Tuesday, December 15, 2009

VPA Concert

The VPA concert was on December 15th. It was one of the biggest concert in the year, and it was really nervous when I performed, because I had to perform in front of all of my friends and teachers. Strings, movement, drama, choir, art and band performed in the VPA concert, but art is only a slideshow. I participate in the intermediate band, and today, we performed with the advanced band, which are all 8th graders. That made me more nervous, because if I play a note wrong, it's going to be bad. We performed at 1:00 - 2: 30, and we have another performance tonight, at 6:00 - 7:30. I play the clarinet in band, and I enjoy playing it, so I was excited while performing. For boys, we had to wear white top, black bottom, black socks, and black shoes. We also had to wear ties and belts, and also, shirts has to be tucked in and all the outfits has to be very formal. We performed in the Fine Arts Theater (FAT) and it is a really big stage, and it has a lot of audience to sit. See how nervous I was during this performance? Band played 4 songs: Trailblazers of the Spirit, Breckenridge Overture (only Intermediate band), Deck the Halls (only Advanced band), and Eagle's triumph. We might've not finish the Eagle's triumpth because the time might run off, but there was enough time. It is lucky that didn't happen because this was a really nice piece. During the concert, when a slow part changes to a fast part, the lights illuminated and changed the colour. Changing the light colour happened quite a few times during the performance, and I like this, because the performance was more exciting. Personally, I think performing in front of our friends and teachers was more nervous than performing in front of our parents. This was a really important performance, so I was really careful not to mess up notes. I was nervous AND excited during this performance.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

10 Picture Definitions

1. Pleadingly -


2. Embezzle -


3. Traumatic -


4. Adhesive -


5. Embankment -


6. Eclectic -


7. Lagging -


8. Revelation -


9. Malevolent -


10. Dejection -

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Flood Buckets

December 9, 2009

Yesterday morning, we headed down to the Little Theater and heard a lady telling us about the victims of the flood. JIS decided to fill a bucket with items and later give it to the flood victims. As a result, all 6th graders had to make 5 buckets each in one day at lunch time. After Young Woo and I finished lunch, we went to the computer lab and checked our JIS e-mails. Some teachers told us to go to the Bali Stage and fill up the buckets. I THOUGHT it would be boring because it was just filling some items in side the bucket. When we reached the Bali Stage, we started putting items inside the bucket. At first, it was boring for me, and as I started the second bucket, I started to like filling the buckets. As I kept on doing this, I started to get fixated with this job. We had to get to the back of the queue and get items from the box and put it in the bucket. Those items were tiny buckets, kids and adult toothbrush, toothpaste, pink and blue towels, sponge, brush, mosquito repellent and some vitamins. At the end, we had to put the JIS sticker on the side of the big bucket and put it on the Mrs. Marello place. Bali Stage started to swarm more and more. As we finished our 4th bucket, the bell rung and we had to get to SSR. However, we still wanted to do it, so we finished our 5th bucket after the bell! There were still some students and teachers left so I decided to do just one more. I finished my 6th bucket and decided to go back to class. Young Woo wanted to do just ONE more so I agreed with him. As we got the 7th bucket, we thought it was too late, so we gave up and went back to class. One person had to do 5 each, but it was fun for me so I did 6. I think it was a good innovation and I was proud of myself when I finished 6 buckets.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Bill Gates

Ruth Strother
***

I recently finished reading a book called Bill Gates by Ruth Strother. I seldom read biography and I don't like them much but I wanted to read a variety of books so this time, I chose Bill Gates for my biography book.

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington in 1955. When he entered Lakeside elementry school, he started loving computer, which was a very new thing for him. Bill Gates meets a friend he will have forever and his name was Paul Allen. They make a small company called Traf-O-Data and sells a scheduling system when he was 17, where he earned $4,200. On 1973, he finally enters the Harvard University. The day Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen started Microsoft was at 1975. On February 3, 1977, the two people sign a partnership agreement to create the Microsoft company officially. However, Bill got 64% of the money they earned and Allen got only 36%. They soon hire some workers, secretaries, and all the people who help the company. They didn't really like this place, so they decided to move the company to Seattle. The Microsoft company started earning a lot of money and started to get very popular. Almost everyone in the house had one of Microsoft's computer. The amount of money they earned started to get bigger and bigger, and Bill Gates finally became the youngest self-made billionaire by 1987. After Windows 1.0 and 2.0, Microsoft creates Windows 3.0 at May 22, 1990, and it became really popular so that almost everyone started using it. In 1992, Bill Gates receives the National Medal of Technology from President George Bush. Bill Gates had two girlfriends, but his Microsoft work was very busy, so the two girl friends broke up with him because they were tired of waiting. However on January, 1, 1994, he marries one of his workers, Melinda French. Unfortunately at the same year, Bill Gate's mother passes away by breast cancer. Also at the same year, Bill Gates became the wealthiest person in America. Microsoft makes Windows 95 at 1995, and Windows 98 at 1998 (of course). After Bill Gates has done a lot of work on his Microsoft work, he decided to care about his family more and care less of his Microsoft work. His first daughter Jennifer is born on 1996, his son Rory is born in 1999, and his second daughter Phoebe is born in 2002. On June 15, 2006, Bill Gates announces that he will not work in Microsoft anymore b July 2008.

