They pray at the city council meetings in my city.

You know how I’m the secretary for the Youth Advisory Council for my city? You know how that means I’ve got to type up “minutes” and e-mail them to the head dude in time for the next meeting?

Well, I don’t remember if I blogged about it (I probably didn’t) but the authorities on the YAC had made me two templates for writing minutes before they were satisfied with my work.

I have a meeting tomorrow right after school (not even kidding- school ends at 2:30 and I have to get home, grab my YAC binder + writing utensil and head to the city hall for 3:30) and as usual it’s 10:23 PM the night before and when I’m supposed to be finishing up minutes, I’m blogging.

What really happened was I’d begun minutes and decided to finally get around to Googling what real “minutes” are supposed to look like and found my city’s minutes. I scroll down a bit and the format is obviously different but not by much. (IRRELEVANT.)

Anyway, I come accross a heading that says “opening.” It’s got the expected stuff- O’ Canada, etc. And then all of a sudden it says something “prayer.”

I don’t know what to think of this.

I personally don’t object to it; we pray during ‘opening’ at pathfinder meetings, too. But before we begin that tradition each year, everyone is asked if they’re okay with that, or if they have any religious objections or whatever. So far no one’s objected to going along with the prayer, even though I know one of them doesn’t believe in God.

But I’m not sure your religion should affect your politics so much as to pray for each meeting. I mean, Canada is a place that is absolutely rich with various cultures and religion. (Maybe not SPECIFICALLY my town, but I still think it’s reasonably diverse.)

If your government can only represent those that have someone to pray to, then really, are they representing Canada, or are they representing their religion?

And not to mention what it looks like. Oh, yeah, “Our city’s terrible- even the polititians are praying we’ll get out of this mess.” or, “Our polititians are sinners, begging for forgiveness!” “This person thinks (s)he’ll look important if they ‘find God’.”

On the other hand again, don’t you have every right to pray before one of these meetings if you want to? (“I don’t have to agree with you, I just have to respect you.”) Maybe they give you the option to sit out. I don’t know; I’ve never been to one of these meetings.

I don’t attend church (or other place of worship) on a regular basis and I suppose I’m not really affiliated with any organized religion. I just think a lot and decide what I think I believe or what I think is probable. (I only do this because I wonder about things.)

But I still haven’t figured out how I completely feel about this whole praying-at-city-hall-meetings thing yet.

Or maybe this is one of those things I’ll never be able to figure out how I feel about it. I’m so used to being the type to have strong, definite opinions about something, and then this comes along…

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE: I sort of crashed our family computer so my mom and brother hooked the internet up to my laptop. And mid-terms are coming out soon and this is what I know I’ve got:

Academic English: 75% (Nearly 20% above class average)

Drama: 74% (12% above class average)

Art: 84% (2nd highest mark in the class- the only one higher is 88% by a girl who’s taken gr. 11 art last year and took gr. 10 art this year because it was the only class that wasn’t full)

History: 79% (Also significantly above class average, I’m pretty sure at least 10%. 1% above my best friend in this class who always brags about knowing so much about WWI because she’s “military family”. Also, I need 80% to be exempt from the exam and I have a test tomorrow.)

Alex Violet

Free Cupcakes. :)

Yesterday was magnificent. Best day I had all week, pretty much.

The morning was okay, English was good, but forgettable.

DRAMA: Before I get to what that class was like I’d better explain the assignment. Two weeks ago (or so) we were handed these sheets of photos of people from other places in the world. The layout looked like yearbook pictures but no one was smiling. The teacher told us they were passport photos. We were to cut out the picture of one person we felt we could relate to judging only by their appearance, then we were to make a backstory for them. She gave us the year they were leaving: 1932. They had to have a reason for leaving their country and coming to a more developed place in the world, but we weren’t allowed to be specific. (The teacher just implied it would be either Canada or the United States, or something similar.) After we had their backstory, we had to prepare a skit (the teacher emphasized that it was supposed to be serious and not comedic) where they told someone in their life that they were leaving, or that someone found out. Everyone was supposed to have a skit for their character and we were supposed to grab other people to play the other characters in our scene. The teacher advised we just get into groups and work with the people within those groups.

My character was a nanny for a family with abusive (yet wealthy) parents and a six-year-old girl. (My character is something like thirteen.) I was trying to leave since the only family I had left (brother who was a child labourer) was beaten to death by his boss. Since my character gets beaten regularly, she is afraid to go down the same path.

So on the very first day we were supposed to practice our plays/skits/scenes/whatever I just called out to anyone within earshot, “Okay, I just need one person.” (For the little girl I’m nannying.) And then one of the new girls walked over. (Let’s call her K.) She only needed one person in her group too.

Her character was a young woman who grew up with a physically abusive father and rushed into an unhappy (and verbally abusive this time) marriage to get out of the house. When my character (the meanie-pants husband) hits her, she leaves.

Yesterday, the teacher had everyone take turns with their skit/play/scene on the stage in our classroom. (The stage= basically foot-high wood boxes covered in carpeting.) She wasn’t marking them since she felt most of us still had some work to do on them, but we were performing only for feedback. (From both her and the class.)

