November

People start wearing poppies on their shirts, the clocks are turned back, it's cold all day and dark at 5pm. No two ways about it, it's November. I once thought of it as the most miserable month of the whole year, but now I've got a happy view on life. Today, and yesterday too in fact it was cold, I could see my breath in the morning and afternoon, and the last of the leaves are starting to fall, but it's not raining, and it's really pretty. And it's not unbearably cold. It's not yet winter here. I just know that this year it'll be a bad one for being being sick, goodness knows fall has been bad enough already, but I'm optimistically hoping that the fact that I never get sick will continue to serve me well. And there will be ice, I know, but hopefully not a lot of snow (people here CAN'T drive well in snow and it's no fun to walk in) And time has been going so fast this year that I just know spring will be back before we know it. Until it does, I will not be befallen by winter blues. It's all smiles and happy from here on out!!

Halloween

Well, it's two days before the day of Haunts, All Hallows Eve, and whatever else it's been called throughout time, known today as Halloween. We haven't carved our pumpkin yet, we don't have any decorations up, I'm not going to the Halloween dance at school tonight, I don't have a costume and for the second year in a row I'm not going trick-or-treating. I'm volunteering at the local nature centure the day of to help with their Halloween program (mostly I help little kids with crafts. I've done it many times before. It's actually kind of fun) and then having a friend over later to watch the Great Pumpkin. Not the all time greatest Halloween, I know. When I was younger, up till a few years ago actually I went out every year. When I was little I'd go trick-or-treating with my mom and the people next door. As I got older I went with friends with no parents and then last year, I quite. Now, I don't go out to movies or parties or dances or anything. It's like the older I get, the more holidays get downgraded for me. But I guess it's part of growing up. Maybe next year I'll find something really fun to do for Halloween. But for this year, it's passing out candy and watching poor Linus spend his 42nd Halloween alone in a pumpkin patch. You've really got to honour his resilience. Happy hauntings!!

Thoughts on the "isms"

Something I often think about is how confusing the human race is. I am reading a book right now, A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson (it's AMAZING!!) and it takes place right before WW2, so the late 1930's. The main caracter is British, but she's working at a school in Austria. The staff and students of this school come from everywhere: England, Germany, Austria, Russia, America, Sweden, Scotland, Czechoslovakia and so many more. They all speak English and German and it really doesn't matter where they come from, because they're all friends. Then, at the beginning of the war the school had to close. The main caracter had a friend in the Austrian village who wrote for the first few years, and then was suddenly called the "enemy" and wasn't allowed to write anymore. But she was just an ordinary girl from a beautiful village, and she was all about peace and love and everything wonderful. It doesn't make any sense. There were caracters who were austrasised or interned because they were Jewish, or because they were German, and so many more reasons. That isn't fair! That's the complicated about war. It's not just this book and this war, it's all of them!! During the revolutionary war in the states, suddenly everyone who stayed loyal to Britain was dubbed the enemy and run out of their homes by their friends and neighbours.

But here's what I want to know. Did they change? If two people were friends before a war, and then a war happened and one of them suddenly decided the other was the "enemy" or whatever and dumps the other one. But did the one who got dumped change in any way? No! They stayed exactly the same, they just happened to be a certain way, and a law or a war suddenly made that bad. Maybe people just go looking for things in each other to hate. Maybe it's in our nature and we can't help it. Only I know it's not. I know that, because I'm not like that. There are some things that we just can't help or change because it's the way we were born. Nobody chooses to be born, or how or where they just are. They don't (WE don't) pick what religion their family practices, or if they are religious at all. We don't pick our skin colour or nationality or language or if we're gay or straight. It's just the way we are and we just have to accept it.

