The poem, “Fat is not a fairy tale” is the perfect poem for fairy tale lovers and people who stand for human rights. In this poem, the poet, Jane Yolen, illustrates how being round is classified as ugly and bad. Her frustration and desire for change is clearly shown throughout the poem. Yolen takes advantage of numerous literally devices to represent her theme creatively.
Yolen plays with the words and in this case, the names “Cinder elephant, Sleeping tubby, Snow weight” ( verse 1) which shows how different princesses from reality. With their skinny and lean bodies, so elegant and beautiful, like a barbie doll, those princesses are perfect, radiant, gorgeous and surreal. In reality they starve themselves to death, force their body into a wasp waisted shape and fling them selves down the stairs. These skinny princesses portray our modern definition of “beauty” when in fact they show how pathetic they are killing themselves.

In the last verse where it says “where everything is good, the sun, wheels, cookies and the princesses, made me think how ironic it is that we presume cookies and wheels are good but the fat princesses are another story. It made me think about our definition of beauty and what we really think it is. How come having skinny people on the edge of death are beautiful yet people who eat 3 meals day and are healthy – fat and ugly?

Yolen makes you think how there is not yet a teller, a listener an even a world out there that would realize how wrong we are. Yet in her last line ” everything is good …. the princesses” (last verse) that maybe one day it’ll change and maybe one day it’ll be good. Like the sun, wheels and the cookies.

The other day, we held a trial in Humanities class and our topic was “whether we should or shouldn’t have child labour”. We spilt into the prosecution and the defense sides and began researching on google. The Lead attorneys, Audrey and I were responsible for a 5-7 minute speech in the beginning. I looked through books about the industrial revolution and child labour and i was able to collect some information but i mostly had the information i needed in my head. From my view, the point of ‘child discipline’ had the most convincing argument because it made sense that children should learn responsibility and get discipline’ Throughout our trial, the most persuasive argument made from the prosecution side was when the witness Emily small claimed “that she was brutely abused by the owners of the factory”. It was convincing because factory owners can be a little aggressive some times but we assured the judge that it was for discipline and nothing more. The prosecution then went about how children were forced to work and how they died from machine accidents. They insisted that child labour should end for the sake of children’s happiness. The defense,on the other hand, stated that england developing country and we need more wealth. We said that child labour will help their country become wealthier and thinking about the children, they would transform into responsible adults. Overall the trial was very interesting and exciting due to us fighting for what we believe, my favorite part was when things got heated up because during the middle when one of the witness protested, and i quote, ” We hardly get paid. Only 50 pence an hour.” which then contradicted the whole the payment-is-unfair-buisness and scored our team some great questions. I would like to do more trials in the future because it was the first time for me to do such thing and I for one really enjoyed. Plus, I also learned about backing up my protests with evidence and speaking broadly to impact audience. But otherwise next time i would improve on contributing more because all i did was give a lead attorney speech.

My surrealist art work:
By: Angeli R.
Title: Show and Tell

My painting is based on a one point perspective view. The theme illustrated in my work shows how poverty in Africa is just another thing people see in the TV every day. They lose interest in such common news that they ignore the fact that, there aren’t the only people in the world. I put the African kids in the jail-chamber and the well dressed men outside to express this message. The animals in the back defines that the kids in the chamber is at a zoo; where people watch them from the outside. The process into creating this piece was challenging because i had take caution when over-doing the painting. What i meant is that when i first painted the sky, the colours blended well leading to a good start. But by over-doing my self, the beautiful sky dissolved into a gray-ish muddy dark night. As for the colour choice, i chose relatively dark colours because this piece isn’t about happiness and hope. I painted the ground outside white, because it draws attention to the men outside and it blends well too. i purposely switched the colour of the chambers opposite on the other because i think the same would be boring. Another difficulty i encountered was the problem of having the kids blend in with the walls of the chamber. Also the kids weren’t human-looking and so were the men in coats. The guy in the green’s eye was blotched and horrible. On the positive side, i showed value in the chamber walls as the get light towards the outside. The walls in front of the animals also shows the value getting lighter. Another good thing I did was making the grim reaper look deathly with the dark purple shadows blending well wit his deadly axe. This piece shows deep meaning of poverty and society’s reactions and it gives the viewer something to keep in mind. If i could redo this project i would a) try not to over do my painting by painting over with another colour, b) clean the edges by using a smaller brush c) lessen the amount of water by no even adding water to my work and d) learn to paint straight lines without a ruler. In the future i would manage my time much more wisely by coming after school more often to finish my work other than doing it on the last day. But overall i am satisfied with my work and i hope to do well in future.