My favourite part of this book is when it talked about Bill Gates being a billionaire. Inside the book, it also shows the pictures of the 10 wealthiest person in the world. There were a lot of Chinese and Japanese. Out of lots of Asian people, it was hard for me to believe that Bill Gates became the richest person in the world by just a computer company. As we know, almost everyone in this school uses Microsoft Windows, and it is a really famous company. I think Microsoft is really good, because it also has Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Invitation and more. Bill Gates is still one of the richest person in the world.

I will give this book 3 stars out of 5 because I don't like biography that much.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

5 picture definitions

1. Pavilion



2. Pensive



3. Seminary


4. Jubilation


5. Extortion

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Eragon

Christopher Paolini

*****

Recently, I've finished a book called Eragon by Christopher Paolini. A lot of my friends recommended it including Neil, Brandon, and Young Woo, and this book was in the recommended book list. Christopher Paolini wrote this book at the age of 15, and he became a professional writer in high school. This was his debut book and it was pretty good. This book is over a 700 pages so it took me a long~~~ time to read this.

This book is about a 15 year old boy named Eragon. One day, he found a dragon egg in a place called Spine. When a dragon hatched from it, he named it Saphira and it became bigger and bigger every day. He lived with his uncle Garrow and his brother Roran at the age of 17. The evil guy, Galbatorix kills Garrow and his brother Roran left his hometown to marry a girl. Eragon was left alone. As days pass, he becomes friends with a man called Brom, and they take adventures with Saphira. They went to a lot of places like Daret, Therinsford, Yazuac, and lots more. When Brom dies because of the Ra'zac, he meets a guy called Murtagh, who was similar to Brom. He also takes adventure with him and these adventure happen all the way through the book.

My favourite part of this book was when he fights all the bad guys such as the Urgals and Ra'zacs. Eragon learned magic from Brom and he uses these magic to the monsters but the magic is very dangerous so Eragon almost died a lot of times. He killed some Urgals, but the Ra'zacs were pretty strong. They were the one who killed Brom, who was like Eragon's father. Later on in the story, Eragon, Saphira and Murtagh meets the upgrade of the Urgals, the Kull. They are over 8 feet tall and very fat. They win in the fight, though. I really liked the part when Eragon fought all those monsters. My another favourite part of this story was when Eragon sparres with his masters, Brom and Murtagh. Brom was pretty easy to spar so Eragon kind of won, but Murtagh wasn't easy. For both Eragon and Murtagh, they couldn't have an adventage and they both said that they haven't sparred someone stronger than them.

I would give this book 5/5 stars. I would recommend this book to everyone of my friends.

Fallen Tooth

December 1st, 2009

I really don't like taking my teeth off and I think it hurts when that happens. About 1 month ago, my back teeth started shaking a little bit and this was the first time my back teeth started shaking. I was scared since then, because I didn't want to take my teeth off. There would be blood all over my mouth. One day, I was eating a nut. I chewed the nut with my shaking teeth accidentaly so it started hurting more and more, and it eventually shook a lot. It was almost going to fall off. As time passed, I started to get more scared and scared. It was last night when the teeth fell off. It was 11:00 p.m. I was still reading the book 'Eragon' and I wanted to have a break so my mom gave me a piece of bread. While I was chewing the bread with the unshaking teeth, I felt something hard inside my mouth. When i opened my mouth and took the hard thing off, I realized it was my teeth. Fortuitiously, it didn't hurt a lot. Acutally, I was going to tell my mom to take it off after I ate my bread but luckily, it came off without any pain. I went to the bathroom to wash my mouth and take all the blood out. There was a lot of blood but it didn't hurt so I could manage that. I also washed my fallen teeth for fun. Next morning, I showed it to my dad and he laughed because he thought it was funny that it came off while I was eating just a piece of bread.