halloween, winter sports, and some random stuff

So halloween is this weekend! yay! im dressing up as ke$ha for school on friday :) i cant wait. i bought a bunch of glitter stuff but i still gotta get my costume together. its gonna be so much fun! then on saturday im probably doing this volunteering thing at school, and then helping anna set up for her youth group halloween party. and on halloween im going to watch movies with caitie :) its going to be an awesome weekend. i love halloween!

wrestling starts soon which i am super siked about! although also kind of nervous because i dont even know how many people are actually on the team haha... we shall seee how that goes. swimming also starts  soon.. but thats not very exciting. i just do it to not be fat. haha. and we have a different pool this year so practice is 15 minutes earlier. and farther away. meaning i have to wake up earlier. not cool. hahah.

also i have decided, mostly, that i am not taking a year off before college, and ill probably go to a school that no one in my family has been to. im going to arkansas in a few weeks to look at a college haha. i hope i like it. cause it looks great online so i hope its as good in reality. arkansas is a really random ass place but that could be just what  i need.

we filmed the first scene of our dig vid group project today!! that was so exciting! thank you to all the extras who helped out. im sorry if you were tired or bored but you were such a huge help! i cannot wait to continue making our film. also today, i sound like a frigging fog horn haha. i have no voice. it sucks because i cannot sing and that makes me go crazy.

i have to go make bloody candles :) hahah this should be fun!

PEP RALLY

okay. so besides the fact that we didnt win, which was obviously a let down,there were some good and bad things about today.
pep rallies are supposed to be about school pride, but really all that happened today was people got angry and bad mouthed each other and the administration. (myself included. this is not a holier than thou post.) instead of building each other up, and being excited about the grades other than our own, we boo each other and wreck decorations. i know its all in good fun and stuff-and once again im certainly guilty- but its not really the point of pep rallies and school spirit week. oh well. it is fun at the start at least. like working as a class to decorate! which leads into my good thing about today.
our class has never been the most outgoing class in terms of spirit, and i was really worried about how we would be as a senior class. and even though we didnt win, we did a really great job of working together to buy supplies and decorate the commons. our class is generally very clique-y and those cliques certainly didnt just disappear, but the lines became much more blurred as everyone worked together for a common cause. i was very impressed to see how well we decorated, even if we caused safety violations and had to redo almost everything...
ALSO
we have the sweetest senior shirts ever. love them. its kind of countering what i said earlier because i think that, while pep rallies are supposed to be about school spirit versus class spirit, when you're a senior it really helps your class spirit more. having a senior shirt that almost everyone wears. and being the top dog in school is awesome. mw and i have our differences. and my class and i do too. but i still enjoy being unified for this one day.
SENIORS 2011. the chosen ones.

update.

so... fall festival was kind of a let down this year... maybe i just set my hope too high, although it lived up to them every other year, but either way it wasnt great. i had a cold, and all my friends were on different schedules of when they were there and if they were working booths so my group didnt get to be together too much.. but thats okay. i still got to see my friends who graduated last year!

tomorrow is our first pep rally as SENIORS!!!!!! CLASS OF 2011 WHAT UP?!
i hope that we pull it off as the best senior class so far!!! i bought some streamers and ballons and table cloths today. and im hoping the fact that my target was sold out of most things in blue means that someone already bought it! i got some blue tights too :) and our senior shirts actually got here on time! cant wait to get that in the morning! this pep rally is going to be soooo great. im really excited to see how our class does as seniors. and that we get the big section of the auditorium hahhaha so we dont have to be all up on each other all the time! I LOVE BEING A SENIORRR

Fall

i LOVE fall. i love cardigans. and pumpkin spice lattes. and fall festival. and halloween. and stepping on crunchy leaves. and my fuzzy blue slippers.

fall festival is this friday :) i cannot wait to eat all the yummy food, and watch the teachers get dunked, and the asl performance, and the teacher band, and just the entire atmosphere. if you don't go to maggie walker, it probably isn't very fun... its just a small school festival. but i look forward to it every year, which means a lot if I'M looking forward to a school function. last year, i bought a fish. i tried to win him but that didnt go so well so i bought him for like 50 cents or something instead. he died within like a week though.... sorry, freddie or eddie or whatever your name was haha. so i probably wont be buying any animals this year... but there is still lots of food and activities to spend my money on!!

i also can not wait for halloween! even though i never have a sweet halloween party or anything,caitie, my bff, and i have fun watching stupid scary movies and being awesome. im already thinking about the halloween cookies im going to make :) and i can't wait to see what all the little kids dress up as! i also love halloween because it kicks off holiday season. i love holiday season. it starts with halloween. then thanksgiving. then christmas. then new years. and then my birthday!  the weather gets cold enough to make fires at night, my family stays in and watches movies or plays board games (really its me trying to get them to do things, my mom reading a book and pretending to participate, my dad probably participating, and if my brother is over, hes just being obnoxious and adhd) but the idea is nice. my mom hates halloween. and she isnt american so she doesnt understand thanksgiving (not that it makes much sense). im not religious but i still love the commercialized christmas. and new years is pretty chill no matter who you are. but anna and i will probably do the halloween decorations, mom will still make the thanksgiving dinner-although ill be at the beach with caitie so i wont be here for that-dad and i always pick out the christmas tree, and my parents will most likely fall asleep before midnight on new years.  and this birthday is the best yet because 1) ill be eighteen!! and 2) i dont have school the next day so i can have a party with my friends :)
i am so happy the weather finally got cold and we can actually have fall this year. holiday season starts soon, and we are 1/8th of the way through senior year :)

Other People...

