Jason Mai 4/29/14

Jason Mai
4/30/14

     Wow school year is almost over and I am anxious and everything is crazy. Right now I am working a job with a family who wants me to film lacrosse, I also need to work on my movie, schoolwork and also trying to come into the dojo becomes a handfull. I keep getting random filming jobs because I am one of the few students in our school who can actually film. For example I am filming the musical this upcoming friday. However the movie is almost done, and I am on the ending proccess of the class and it is getting very fun. I got to make a trailer, I am making a poster with a friend of mine who is AMAZING at photoshop, I made a trailer and I am working with a few friends to get the score of the movie as well as the trailer. Over its a huge project. I cannot wait until the film festival on may 29th at the Wayland High School autitorium

Anways heres a link to the website, check it out ;)
http://animalsmovie.weebly.com/

Last thing I want to talk about this blog post is the mastery program. I am sad but I understand I won't pass this year, I am not quitting but because of my absent during wrestling season there is no way to pass. I still do the requirements I can do, and try my best on what I can do. However this year was more testing the waters I guess. This year I bite off more than I could chew with everything I've occupied myself with. So for next year, I am changing a few things to make sure I pass. For one I am not going to do wrestling again, I was a good experience but I need to focus on the mastery program. I will still be doing film because it is my passion and part of my life now. School may be slightly harder but I will work with it, and SAT's will be next year but I feel as if I can handle it. Mostly I just to balance my life around these few aspects: School, Movie Making, Mastery Program, Friends and Family. If I can do that, I'm golden

Uhh other than that, I'm just glad school is almost over, Then I can relax more, I want to make another short film. I will be going to Peru, I have lot planned. I feel as if 2013 and 2014 have been great years for me, even with the setbacks. Hopefully 2015-16 will be even better!
   

Olivia Eburne Blog post week of 4/27

This is something I wrote for a History journal that I wanted to share here, too.

Olivia Eburne

Identity

I am a 14-year-old girl from Wellesley, Massachusetts. Many people immediately assume that that makes me a rich, spoiled, Swellesley girl. But it doesn't. I am kind, caring, and I try to give back to the community. I don't live near the center of town, but rather on a beautifully charming pond called Morses pond. Because I live there, I don't live near any of my friends. But I wouldn't move for the world, even if it means being with the "in crowd" or getting richer. I'm not defined by what society thinks I am. I am not a Swellesley girl, just because I live in Wellesley. It is as if I don’t even live in Wellesley, living where I do. I love the pond. Growing up, it has shaped me. I swim in it every day in the summer, paddling out on my stand-up paddle board, then diving in once I have passed the weeds. Some of my friends think that it is dirty and gross, but I love it. I paddle over to the town beach across the way, and swim there too. I go out for canoes, swatting the bugs, checking for turtles in their favorite sunning spots. Sometimes I see a muskrat, or a great blue heron. Mostly I see ducks, geese and swans.

In the winter, I skate on the pond and the entire community appears. In the winter, the pond connects everyone on it. Go out for a skate, and you’re likely to meet at least four other people doing the same thing, or any other ice activity, such as kiting, ice-boating, ice-fishing, or cross-country skiing. In the evenings, everyone is out. There are parties, and if you’re on the pond you’re invited. There are cookouts and exploring and hockey games, organized out of the rag-tag team of kids who happen to be out skating that day. When it snows, we shovel rinks—giant ones, bigger than hockey rinks. We create paths to connect the rinks, and through them flow easily from one house to the other, stopping to say hello, and maybe get hot cocoa. Perhaps I'm romanticizing it a bit, but skating on the pond is my favorite thing in the world: To feel the wind in your hair. To look back and see the vine-shaped imprints your skates leave on the ice. That’s the most graceful thing I can imagine, and I’m so proud that I can count it as my identity. Because I don't think my identity is defined by what I look like, or what I own. At least, not just by that. I believe that it is also created out of the memories that you possess—the bouquet of good smells, and salty tears, and joyful hugs. The breathtaking things that you have seen, and the amazing things you have experienced. These are the moments that make up your true identity. These are the things that make you who you are, that influence your personality and disposition. And I think they are the only things that matter.

