Would you like your future to be determined by others? Why or why not?

Personally I think the option to choose what I want to do and live how I want to live is something I would not want anyone to take away from me because I wouldn't want to have to live with a profession that I don't enjoy doing, I mean I don't even know what I, myself, want to do, how is ANYONE else supposed to know and choose for me? So, no, I would not want my future to be determind by anyone else because I think that in order to learn, you have to make mistakes in your decisions with everything including what you want to do with your future. I find it annoying even when my parents try to tell me what I should do, so if someone that I didn't know very well, like in "The Giver" tried to tell me what my job would be and that I had to live with it, no question, I REALLY don't think that I would be too happy. On the other hand, I think that if I grew up in a community like in "The Giver" I would find it absolutely terrifying to have to choose what i wanted to do because no one had ever given me the option to choose what to do with my future I would think of it as unsafe and an a really stupid thing to let people do because I, and most of the people before me, had been shielded from the pain of mistakes or failure, but I still think that it is important that we, as people, get to determine our future.

ThE eNd Is HeRe! TRIPODS!

In the book "Tripods and The White Mountains," Henry starts out as a sort of mean, unusual character. The first time we meet him in the story he basically attacks Will for no reason, other than the fact that they 'always' fight. This definately gives you the impression that he is not a nice person, at all, and you really DON'T like him. Throughout the story though, he goes from being an utter bully, to quite a nice kid. After Will meets Ozymandias, and decides to leave to go on his journey to the White Mountains, Henry decides to follow him and go along with him. This is the first turing point in his character. Henry slowly starts being nicer, and warmer towards Will, but quite subtly. Henry didn't fight with Will quite as much, or even at all, and i think this is the first step in Henry's character change. Just the fact that Henry would want to go along with Will on a journey is a pretty big step in his change in character because I don't think the old Henry would want to even think about going somewhere on a journey with Will.

My opinion of this book is that it is kind of boring and it has too many big points in the story, so your kind of confused as to which part is the climax. Some of the big parts are when Will leaves his home, or when they get captured and they have to escape from a holding room where they meet Beanpole, or when Will gets hurt and they stay at the castle, or when they are hiding from the tripods underneath the rocks just as they were about to get to the White Mountains. As you can see there are a few too many part in the story that you could count as being a climax, and, since the story is not very long, there shouldn't be that many. Otherwise I think the author used some good techniques and great vocabulary which I found quite interesting. I think the concept of the tripods is good and overall I think that it was a good story idea and the author wrote it quite well.

Freedom- Tripods, Castle with the red tower

"The bitter thing was all the spirit, all the gallantry, was wasted. For even more than inferiors, they accepted and looked forward to being Capped. It was a part of becoming a knight, or of turning from a girl to lady. Thinking of this, I saw how good things could be meaningless in isolation. What value did courage have, without a free and challenging mind to direct it?"

This quote shows Will's strong feelings towards freedom. He mentions how he believes that all the great perks there were from staying at the castle, and all the great praise that the knights got from doing their duties, were all wasted because their real emotions, thoughts or feelings were being controlled. They had no choice to think what they wanted to think, because they were capped. Will is making the connection that, without a way to make you own decisions or have your own opinions, there is no reason to be courageous or thoughtful, for it is not you who is directing those qualities inside you. The theme of freedom really shows through here because you can see that Will is struggling to decide whether or not its worth it to stay at the castle, and it is even harder for him to make the decision because he does have the freedom to make that choice. I think this is an important point because maybe, that freedom forces him realize that the only reason he had come so far was to keep his freedom. I think that Will is horrified when he finds out that Eloise it capped, and even more so when he finds out that she was going to leave in order to serve the tripods. This sort of puts him off the edge because he finally gets it that capped people are not free, he is free, and he needs to leave in order to continue to be free. This is why this quote shows, and relates to the theme of freedom.

Power of the Void- Jr. Band

"The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides an exceptional education that challenges each student to develop the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible (silence) global citizen."

