Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Sue Thomas

 Sue Thomas was born on the 24th of May 1950. At only 18 months old she became highly deaf, as she grew up speech therapist helped her to learn how to speak and she grew very skilled at lip reading. Thomas graduated from the Springfield College with a degree in political science and internal affairs. Sue worked at the FBI for four years, she first started working as a fingerprint examiner but she finished as an undercover lip-reading specialist. After four years Sue stopped working at the FBI and wrote a book called Silent Night which became the base for a TV show. The book tells her story from when she lost her hearing, to when she quit working at the FBI. The TV show is about her time working for the FBI. Sue later wrote another book about stories of living with multiple sclerosis (which she contracted in 2001,) the book is called Staying In The Race. Sue Thomas was a very important person and she showed that just because someone is deaf or disabled it does not mean that they can't be successful and or find their place in the world. Sue Thomas died at the age of 72 on December 13th, 2022.




Monday, April 29, 2024

Track meet

 On Friday we went to the track meet. We got there about nine in the morning and waited for the first event. While we were waiting with our friends they called the grade 9 up and I heard someone call 8/9 so Alex and I went up. We didnt realize until after the race that we raced in the grade nine race so I asked one of the people if I could race again and I was allowed to race in the grade 8 race.


This is me and one of the other grade 8 in the race as you can see there was like an inch between me and first.

I got second in both running the 100 meters and the 400 meters. I also got second in the race against the grade 9s. In shotput I got 6th and and 4th in discus. I got participation in the long jump because I accidentally lay down.
 I love to go to the track meet and can't wait until next years.


Thursday, April 25, 2024

Running Goal

 I was able to complete my running goal yesterday just in time for the track meet which is tomorrow. if you don't remember my goal was to run 5 kilometers in 30 minutes. It took a lot of perseverance but it was worth it to finish the run. I don't think that I would have been able to complete my run without the training that I did.

Here is a picture of me running




Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Wizards Return

 

Wizards Return

 

As we walked into the remains of the decrepit castle, we could feel the ruined ground through our run-down Krakow’s (footwear commonly worn in the Middle Ages). We looked around and saw invasive vines creeping up the almost nonexistent inner walls. We were in awe of what we saw, then heard the booming voice again, "You have finally arrived." The voice sounded like it was right behind us and we twirled around to see the mysterious worn man who had passed by the turret window. "I have been awaiting you".

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 It had been a long day, when I arrived at home after working in the field to find a strange letter addressed to me and my younger sister Isabell. I lifted it up and opened it. I was lucky enough to have had a father who taught me how to read. The letter said, “Meet me at the abandoned castile in the woods.  All the kids had heard of the castle, but few had gone to see it. I thought of whoever told us to meet them there and pictured them sitting and waiting.  Without much time to think, I grabbed my sister’s arm and we trudged off toward the ruins.

 “Is there anyone in there?”, I wondered aloud, staring up at the gothic castle. “The letter said they’d meet us…" his voice trailed off as a tall man in a robe, shrouded in darkness walked by one of the turret windows. Just then, the gigantic drawbridge started to descend.  The bridge thudded to the ground and he heard a loud but worn voice call, "ENTER!". As we walked into the remains of the decrepit castle, we could feel the ruined ground through our run-down Krakow’s.  We looked around and saw invasive vines creeping up the almost nonexistent inner walls. we were in awe of what we saw, then heard the booming voice again "You have finally arrived." The voice sounded like it was right behind us, we twirled around to see the mysterious worn man who had passed by the turret window. He said "I have been awaiting you".

 He told us that he was a wizard and he needed some apprentices because he was one of the last sorcerers in the world and he would like to train us. We were skeptical but we said yes. He told us that our training would start at 5 am the next day and that we would be staying at the castle which was actually hidden with a magical border and was beautifully furnished. He showed us to our rooms and we slowly drifted off to sleep.

Once we woke up, we found a cloak for each of us. For the rest of the day, we were led around the castle by the man, who told us that his name was Simon. Simon told us about how there used to be many sorcerers but an evil sorcerer killed most of them off before the king put an end to him. After he showed us around that day, he told us to meet him in the courtyard to learn our first spells. It took a few days, but we eventually learned the spell to materialize food out of thin air.