Day 1: Welcome come to my doom. Enjoy.
*inside my dream*”I declare today as National Potato Independence day.*cheers and wolf whistles* so as the rightful citizens, raise your potato and sing the potato anthem…” “ANGELI WAKE UP!!! I’LL GIVE YOU 3 SECONDS OR IT’S GONNA BE RAINING DOWN YOUR FACE!!” urg. I wake up to my mother shouting at me for some reason. I probably forgot to let the dog out last night.. wait we don’t have a dog. Then what ..? ” YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR YOUR TRIP!!” that’s it, it’s the day i have to go on a ‘field project’ or as i like to call it ‘a class vacation’ to Nagano. We were planned to stay at this place called Northstar. I hope they have a ping-pon table, cause i like smashing the ball and ruining the game. Aren’t i in such a great mood. Just peachy. I’m not much of a morning person if you haven’t noticed. I got out of my soft covers and got changed. I stared at my bags i was going to bring. They looked like they were a time bomb near the end of the countdown, ready to exploded any minute. Carefully i dragged them to the door and quickly grabbed some toast and headed out the door. I was on my way to Audrey’s because she lives right in front of me and that her ever-so-considerate father was dropping both of us off at school. An hour later of bothering Audrey on the way there (one of my number one hobbies in my list of hobbies to pursue when older and wrinkled), we arrived at school where i was attacked by a mob of huggers that i lately on identified as my friends. We proceeded to stand at the playground until everyone was here and went on the buses. You know the term “roadkill”? Well the situation on the bus could’ve been defined by roadkill. It was 6-straight hours of pure torture. It’s like going on a roller coaster full of non-stopping-stomach-fluttering sensations. People kept on singing tunes in out of tune voices, boys kept on getting ‘too hyper’ and the elf in my head wouldn’t stop yammering. and no, having a elf in my head is a perfectly normal thing. not. It’s not like i could jump out the window because that wouldn’t be so smart, and my headphones were useless because no matter how high i put my music on, i could still hear voices in the background. After struggling through the pain i felt the bus stop. Out my window awaited such a beautiful scene (hold on, it gets poetic from here). Before my eyes was a huge lawn covered in a blanket of crunchy mango-maple leafs. The sturdy thick trees that surround the area in their honey golden leafs glittered with sunshine. The heaven blue river that flows gently across the lawn in a silent trickling beat. Finally there stood a wide lodge made of dark brown wood and the sign that said “Northstar.”
We played team building exercises out on the lawn such as sitting on the ground and pulling ourselves together at the same tie. It was tricky at first but before we knew it, instead of pairs we were pulling 16 at a time. The air outside got cold so we went inside. That’s when they told us that the girls had to go to a smaller lodge called Raicho instead of staying at that cool place. But orders were orders so we took a bus to Raicho and i discovered that my bunk mates were my friends Seira, Ellen and Melanie. I guess this trip became a bearable. a little. I went down to dinner only to have find myself piling food onto my plate like crazy due to the marvelous smell coming from the food. And boy was it good. Satisfied with my tummy i head up to my bed where literally fall down my bed and sleep. It was like some hit the snooze button on me. Not that i didn’t know i had a button on me, did i?

