Zoom Out Of An Image

cropped-Dolphin-23-Good-20xp1y6-1gl8ig4.jpgPhoto: Meg

I took this photo on the 25/03/16. I was going to the Abrolhos Islands for Easter with my family and two other families that we are very close to. I was sitting out on the bow of the boat with my two friends and these two dolphins joined us and swam along side the boat for a few minutes. It was so amazing to watch the dolphins having so much fun, and I am so glad I had my camera with me at the time.

Make comments about what else is happening outside this picture. Try not to make them very long, so other people can have a go! Remember to read the comments before yours so the ‘story’ makes sense.

Whoops

I’ve been sort of neglecting writing about books in the last 3 or 4 months. I haven’t been reading as much as I normally do and I also haven’t found a book that I really love and want to talk about. However I did buy 3 new books on the last week of last term, when I was down in Perth on a school sporting camp.

The first book I bought was Shadow Girl by John Larkin. I started reading this book a few weeks ago but I haven’t gotten into it and have yet to finish. It is about a girl who is/was homeless and how she became homeless and things that happened to her while she was. It is written in a strange format, with half the chapters written as an interview type way, with the author talking to the shadow girl. The other half is written in the shadow girl’s point of view about things that happened to her. It is weird way to write, I have never seen it before, and it is confusing me and I am unable to concentate while reading it.

The second book I got was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. She also wrote the book I talked about in my first post, Carry On. I enjoyed reading her work and so I bought another of her books. The story follows Cath and is written in third person. She has a twin sister, called Wren, who has been her best friend since she could remember. When they both move out to go to college Wren suggests not sharing a room. So Cath ends up with a girl called Reagan. Cath is the kind of girl who would rather sit at home reading while Wren is a party girl, going out and getting drunk with her new roommate and BFF. Cath struggles at college, not used to being on her own so far from home and without her sister. Family problems arise and Cath finds herself stuck in the middle. Carry On and Fangirl have a weird relationship. They are kind of a series but at the same time not really. In Fangirl, Cath is writing a fanfiction, what she thinks the yet to be released final book of a fictional series should be like.  Carry On is Rainbow Rowells fanfiction on what she thinks the last book of the fictional series should be. I imagined Cath’s fanfiction to be very similar to the way Rainbow Rowells wrote it and I was confused for a long time about the books relationship. (It took my sister a solid half an hour to explain all this to me)

The final book I bought was called If I Was Your Girl and it was written by Meredith Russo. It is about a transgender girl (so she was born a boy but now identifies as a girl), Amanda, and about her life after she moves to a new school. She moves because of what happened at her old school. No one knows what Amanda’s life used to be like and she has no intention of anyone knowing. She makes friends with a girl named Bee who she grows close to in their ‘Art’ lessons. (The teacher wasn’t at school, they were away on holidays, but the girls would have to go to PE so they pretend they have a teacher for a solid two terms) Amanda and Bee play the Honesty game and it ends with Bee coming out as bisexual and Amanda admitting she used to be a boy. Amanda is amazed to have found such a great friend but can she really trust Bee? I loved this book so much as it was not something I would normally read but it was interesting to learn and find out about subjects that people don’t really talk about like LGBTQ. It was kind of cliche with the whole new girl meets friends, gets accepted, meets a boy but then it also has the drama of her being transgender and no one knowing. She doesn’t know how to open up to anyone and is shutting everyone out, leading them to believe she doesn’t like them. But the truth always finds a way of getting out and jealously comes into play, Amanda is in for a whole lot more than she bargained. I don’t really fully support how the story ends I think their could have been some more on what happened, it was a little bit of a cliffhanger but there is no next book. Other than that minor detail I would fully recommend this book to anyone that wants to read a good book.

 

Classic Sponge Cake

imageI made this cake today for some of my friends. I think they enjoyed it, I’m not really sure, but I hope so. It is sort of the first sponge I made so I think it was successful. I have made it before for lamingtons but I have never made it alone, just to eat.

Ingredients

95g self-raising flour

25g cornflour

4 eggs, separated

100g caster sugar, 2 tbsp extra for the egg whites

1 tsp of vanilla essence

1/4 tsp cream of tartar, I replaced with 4 tsp of lemon juice because I had no cream of tartar

Cream and strawberries to top

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Grease and line a circle cake pan. Sift the flour and cornflour together, and set aside.

Using an electric mixer, whisk together egg yolks, the 100g of caster sugar and vanilla essence for 2-3 minutes, until thick and mouse like. Set aside.

Whisk egg whites until starting to froth, then add cream of tartar or lemon juice and continue to whisk until stiff but not dry. Whisk in the 2 tbsp of sugar gradually.

Fold a large scoop of whisked egg white into the beaten yolks, to slacken the mixture, then fold in the sifted flour and finally egg whites, until just combined.

