Writing Blog

MY RESOLUTIONS FOR SCHOOL

When you are procrastinating on homework, what various things do you do to postpone the work?

Some days, I can be a really lazy person. When I get to my house and I don't want to do my homework, the first thing I do is eat a snack. (I do it even when I'm not procastinating). When I finish eating, I start playing piano, practicing every single song I know until there's nothing else I can play; after that, it's usually the time of the day when my mom gets home from work. When she does, I start talking to her.

When I'm done with all of the talking, I usually tell myself to stop being lazy and start doing my homework, but when I get all my stuff out of the backpack, I start checking my phone, visiting all of the social networks I'm in and then make the mistake of opening websites where people post pictures. I really like looking at those pictures, especially when I have homework to do, so I stay in those websites for a really long time.

By the time I'm done with the pictures, dinner's usually ready, so I go to the kitchen and eat as slowly as possible, chatting with my parents and my brother until they remind me I have homework to do, so I start doing a little of it, but then quickly start playing games on my phone until my parents go upstairs to sleep. That's when I realize it's really late and I haven't done half of my work, so I get serious and finish it.

Magic, what an amazing thing! I think at certain points of our lives, we've all wondered what would we do if magic existed, so here's my story on how I started thinking about it. Since I was very little, I've always liked to read. My parents, who are great readers have helped me pick out books that they thought I would like and did the same thing with my brother. One day, they bought him Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and since he liked it so much, he read the other books in the series and later introduced that amazing, magical world to me. At once, I fell in love with Harry's world and started wondering about magic. What would happen if I were a witch, and at the age of eleven got my letter from Hogwarts? What classes would I like and which ones would I have trouble with? Which teachers would I like and which ones would I hate? What house would I be in? Certainly NOT Slytheryn.

With all of the magic I thought of, I started thinking about the wizard stores mentioned in the books. There, the author talks about Hogsmade, a town where the students who attend to Hogwarts go to on some weekends. She names various shops like Zonko's, which is a store where wizards can buy things to make pranks, Honeydukes, a sweet shop with wizard candy like the chocolate frogs and many other places. She also talks about the Diagon Alley, a place where young wizards buy their materials for school; where there's a bookstore, a pet store, a wand store and a wizard bank. Every time I read about those places, I liked to think what things I would like to buy from each store.

I also liked to think about magical creatures. In the Forbidden Forest, which is near Hagrid's place, there are many creatures like thestrals, centaurs, talking spiders and unicorns. While reading, I also imagined myself walking through that forest and being scared at the slightest noise I heard. If magic were real and I went to Hogwarts, I would be a really happy person, casting all sorts of spells and having an awesome time.

My experience through magic

Today, I'm going to talk about my favorite female singer, Adele. I started listening to her because of my dad. One day, I was doing homework when he called me and told me he was going to show me a video I would love; it was a video of her singing "Someone like you." As I continued listening, I was amazed by her voice and the lyrics she wrote, so I bought her three albums "19," "21" and "Live at the Royal Albert Hall"

Adele is a british singer born in May 5, 1988. Her first album "19" was successful, but she gained her fame because of her second album, "21." When she became famous, people started criticizing her because of her weight. She didn't pay attention to those horrible comments about her and stayed just the way she was. In the 2012 Grammy awards, she won the six awards she was nominated for and sold many copies of both albums.

I think Adele is a great artist and deserves all the fame she got because she has an amazing voice and she writes beautiful, inspiring songs. Also, despite of her fame, she lives a very discrete, humble life and doesn't buy expensive stuff all the time. I think Adele could be a role model for women everywhere because she shows you don't have to be size zero to be successful in the music industry; you just have to have a great voice. She is also a big inspiration for me because she won a lot of money and has a lot of fame, but still lives a quiet life.

My favorite female singer

One of the most important things for me is family. My family is and will always be there for me when I need it; in good and bad times and I'm really glad I have it. Every time I've been in trouble and needed help, they've given me great adivce and made me feel better. There are two things you should know about my family; it's very big and almost everyone in it plays an instrument.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always liked music. That's because I have a huge family filled with many aunts and uncles that play instruments. Some of them are professional musicians. December is the time when we usually come together an I've always liked that when we are together, one of my uncles simply takes out a guitar and starts playing. Everyone starts watching and some people join in. My family has been a huge influence for me, and I am thankful for them because they encouraged me to play instruments. One of my uncles taught me how to play guitar and since then, I've liked music even more than before and I started playing piano too.

Families can have a lot of influence in someone's life. They can affect someone's personality and their likes or dislikes, and other things. That's why am very grateful to my awesome family who taught me all about music and how to appreciate it's different genres and styles. Of course, my family also taught me many other things like the importance of being united and caring for each other, but in this blog, I wanted to talk about the musical part of it. How about you? What is one of the greatest things your family has taught you?