Day 2: Star Gazing – romantic much?
“ang…Ang…ANG!!” i heard i voice scream. since when did mum call me ‘Ang’? “Huh?.. who let the chickens out?” I groggily reply. “Never mind. Come on. Breakfast is in 10 minutes.” said Melanie. “um sure i’ll be there.” I surveyed my surroundings when i suddenly remember i was in a little room with my friends so that must mean.. I’ve been held hostage by Death eaters as a punishment for uprising against Voldemort! See what the mornings do to me. I think crazy thoughts, not that i’m usually this weird though. I think again and realized that I’m probably on my vaca- i mean field studies. “I thought you were coming?” said Seira impatiently. “right I’ll be there in a jiffy.” i said. Mmm what is that wonderful smell? am i dreaming this or is it some sort of illusion? i thought while going down the stairs. My answers were answered when i hit the dinning area. Aha, breakfast! i join my friends at the table and swallow the food till i scraped the plate clean. I think i’ll like the breakfasts here. We walked to Northstar to meet up with everyone else. We had a option for today. It was either guardrail painting or Ski lodge fixing. Of course i took the painting option. So did my friends so i was pleased. we were provided with a brush and a can full of paint. There were ten million rail and i didn’t see how we were going paint all of them. First we had to scrape off the rust from the rails. then we paint layers on the surfaces. Even the back of the rail was necessary. I mean who looks at the back of the rail when they crash into it? ” *crashes into rail with car* Never mind me, or the car, what beautiful paint it has on the back of the rail. Ooo even better underneath the rail is like that master piece by leonardo what’s-his-name” Really. Like that’s going to happen. Anyhow after hours of painting every single white spots, i stand up to see that some how i was covered in paint head to toe. Including the back of my neck. How did that get there? We went back to Raicho to eat lunch and we had this delicious curry for lunch. Ellen was so hungry that she ate her bowl in one bite and went back for another. When we went back to Northstar we had to split into groups and build “organic-chairs” which were just chairs made out of leafs and all that stuff. Our team was lazy so while the others were building extraordinary chairs we made a reclining chair instead. The ground was the base and we had a foot stool and a head rest. It was actually quite comfy. But did we win anything in the end? Definitely not. Though it was fun so i guess that’s it matters. We star gazing at the end of the day. Well actually it was more of a cloud-gazing. We had to sit still for a decade or so, so that we could “here nature’s voice in disguise” and noises we usually couldn’t hear due to being in the city. That little excursion was fun excluding the fact that i’d probably never feel my finger and ears tips again, my teeth fallen off by chattering too much, and my toes crumbled to shrubbles. Relief rushed through me as i snuggle into my warm and fluffy covers.