Some people might want to hide some of their memory bouquet, feeling ashamed of some of the things. And that is completely okay. You can choose whatever flowers from your bouquet that you want everyone to see. Because it won’t matter—in the end, you will still be that whole bouquet on the inside. And as long as you are alive, you can keep adding to that bouquet, and making it stronger and better, and lovelier every day.

Jake Landgrebe 4/29/14

The purpose of this blog post is to explain not only why I wasn't able to blog last week, but will also go into detail on what this was.

Last week, I went on a trip that my Boy Scout troop only does once a year during April vacation, we call the "April Trip". This is a week long camping trip where we not only camp but also participate in awesome and interesting activities throughout the week. The first day, we drove down to the shanendoah valley in Virginia. Once we were there, we set up our tents in the dark, sat by the fire, and went to sleep. The following day, we made our way to the Luray Caverns, the largest caverns in the East Coast. These caverns were beautiful and HUGE! The day after that, we took a canopy tour (zip lining) down a mountain, where the longest line was 975 ft long! Later that afternoon, we packed up and headed south towards a campground close to the Kings Dominion amusement park. After we spent the night there, the next morning we got up bright and early and hurried down to the park. We were one of the first people in the park, and had the park to ourselves for the first 45 mins. We went on roller coasters, spinning rides, drop rides, and had an awesome time. The next day we came back, wishing it wasn't over. The trip was a lot of fun, and I definitely wish I was still down in virginia.

Olivia Eburne Blog post for the week of 4/20

Blog post for the week 4/20

Hey y’all! I’m in the south again, as I mentioned last post (the survival of an early day, etc.) and I thought, “Why not write a post about this trip to Alabama?” 

So I will. It will be this post. So there.

 Y’all are now going to learn about my second adventure to the South. This was an April vacation trip for 8^th graders where we went and toured civil rights landmarks in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Tuskegee, and Atlanta.  In all we saw five cities, five museums, four churches, four national park sites, three cultural institutes, two world headquarters, and a state house.

Day one: The first thing was that we had to get up early, but you heard about that.

We first visited 16th Street Baptist Church, which was the rallying point for many marches and speeches.  We also learned of the 1963 bombing that took the lives of four young girls, carried out by the local KKK.  Our speaker, Mr. Washington, was 18 years old during the height of the movement. We then went to the  Southern Museum of Flight  and closed out the day at Kelly Ingram Park.

Day two:  We visited the Slavery Museum and the National Voting Rights Museum. We experienced a slavery simulation with Sam, our tour guide. No history lesson could teach you the emotional impact we felt while we endured this treatment.

We retraced some of the footsteps of the Selma to Montgomery march,  beginning  by crossing the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. We also visited MLK Junior’s first church, and had  a tour of the State house.

Day three:  We had a tour of Tuskegee University  as well as the George Washington Carver Museum. The third part was my favorite part, it was a tour of Moton Air Field, home of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American group of air force fighters. They shot down over 100 German aircraft and never lost a single friendly bomber to enemy fire.

After that we went to Atlanta and toured CNN headquarters, which was quite cool, and we got to meet Carl Azuz, who write and anchors CNN Student News, which we watch a lot at school.

The last day we sent to the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.  After the museum, we went to the tombs of Dr. and Mrs. King as well as the Ebenezer Street Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Sr. preached.

Whew!

Razia Jan. Hero. Chelsea H.

One of the living heros I would like to profile is a woman by the name of Razia Jan. Razia was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States in 1970 where she was the proprietor of a small tailoring business in Duxbury Massachusetts. She also served as the president of the town's Rotary club. Razia is the founder of Razia's Ray of Hope Foundation (based in the USA) and the Zabuli Education Center (located in Afghanistan). In Afghanistan there are many threats against females seeking education but that doesnt stop the Zabuli education center from opening its doors to the 354 girls from 7 surrounding villages who recieve a free education funded by Razia's Ray of hope. In order to keep the girls safe Razia's school is surrounded by a stone wall where guards and staff check the air and water quality of each classroom every day. 