Once we had learned that spell, we both started learning the spells really fast. In a month we had learned five spells, but one night I was going to the lavatory pit and I saw Simon creeping around. I watched as he pulled one of the books off a bookshelf and a door swung open.   I watched him enter the door which slammed shut behind him. I snuck over to the bookshelf and repeated what Simon did and the door swung open to reveal a long stone hallway. I crouched along the hallway and as I got farther along, I saw that it led into an open cellar with a large frozen shape in the middle of the room. The shape was about thirty feet tall with humongous twenty-foot wings and teeth that could kill. Even though the monster that I had figured out was a dragon scared me, I stayed to see what Simon could possibly be doing. I looked over towards a desk on the far side of the room and I saw that he had a board that showed plans of some kind. Part of it said, “Find apprentices to help complete the spell.” That’s when I realised that he was using us to free the dragon from its prison. When I realised that, I ran back to my room to get to sleep so I could tell my sister the next morning.

The next day I told my sister what I had seen the night before, and she told me that she thought I was lying. I told her that I would show her on the next day we had off training and so I did. When I showed her, she realised that we needed to do something. We spent the rest of the day figuring out what to do and we figured out a plan that we could attempt. We weren’t sure           if it would work because it would include trying to over power Simon, but it was the best thing we could think of. I snuck into the room to try to surprise him but when we got close enough to peer in, we saw that he was there already and it looked like he was waiting for us. He shouldn’t have known because we made sure he wasn’t around to overhear us. That didn’t matter any more, we just had to go and hope that we could beat him quickly. To try and keep him from doing anything, I cast a spell to disarm and stun him which worked for less than a couple seconds. Luckily, Isabell cast a fireball spell but Simon had recovered and was able to ricochet the spell back at us. As I looked up, I saw a loose stone which I shot with a combustion spell. This made an explosion and wherever I cast the spell, the explosion dislodged the stone.  I watched as it fell onto Simon’s head and knocked him out. As we turned to look at the frozen dragon, we heard a cracking and watched as the ice broke and freed the dragon. As soon as it broke out, it started to attack us. We quickly rolled out of the way but it slightly burned my toe. I cast a spell that would electrocute the dragon but it didn’t do anything. That was when I remembered a story my friends had told me about a dragon that was impervious to magic and the only thing that could kill it was a certain wand that the master wizard had. I remembered that Simon had told us that he had been gifted a wand from one of the strongest wizards back when there was a lot of them and I thought maybe he had the wand.  

 

I dashed over to Simon’s limp body and grabbed the wand out of his hand and cast a spell of slowing on the dragon which worked and slowed it down. I cast another combustion spell which threw the dragon back and stunned him for enough time that my sister could get back to my side. The dragon was too strong for just me to take on, so I gave the wand to Isabell and tried to distract the dragon for enough time so that Isabell could cast a spell to freeze the dragon again. She started to cast (this spell took more time to cast than others) and the dragon swung its razor-sharp claw at me. I ducked under, then all of a sudden everything went quiet.  It was so quiet that you could hear birds chirping from outside the even more broken-down castle.  I tuned around carefully, not knowing what I would turn around to see but when I turned around, I saw Isabell standing there and a frozen dragon sitting right behind me. There was no time to rest because we needed to do something about the dragon, so we cast a cloaking spell and turned to where Simon’s limp body lay. “Now what?” Isabell said.                                                                                                     “We have to figure out what to do with him.”                                                                                                We grabbed the wizard and took him to the, luckily still intact holding cell. We threw him in and locked the cell door. After, we took all his items for magic and cast a spell to give him cups of ground up mix of carrots, pork, water, and some potatoes. It looked disgusting! Once we had done that, we stacked up bricks of stone until there was just one left for him to get air out of. Once we had done that, we took a walk back to our quaint little village and went to talk to the nobleman of the town. We demonstrated some of the spells that we knew and he was so impressed by what we had done, that he sent a message to the King. He told the King that we would be a great addition to his ranks. Shortly after, he sent a letter back saying that he would love to treat us to one night at the castle so we could show him all that we knew. We replied yes and left on our journey. We met some of the nicest folk we had ever met and once we had made it to the castle, we showed the king who was delighted by what we showed him. He asked if we could help to train more wizards to bring them back to our world.  We gladly said yes and now we have some apprentices that we are training even though we are not much older than they are. They are good and diligent learners and I predict that the world will soon have many more sorcerers like us.