Day 3:Why snuggling inside fluffy covers always seem like a good idea
I woke up to voices and the sounds of feet scuttling around. “hurry up Ang” said Melanie, ” We don’t have time to be lying around.” ” Time for what?” i asked. ” we’re going hiking.”
There. just like that. I immediately imagined all that walking up and down and up and down, the coldness that creeps through the gap between my neck and my scarf, the muscle pains after going through the mountain and not to mention the uncountable amounts of blisters i’ll probably get. Now don’t get me wrong, i like exploring, i like the outdoors but do i like 5 hours hours straight of walking with small shoes upon rocky grounds? who doesn’t. I felt like snuggling into my warm, soft covers and leaving to dreamland but apparently i was “supposed” to get ready for a “super exciting day of absolute fun” so mumbling under my breath, i stuff my coats and water bottles into my bag and hurried down to breakfast. At least the breakfast brightened my mood. a little. It was delicious as always, and as soon as we were done we got into the dreaded bus and rode our way to north star.
We met up with the boys and we were officially off to the hiking place, Kamikouchi. Hour and a half later from nervously looking out the window we arrived to our destination. one step outside the bus and my teeth were chattering to death and my legs were viberation mode. i knew i should’ve brought more layers of coats. Our little hike group’s tour guide was Seiya so i guessed it was bearable, for now. We walked in various directions; up and down and right and left and you know, everywhere. i found my self actually enjoying myself as my friends and I talked and sang during our way. I even got to annoy some people which was a bonus. My camera was bursting with photos of nature’s beautiful side and what it has to offer. We took at group photo at the steps near this big bridge. When the other tour guide offered to take other’s cameras too, we all scrambled to towards him like a mob of impatient women rushing to a 80% discount boutique. He had at least 80 cameras dangling from his arm like a laundry line. We came across this statue with a guy’s face on. Seiya said that he was a guy who came from England or somewhere and made Kamikouchi famous to the world. cool. We also visited the museum in the park and we headed off to the buses afterwards. Finally! it was fun though, i gotta admit maybe i’ll give hiking a re-think. We were dropped off at our lodge so then we took a long refreshing bath and went down to have dinner. Yet again the dinner was fabulous. Seriously, how do they do it. Probably magic of some sort. We had Tonkatsu (Pork chops) and between a scale from 1 to 10, it was a 50. We were scheduled to have the boys over for a movie night so we sat and waited. and waited. and waited. We were so fed up waiting for them so we cranked up some music and started dancing. Then FINALLY the boys decided to show up and crash our little 5 minute dance party. They have such great timing don’t they? Anyway the Movie we watched was “White cops” and its about these two black cops that disguise themselves as white girls for a mission. The room was filled with never ending laughter as the characters on the screen entered various-hilarious situations. We finished the movie and got our special Northstar T-shirts too. Before i realized it, my feetwere at the front of my doorstep. Then without further notice, i entered deep sleep, or as i like to call it, Dreamland.

Day 4: The invasion of the Marshmallows
*groans* meh the muscle pains hurt from yesterday. “Ang come on, wake up or i’ll poke you to death.” Said Melanie, again. ” I know you wouldn’t” i said, “you know i would” she replied and started poking me on my sides so much that i bet there were tiny bruised spots on my stomach. “okay fine i’ll wake up,” i said shaking with laughter ” What are up to today?” ” I don’t know but lets go down, I’m starved” said Seira. So then we got changed into decent clothes and went down to breakfast. While i was munching on my perfectly-crunchy breakfast, the guide there announced that today was do-the-activites-we-chose-yesterday-day. Basically today’s the day we do the activities we chose to sign up for yesterday during the movie. Now me and my friends were clever so we signed up for the same activity for the same time. There were 4 activities to choose from: mountain biking (nah), orientating (navigation), rock climbing (fun) and hiking. i wasn’t going to do hiking again, despite the fun i had so we decided to do rock climbing in the morning and orientating in the afternoon. We drove down to Northstar and the hiking group had left all ready. The mountain biking (MB) group had their bikes ready and the morning orientation group was off to the woods. So it was only us rock climbers that was left in the lodge. Now I’m not the greatest rock climber in the world. Actually I suck. I have no power in my arms what so ever due to the fact that they’re just sticks with a layer of dead skin cells. So its was unsurprising that I was already out of breath when i climbed my second stone up. The only thing i admit i was okay-ish at was belaying. The recipe of belaying seemed complicated at first but once you have a steady rhythm going on, it’s easy to mimic the steps.
After what it seemed like an hour or so we went back to Raicho for lunch. We had gudon which is sorta like rice tucked in with a blanket of beef and onions. Yet again it was splendid. Some people kept on giving me their meat because it was full of fat but i like it anyway. We returned to Northstar to begin our second activity of the day. We gathered in to the small lounge and waited for our director. His name was Steve, the tall guy with the red hair. He explained what orientation was and how to use a compass. We then gathered into groups of three (Melanie, Seira and I) and as we were given our treasure hunt instructions, Steve yawned and I then noticed he looked tired. Since he actually was, he let us play a game of ninja before we went. Ninja is this game where we all strike poses and we go around in a circle trying to smack the hand of the person next to you in one move. At first i failed but as we played more and more, i actually started to learn and improve and in the end i even defeated the best player. Through the woods and trees we went finding hints for the treasure. At one point we had to climb this very steep hill full of bushes and twigs. I seriously thought i’ll never see daylight again. That’s how pathetic i was. In our group of three, we each play a role; Seira is the Navigator, Melanie was the Recorder and I was the Pace counter. Hint by hint we got closer to our destination and finally we reached the lodge. We concluded that the treasure was a message given by the hints. It was a quote by Helen Killer. Since we finished the quest earlier, we went out to play a game of jackpot. Jackpot is a game that requires a flying disc. Preferably a frisbee. one person throws it into the huddle and calls out a number from 10 to 1000. The person for example says 20 and throws and if you catch it, its mean you got 20 points. You got to get 1000 points in order to be the caller. I got a little too aggressive i guess. Well you see, when i finally caught a frisbee, William grabbed it and demanded that he caught it so i kinda kicked him in the shin to let go. It was impulsive! I swear. Everyone clapped and cheered though when i did so. Even Steve looked happy. We continued playing out in the cold for a while until the bikers came back. So then we went back to our house and showered and returned back to Northstar. There, we had our last dinner together. By the way, it was yummy. We wrapped our selves in scarfs and hats and went outside to burn some wood. It’s a good thing i brought some marshmallows. Even though they were sugar cube sized they were nice and toasty. I then felt mischievous so me and my friend, Daniel decided to put marshmallows inside Elliot’s hood one by one. When we peered inside it was half full of twigs and squashed marshmallows. The best part was that he didn’t suspect a thing. At all. After watching marshmallows burn in the flames, we went inside and we watched people performing skits and their “talents.” It was quite hilarious actually. Some people did funny skits while others sang with serious faces. There was a still an unmoved smile from my face as my head hit the pillow and everything went dark.