I think it is part of human nature to care too much about what other people think about you. No matter how hard you try, or think that you don't care, on some level you do. It's impossible not to. We are constantly subjected to society's ideal features, or this seasons styles, or the popular music. I could sit here and say that I don't care if you like the color of my hair, or that I wear converse with everyyythinggg, but I'd be lying. Even if I don't really like you, what you say will still effect me. I will second guess myself in the morning when I get dressed because I don't want people to talk about me behind my back. Even the most self confident and secure person will feel a sense of insecurity when criticized. There are, of course, ways to deal with the effect other people have on you, but you can't say that they don't effect you. This sounds so cheesy and cliche but I've been thinking a lot about it because for the last year especially, most of my emotions have been shaped by certain people and events. I don't want them to be. I wish that they weren't. But you can't tell yourself how to feel. Certain things I believe are mind over matter, but the brain is a hard thing to overcome with itself. The only way I have yet found to cope with this is to find role models that are great at being themselves, and try to follow their lead. It doesn't help in every situation, but it has helped me get a little bit closer to not being as effected. This is really wordy and rambly, and to anyone who read this I'm sorry but thank you. I just needed to vent. 

school web security

suckkkss. if you click log out you can go where ever you please. like to your blog. currently I'm in American pop culture working on a fantastically awesome group project... not. now I get to go to latin... yay

Invisible Children

Today the non-profit organization Invisible Children came to speak at our school. It was started by three young guys who went to Uganda because they liked making movies and wanted to see what they could find there. They ended up meeting adorable young children who had been forced to become child soldiers, and these men decided that action needed to be taken to help the soldiers. They made a wonderfully moving and heartfelt documentary that they brought back to America. Since this movie was made, they have started their organization and have raised a bunch of money to rehabilitate the schools in Uganda and thus, the children and society as well. Two native Ugandan women came to tell us their stories as well. This was the best done assembly I have been to in all thirteen years of my education. The stories were moving and personal, and they weren't trying to make up support their cause, but simply show us that one voice CAN make a difference, and whatever it is, we need to be passionate about something. Sitting in the auditorium, watching these guys, not much older than I am, being a part of historical peace movements, I have never felt more insignificant. What have I done? I complain about the school work I have when kids much younger than me are taken from their homes and forced to kill. And other children are dying. Or being forced to sell themselves to support families. This isn't just a Ugandan problem. So many children living in 2nd and 3rd world countries would give anything to be able to go to school. Or just to sleep in their own beds. Even some children in 1st world countries face these problems. During that assembly all I wanted to do was run out of the school, jump in my car, go to the airport and take off to some desperate country and make a difference. I had been thinking about taking a year off before college to travel europe, or roadtrip across america; but that time and money could be spent in a much better way. I feel like the most spoiled person in the world when my biggest problem is that all my cute clothes are dirty. Or I have "no" money. When we study events in History like the Holocaust, or the Rwandan genocide, we often say immediately "Why didn't someone stop them?!" the answer is because they are exactly like us. They saw pictures or heard reports, felt sad for a moment, and then went about their lives. It is smply human nature to assume that someone else will do it. Someone else will call the police, or breakup the fight or whatever it is. But someone has to be that someone else. I'm not saying I'm going to take a year off and fix the whole world. We all know thats not going to happen. And saving one child soldier, out of thousands, maybe didn't seem like it was that significant. But, after meeting Grace, who had to raise her sister's three children, and her own daughter, and her sick mother, in a war ridden country, and seeing that this organization was able to send her back to school and she will be going to college when she gets back from this tour, really opened my eyes to how significant it really is to save one person. Without the help of Invisible Children, Grace most likely would never have been able to afford schooling. Now Grace is going to study to be a teacher, to teach children how important it is to be passionate and active about something. This post is kind of rambling, but I just couldn't stop feeling incredibly insignificant and spoiled when I saw the danger those three guys put themselves in to help out others. Everyone could learn a lesson from this organization and the movie they showed us today, The Rescue of Joseph Kony's Child Soldiers. Thinking is easy. Acting, is a completely different matter. And from this point forth I hope to keep these thoughts in the front of my brain, and start taking action for things I believe in.