I think that adding the silence before the words "Global citizen" creates the most tension. This is because the mission statement is saying what it does to make you a successful, spirited, socially responsible global citizen, but when you put the pause right before the words "global citizen," you make the audience (or who ever your talking to) wait to hear, "a successful, spirited, socially responsible, what?" because they are forced to wait. This causes tension, therefore inducing a question, which is answered after the silence.

Christmas Snapshot

I was driving in Sri Lanka. We had already driven for three hours, and I was getting tired of it. In Sri Lanka The roads were so bad that even if things were only a few miles away it would take you hours to get there. Kandy was 50 miles away from our hotel, but it took a six hour drive to get there.

We came to an intersection when we noticed something holding us up. Before there had been many cows in the road so we expected a herd of cows. Sitting up in my seat I inspected the road for the hold up. I noticed that there were about fifty goats lounging around in the street.

We could do nothing but laugh and laugh until they finally retreated about five minutes later, and we were free to drive again. Our drive ended a few hours later. At least we had a great story to tell about our interesting trip in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

After we finally got to our hotel in Kandy, I sat in my room and watched D.V.D's for a really long time. it was nice to sit in a bed, instead of sitting in a car. I had over 48 hours of Will and Grace on D.V.D, so i just watched it for hours.

That night we drove a few minutes to a temple, in down-town Kandy. This Temple was a temple that Buddha was supposed to have visited himself, during his lifetime. Inside a golden casket there is a relic of one of his teeth. We listened to the stories in the temple and took pictures. Afterwards we went shopping for a bit.

A few days later we left Sri Lanka to come back to K.L. We had many stories to tell, and many pictures to show people. We had had a great time in Sri Lanka. :)

Sixth Grade- Skills and Goals

A skill I have learned in the past five months is that I learned how to use all aspects of my voice in drama. We went through every step it takes to find your voice, including respiration, phonation and articulation. In learning this skill I am now able to control my voice well when I am publicly speaking.

A challenge i faced in the past five months was when I had to make the decision whether to play in a soccer game or go to play rehersal. This happened a few times when I had a big rehersal scheduled for the same time as a soccer game, and I knew that I would probably be kicked out of the play if I skipped rehersal and I also knew that there would be other soccer games that would not clash with my rehersal schedule. I dealt with this by choosing whichever was more practical, or more of a one chance situation. For example: Most of the times I found that it would be more practical to go to play rehersal because I knew that I only had one chance to be in the Harry Potter play and I didnt want to mess up that chance. This is how I have dealt with a challenge in the past five months.

A skill that I would like to learn as I go through the year is to be more organized. I would like to be able to keep my locker cleaner and keep better track of my stuff.

I contributed positively to the sixth grade community by befriending lots of new students this year. When we first started sixth grade I was already really familiar with the school, so I was able to show a lot of people around and help people become more used to the school. This is how I contributed positively to the sixth grade community.

One goal I have for the New Year is connected with the skill I would like to develope. My goal is to become more organized. The steps I will take to reach this goal is that I will get all my stuff ready at night before I go to bed, keep all my stuff in the correct designated folders, and throw out old, unneeded papers so that I am sure of what i need to keep track of. Another goal I have is to become better in my trombone skills. The steps I will take to reach this goal is by keeping up better with my practice logs and be more focused in my practice sessions. These are two goals I have and the steps I will take to reach them. :)

Life lessons- Decions

In the past few weeks I have learned an important lesson about making decisions.
Since I made the play, I have to devote most of my time to rehearsals for it, I also signed up for soccer, so I have to work around the conflicting schedules. On one occasion, the schedules for these two activities conflicted badly, and I had to make the decision between a real game against another school, and a hugely important rehearsal for the play, that required the full cast to be there.
It was an extremely hard decision to make, but in the end, I chose play rehearsal because I knew that there would only be one Harry Potter production, and I didnt want to risk being kicked out of the play to go to a soccer game, although I really did want to go to the game.
This occasion taught me an important lesson about making decisions. You can't always please everyone with the decisions you make, but sometimes you have to choose something important, over something else that you will be able to make up for another time.