My awesome, musical family

Marriage. It's something everyone should do at a proper time and with the right person. I think when it comes to deciding, a person should be very careful. Getting married and living with someone is very complicated and in order to live together, a couple has to share some interests, values and opinions. Those three things I mentioned are also really important when it comes to raising a child. Imagine your parents dissagreing about everything. It would be horrible!

Think about older times; times in which arranged marriages were very common. The only things parents cared about was marrying someone who had money, so thanks to the marriages, they would become wealthy. People were usually unhappy about their marriages. The fact that some parents still force their children to marry who they say horrifies me. When people are going to marry, they're old enough to make their own choices and shouldn't let other people make them for them.

I think most parents are very understanding and give great advice because they have more experience and have gone through a lot, so If I had to make the decision of marrying someone, I would definetly ask my parents about it. Listening to their opinions could help me make the right decision. I'm not saying parents should make the decision for you (the decision has to be made by you,) but it's important to listen to opinions, specially your parents' who know you the most and only want the best for you. Obviously if a guy wanted to marry a girl, he knew she was the one he wanted to marry and his parents didn't approve, my advice for him would be to follow his heart, but I think listening to opinions can help a person clear it's thoughts and make a final decision. Finally, I think parents can give their opinion, but it's the person's choice wether to follow their advice or figure it out on his/her own; wether to listen to the opinion or not.

Marriage, should your parents have a say?

In this post, I will talk about Mexico, an amazing place to travel to. It's very colorful, filled with delicious, spicy foods and learning about their culture is wonderful. I've traveled twice to the country and both times I went there, I loved it.

The first time, I was twelve or thirteen (I don't remember very well) and my family and I went to Mexico City. When we went there, we visited several museums where we got to know better about the history of Mexico. Another place we went to was Teotihuacan. It is a place that has three famous pyramids built by the natives; one is the Moon's Pyramid, the other is the Sun's Pyramid and the last one is the Serpent's Pyramid. In our first trip, we also went to a beautiful, little town called Taxco, which is known for its silver jewelry.

The second time we traveled to Mexico, we went to Cancún. It's a place where many tourists go to and what I enjoyed the most about this particular city was that it was near to Chichén Itzá. This is a place where there are many pyramids who were built by the Mayans and in there, you learn a lot about them. Sadly, it is very big, it has many buildings and our tour guide was talking too much (talking in and on about things that weren't important and nobody was listening to,) so we didn't get the chance to visit all of the place. After going to Cancún, my family and I went to another city, Guadalajara. My half brother and his girlfriend live there, so they gave us a tour of the city. It was amazing! The last stop in our second trip to Mexico was Mexico City, where we mainly went to museums and gift shopping. We went to a huge traditional market which had many things. You could find simple things like food and more elaborated things like traditional Mexican decorations and dolls. In the market, we bought really cool things for our numerous family and before we knew it, it was time to go back home.

Mexico is a great place to travel to because there are many interesting places to go to and every single one of them still keeps old architecture that the natives built. You never get tired of visiting all of the great things that are there.

A great place to visit

Haven't you had one of those days where you just want to lie in bed and do nothing? I have, and in my life, this happens too often (I should be worried now.) Sometimes, I get far too stressed about school; if I'm having good grades, if I did all of homework or I missed one because I procrastinated (read blog on procrastination,) if I'll do well on my test, etc. That feeling always comes to me when I have too much work for one day or I have a project or test the next day and I worried about how I'm gonna do.

In that scenario, I have a lot of trouble getting ready for school because I start picturing myself sleeping, reading and watching TV (but mostly sleeping). I also think about vacations, in which I can wake up at 11:00 am and it doesn't matter; days where I can sleep all day, watch movies and just relax.

Lying in bed and doing nothing is such a great feeling! The bed is cozy, the blankets are warm, the pillows soft and I could stay there all day. Those lazy days where you are in school and you feel like you want to sleep the entire day are horrible. To prevent it, I try to go to bed early, so I can have a little energy on school days. Finally, all I can say is to prevent lazy days in school, sleep all you can at night, but the best cure for them are weekends.

I seriously don't know about you, but I love watching children's movies. I think they are entertaining and even though I know what's going to happen in the end, I still like them. It all started one day when I was watching TV. There was't anything to watch, so I started flipping through the channels and in Disney Channel, Cinderella was on. I found myself enjoying it and trying to remember the songs or how the characters were going to react to a certain scenario. At first, it started out with princess movies, but later, I watched other movies like Shrek, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

The only thing I'm sad about is some of the children's movies they are making now. I think the old movies are way better than the new ones because they were more creative. Think about it; before, they made awesome movies like Toy Story, who is very cool and entertaining, but now they are making movies about airplanes and snails who who have the power to be fast. They aren't being nearly as creative as before.