Turn the mixture into the prepared tin, gently smoothing the top. Place in oven, reducing the temperature to 170 degrees Celcius, and bake for 30 minutes. Check if the cake is cooked before taking it out of the oven by very gently pressing with an index finger to check if the centre of the cake is firm. If so, remove from the oven and check the d’être with a very fine skewer – it should come out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack, to make sure the top is nicely set.

Once cooled, split the cake by cutting with a sharp knife into two even rounds. Top the base with whipped cream and strawberries, then place the second cake layer on top.

Note: Recipe is not my own – The Great Australian Cookbook- Margaret Fulton and Suzanne Gibbs

My Birthday

Last week on Thursday it was my 15th birthday. I had a pretty good day and got a few presents from my friends so I had to carry them around all day and they were actually kind of heavy. I didn’t enjoy English very much that day (sorry me being slightly passive aggressive) , though, because we had to do an essay on character study. Then I had GATE for 4 periods and I played piano and played a board game so that was good. I had netball training after school but my mum brought cake and it was really yummy.

I got some really cool presents like a Polaroid camera and a 1000 piece puzzle. I got a giant teddy from my best friend and when I say giant I mean giant, it is a metre tall! I got a block of chocolate and little husky toy, which is really cute and I love, a big pin up board that I can put photos on and few room decorations for my new room.

On Saturday I had a sleepover with my friends and we had a good time hanging out and doing my puzzle. My sister and dad were up for the weekend, too, so Adelle hung out with us.  We played a few games like never have I ever and truth or truth and I got my third cake in three days. Most of us had to go to the comedy Zest Festival in the morning but we were up until 3am so we were exhausted. When I got back from that I had a very chill afternoon and just tried to finish my puzzle. I did succeed, well sort of because THERE WAS ONE PIECE MISSING. I still think one of my friends took it to mess with me but they still have not admitted it or returned it. It is very possibly somewhere in my house but I couldn’t find it and I looked for a while. I’m still mad about that too. So to those who know please return my puzzle piece that is missing and the puzzle will sit at my house, almost finished, until it is returned.

On the jellicoe road

In English we have to read a book. There was a choice of one of the following- Z for Zachariah, Tommorow When the War Began, Lord of the Flies, Destroying Avalon and On the jellicoe road. I have read Tommorow When the War Began outside of English and I enjoyed it heaps. I started with the second book because I was on camp and one of my friends had it and it was a very long bus ride so I decided to steal it and read it. The book didn’t make very much sense but I was told mostly about what happened in the first one and was still able to read it. I then read the first book and then continued the series. I read Z for Zachariah first and finished that quickly because it was a small book. I read Destroying Avalon next which took me a little bit longer because the book was longer but I enjoyed it so I read it faster. It was about the effects of cyber bullying but told in a story point of view. It was an intresting read.

We are required to read until the end of the term so I got out another book, On the jellicoe road. I don’t really like the book that much and it doesn’t make much sense at the moment but I haven’t read very much yet because I’m not enjoying it. It is about a year 12 girl, Taylor Markham, and other than that I don’t really know. I think she is trying to find her mum who abandoned her so now she lives at a boarding school. She is the school leader and has to negotiate with other people on where they are allowed to go on the grounds. *insert confusion here* She has really bad dreams/nightmares where a boy is trying to tell her something. I don’t understand the book at all it is very scattered and I’m already 100 pages in. I think I might stop reading it because I’m not enjoying it and no one else has read it so I can’t ask anyone.

Zest Festival

Since 2012 in Kalbarri, around the 18, 19th of September, there is a festival held that goes over the weekend. It has to do with the history in this area. It began 5 years ago on the 300th anniversary of the Zuytdorp crashing on the cliffs north of Kalbarri. This year is the last year it will run, on the 400th anniversary of Dirk Hartog arriving in Australia and leaving behind the first artifact, the Hartog plate. It began in 2012 and the subject was the Netherlands and the Zuytdorp. In 2013 it was about South Africa, in 2014 it was Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. In 2015 it was Japan and China. This year the subject is unity and how all of those countries were united through the VOC or (as it roughly translates to in English) the Dutch East India Trading Company.

I really love the Zest Festival and all of the opportunities it has brought to the community and students. I was strongly involved in last years Chamber of Retoric, a performance on the Saturday night that has to do with the year’s subject,. I was one of the four puppeteers that moved the two Japanese samurai brothers. I trained with a professional puppeteer, Karen Hethey, for weeks leading up to the performance. It was amazing to see the whole thing come together and all the work that happened behind the scenes that paid off.

