Kalypso The Odyssey

hrm… well, i guess on a whole, its better than middle school… there work load is sooo hard to keep up with though, especially in the AP class im taking. oh, incase you didn’t know, heres my schedule:
A days: Orchestra, Gym, Human Geography, World Lit
B days: Orchestra, Physics, Geometry, French III
(i follow a different schedule depending on what the day is labeled. its done like this so we can have longer classes and its just easier. We don’t have to haul around as much crap, and have more time for homework! :D)

i’m taking two sophomore classes and 2 junior ones, so i guess i should expect more work. but other than academics, there’s just a better vibe in high school. maybe its school spirit? but that couldn’t be right, cuz i don’t like my school. oh well, what ever… :/

on another note, i plan on attending NONE of mah school’s dances, but ill crash all of the after parties! XD but the dances that my school holds tend to suck really hard, so its not worth paying the admission fee. i do, however, plan on going to lots of other school dances, like the ben franklin homecoming that i went to last friday. It was pretty cool, and was being held at the superdome! The music selection was shit, but thats to be expected when the majority of the people attending the dance enjoy listening to things like disney… *cough*dumbassshallowpreppies*cough*

right… so, I blogged! :O wow, its been a while… i seem to spend all of my time online on facebook… *sigh* (i sound so shallow in this… i guess thats normal though, cuz im a teenager! :P)

The Math and English Exams were combined into one project. We had to make a children’s story book. Within the book, we had to include three math problems that would somehow help the story move along. For example, “Jenny has three nickels and 2 dimes. She found out that she has $0.33. That was just enough to buy the pineapple…” Except for our problems had to be a bit more complex. The science and social studies exams are going to be easy, as far as I can tell. (don’t tell Mr. Bravo I said that) I finished the book before it was due and turned it in for extra credit. All that is left are the french exam and the music exam, the two that i am most worried about. For french, we just have to take an exam, but for once, I think I’ll actually need to study O_o, I know, right… But the professions confuse the hell outta me, so there’s not much I can do about it. For the music class, we have to audition to get into the CA next year. (CA = certificate of artistry) Im not worried that I won’t make it, it’s just that I have to stand up and do a solo in front of judges. I wouldn’t mind, were it not for the whole solo thing… well, not much I can do about this one either.

So, school’s started and everything is going fine. I like most of the people there, when it comes to teachers. All of my friends are fawesome and all of the academic crap is easier than hell (in fact, everything is so easy that it’s hard to concentrate, so I often find myself slipping off into lala land :P.) So, here are my school photo’s:

They admin makes all of the students wear these things on laminated ID’s. The photographer peoples who take the photo’s aren’t the greatest in the world. So, instead of just wearing them, some student’s ‘deface’ their ID’s, but then the admin banned that to. If you are caught not wearing your ID or with one that’s been totally dilapidated (random note – that that word makes me think of a duck bill. Sorry, just had to put that in), then the teachers can give you a lunch detention. So anyways, I have the normal classes:
Algebra 1 (boring & monotonous)
English 1 (’tis grate! Love the teacher + were reading stuff like ‘The Odyssey’ & Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’)
Earth Science (teacher’s not all that wonderful… doesn’t have great conversation skills and talks way to much.)
Louisiana History (beautiful. Teacher is definitely cool, but how could you not love LA history?)
And my elective:
French 2 (Vive la France! La class est super!)
CA Prep Strings (Basically, I’m in the school orchestra. Surprisingly, we don’t sound like thousands of flee-ridden alley cats being dipped in acid and then thrown into a spiked pit and then… eh, well, I could go on, but you probably have better things to do. So, basicly, unlike other school orchestras, we actually sound good. We can play things like Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, Pachelbel’s Cannon, and Orpheus in the Underworld, more commonly knows as ‘The Cancan.’)
With all of the classes I’m taking, I think that I will enter high school with five credits… Yah ^_^. An’ such is my current school related life.

While re-reading this, I realized how stupid and ‘high-school-girlish’ I sound. *sigh* Oh well. Not much I can do about that, unless I wanted to go back an rewrite the entire thing, and anyone who knows me would agree that I am much to slothy to do such things… : (

Here’s a poem that I wrote for english class:
Rain

The rain is falling forevermore down,
Forevermore falling, falling onto the ground,
These tears from the heavens, they all fall around,
They fall all around without making a sound.