I really don't know if my opinion is justified because I grew up with those movies I talked so greatly about and they are a part of my childhood. What if they are similar to the new ones I didn't like, but because of my attachment with the older movies I can't realize it? I just hope I'm wrong and the new movies are amazing (like Despicable me, I loved it.) What do you think?

Lazy days

Children's movies

Have you ever seen an adaptation of a book that's so bad it looks like a parody? That's what Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet seems like to me. Romeo and Juliet is a tragic story about two lovers from rival families, whohave to keep their love a secret and go through all sorts of obstacles in order to be together. This is a classic love story that has been reference to other love stories through the ages all around the world, and this particular film version doesn't live up to my expectations.

The movie tries to make a modern version of the story, and I believe there are some things they do well on, but there are some others in which they don't. The first thing I don't like is how they make the Capulet family look like. They appear to be very extravagant and the film also makes them look like they don't care about Juliet. The play doesn't show any difficult relationships between them, but in the movie, Lady Capulet rarely talks to Juliet and Lord Capulet even hits Juliet in one scene. The second thing I don't like is the violence. The movie shows lots of killing and destroying from both families, fights between them appear in the news and that much violence isn't in the original play. The film portrays them as savages who kill people and destroy things, and that misleads the main theme of the story (love) to violence. The third thing -and probably the thing that bothers me the most- is the dialect. I believe that if Luhrmann is doing a modern-day version of the story, he needs to change the dialect into words that would be used today, not keep the original one. It doesn't seem right; all of the characters with guns and cars, but talking in an older language. That's the thing that I liked the least. However, I like the way Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes act as the star-crossed lovers. That's because they keep their characters' simplicity and use it to portray a believable, tragic love. As I said before, it doesn't live up to the high expectations I had of it, but now, moving to another topic, I'm going to state some differences I found between the play and the film.

In these differences, I can't be too specific because I don't want to give away the story if you haven't seen it or read it, but here are some of the differences. In the movie, some characters are very extravagant; especially Lady Capulet, Tybalt and Mercutio. Lady capulet is always trying to look her best and she wears party dresses and uses wigs, Tybalt instead of being protective with his family like in the play, has always an evil look, like he wants to hurt someone. Mercutio in the play is a nice, easygoing person, but in the movie, he is completely crazy. In fact, in one scene of the movie he wears a dress to go to a party and he even gives Romeo drugs. I believe if it weren't for the extravagance of some of the characters, the movie could've been better, and I might have recommended it to someone.

Honestly, after watching this movie, I don't think I would recommend it to anyone. Even if a person hasn't read the play, I doubt they would like it. That's because some of the actors don't do very well on being subtile in specific parts of the story. If the actors played their roles like Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, the movie would be much better.

I think it's extremely hard to make an adaptation of a book or play, especially such a classic, famous one, but that's why a director has to be very careful. I believe Luhrmann has an amazing idea, but he doesn't do a good job executing it; he tries so hard to make a modern-day version, he doesn't realize most people don't act like that nowadays. In conclusion, the movie fails to show a credible modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet, due to the relationship between the characters and the extravagance of some; making it look like a horrible parody of this amazing play.

Romeo + Juliet movie review

You may be wondering who am I and why am I writing this? Well, my name is Antonia Arbeláez and I am fifteen years old. I live in Manizales, which is a small city located in Colombia. I'm a student at Colegio Granadino, where I do a gigantic amount of work and have fun with my friends. My personality is really weird; I am one of those people who can be very serious at times, but funny and outgoing at others, specially when I'm around my closest friends. I love to play piano, sing, read, play basketball and hang out with my friends.

I created this assignment because I know this is a great way to learn to make connections and to improve my writing skills. I hope when I finish this project, I will be a better writer. My goals with this project are writing it in a way that when people read it, they will be able to know exactly what I felt like in the three moments I picked. The three memories I chose to make my soundtrack are the first time I scraped my knee, but stood up and didn't cry, the time when I realized I liked to read and the first time I sang a song in front of a real audience.

"Soundtrack of your life" introductory parragraphs

Blues is a musical genre that has been around since the ninteenth century. It originated in the South of the United States and it's a form of music that evolved from folk and work songs. In that time period, slavery was present, and while slaves did all of their hard work, they sang songs to distract themselves. They sang about their living conditions and their sadness until the songs became a whole new style of music. Shortly after, it became known all around the world.

When listening to a blues song, you might notice that the singer sings the song with a lot of feeling. When you listen, you immediately feel the emotions the singer tries to portray because it talks about such sad topics that you can connect to them. Also, the way they sing it is amazing; personally, when I listen to a good blues song, I can feel the desperation in the singer's voice. I can feel the way they do when they sing about losing a person they love or when they sing about how their life changed because of a tragic event, but the voice of the singer has to be powerful in a way that it can transmit what they are feeling and make other people understand theur sorrow. that's the magic of the blues.