Day 5: Warning: Sappiness ensured
Suddenly I shot up from my bed. Huh, that’s weird. I never wake up unless i’m provoked to do so. What’s that feeling that’s been nagging me since i woke up? Oh that’s right, today’s the day. I woke everyone else up and we got changed and cleared up our sheets a little. We meet up with breakfast down stairs and was lovely as usual. It sure was gonna be missed. The guides came down and instructed us on where to put what in the rooms (eg. bed sheets and all that nonsense) It took us about 30 minutes to do so. We then went up to feed our bags with clothes. I don’t know what i’ll do without Audrey’s help. The night before she gathered my clothes into semi bags so it would be more organized. Seriously, what can’t she do? Anyway I (literally) dragged my bag down the stairs and threw it into the van. when i went back to check if we forgot anything in our room, the place seemed bigger. It’s like an emptied pool that was full of junk. It was a little sad to see the room empty but I was excited to go too. Oh yeah did i mention? we’re going home today.
If it’s one thing i hate, its saying goodbyes and all that stuff. Knowing you’ll probably never see someone again is pretty sad if you think about it. Especially if they’ve done so much for us. When we were at the shoe place, one of us gave the people at Raicho some flowers and said a few words on the behalf of us in japanese. We need packed into our small bus and waved to them and screamed goodbyes and see you’s at the window. Course, we looked like a bunch of hooligans waving frantically till our hands ripped off from the outside but i knew they understood. We got to Northstar and the boys took AGES in packing up so we played in their game room. When they finally decided to come out we got into our tutor groups and played “team-building” exercises to communicate and all that stuff. Our mission was to get everyone of us on the other side of the spider web through the holes. The catch was that when someone goes through one hole it was their’s and no one else can go through it. Somehow though we were the only tutor group to get everyone over the obstacle. some kind of miracle, probably. We gathered at the steps of the lodge and I prepared myself for a big speech from the guides about “thank you for coming, communicate is important, don’t comeback..” and all that usual stuff. We took a group photo and this time the guide did not accept any other cameras (go figure) and so that went by quickly. Here then did we have one of us say thank you and gave a small gift of apprentice. This was it then. As i looked out the window, i remembered all the laughter and fun we had for the past 5 days. The first day when I saw the lodge. The time when i thought i would probably die and be buried at someone’s back yard because we were going hiking. These memories that made this trip a little more bearable than i thought. As i looked at Northstar growing farther and farther away i thought these memories were just another chapter in the book called “my weird life” in the library of my brain. Then I smiled and turned my back on my past and looked forward to the future.