Now me, I'm really lucky, because I was born in Canada in the 90's and raised believing everything I just said. Nobody that I've ever met hasn't wanted to be near me because of what I look like or believe or anything else about me. The past few hundred years have really changed the world. People worked hard so that people of all nationalities, all religions, all skin colours, both genders, gay or otherwise could live together in peace without problems. And still the world isn't perfect! People are still rasict, sexist, homophobic and all the other "isms" that exist. Why? I don't know. But it's stupid. And it all goes both ways. When I read The Secret Life of Bees and To Kill a Mockingbird I learned that in those times, in the southern states, (Alabama and South Carolina) people were excluded and beaten on (physically and emotionally) for having black skin, which I knew, but the racism went both ways and some of the black people were just as hostile toward the white people. I read a story once in Chicken Soup where a boy in the grade 8 class of whoever wrote the story got in a fight with another boy and was suspended and punished for a few weeks and had to miss out on all the special school events. Nobody thought that was fair, because the fight started when the second boy had said something rude and racist against the first one (who was African-American) and the school had a zero tolerance for violence ("missing the irony of the situation" to quote the story) I didn't understand the irony until my mom explained: zero tolerence for violence, but not for racism. And that was in current times.

My school is great. Everyone is included, cared about and welcome no matter what. People get in trouble for being rude or smoking or skipping class but skin colour and religion doesn't play into that. There are programs like Gay/Straight alliance and posters everywhere saying "Homophobia free zone" and other inclusive things like that. And still I hear people saying "that's so gay" or other rude things like that. I guess for some people they can't help it, it's what they've grown up with. For others they're trying to be cool. But for me, I'll never do that. It's partly because I was raised knowing everyone is equal, that we're all the same inside and most just want what's best for their families and themselves. But also, I don't say or write things like that because I can flip the situation and I can imagine how much it would hurt and how I would feel if it was me. Think of what the world would be, how fast wars would end, if everybody started believing that. It's so easy! So why isn't it happening?

I've been thinking these things for years, wars and human equality. I want to do something to help change the world, to stop this more then it already is stopped, but I don't know how effective it would be. If people I see in the hallways of my Homophobia free school can still say rude comments like that, how much more can be done? Now that I think about it, nothing. Now they've got the information and it's just up to them to change. Let's hope, for the good of changing the world, they pick it up soon.

Sorting Garbage

It was a beautiful Saturday today. The perfect kind of day to spend outside in the fresh air, which I did. I spent six hours in the parking lot of my school sorting through other people's garbage. Okay, it's really not as bad as it sounds. We have a really great recycling program at R.S.S., technically we are called a "zero waste" school and we don't have any more garbage cans and absolutely everything can be kept out of the land fill. Truth: there are still illegal garbage cans, but there are also recycle stations, probably around 10 or 15 around the school. At each station there's a paper recycling box, a juice box bin, a food waste bin (for all food, paper cups, paper towels and napkins etc.) and the recycling tower. It's one of those plastic rolly things with 5 drawers and you split soft plastic, hard plastic, foil lined plastic, styrofoam and electronics into their own separate drawer and it all goes to special recycling stations and is all kept out of the landfill. Well, once a month (and this actually started before the in-school recycling) we have a mass recycle depot in the parking lot. We sort all of that and way more and bag it and keep it all out of the landfill. When I started working at the depots last year it was totally unorganized and completely chaotic, but it's really changed and now there's a great method. It's actually kind of theraputic (not that I need therapy or anything) to sort through the disgusting garbage and keep it out of the oceans and landfills. I did that for four hours today, then worked for another 2 (a little short of 2 actually) at the bottle drive for band. It's one of many fundraisers we do. Anyway, that equalled almost SIX HOURS spent at school on Saturday. True the school was actually closed, but the point remains the same. I don't mind though. I love school, and mine is so great, I couldn't imagine going anywhere else. Even though I actually went to two other places for nine years before I got here and thought the same thing about both of them. Maybe I just settle well. Anyway, to wrap it up. Saturday: sorted garbage, watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, blogged, now I'm off to... I don't know. I'll think of something.

A Question for the Day...