I performed mine while she was there and she said I needed to work on building up to a climax. I thought I already had, but I guess it wasn’t obvious enough.

A while after that the teacher had to leave for an appointment or something and my art teacher came in to supply. Which is great, my art teacher is my favourite teacher. While the drama teacher is difficult to please (not that I have a big problem with it much anymore; it just gets annoying sometimes and I usually blame it on the fact she’s pregnant and sometimes pregnant ladies are irritable), my art teacher thinks everything is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Even when she does notice something that could be better, she’s always really friendly about pointing it out. I also get the impression I’m one of her favourite students because of that art award last year and those constant ten-out-of-ten on homework assignments and her trying to recruit me for the art council until I joined.

So when I got up there to act in K.’s scene, I felt like I had something to prove. And that’s not ALL I’m good at! So when I sat back down I still felt that huge adrenaline rush and I got fantastic reactions from all present. I love proving myself. (K.’s character was supposed to be meek until the end when she decides to leave. She got good reactions from that, too.)

ART: If that alone wasn’t enough to make my day, art class after lunch was great too. We were working on clay masks. (Last year when we were working on clay I didn’t do so well. In fact, I blogged about it. Try looking at some of my earliest entries back in June for the story. This year is different though.) When we had something like 15 minutes left, one of my best friends knocked on our classroom door to invite the whole class (of about fifteen; I love our small art class) to visit her business class where they were giving away FREE CUPCAKES AND COOKIES! Ms. T (art teacher) told us we had to clean up first. So we cleaned up in something like half the time it usually takes us since everyone was cleaning. And we were more enthusiastic about it, too.

While we were cleaning, one of my other new friends, J., told me she signed up for yoga club this week. I was overjoyed since I signed up, too. She told me she didn’t go to the first meeting.

“I didn’t either, but that was because I was supposed to be somewhere else. I sign up for too many extra-curriculars. Mondays are Students’ Council, Tuesdays are Pathfinders, Wednesdays I have Art Council at lunch and at least once or twice a month I have Youth Advisory Council after school at the city hall, Thursdays I just signed up for Yoga Club and Fridays I have Students’ Council again. On the weekend I may or may not have a Pathfinders or Youth Council event-”

Her eyes widened. “You know Yoga Club is on Tuesdays, too, right?”

“Yeah, I know, I just forgot to say it.”

I think I have a problem. I’m addicted to extra-curriculars. But I just like to feel like I’m doing something for the world. Or maybe even just myself. I spend too much time on the computer, maybe I’m trying to make up for it. Anytime I’ve got to spare I feel bored. I feel terrible whenever I’m not doing something productive, it seems…

Once I got into the business class I was immediately given an empty ballot where I’d write which cupcake/cookie display I liked the best and offered a cupcake. Who in the right mind would turn that down?

So I loaded up a paper plate with every cupcake available (and as many seconds as I was allowed, which was one or two). I got to this one table where one of my friends who’s really more of an aquaintance offered me a cookie and rambled on about how they had a cardboard display and they help save the tigers. “Tigers for tigers!” (Tigers = school mascot) I thought it was genius. At the end he gave two thumbs up and smiled, “So yeah, vote for us!”

“But I don’t have a pen.”

So he tried to give me one but my hands were full with cupcakes and cookies. “Do you want me to write it down?”

“Yes, please, that would be great!”

So he did and I handed in my ballot. I realized the hallways were empty and as I walked down the hall to my history class, I saw another friend.

“Hi, Alex!”

“Hi, did the second bell already ring?”

“You mean the bell for class starting? Yeah.”

“Oh, poop. I’m late.”

I walked slow though. If I’m already late, then what difference does an extra minute make?

HISTORY: I walked in and immediately, “Oh, Alex [insert my real last name here] is here!” The substitute teacher came over and asked me to repeat my name. She asked me if I was in the business class. (I still had cupcakes and cookies with me.)

“No, just distracted by it.” I laughed and went to sit in my unassigned seat by my friend (she wants to be called Kira when I mention her on the blog) who’d invited my art class to the cupcakes.

The guy in front of me said, “Whoa, Alex, didn’t see you there.” He eyed the pile of cupcakes and laughed. “Well, that won’t give you diabetes or anything.” I laughed too.

I love history. We learned how the stock market works (the student-teacher who teaches us instead of the real teacher wants us to know that before we move onto the Great Depression unit) with short explaination and then a game. The teacher explained we had each a thousand dollars to invest in three companies. He explained the risks of the different companies which were mostly The Simpsons themed.
After playing that game, I finally understand how the stock market works after all those times I’ve asked one parent or the other.

TODAY: Pretty calm, I woke up at something like noon-thirty and was told to get ready because we were going to the theatre to see Clash of the Titans, which was, indeed, a pretty good movie.

Long and detailed entry, but what the hell. I had a good yesterday. Students’ Council was cancelled, so I got to go right home. I was way more social than I usually am, and it left me feeling great. 🙂

Alex Violet

YAY FOR THE MARCH BREAK.