Every year an activity from the country we are studying comes to school. It is normally a musical instrument of some sort. In 2013 drums were brought to the school and all the classes learnt to play. The best students were then chosen to perform at the Chamber of Retoric. In 2014 I was in the group of people chosen to play at the Chamber of Retoric. We played the Gamelan instruments from Indonesia. In 2015 we learnt to play Taiko drums. They were played by professionals at the Saturday night performance.

The Zest Festival has been amazing experience for everyone who has ever visited for the weekend and attended or been involved in the process. I feel very privileged to live in Kalbarri. it’s not every day an opportunity like this comes around and to quote myself from last year “When something like this comes around you have to reach up and take hold of it with both hands”.

Eyes

This is kinda random but you can tell a lot of things abut a person by their eyes. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. There are so many different variations of eye colours with flecks or dots or lines or stripes. I wonder if you can find anyone with the sames eyes. Are they like finger prints? Unique for every person?

Okay I googled it. I don’t think they are unique but there are many different variations of colours. They are determined by genes. The basic eye colours are blue, green, brown, hazel, amber and grey. Not everyone fits under categories like this. My eyes for example are between a blue and green. Maybe they are even a greyish. They are kind of mix between the two but the colours I’m surrounded by affect the way people see them. They also have little yellowish or green sqiggly lines that surround my pupil. Some people have really dark eyes, almost black if you don’t look properly. Others have really light eyes. Some people have a darker ring around the iris which is called a limbal ring.

It’s possible to have your eye colour change. When babies are born their eyes are normally different to the colour they will have for the rest of their lives. Their final colour will become present at around 3 years of age. Eye trauma, puberty, pregnancy can affect melanin production which can cause the eye colour to change during these times. Melanin is the pigment cell which makes colour. Skin and hair colour is made by melanin.

It is also possible to have different coloured eyes. It is a condition called heterochromia and can be complete or partial. Complete heterochromia is when the two eyes are different colours. Partial heterochromia is when one eye has part of another colour. It is caused by a lack of pigment in a particular place or it can be inherited.

So I learnt a lot about eyes today because I looked at someone’s and wanted to see what cause eye colour and why some peoples had different flecks and lines and dots.

Character Study

Today I will be writing about Taylor Markham, the main character of my English novel, On the jellicoe road. I will be writing about her characteristics and the importance they play in the novel. The book is written in first person, from her perspective. Taylor is a senior and the leader of her school house. She is an orphan as both of her parents died in a car crash when she was younger. It is September, meaning the beginning of the territory wars between the Townies, the Cadets and the Jellicoe School. Taylor has been raised to lead the jellicoe school and she will do her best to succeed.

Taylor’s most prominent characteristic is leadership. She is a born leader and, since year 7, has been trained to become the leader of her house and of the school. She has the right to surrender to the others and she has to contact the leader of the Townies and Cadets to negotiate land, paths and areas. She controls the other house leaders, even though they hate her, they cant kick her out because they need 5 votes and they only have 4. Taylor is also strong-willed and minded and will not let anyone tell her what to do.

Taylor is quite an erratic character. Both of her parents dying hen she was young affected her greatly. Going to a boarding school she had no authority figure an her grief made her wild. When she was in year 8 she ran away from the school, and found a Cadet who was also running away. They boarded a train but it derailed so off they went, to find Taylor’s sister. The Cadet “betrayed” her and they both got taken back.She burnt down the laundry one year as well. She is quite a rebel and doesn’t listen to many people.

The third major characteristic Taylor posses is empathy. She mentions a lot how bad she feels for certain people. She feels sorry for Ben who is always getting bashed by the seniors and that they always target his fingers and hands so he won’t be able to play music. She is sorry that she doesn’t try to look after the younger children in her house and that Hannah has to do it because Taylor has never bothered. She carries a lot on empathy but she doesn’t empathise the right people.

Taylor Markham plays an important role in the story as the main character. Without her the story would not be. Her leadership is important and her erotica move the story along and keep it interesting.

My Week Away 3

On Tuesday I got up 15 mins before breakfast and hurried to get ready. We all left a little bit late but breakfast wasn’t served yet so we were in the clear. The hot food we got was small pancakes but I only ate 2 because I was so nervous. Mrs Christensen gave everyone instructions on where they had to go, as today was Tuesday, the day of camp where we had to do heaps of work. My friends all went off to their respective groups and classes while I packed my bag. Mum and dad were a little bit late so I asked my friend’s mum to call them. Just as it finished ringing they pulled into the driveway.

We drove back to the freeway and drove north, heading towards the city. We got to the city and continued north. We found the orthodontist, following my dads iPad directions. We went inside and I thought it was pretty fancy. There were 4 tables along one wall and 3 play stations/ Xboxes and there were 15 nice comfy chairs spaced around, in groups of 3. That was just the waiting room. It was weird for an orthodontist. We only had to wait for about 10 mins and they called me up. We walked down a small hallway and into a large open room with 3 dentist chairs along one wall, all different colours, one orange, one blue, one yellow. Along the opposing wall there was a counter and behind that, a large wall of dentisty things in drawers and cabinets. There were different other things spaced around the room but they were the main ones.  I was told to go to the blue chair, the one in the middle.

