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.

Social Scientists- Archaeologist

If I had the choice to be one of the five social scientists, I would choose Archaeologist. I really enjoy searching for things and going on treasure hunts to find "burried treasure" and i think that if i were and Archaeologist I would have the opportunity to do that in real life. Another reason I would choose Archaeologist is that I have always had an interest in the way people lived their what their cultures were like, and if I were an Archaeologist I could learn about that easily. My final reason for picking Archaeologist over the other five social scientists is that I have always wanted to know how to read hyroglifics and other ancient languages, and if I were an Archaeologist I could do that, and enjoy it.

ALL ABOUT RAH :P

My name is Raphaela, but most people call me Rah. I am from America, I was born in Kobe, Japan and lived there until I was two 1/2 years old, and then i moved to Malaysia and have lived here ever since. I have an older sister named Gabi (Gabriella.) I'm 11 1/2 years old, and my sister is 15. Her birthday was actually yesterday on August 10th, and my birthday is November 22nd. I enjoy playing music, singing, acting, and drawing. I play Trombone, Violin, Piano and Guitar.
I enjoy reading and the last three books i have read are; Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, the last two books of the twilight saga, and number the stars. The twilight saga is about vampires and werewolves, and number the stars is about the Holocaust and how WW2 effected Denmark.
I really enjoy going to the movies with my friends Riley and Merina, and the latest movie I've seen was with Riley at the Pavillion and we saw the proposal, and i am excited to go see up with Riley this weekend.
My academic goal for this year is to improve on my Trombone skills and music theory. I also have a social goal for this year. It is to make many new friends because i have a lot of good friends that I have known for a while and I think that it would be fun to meet some new people.
This summer was a lot of fun for me, and i think my favorite vacation memory is when i went to six flags with my 19 year old cousin Scott, (who is a 2nd year college student) and my 15 year old sister Gabi, (14 at the time.) Six flags is a giant roller coaster park in Atlanta, Georgia. We went on seven roller coasters, which is every roller coaster except one (and we didn't go on the last one because by the end of the day we were all too tired to go on another roller coaster.)
I have dark-ish, dirty blonde. It is long, thick and curly. I am average height, (not too tall not too short.)
Thx for reading my blog!
Rah