or a year later, you think how things would have been different if the words had come out.

Until recently I kept almost everything I had ever written at the bottom of my closet, and on days when I was feeling particularly bored or upset I would look through all of the forgotten notes, letters, and stories. One thing that I found I had a lot of was letters that had never been sent. In these letters I would say everything that I had wanted to say to people and at the time of writing them I had every intent to send them. Things like 'I'm really mad at you. I can't believe you didn't tell me about....' or 'You don't really want to be happy do you? Or else you would have gotten away from....'. After reading these I would remember (and feel) the emotion behind the letter and I would always find myself wondering if it would even make a difference.

Just over a year ago I wrote a paper for my creative class on my relationship with my dad. The last piece of the paper was a letter to him that stated that I knew things weren't going to change and that I was just writing the letter for myself because I never actually planned on showing it to him. A couple months later I decided that by showing my dad the paper I might actually be helping him. I emailed it to him and told him to read it. He had known about the paper and he had known (or I thought he had known) that I never planned on showing it to him. About half an hour later he called me and told me that he had, had to leave his office because my paper had made him cry. I took this as a good sign that maybe things would get better. I hoped that I had finally managed to get my words to him in a way that I couldn't do normally.

Yesterday, I cleaned out my closet. I took out all of those notes, letters, and stories and threw them out. I decided that I wanted to start clean. I wanted to try and let go of all of those situations and teach myself in some way that nothing I could have said would have made a difference. I say this because my paper didn't make a difference at all in the situation with my dad. I pretended that I had gotten over it and it was forgotten.

Like any person, I have these dreams of how I wish things would change. I used to spend a lot of my time thinking about how these dreams might have been reality if I had ever gotten the courage to speak out. Now I'm trying to get passed that. I know that the things I thought wouldn't really have been able to change much. So I'm ok with all of that now.

There are still things I want to say. I still have feelings that I don't show because I don't know how too. The hard things are just that. I can't tell people my deepest thoughts and I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person that can.

The things that absolutely have to be said aren't often things that are said by me. I can't talk to people. It's something I want to work on, but I don't think I have to work on it by going through the hard things. I could start by trying to get the other things out. The things that aren't difficult at all. That's where I'm going to start. I still won't be able to make the other things known, but, for now, I'm ok with that.

Summer..... is grand.

So now that it's about two weeks into summer I'm finding it a lot easier to believe where I am in my life. I got my schedule for my first year at Layton High about a week ago because I got into the AVID program which should make me go from a 3.952 student to a 4.0 student. I know what classes I'm going to have when and I know what classes I will have with Izzi. It is way exciting and I can't wait for next year.

I've surprised myself by coming back to this blog already. I told myself that I was going to continue to write in it, but I've never really been one to commit to something like this. I think I mentioned at the beginning of the school year that I have had blogs before that I kept up with for a week or so before just forgetting about them and I had thought that, with the school year being over, this would become just like any of those. I am glad to see that, at least for now, I was wrong.

In the last two weeks a lot has happened. Along with being done with Junior High I have found a place that was so amazing. Washington D.C. was a beautiful place. Sure, it is more city than I would expect to love but there was just something about it that made me wish that I could stay there forever. Maybe it was the people I was with, maybe not. I tend to think not because a lot of the time I was there I was annoyed with more than one person. It might also have to do with my experiences there as a Science Olympian and if that is it then I am sure that I would still love it if, one day, I was to return.

Or maybe it was simply because I had one of the greatest moments of my life up on the stage at George Washington University. That, I'm sure, is one of the key factors.

Oh, did I not mention this last time?

I got second place in Trajectory. Second place in the nation!!! Can you believe that? I have never had a greater achievement in my life and I am sure that it will probably remain one of the greatest achievements in my life for the rest of my life.

Have you ever gotten an award in front of thousands and thousands of people (plus more watching via satellite and webcast)? Well I have to say that it is the best feeling in the world. Knowing that all of your work has come to something that great just makes you feel like it really meant something. Even if it was only for a junior high level competition, I think that what I did really did mean something. It wasn't a gold, no. But we lost because of a difference of .5 centimeters. I consider that as good as gold.

Along with having the time of my life in a place that I now love, I have realized that school isn't my only life. My family is amazing and, while I have always known this, I do fit in with them. I may not play video game and I am certainly not an artist, but they are my family. We all love to watch movies together. We play card games together. We go camping together. And when Izzi and I are getting along we (gasp) even help each other do our hair or come up with jokes that no one will ever understand. That is what I love about having a big family. There is always someone making jokes and almost always there is laughter.

I have also realized that even though mL, my best friend in the world, does get better grades than me I am just as good as her. I am as smart as her. I am as talented as her. I can be just as successful as her. I will be just as successful as her. Maybe I'll be able to do better because she is my friend. I know that I am doing better in school because of the influence of her and my other friends as well. I know that I would not being improving as much as I am without them.

Heh. I don't know if anyone even reads this now that it is summer. I am pretty sure that there are not many of us that are still blogging, but to any of you that still are (either reading or writing) thanks for a great year!!! And I'm sorry we never got around to that bowling party we wanted to do.