The Blues

"Grits Ain't Groceries

All around the world I'd rather be a fly

I'd lite on my baby 'n stay with my woman 'till I die

With a toothpick in my hand I'd dig a ten foot ditch

And run all through the jungle fightin' lions with a switch

Because you know I love you, baby

Ooh you know I love you baby, yeah

Now if I don't love you baby, I tell you

Grits ain't grocery, eggs ain't poultry

And Mona Lisa was a man

Grits Ain't Groceries is a blues song by Little Milton. It's an upbeat song about unconditional love. As you can see from the little piece of the song I posted, the lyrics talk about what a man would rather do instead of being apart from the woman he loves. He uses hyperboles to sing about ridiculous things he'd do for his loved one, to make people understand he'd do anything for her. The song uses a lot of contractions to show the dialect at the particular time and place. It also lists objects that everyone knows about to make the listener understand the hyperboles better.

I think the author chose to write about this particular topic because he had a strong experience with love. When people live certain types of experiences, they have an easier time writing songs because they use those experiences as an inspiration. I think that was the case with this song. Love is a topic millions of people write about and even when times and generations change, people everywhere write songs about it. That's because love is and will always be present in many aspects of people's lives and I think people will never stop writing about this particular topic.

In 2014 when the year was just starting, someone gave me an advice that helped me since the moment I heard it. The advice was "be the type of person you want to meet." I thought about it and I concluded that I wanted to be the type of person who treated everyone nicely and was fun to be around with. In that moment, I started reflecting on my life and my attitude towards others: how I behaved, how I treated others, and how I treated myself. I realized I wasn't always the nicest or happiest person, so I decided to change that.

I started out by changing my attitude. I became a more cheerful and open person and I saw that people were starting to be more happy around me. I also started being nicer to everyone, even to the people that weren't my friends and I saw that they really responded to that.

Ever since I started doing all those things, life has become a lot easier. By not worrying, by being nicer and by not caring that much about what others think, (because I'm still working on that) I started being happier and easier to be around with. That awesome advice helped me become a better person and has solved many of my problems.

Greatest lesson

John Proctor as a tragic hero

This unit in English we are reading The Crucible by Arthur miller. It's a play that talks about the Salem witch trials in 1692 and the atrocities that were commited during that time period. They started because a group of girls tried to practice withcraft in order to kill a farmer's wife because one of the girls fell in love with him and wanted to take her place. The main character is the farmer and his name is John Proctor. He's a very serious man and he's respected by the townspeople because he makes his own decisions and doesn't do what everyone does. He has three children and a wife called Elizabeth, but his whole life falls apart the moment he makes a mistake.

He has an affair with a seventeen-year old girl called Abigail, who works for him. His wife Elizabeth finds out and fires Abigail immediately. Proctor feels terrible about what happens and tries to fix his relationship with his wife, but she doesn't fully trust him anymore. What happens next is what I already explained, Abigail and her friends try to put a spell on Elizabeth, but her uncle sees them and one of the girls pretends to be bewitched. Because the other girls are afraid of the consequences for their actions, they start accusing the people in the town for witchcraft. The town goes crazy and there's suspicion everywhere, but Abigail tells Proctor that it's all a lie. Proctor as an honest man tries to do what's right and save innocent people from being accused, but he doesn't know how to convince the court that the girls are pretending.

Proctor is the perfect example of a tragic hero because its definition is "a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction." (n. d.). Retrieved February 27, 2015. This definition matches perfectly the life of John Proctor. He makes a mistake (has an affair with Abigail) and due to that, a series of events that (until now) are leading to Proctor's own destruction unravel. Even though he makes a huge mistake, readers feel empathy for him and like him because of his heroic characteristics.

The Lottery is a story about a town that has the tradition of doing a lottery every year. The story talks about how the town prepared for it; kids collected stones and put them on the main street, the townspeople organized themselves by families and it showed that the same person organized it each year. Throughout the story, readers believe it's a normal lottery, but in the end we realize that the person who gets the "winning" paper gets killed.

Whacking Day is an episode from The Simpsons that as well as the previous story talks about a tradition. Each year, the people in Springfield went out, looked for snakes and whacked them to death. They loved their tradition and when Bart and Lisa tried to stop it and say it was wrong, they wouldn't listen. In the end, they stopped it and ended the tradition.

What both stories have in common is that they both talk about a tradition that has been going on for many years and most people are not willing to stop. We can see that whacking day took the idea of a tradition in the lottery and changed it to represent the especific idea it wanted to show.

The Lottery vs. Whacking Day