 

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih


Iqbal Masih is a very important and inspirational book based on a true story. The book follows Fatima a child who is forced to work at a carpet-making sweatshop in Pakistan to work off her parent's debt. One day a new boy arrives and that boy's name is Iqbal. The night that he arrives all the kids gather around his pallet and start asking him questions. This is where he tells them all that they will never be able to work off the debt and most of the kids don't believe him but Fatima does. They end up becoming friends and he tells her that he is going to escape. When he inevitably does, he tries to go to the police. When he and the police get to the house the master pays the police to stay quiet about the workers. That doesn't stop him because he says a man talking about how it is illegal for children to work off debt.  Next, when he escapes again he goes to the man and that man brings some trusted police. They are able to stop the master and the kids get to go home but Iqbal stays to help bring the bosses of the factories to jail. During his work to stop the bosses, other countries take notice and invite him to speak. He was also given a scholarship to a college. During the month of April, he went to see his family but on Easter day he was assassinated. Iqbal was a true story and he is a symbol of hope and inspiration all around the world







Thursday, February 22, 2024

Tynker

over the past few weeks in tecklab we have been doing a Tynker course and at the end of the unit we were making a project using everything that we were working on in my course. We focused on having health variables so I made a game where you have to click the boss to deal damage and when he dies you go onto the next level. here is the link to my tynker: https://www.tynker.com/ide/v3?type=diy&p=65d4fbd6ec6b7e78e7165079

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein had both ADHD and Asperger's syndrome, which is a disability on the autism spectrum.  These disabilities might not be noticed. There are a lot of disabilities that may not show but they are still there. Ironically, Albert had a lot of trouble with his math, yet he invented the equation (E=mc2). Just because you can't do one thing does not mean that you can't do another.  Everybody is capable of something, even if you don't think you are.





Friday, February 16, 2024

Piano

Piano right now is really fun because Aiden was cleaning out his room and he gave me an Imagine Dragons official piano book and I have been learning songs out of that. I am learning "On Top Of The World" and I am loving it. In piano I am also learning the Mission Impossible theme and a duet called Bright as a Button. I am going to be doing the duet with Caileigh and its awesome.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Update on Health Goal

 I have been working on my health goal and I have seen some improvements as I run I can now run for five minutes at a speed of 5.5 miles an hour. I am not getting tired anymore. I am thinking of boosting the speed up to 6 miles an hour. I want to eventually be able to run ten kilometers an hour which is 6.3 miles an hour this will allow me to hit my five kilometer in thirty minutes.

Monday, January 29, 2024

Nutrition

We were curious on how healthy I was eating. My mom printed out a sheet of paper that had two days on it. The first day I wrote down what I ate that day and the next. I analyzed what I was eating and what I needed to work on.  Then I tried to eat the stuff that I didn't eat as much of the previous day.  This included dairy, fruits and vegetables.  We checked my stats from both days and figured out if I am eating healthy or not.  I would say that I eat pretty healthy but need to work on eating less simple carbs and more complex carbs.  This has taught me a lot about the variety that you should have on a daily basis. here is a picture of my health log




Tuesday, January 16, 2024

My Health Goal

 For tech lab I had to set a smart goal that I wanted to be done in a certain time. My goal is to run 5 kilometers in thirty minutes by my school track meet in May. What I am doing is running for five minutes on my treadmill each day which will hopefully help improve my endurance for the race.  I will add time to the run each week. I hope that even after I finish my goal I keep running.



Mexico trip

 On the fourth of January, I left to go on my Mexico trip but before we got on the plane we had to drive five hours to Vancouver so we could catch our flight. After the flight, we had to get on a bus and it would take us to the resort. We got there around 9. We got the family-exclusive side which had its own pool and beach and it had a restaurant called The Nest. After I woke up, we went down to The Nest and ate breakfast. The entire day went by like a blur and we did a lot of things. We went down to the beach and went swimming, we got dinner at The Nest and hung out after dinner. The next day we ate at The Nest again and swam at the beach. Alex and I checked out a game room that they had, then we went to bed. I woke up the next day and was excited because we were going to try eating at a buffet they had and the food was really good. They had an omelet bar that was really good and here is a picture of some food that we got.


After that, we ate some more food and tried some really fun boogie boarding. The next day we we left the resort and walked around the city. We also went to a farmers market and had some of the best salsa that I have ever had. I woke up and ate at a different buffet and I was sad because it was the last day but we made the most of it. We went out boogie boarding one last time and we had one of the best days at the resort. I woke up and ate breakfast the next day and my dad signed us out but luckily we were able to stay at the resort until the bus came to take us to the airport.




My top three favorite things were the beach, the infinite drinks, and the ability to chill all day.
Overall my Mexico trip was a trip that I will always remember and it will be one of the best trips I will ever go on.