https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFS9E3qIpcc

Final draft

Veeti Heikkinen
Jennifer Guarino
5.20.2016
English
                                                                  March
     I had to remember an 8-line poem for my English class so I chose the poem "March" by an unknown author. I had to read the poem out loud, write it down and also perform the poem with music on the background. And now our teacher is planning to make us do a new video of us reading the poem with pictures on the background. The poem I chose, talks about spring coming and taking away the leaves left from autumn. The poem "March" symbolizes how our life has negative changes, but everything will turn out positive, and those memories will always be a part of us. The poem uses structural changes to show how those changes in our life shapes us.
     Like I said, the poem that I chose discusses how “the winds of March” comes and changes the winter towards summer. The poem says to the winds of March that “we welcome you”, which shows how much spring has been waited during winter. The Winds of March in this poems represents something positive. The positive thing comes after winter, which in this poem is something negative and misery, and even suffering. In this poem, the statement “blow the dry leaves away” refers to the start of winter, fall. This means that the bad things in your life, which is winter in this poem, starts from something that isn’t as bad, even beautiful. This shows that you never know where your life is going, and you shouldn’t be too trustful towards the good things, because they can lead to something bad. The poem teaches how all things end, but also new things start. This is shown through different times of year. When fall ends, winter starts, and when winter ends, spring starts, which is the start of summer. This can also be understood in a way, that the start of something, ends something else. This poem brings out the contrast between fate and destiny. It makes the reader think that can he change his life through his own actions, or is everything meant to be. It makes you think that are you living your own life, or just experiencing it.
     The poem is structured in 8 different lines. 5 of the lines contains 3 words, while 2 of them has 4 words and one line contains only 2 words. This helps the poem to bring up the fact that everything doesn’t always go the same, and there are changes in your life. The last last line contains 2 words which shows how your future will always be different in some ways than the present. The rhyme scheme in the first stanza of the poem is as following: A B C B and in the second: D D E D. The poem has a rhyme scheme, so it is not a free verse poem. The repetition shows that even that you have some changes in your life, you are still living the same life. Those changes stay in the past, but they are still a part of you. The poem has a happy emotion, which tries to show the reader that life is still a positive gift, and how you should stay happy, even though your life wouldn’t be so easy. The poem uses a lot of figurative language to show the meaning of the poem as a simile.
     This poem is one of the most meaningful poems ever written. It discusses honestly about the meaning of life and living. It makes the reader really think about his attitude towards life. It makes the reader realize how something bad is always followed by something good. At the same time the poem makes us think about destiny and fate, is the good taking the bad away, or does the good come only after the bad is gone?

The poem "March" symbolises how our life has negative changes, but everything will turn out positive, and those memories will always be a part of us.

Veeti Heikkinen
Jennifer Guarino
22.5.2016
English

The Cheshire Academy spring drama was "comedy tonight". It was a collection of different skits, dances and songs. All the skits were written by students and faculty from Cheshire Academy. The show was performed in the Black Box theater in the Field House on Friday and Sunday. Overall the play was funny, like it was supposed to be, but it seemed like the play could have used more rehearsal before it was performed. The actors all did a great job, but it seemed like the play wasn't ready yet. Some actors forgot their lines and the things that they were supposed to do. This might be because there were a lot of single skits that you had to remember instead of a single story line. Also because this was a comedy, body performance was an important part of the skits. Anyway I don't think that it was necessarily a bad thing. It made the play even funnier in some ways. All the actors performed bravely and weren't embarrassed to perform, which was a huge part to make the play successful. Some skits ridiculed some president candidates, religion and the faculty in Cheshire Academy. This was done by over exaggerating their personalities and characteristics. The play wasn't afraid to brake the limits to please the audience. The play was enjoyable to watch and I would recommend it.

Veeti Heikkinen

Jennifer Guarino

5.20.2016

English

March

I had to remember an 8-line poem for my English class so I chose the poem "March" by an unkown author. I had to read the poem out loud, write it down and also perform the poem with music on the background. And now our teacher is planning to make us do a new video of us reading the poem with pictures on the background. The poem I chose, talks about spring coming and taking away the leaves left from autumn. This symbolizes how your life will turn out positive, even if you are going through some hard times.