I sat in the chair and a lady immediately got to work cleaning my teeth with this weird green paste, that tasted absolutely horrible. It was rinsed off and I was given a mouthwash to clean the taste out a little bit. The dentist chair had a small sink attached to the light post thingimebob. I spat into that and laid back down. Another lady came over and they explained to me that the brackets for my braces are in a mouth guard type thing and all they had to do was press it onto my teeth. They dried off my teeth, applied a dot of glue to them all and stuck the mouth guard on. It was held in place for a minute and pulled off. Then the process was repeated with my bottom teeth.

They gave me a small break in which I ducked off to the toilet because I really needed to go. There was a mirror in there and I checked out my new silver wear.

When I returned to the chair they gave me a little palette with about 25 different colours on it. This was the coloured band that would hold the archwire on my brackets. I picked teal after a quick scan. It was the best colour there, I thought. They ran me through what was going to happen then, attaching the archwire to my brackets and securing them in place. That was finished in 15 mins and then we had to wait for the dentist to come and check before I was to be let go. He decided to add two more brackets to my very back teeth on my bottom jaw. They ran me through foods I could and couldn’t eat and how and when to brush my teeth. Then I was freed. It only took about an hour for the whole thing.

We drove back to the camp and I was dropped off, just in time for lunch. We had pizza and everyone kept saying to me ‘smile’ every time they saw me. We did boring work after that until afternoon tea. Until them my braces hadn’t hurt at all. The only problem was that I wasn’t used to them and kept getting my lips caught on them whenever I opened my mouth. But when I bit into a cake of some description a throbbing pain went through my mouth and and didn’t stop until 5 days later. 😫😫

Tuesday night was uneventful but we did go into the games room and play ping pong. My friends all refused so I went with Sophie and we played with the boys in our class. Oh actually one funny thing happened. A GATE student had been in Kalbarri for the recent holidays and I had seen him a few times, coming into the bakery, where I work. I was versing him in ping pong and he stops and goes ‘when did you get your braces? I don’t remember you having them on in the holidays.’ I looked at him and laughed and replied today. I confused him so much and had to explain that no I missed the entire morning and I wasn’t there and I went and got them. He didn’t believe me so I had to get Sophie to back me up. It was funny.

The girls were all going to play never have I ever but we decided to get an early night as we were going to Perth Modern in the morning.

 

My Week Away 2

I ran out to where the car was parked and luckily mum and dad hadn’t left yet. I grabbed my poster and said another quick goodbye. As I got out there the bus from Perth Modern School, the real life school that is connected to GT, arrived. People who arrived in Perth without parents or whose parents needed to go home were brought to Perth Mod and then bussed to the camp. Two more of my friends, Anna and Chloe, were on that bus and they were yelling at me and waving. I ran over to them and hugged them. I showed them the way to our dorms and let them settle in. Chloe was in my room and Anna was in the adjoining room that was connected by a shared bathroom. Another girl arrived, Sophie, who was in the same room as Anna. Grace, in my class, arrived shortly after Sophie. We knew that the other girl in our room, Apryl, was on the bus from where she lived but it arrived later, at about 2 o’clock. Chloe and I went out for a little bit of an explore. The place we were staying at was quite large with a big oval and an adventure playground and a flying fox. The camp also had an after school care area and 4 areas of dorms. There was also a large dining room/kitchen/hall. My favourite thing there was the games room. It had two ping pong tables, four pool tables and two table football games. Sadly when we found it the door was locked and we weren’t allowed in. After a little bit all the other girls in our dorm came out to see and many of the other students from GT as well. We just hung out and found out fun and interesting things that happened since we had seen each other last. Then it was afternoon tea and we got cake. Then we had to do some introductory games while we waited for the bus that Apryl and some other people from her town to arrive.

They arrived and we were all very excited to see them. The coordinator of GT, Mrs Christensen, talked us for a little while and made us do a worksheet called Roadmap to success. It was very boring and we didn’t like it at all. She gave us an hour of free time before dinner at 6 and I was excited to go into the games room. It was open this time! I challenged Apryl to a game of ping pong and we had a lot of fun just hitting the ball back and forth. A boy called Sam, from year 8, was pretty good at ping pong and so was Jordy, another boy from year 10.

Dinner was lasagne and it was alright. We had a games night after dinner and I don’t think my team did very well. But we had fun and that’s the main thing right? The first day of camp was fun but all I could think about that night was getting braces the next day. Mum and Dad had planned to pick me up right after breakfast the next day, Tuesday, and I was already getting nervous.