Razia has received many awards for her humanitarian work, including the 2007 Woman of Excellence award from Germaine Lawrence Inc., multiple Rotary Club International Peace Awards, and certificates of appreciation from the Army Corps of Engineers and the American Legion. In 2011 Razia was honored by the Duxbury Rotary Club with their inaugural Amazing Woman of the Year Award. In 2012, Razia was named a CNN Top 10 Hero. Razia also recevied the 2013 Speak for Thyself from The Alden House Historic Site and the 2013 American Muslim Women's Empowerment Council Award.

In 2008 she moved back to Afghanistan (Kabul) where she continues her work with the Afghani people. 

Her foundation's website can be found here http://www.raziasrayofhope.org/   


Chelsea H.

Olivia Eburne Blog post for week of 4/13

Hey peeps! I haven’t posted in a bit, and I have no excuse other than the fact that I was swamped—first with catching up with my homework from missing school for Build-Vention (and I’m still not totally caught up.) I swear, the amount of homework I have is inhumane!

Then I had Easter preparations to attend to. Every year my mom and I make Easter hats, like the crazy ones you would find in Great Britain. Except for this year, where I opted to take the Steampunk route.

After that was Marathon Day, and at the last minute I went to watch the race with a friend. And then the same day I had to pack to go to Alabama. Again. Seriously, I should have just stayed packed. I am now currently in Alabama, having survived getting up at 3:00 a.m. in order to fly out at 6:00 am. I am running solely on adrenaline, but I did get awesome photos of the sunrise from the air!

But No More Excuses! I am posting now, and that is all that matters. I think that this post I would like to talk about the Build-Vention.

The Build-Vention was amazing. I don’t have enough space here to talk about every detail, I will have to save some for the next post. Stuff like meeting all these kind and like-minded people—I wish I could have caught every inspirational moment on film and put up a video with this post.  But I would have so much film I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Let me just say, though, that Tom Callos can really talk! We didn’t stay up listening until two a.m., like what happened last year, thank goodness, but he did get us up an hour early one day—I think in order to have more time to talk.  He was thinking ahead so we could still get to the job site on time!

Another thing is that we had mats—a whole lot of karate mats where people could grapple.  And boy, did people grapple!  There were people up till and past 10:00 pm, still grappling. I know it doesn’t sound that late, but trust me, after a taxing work day all you want to do is sleep, but there are other martial artists out there, asking you for a roll. So instead of sleeping you go and grapple for a couple of hours. It was tiring, but boy was it worth it! I learned so much by grappling with people from different styles than Revolution’s.  I know I couldn’t grapple for as long and hard as many of the people there could, that’s for sure! I mean, there were plenty of people who didn’t stop until Tom got up and turned off the lights!

After that they got up the next day at  6:00 am, already charged to work the entire day!  I don’t know how they did it.  I am a person who really needs my sleep apparently.

Anyway, it was an amazing experience, and I wish everyone could have gone.

 Note: I wrote this while I was on the road, but couldn’t post it till I got home.

Jason Mai 4/22/14

Jason Mai
4/22/14

     It is 3:44AM as I start this blog post. Yesterday I had the most weird, calm, interesting day. I awoke at 10-11am. Did my regular morning routine, brush teeth, eat, workout. Then I went to get a haircut. It was a simple day. As soon as I get home from my haircut my friend texts me that she is in the area and she wanted to hang out. I've known this girl forever, actually I've written about her in one of these blog posts. Anyways we hang out, we go around town. She shows me some cool areas in the town I've never seen, we shared thoughts, laughter, conversation and food, but she had to go around 2-3pm. You see this girl is always busy, people always calling her, texting her. It seems like everyone wants to be with her, so I ask myself and her about this. Why is she hanging out with me? I'm not an interesting guy. I do martial arts, go to school, make films. I feel like I am a very simple human being and I'm not sure how to put my thoughts into words...but there are no perks of being my friend. And what I mean by this is, it may seem shallow but I've realized that being friends with someone isn't just being friends. People these days are friends with selected people to get them what they want, I don't want to explain this in detail but if you understand, then you understand how messed up those people can be. For example I have a friend who gets really good deals on Nike shoes because his aunt works for the company, but I'm not friends with him because of that, hell I've never used that part of our friendship to my advantage. I know people who don't even know him and will ask if they can get him to get shoes. This is just one example.