I have questions. Not normal every day questions ("Where's my favorite pen?" "What's wrong with the sink?" "How do you do this math problem?" etc.) but actual, deep, life questions. Here's today's question: "What is it about people that we need each other so much?" When we feel sad we put a hand on someone's shoulder or hug or just sit in their presence. When we're happy we want to find the people we care about and share our happiness. When bad things happen most people would rather be with people (friends, family, anyone really) then be alone. People are better than no people. Same thing when bad thing happen, we'd rather be with people then alone. It's an interesting point, and I think I understand why it's like that. It's just the way humans were made. We are built to be caring, loving creatures. We can't survive on our own. True, with the right resources and equipment, physically we can live alone all our lives. But emotionally, we need people, we need that warm feeling deep down inside that you get when you know there's someone in the world that cares about you. That is why we need each other so much. For some they don't mind showing love of life and everything around them, for others it's more important to shove personal feelings deep down and try to lose them down there. But you can't deny the fact that we are built this way like it or not. It's one of those things that we just have to come to tearms with and accept, sooner rather than later. "Live to laughingly love life!"

Wonder Water

There is nothing more precious, beautiful, enchanting and wonderful on the face of this earth than water. It is everywhere, it is everything. We drink it, breath it, bath in it, wash with it, play in it. It falls as rain, fills in waterfalls, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, freezes into ice, condenses into steam. We absolutely need water, and there is no way around it. Our bodies are made up of mostly water and it is one of the three things that every living creature cannot live without. But, as much as it is a necessity it is also completely fascinating. There is nothing more soothing than watching rugged ocean waves crash across an open beach, pulling the rocks back in it's wake with a beautiful rolling sound. I have seen these rugged waves on beaches, on the Queen Charlotte Islands, and in Cape Breton, as well as Botanical Beach a few hours from where I live. In these places I was staring straight into open ocean, open Pacific, with nothing between me and Japan, and open Atlantic with nothing between me and France. It's an incredible thing, to see, just this wild, crashing, powerful water. It's just water, it runs through your fingers, it gets everything wet, it creates mud where we don't want it, and it's absolutely powerful. I have also seen Niagara Falls, the world's 50th largest waterfall (from the Canadian side which everyone knows is the better of the two) and the enormity of what comes crashing down there every minute, not to mention who's gone over the falls and lived through it is truly something to marvel at. Many people in the world don't share our novelty of instant water from several places around the house. Some have to walk a long way to get to a pump or a well and often times it is dirty or infected and makes them sick. We are so fortunate here to have this instant, clean, wonder water at the turn of a tap. Water: clear, beautiful, delicious, wonderful. Waste it not.

Happy Monday!!!

I called this "Happy Monday" but it really didn't start out that way. I've learned over the past few years that being late first period on Monday morning is really not a good way to start a week. I had to play soccer (something I hate) in gym class and I didn't have my extra shoes, so mine got drenched out there!! I killed a frog after lunch in sewing (not a real one! I'm not an amphibeon murderer!!) I'm sewing a little frog, one that you fill with rice, and I was instructed that I had to sew very slowly and carefully and if my stitches weren't straight it would end up as a roadkill frog. I honestly tried, but even at the slowest speed the machine seemed to be going too fast, and I was constantly going over the lines, and my stitches were all coming out choppy and uneven, going zig-zaggy where it should have been straight and pointy where it should have been round and it was just awful!!! I killed it! I picked out my sewing and I'll try again tomorrow. The teacher wasn't kidding about it being a long, hard process!!!

More bad news later didn't do much to make my day happier. But over the past year I've come to understand that sometimes in life, bad things happen, things you didn't expect. These things are hard, often unfair and they can hurt. But they do happen and the thing to do is to feel sad and sorry for a little bit, but eventually to accept that it happened, and you just have to move on with your life. We just have to say to ourselves "Okay this happened, and it sucked. What am I going to do about it? How am I going to react? What is the best thing to do right now?" Once we can ask ourselves that, and deal in a calm manner, we can handle anything. Take for example, the boat in the above picture. It is the bow of an ancient ship that was sunk on a beach on the Queen Charlotte Islands a few hundred years ago. That was unfair, a lot of people died, and it was hard. But it happened a lot, and people kept sailing and with time they improved safety measures until they got to what we have at present time. And that's what we have to do in life. Just keep moving, and things will generally look up when the sun comes out and it stops raining.