For Pictures =>

Although everyone has their own taste in music, one of my favorite genre is Jazz. My opinion is that listening to jazz helps relax yourself and i think that it would be suitable to listen to music like that when you are reading a book or when you have the blues. Speaking of which, i recommend the song “ In The Mood” because from my view that song has lots of upbeat, cheerful parts played in it. My favored instrument in the song is the trumpet because it portrays the song’s energetic parts.

Even though jazz is a relaxing genre to listen to, there are variety of more types existing. For example, hip hop and pop music which is very famous to all ages, is popular because of it’s catchy rhythm . One major example of a pop music artist is Michael Jackson, who has recently passed away. His songs were mostly about apartheid and global issues, but people loved him of his great songs such as smooth criminal, thriller and etc. he was even called the ‘King of Pop’ because his songs were loved by lots of people. You can see that pop music is mostly cheerful, ebullient, up beat songs that the people can sing and dance to. Hip-hop and rap music, on the other hand, is similar to pop but has lots of rhyming lyrics in it. For instance, the song ‘Like that‘, is a Hip-hop/rap song. Hip-hop and Rap songs have a fast tempo which makes it hard to listen to the lyrics. Overall from my point of view, i think hip-hop music is hard because it’s a type of music that you need to pronounce the words clearly in order to get the message straight.

At this time of the year, what many people would listen to is the Holiday songs. For instance, ‘Jingle Bells’, ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Last Christmas’ are songs that bring out the Christmas spirit. My opinion is that listening to the holiday songs can make you cheerful but sometimes it can be annoying. For example, in the department stores where they play Christmas songs again and again.

There are many types of music in the world such as Jazz, Rap/Hip-hop and Holiday songs. But there is one thing in common that they all have, each music has there own story (message) to tell.

Today 10am in Japan time at the white house in Washington, President Obama announced the new president that won the elections for 2029.

Obama declared that he should not let some one who has no experience on being ruler (or as in president) other than being the one of the most famous celebrities, become into the next president. Although we have no clue who won the votes, Obama left us with a description of this new president, before he left the building. According to the description, the president has black hair and he used to be a black American but operated his face into a white American. He also has a pair of black sunglasses he always put on and as for the background information, he was known by the artist of the song “Thriller” and also “Beat it” and many other folk songs. He was also known as the calligrapher for the famous dance step the “moon walk”.

Many citizens have theories for this new president. For example “ my hypothesis is that M.J. stands for Michael Jordan” or such as “ my grandfather used to listen to thriller when he was 10-11 years old so I think he knows who the president is. Only if he were alive then he would of known.”

Yet unsolved, some day soon the mystery should be solved only know the mystery president’s secret. 

My opinions on Edublogs, questions and answers.

Q1.What do you think about using a blog/ website for learning at school?

A. I think that using Edublogs as a source of learning is a good idea. It is especially good to use blogs in english class because the more you type the better you can get on type and you can also see other classmate’s blog entries and comment on them. 

Q2.What are the best/worst things about using blogs?

A. Well one the best things are that you can change the backgrounds of your site, you can add pictures, videos and etc. One of the worst things for me is that when you finished writing a blog post you try to put a picture to with the post, 1. it takes time and 2. it can get complicated and not work.

Q3.Do you like the idea of using your blog/website for other classes, not just English? What subjects and why?

A. My perspective is that we should not use Edublogs in different subjects. For example in math we usually use books and works sheets instead of using the computers. It is the same for the other classes, so i think that it would be no use using Edublogs.

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