Beauty in the City and Heartbreak in the Mind

Wow. A lot has happened lately. So much in fact, that it is completely overwhelming, totally exciting, and heartbreakingly sad all at the same time. I cannot begin to explain how I have felt the last few days. Everything has seemed so unreal that it is taking a lot to get my mind around all of it. My life is changing. So many things are beginning and ending that I am sure I don't even recognize all of them.

The most recent event that has got me excited, overwhelmed, and sad was the National Science Olympiad tournament in Washington DC over the weekend. I saw things and experienced things that have changed how I think and where I want to go with my life. I found a place that is magical and amazing and so completely awesome that I wish I could still be there. The competition itself was not even as big a part of the experience as I had thought it would be. I mean, I am completely happy with the results of the competition (I'll write more about that later) , but the city of DC was so much more than the reason I was there. If that makes any sense.


The next thing that has got me feeling so. . . different, is that school is over. It is summer, and yet I feel like I should be getting ready to go to bed so that I can wake up at 6:30 AM tomorrow and get ready for school. It just feels so weird to think that I am not a student at FFJH anymore. Come August I will not be riding the bus to a school where I know all of the teachers and a lot of the students. Instead I will be walking to a school where I know some of the students and not a single teacher. It makes me incredibly sad to think that my time at FFJH is over and I am already finding that what Mr. T said about me experiencing withdrawals from the school is true. Haha.

Knowing that so many things are beginning and so many others are ending, I have decided that I am going to try to keep up with this blog. I want to record the things that mean a lot to me. The problems or the experiences that I want to remember, and I want people from the honors english class of 2007-2008 or future students or Mr. T to read about it. I want people to know what is going on with my life and I am going to try so hard to remember to write in here frequently.

Honors English is over. So is 9th grade. So is the National Science Olympiad Competition.

High school starts in August. I get my learners permit sometime this summer.

So much is happening now. It is really hard to wrap my mind around it.

Walk Two Moons to Kill a Mocking Bird

Walk Two Moons to Kill a Mocking Bird

Did you know that it is a sin to kill a mocking bird? Did you know not to judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins? Well neither did Salamanca ‘Sal’ Hiddle or Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch at the beginning of their stories. These two girls are very similar despite living in very different time periods. They’re curious, brave, caring, and both of them have lost their mothers. Sal and Scout probably would have gotten along very well, had their paths ever crossed.

To truly understand someone and their actions you have to know what they see, you have to take a step out of your own life and into theirs or “walk two moons in their moccasins”. This is a lesson that both Salamanca and Scout learn during the course of their stories. Salamanca learns that she was wrong about Mrs. Cadaver, the only survivor of the accident that Sal’s mother died in and the last person to ever talk to her. Scout learns that Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley was not someone to fear but instead was someone who cared for Jem and herself and watched out for them their whole lives.

To Kill a Mockingbird Page 278

Daylight . . . in my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephanie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over her azaleas. It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him.

It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.

It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. The boy helped his sister to her feet, and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.

Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog.

Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him.

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

While both lessons were difficult to learn and understand, they gave the girls a little bit of peace and they helped Sal and Scout grow up a little. Something that didn’t help with that so much is the girls’ crazy imaginations.

Both Salamanca and Scout have great imaginations. The things they came up with helped them create stories and jump to conclusions about people around them. To Scout Boo Radley was a crazy man who stabs his mother with scissors and is kept locked inside his home. To Salamanca Mrs. Cadaver is a murderer who killed her husband and buried him in her backyard. Eventually the two girls see that they were wrong to think these things about people before knowing much about them. Salamanca and Scout used their imaginations and their curiosity to create incredible stories about other people.

One of the bigger similarities between Salamanca and Scout is that they are both story tellers. Within the first ten pages of Walk Two Moons Salamanca is asked to tell a story and so she begins to tell the story of her friend Phoebe. Scout starts out her own tale by telling the story of her family and Maycomb. The most important story that either of them tells, though, is their own. They tell the story of how they grew up. That is a lot of what makes them so similar.

Throughout their stories Salamanca and Scout show that they are caring, curious, and imaginative girls. They tell the stories of themselves and the people around them as if they were right there in that time and they reflect on what they’ve learned from those experiences. Salamanca and Scout both grew up a little when they learned that killing a mockingbird is a sin and not to judge someone until you’ve walked two moons in their moccasins.

Hurry on up now!

I don't really know what to write about today, but I figure I'm way behind in discussion posts and just a bit behind on blogs, and so I better get going on them.

I guess one major thing that has been on my mind lately is the future. We have less than twenty days of junior high left. You would think that now things would begin to feel different than they have all year, or at least from the past two years, but nothing has really changed. Of course, CRTs are on the computers this year and that makes things different. The tests are not as stressful as they were before and they actually seem as easy as they should.

Other than that though there is not anything that feels any different than it has for me all through junior high. My classes are still the same, my friends and I still talk about the same things, and over all everything is just as it has been for the past two years.