     Anyways she had to go, and I didn't want to go with the people she was hanging out with anyways. They were losers, well at least one of them. It makes me sad that she hangs out with people that are so....bad. I'd say 85% of the people she hangs out with are a bad influence on her, but sometimes you need to be a good influence to the bad ones. That's how she sees me. That was her answer to why she hangs out with me, because I'm "genuine" and apparently a good influence on her. I'm glad as a women she does something that benefits her and not others. I almost feel as if she hangs out with me because I'm not like the other guys that she hangs out with. I don't always try to make a move on her, I don't try to make her do stuff she doesn't want to. Honestly I am her friend, and our relationship starts and ends there. We talk a lot about the future, I worry about her, but she says she'll be fine. I trust her, because no matter what, she seems finds happiness, and not every pent up teenager can say that. I don't know if I can even say I'm truly happy (I think I am) People ask if she really is happy? or if she is hiding it under everything. But for some reason I see that she is, deep down in her. Which makes me worry but also happy for her. I'm worried of what she believes is happiness, but what am I to judge what makes someone happy. It's just that I've known her so much of my life, and shes important to me. In another life, she would hang out with good people all the time, but the reality is, sometimes good people don't always get good things. I don't know anymore, because she is happy, and I can't take that away from her, I've tried to forget about her, ignore her. There is a gap in my life where I pushed her away in my life, and that was because of how hard it was coming with terms with who she was. How it happened. Why it happened. But we both have grown so much as people, we accept and move on.

     So she leaves and I'm with one of my friends. We talk, eat the food left. Go to the park, lie down on the grass, take in the sun. A bit later my friend's girlfriend and her friend stop on by, they sit down beside us. And we just start talking and talking, we were laughing and that was probably the first time I've took the time to sit down and talk to my friend's girlfriend like that. It opened a lot of doors, not all of them nice. You see I've only known this girl through my friend, but I knew enough. I knew she battles depression, and I know the things shes experienced, I don't want to get into detail to be honest.

     Later that night, we are talking over facebook and we start off with small talk but eventually we start talking about how she really felt about everything. I was surprised how open she was to me, I wasn't sure if because her boyfriend was my friend, or she just needed to tell someone. Either way I was there for her. We talked for maybe an hour over chat. About her depression and what causes it and what she felt about just...everything. As we got into more deep matters I realized my how much my words effected her, I saw that she was really really looking to me for advice. For support. For help. I tried my best, I try to hold together the unstable building with my roll of duct tape, through the binding of my words as they seem to hit spots in her soul and mind that calmed her. Relieved her of her problems that were still there. I didn't always tell her what was true, because as I learned over the years - sometimes people aren't ready for the truth and sometimes it is okay to lie. When the conversation ended, apparently I had left her at a better place then where she started. Helping her made me feel very...happy just doesn't hold the power of the feeling I felt. I could hear the tears through the text. Which leads me to my last point which is? Love.

     When we think of love, most people think of romantic love. But I feel like love exists between all people. Family love, friendship love, sure relationship love, but I think most importantly? Self love. Girls like the one I was talking about earlier isn't uncommon. Many many girls are insecure, hide their feelings from everyone. I feel so stupid for not being able to explain this, but I'll try, it is sad to see girls or anyone think they are not sexy, unique, funny etc etc. I can't fully express how I feel but I know that this is wrong. I just can't imagine how she feels, and it is so hard to connect with her because of that, but I try my best to weave my words of ignorance into her bleeding soul, but there is only so much I can do. Only so much her therapist can do, Only so much the drugs can do. Only so much the doctors can do. Only so much her friends can do. I can't do this anymore, I have so many feelings I want to write out on this page but its 4:38am I spend about an hour on this in the middle of the night, that is why this post is so late by the way, because I couldn't sleep without worrying about people in my life. But i'd rather be educated and pained, instead of ignorant and living in bliss.

     I need to go back to sleep, if I can. Oh and if anyone reads this blog post, I know it's long. Thank you, I need someone to know. I'm not as strong as people make me out to be, maybe I can punch hard or kick even harder but deep down this is how I think, and I wish more people knew that about me.

-Jason Mai