At my school we get today off as a ‘Non-Instructional Day’. So March break starts EARLY. 😀

You don’t know how many YouTube videos I watched, trying to find the perfect Bowling for Soup video for you. I chose this one because their interruption after the “Stop. STOP. STOP!” lyrics is the funniest I’ve seen out of the videos I watched. Bowling for Soup RULEZ.

Yesterday I did a Pathfinder thing. We were supposed to meet at the Pathfinder leader’s house to uproot some of her daffodils (they’ve sprouted about an inch, more or less, above dirt level) and walk them over to the church to plant them. We worked from around 4:30 to 6:45 when the sun was going down. Only two other Pathfinders showed up, but we all had fun anyway.

At one point me and one girl were digging holes for the daffodils and we hit the mat that’s under the soil and didn’t know what it was at first.

B (the Pathfinder that was digging with me): Oh my God, what is that? It’s moving! [Pokes mat with hand-shovel/trowel/whatever-they’re-called, it moves]
Me: OMG, it’s a dead body.
B: [Giggles]
Me: What if it really was? Someone just burried a dead body ou’side the church? Would you like, freak?
B: Yeah.

The Pathfinder leader burst our bubble, though by telling us what it really was. Both me and B were disappointed.

But it was okay. 🙂

After the two other Pathfinders left, the Pathfinder leader (we call her Tigger, I hope it’s okay that I say that on the internet…) invited me and my mother and brother (who also helped garden when the sun started to disappear) inside the church and offered us chocolate milk and gingersnap cookies. Which rule. I got to finish off a whole row of them from the cookie bag.

I’ve found it easier to sleep a lot lately, too because I haven’t had pop in days and gotten a reasonable amount of fresh air and on top of that, my to-do list has been lengthy lately.

Especially for school. I was supposed to have four assignments and a test due this week. (But lucky for me the test is postponed until the day we get back from break.)

I had a Student Council meeting on Monday at lunch.

Plus I had to sell tickets all lunch on Tuesday for the staff-student hockey game the next afternoon.

I walked home from the hockey game with Smiley on Wednesday, which is a very long walk. Not as long as the walk from school though, but still over an hour or so. But it was worth it, since it was such a beautiful day out. I got home by a little before 3, which is usually the time I get home by on the bus. I fell asleep for a while with my cat on my stomach, and woke up when my mom made me go to the Youth Council meeting.

After that, Thursday was really a relief.

Even though a presentation of one of my assignments plus a written response of the book, To Kill a Mockingbird were due, it was great. The teacher complimented my assignment and said it was a really unique idea, no one’s ever made masks for the assignment before.

We had been given a list of assignments to choose from last week, the last one on the list being anything the student can come up with as long as the teacher approved. I spent hours on making masquerade masks for the characters Romeo and Juliet and then ten minutes explaining how they represent the characters.

Long story short, life has been busy but fufilling lately. 🙂

Alex Violet

Resolutions

I’m sure I’ll probably edit this post later on; but these are my goals for the new decade:

1

Finish my novel already; and get it published.

2

Audition for Canadian Idol

3

Change people’s lives (for the better!)

4

Pursue a career I love

5

Visit another country for at least a week

6

Be Happy 🙂

7

Share that happiness

8

Make history

9

Learn to bake bread

10

Do something prideful each year that I can remember the year by (like last year it was Dinner Theatre, this year the Student Council & The Youth Council)

11

Be in a movie (even if I’m just an extra) (a sitcom would count too) (even just behind-the-scenes in a play)

But my main goal for 2010 is to write my novel and do my very best in school.

On a different note, I got a texty messaging phone (is not activated) for Christmas as well as several other lovely items such as a sweatshirt with built-in headphones by Avril Lavigne’s Abbey Dawn clothing label and a box set of Jane Austen novels. (Tried reading Emma but didn’t get past the first couple of pages. Now I’ve read the first chapter of Northanger Abbey)

My family and I went out shopping yesterday on Boxing Day. We visited Best Buy where my brother got an iPod shuffle (in aquamarine), and Chapters where I got Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, which I read most of the morning. Really good book so far.

At Best Buy my mother suggested we look at laptops for me. She originally suggested that I look into a laptop with my Best Buy gift card and my significant amount of money (by my standards) given to me by my incredibly generous family members for Christmas and my birthday.

So we were looking at those really miniature baby laptops that are only, like, 1 gigabyte (that’s sixteen times less than my iPod, and my iPod is not even the newest version as I got it last year for Christmas) and I thought they looked absolutely adorable but they just wouldn’t be enough space for me.

I formed a small checklist for things I must be able to fit on my laptop:
– I must be able to have internet.
– I must be able to write my stories on it.
– I must be able to play the Sims 3.

Anything besides that is just a bonus.
So I saw this one that was of the larger variety and it was called the Acer ASPIRE (not sure about the capitals but I think it looks cool the way I typed it).
Supposedly it ‘has Windows 7’ which everybody was treating as a program while all this time I thought it was a type of computer on its own.

I don’t know. I just want a decent laptop for a small price.

So yeah, life is great, hope it is for you too. I am off to activate my telephone.

And my birthday is in two days.

DECEMBER 29 2009 – Alex will be fifteen years old.

Hope your last few days of the decade is lovely.

Alex Violet