I guess it would seem more real to me if things were beginning to change now. If I could feel things gradually becoming it different it would be easier to grasp how close we are to being finished with junior high. There are so many things that will be coming to a close in the next few weeks, and it is really hard to picture how things are going to be after I am done at Fairfield.

In my mind I picture my seventh grade orientation. I remember looking around the school and thinking about how big and scary it looked. I had been so excited for junior high back then, and I wasn't at all afraid of anything except being able to open my locker. I compare that day to the open house at Layton High a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot different than my seventh grade orientation. My mom dropped me, Carley, and my two little sisters off at the school and we went straight in to get started looking around our new school.

I saw my friends and we walked around looking at places together. We weren't guided by anyone as we were at the seventh grade orientation. It was weird. There were only some parents there. Not a ton. Most kids just came with their friends. I realized then that I really was afraid of getting lost in there next year, and I know that it is a realistic fear.

High school is going to be very, very different from junior high. I know that. I'm excited for it. I can't wait to have only four classes a day and I can't wait to take driver's ed and all of the other fun classes I'm going to take. I am so excited for high school. I just wish it felt more real than it currently does. I wish that things were already changing more, because then I'd be able to grasp that I only have a few more months until I am in high school.

Well, I guess I found something to write about. It is the same thing I've been writing about for a while now, but whatever. I guess I have other things I need to be doing so I'll try to write more later.

Darling

For the longest time (about two weeks now), I've had this feeling of dread and just plain unhappiness that I haven't been able to shake. When I feel like this I usually grab a book and that's all people see me doing until I can get it to go away. This hasn't happened to me in a long time, and I've never really found anything that brings it on. I just start to feel like something is wrong and that I don't want to be around people.

My friends and family have noticed that lately I separate myself from them and go off on my own whenever I can. I come home, do my chores, and go straight up to my room. During school I eat lunch and then go to the commons to read until the bell rings. In class I read before the bell rings because it keeps people from talking to me (and I am reading a good book, not amazing, but that's an entirely different topic). Today I found my way out of that. It surprised me what ended up doing it, but I was glad that it happened, so glad.

In seventh grade I didn't really have a whole lot of friends. I joined the Science Olympiad team and I joined MESA and that's basically where all of my friends came from. I am so glad that I ended up doing these things because I met some of the most amazing people that year.

Two of my very best friends that year were ninth graders. We met through Science Olympiad, specifically the Meteorology event because we practiced together. At first I didn't really know what to say to them, and I don't really know exactly how I started talking to them, but I do know that by the end of the year Lori and Becca were the coolest people I knew. We even had nicknames for each other. Haha. Granted, they weren't very original nicknames. To me the two of them were "the crazy 9th graders" and to them I was "the one and only crazy seventh grader". I told them this year that since I was now the "crazy 9th grader" that I would have to find a crazy 7th grader of my own. That hasn't happened, and I don't think it will.

I don't really talk to Lori and Becca much anymore. It's sad, but I've hardly spent any time with them since they left Fairfield. I still think about them all the time, and I wonder if I'm anything like them. I've always wanted to be like them. They are the greatest, nicest, and smartest people I've met and had a chance to be friends with. The things they did were things I wanted to do. I picked up the crazy things, like eating 3 dum dum suckers at a time, and I tried to pick up the good things they did.

I talk to Becca and Lori when I can, and I'm always interested in what is going on with them. This week I've talked to Lori a couple times, and I think that it was because of those conversations that I am feeling so awesome right now.

Have you ever seen someone that made such a difference in your life after not seeing them/talking to them in months? Well it's one of the greatest experiences ever. I was so glad to see Lori today, but I didn't think I was really going to talk to her. She's at the school sometimes for Falcon Academy, and although I see her she never really seems to have time to talk to me. It was so great to have her come into my seventh period and then come over to talk to me. We talked about possibly hanging out sometime and how busy we are and how I never talk to them anymore, but that wasn't the funnest part of the conversation.

Lori says I remind her of Becca. It makes me curious as to how I remind her of Becca, but she says I'm just like Becca was when she was in 9th grade. I doubt that. I'm not nearly as awesome as Becca is, but it definitely made me happy to hear that.

The funniest part of the whole thing was when Rosie came over and started talking to us. Lori said that she just think Rosie's little sister is so "darling" and it made me laugh so hard. Lori and Becca always said darling that year that we went to the same school, and it was so funny to me. They were the only people I had ever met who had called me, or anything, darling. To hear her say that just brought a flood of memories back. Days walking through the halls together or Science Olympiad practices.

So even though I don't really have any idea when I'm going to get the chance to see Lori and Becca or talk to them again it was so great to be able to see one of them. Just thinking about them is enough to make me happy. I miss them so much, but I'm hoping that we might get to see each other and hang out soon. Our lives are so busy, but they're only going to get busier.

So that's why I've gone from really kind of depressed to extremely happy in the last hour and a half. Life is pretty good. I'm loving the way my life is going and I love that I've had so many great opportunities.

Anyway... Enough of that. It's not like anyone reads this blog anyway...