Like I said, the poem that I chose discusses how “the winds of March” comes and changes the winter towards summer. The poem says to the winds of March that “we welcome you”, which shows how much spring has been waited during winter. The Winds of March in this poems represents something positive. The positive thing comes after winter, which in this poem is something negative and misery, and even suffering. In this poem, the statement “blow the dry leaves away” refers to the start of winter, fall. This means that the bad things in your life, which is winter in this poem, starts from something that isn’t as bad, even beautiful. This shows that you never know where your life is going, and you shouldn’t be too trustful towards the good things, because they can lead to something bad. The poem teaches how all things end, but also new things start. This is shown through different times of year. When fall ends, winter starts, and when winter ends, spring starts, which is the start of summer. This can also be understood in a way, that the start of something, ends something else. This poem brings out the contrast between fate and destiny. It makes the reader think that can he change his life through his own actions, or is everything meant to be. It makes you think that are you living your own life, or just experiencing it.

The poem is structured in 8 different lines. 5 of the lines contains 3 words, while 2 of them has 4 words and one line contains only 2 words. This helps the poem to bring up the fact that everything doesn’t always go the same, and there are changes in your life. The last last line contains 2 words which shows how your future will always be different in some ways than the present. The rhyme scheme in the first stanza of the poem is as following: A B C B and in the second: D D E D. The poem has a rhyme scheme, so it is not a free verse poem. The repetition shows that even that you have some changes in your life, you are still living the same life. Those changes stay in the past, but they are still a part of you. The poem has a happy emotion, which tries to show the reader that life is still a positive gist, and how you should stay happy, even though your life wouldn’t be so easy. The poem uses a lot of figurative language to show the meaning of the poem as a simile.

This poem is really meaningful. It discusses honestly about the meaning of life and living. It makes the reader really think about his attitude towards life. It makes the reader realize how something bad is always followed by something good. But is the good taking the bad away, or does the good come only when the bad is gone?

youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhsYOM4bmvQ

Winds of March,
We welcome you,
There is work
For you to do,
Work and play
And blow all day,
Blow the dry
Leaves away.

The overwhelming smell of joss sticks. 
They do make a very strong smell, 
not a particularly nice smell, 
but it’s meant to appease the ancestors. 
That was the overwhelming smell 
except for the smell of burning gasoline 
and diesel and the smell of burning flesh, I must say. 
The main sound was the wailing and misery of the monks, 
who had known this guy for many years before and were feeling for him. 
Then there was shouting over loudspeakers 
people, trying to figure out a way to put him out, 
put out the flames around him without actually killing. 
So it was a jumble of confusion.

Malcolm Brown, 

The fig means a gift from allah to the father. It symbolises nature's beauty and achieved dreams. Even though it is a gift from god, we need to work ourselves in order to achieve it, not just waiting for it to magically happen.

It is getting warm,

The sun is up once again,

Summer is coming.

Macklemore - Wings:

We want what we can't have, commodity makes us want it
So expensive, damn, I just got to flaunt it
Got to show 'em, so exclusive, this that new shit
A hundred dollars for a pair of shoes I would never hoop in
Look at me, look at me, I'm a cool kid
I'm an individual, yeah, but I'm part of a movement
My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it
They told me to just do it, I listened to what that swoosh said
Look at what that swoosh did See it consumed my thoughts
Are you stupid, don't crease 'em, just leave 'em in that box
Strangled by these laces, laces I can barely talk
That's my air bubble and I'm lost if it pops
We are what we wear, we wear what we are
But see I look inside the mirror and think Phil Knight tricked us all
Will I stand for change or stay in my box
These Nikes help me define me, but I'm trying to take mine off.

("http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/macklemore/wing.html")

These lyrics are from Macklemore's song "Wings". The song is about a boy, who wants to be good at basketball and tries to achieve that by buying cool shoes. The meaning of the song is that we are trying to define ourselves by following other people around us. In the music video, Macklemore is reading the lyrics from a book to little kids. This shows that the song is trying to send a message teaching people to be themselves and not blindly follow others. If you build yourself on what you wear, that's all you are, and without them, you are lost. The tone in the song is sad and rhythmical which makes it meaningful. The lyrics follow mostly a rhyme scheme AA, BB, CC... but at some parts ABAB. This chore has 8 stanzas that each has 2 lines. These lyrics works as a poem, because it follows the same rhythm, has stanzas and ending rhymes. The lines doesn't have same amount of syllables, but it is fixed by singing faster and slower and keeping small breaks.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

– William Blake (extract from Auguries of Innocence)

I chose it because a lot of the other poems I read were negative and depressing, which I don't like. I like how this poem is positive and describes freedom as a key to happiness. It tells how you need to be free and not stressed to see the world's true beauty.

Veeti Heikkinen

25.4.2016

English

Jennifer Guarino

Creative Project Reflection

For my creative project, I drew a drawing. In the drawing, Kellyanne is in a wheelchair, going up a hill. There is also two invisible characters, and their shadows, that represents Pobby and Dingan. I drew this drawing with pencils, so it is black and white. I didn’t use any colors, because I think that black and white is more meaningful and it fits the scene, which is a little sad. Also colors might have made the drawing less professional.

The hill in the drawing, represents the difficulties that Kellyanne has. She is going up the hill in a wheelchair. This shows how hard it is for Kellyanne to go through those challenges by herself. Kellyanne has her hand resting on the wheelchair, so she isn’t pushing the wheelchair forward herself.

There is also dark shadow behind Kellyanne, and it gets lighter when you go up the hill. On top of the hill, there is no shadow, only light. this also represents how Kellyanne is going away from the shadow towards the light. What the light represents, is for the audience to figure out.

Behind Kellyanne there are two characters. You can not see the characters, but you can see two lighter parts in the drawing behind Kellyanne. There are also shadows of those two characters behind the shadow of Kellyanne and her wheelchair. Other one of the characters is pushing the wheelchair that Kellyanne is in. The idea of this is to show that even if you can’t see those characters, they are still helping Kellyanne. That way they actually are real, even if you can’t see them, which is the main idea of the book Pobby and Dingan.

I did this drawing for my final project, because I thought it was a good way to show my understanding of the book. I did it as a drawing, because I like drawing, but I am really bad at it. This was a good way to practise my drawing. I had to do a lot of practising before I did my last draft, and I can really see how my drawing improved from the start to the final draft.

While I was drawing Kellyanne and her wheelchair, I had to do a lot of very detailed drawing. Drawing the hill, shadow and Pobby and Dingan was not detailed drawing, but it was also hard and time consuming. I had to draw the same spots over and over again, and to make sure that I don’t draw too hard. I think that My strongest part of the project is the idea. The drawing doesn’t look really professional. The hardest part was drawing Kellyanne’s face, and I think that it is the weakest part in my project. Also people that haven't seen or read Pobby and Dingan, can still understand my drawing.

I have drawn Kellyanne and her face many times. I have tried to draw different kind of faces and emotions to her. I won't try to make her look real, but I don't want her to look like a stick figure. I still need to draw my final draft on a bigger piece of paper, which might take a few tries.

I will draw pobby and Dingan for my creative project. I won't draw them as people, but I will draw them as some kind of force that protects Kellyanne. I'm not yet exactly sure that how I will make Pobby and Dingan noticeable. I'm also not a good drawer, so I will probably have to make many drafts before my actual drawing. I will try to draw my final draft with a black in pen, or a pencil, so it's going to be black and white. I hope that I will learn drawing from this project, and also portraying my ideas into drawing.

The quote: "The secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absence." means that opal is so valuable because it is a symbol of hope and dreams. People have dreams that could be achieved by finding opal, and that gives them hope to keep on searching for it, even though they might have never found it yet. Hope and dreams are the "fuel" of humans that we need everyday to get out of bed. For the characters in the novel, opal was also a symbol of hope and dreams. But everyone has their own dreams, and for everyone the opal has a different meaning. For Ashmole it showed that believing is the most important thing. The opal showed Ashmole how dreams could be achieved by believing that they will happen. Ashmole wanted Kellyanne to get better and his dad to win the trial. The opal helped Ashmole to believe and hope that they will happpen. The opal is an important thing in the novel, because it was the only thing that gave the characters hope. I think that the different colors in the opal represented different dreams that people had. And the absence means that they only exist when you don't have them. If you got everything you ever wanted, you wouldn't have any dreams, and that would take the living out of your life. Living is having dreams and going after them and trying to achieve them, not the achieving itself.

Book vs. movie

In the book, Ashmole didn't get the opal back like he did in the movie. Also Sid started yelling and threatening Rex in the book, but not in the movie. Also Kellyanne died in the book. The movie didn't tell that part, but the movie neither said that Kellyanne turned out okay.

Pobby and Dingan quiz answers

2. When Ashmole was going to look for Pobby and Dingan at the mines, he wasn't really sure if he believes that Pobby and Dingan are real. On his way there, Ashmole thinks how amazing it is that the place was once on the bottom of the ocean: "If this amazing thing was true it was just possible Pobby and Dingan were true too." Ashmole thinks. This is important moment for the story, because that is when Ashmole starts to believe that Pobby and Dingan were real, and really search for them. He realizes that even if he hasn't seen something himself, it might still be true, just like Pobby and Dingan.

5. This story duscusses the importance of dreaming and believing. It shows how those things gives us hope. Ashmole finds Pobby and Dingan not only because he believed they are real, but because believing in them gave Ashmole hope to keep on looking. He believed that if he finds them, Kellyanne will also get better. Also Ashmole's father Rex had big dreams that he will find opal and then have a much better life. These dreams gave Rex hope to keep on looking and mining for opal. Even that he had never found opal, he had hope to give him energy to look for them.

Claim: Me and Dad were relaxing after a hard afternoon's work out at the claim. 
noun. a piece of a mine, that is owned by someone

wobbling: a four-wheel-drive police jeep came wobbling down the creamy red track.
verb. moving with an unsteady motion

startled: My dad turned around, startled.
verb. to move with a quick sudden motion.


figment: Pobby was a figment of her imaginings.
noun. a product of imagination


rummaged: He rummaged through a pile of rocks.
verb. moving around looking for something


ute: I slammed the door of the ute in Dingan's face.
noun. car type


crackpot: Lightning ridge was full of flaming crackpots as far as I could see.
noun. a strange or crazy person


Mello Yello: hiding my anger in a swing from my can of Mello Yello.
noun. a lemonade brand


mates: Dad had become mates with Pobby and Dingan.
noun. friends


opal: My dad would come back from the opal mines covered in dust.
noun. a type of rock

fairdinkum: There’s definitely something in that earth with the name Williamson on it!” “Fairdinkum?”
Austrailian slang word for truth, really, fair

imaginary: I wasn’t crazy enough to talk to imaginary friends.
Noun. Something that you have made up that exists in your head, not usually physical

grub: She said they were quieter and better behaved than me and deserved the grub.
Adjective. Short and thick

fossilized: a fossilized mammoth tooth with sun-flash in it.
Adjective. Remains of something really old


mammoth: a fossilized mammoth tooth with sun-flash in it.
Noun. An animal that doesn't exist anymore 

Are Pobby and Dingan real? It depends. In the book Pobby and Dingan, Pobby and dingan are Ashmole's little sister's imaginary friends, that might actually be more than imaginary characters in the book. But if they are imaginary or not in the book, does that make them real or not real. "Things that never existed can’t be dead. Right?” This shows how Ashmole didn't think that Pobby and Dingan were real, at least not in the real physical world.
I think that if they are imaginary, they are real. If they are defined as imaginary characters, and not real people, the fact that they exist in ones imagination, makes the characters real. If you think that is God real or not, you might think that it isn't. But what if God is just an imaginary power in our heads, instead of a actual physical person in the sky, does that make God real. I think that it does, because the definition of God is then something that someone believes in, and it is true that someone believes in God, so God is real.