The rain makes me sad, but not for it’s wet,
Not for the coolness, as the sun starts to set,
No, I become sad when the clouds are upset,
Because of what happened, that I’ll never forget.

Do you know why rain falls, why rain falls for me?
Because a day long ago, we met at the sea,
So happy we were, that boy and me,
We would talk of our sorrows till they left us to be.

But the sorrows came back as the boy went away,
Death took his soul and flew off in the day,
For a god was I then, and forever I stay,
My curse is to live and not go away.

So I stay here on earth with the rain’s silent sound,
The clouds and I cry with our tears falling down,
They fall to the floor and sink into the ground,
I envy the earth as it painlessly drowns.

My homeroom teacher’s name is Ms. Dunlap. She’s nice and has alot of useful and interesting things to say. She teaches Pre-Algebra but my dad thinks that we should have already started Calculus and I agree but I can’t do much about it. Other than her I have Ms. Tunis (English), Ms. Jones (Social Studies), Ms. Lovitt (Science), Ms. Marina (French), and Mr Jordan (music). So that’s about it. My teachers are nice and I feel that it is going to be a good year.

Tomorrow, me and my dad are going on a six week trip to the Middle East on an archaeological excavation (my dad gets his trip for free, but I have to pay to spend six weeks in the dirt digging up broken pots and dead bodies from 3,000 years ago). But don’t get me wrong, it’s a great experiance and a chance to meet nice, fun new people. But anyways, I have this summer reading list that I have to finish and we couldn’t find one of the books that we needed at book stores so we had to get it at a library. It’s called, Dovey Coe by Frances O’Roark Dowell, and it is about a little girl named Dovey from North Carolina who gets accused of murdering her older sister’s evil sutor. Her brother Amos is deaf and because of this, everyone thinks that he is crazy. Amos has two dogs, Huck and Tom, an older sister named Caroline, and mother and father who are called Mama and Daddy throghout the book. Caroline’s sutor, Parnell Caraway, is a bratty rich kid, who has never worked a day in his life. He grows up being spoiled by his parents and comes to think that the world and everything in it is his to buy and sell. The only thing that he can’t have is Caroline Coe. So, to get his way, he comes into the family and tries to ruin her plans to go to college and become a teacher by making him fall in love with her. His cruel plan fails miserably as she turnes him down again and again, humiliating him and causing him to become bent on revenge. The thing that I liked best about this book was how it was a murder mystery book, because I like those. The thing that I liked least about it was the southern accents, I don’t know why I don’t like that accent, especially because I live in the south. The problem with reading is that the book is due back before we return, so I am stuck on the last evening before that long trip, reading when I could be doing stuff online. Maybe this is my reward for getting all As on my report card. I don’t get why people usually reward a great feat with more work. Like one of my many friend’s relitives says ,” No good deed goes unpunished.”

In my social studies class our teacher, Ms. Kitner, asked us to write a paper about how the location of ancient Greece impacted how they lived. Today I stayed home from school because I was sick, and my dad made me go with him to Xavier and write also about how where we live in New Orleans impacts our lives. So here it is:

The location of ancient Greece infuenced how the Greeks lived because the Greeks lived in a hot and dry climate with a rocky soil so they couldn’t grow grass or most of the other produce items that sheep and cows eat. This made it hard to herd animals. The Greeks could grow a few produce items including olives, grapes, apricots, and a few other things. From the grapes the Greeks made wine and juice, and from the olives came olive oil. They could trade all of the things for other items across the sea. The Greeks, who lived on a peninsula, were almost completely surounded by the Mediterranean sea. This gave them the advantages of trade (by boat) and they could also visit other places across the Mediterranean sea (also by boat.) Where they weren’t surrounded by water, the Greeks had many mountains which made it dificult to interact with surrounding city-state. So as you can see, the location of ancient Greece greatly impacted how the ancient Greeks lived.

One more place where the location deeply impacts how that location’s civilions live is where me and my immediate family live: New Orleans. This is true for many reasons but I will only focus on three. They are language, music, and food.

The language that we speak mostly here down here is English, but because we live in such a diverse community there are also many others including French, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish. Even English though in New Orleans is influenced by other languages. They say for example I am going to make groceries. This comes from the French.

The native music down here is stuff like Jazz and the Blues. We get these from the past because of how the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, so here we are a major trade port. Because of this we get many ideas and items from the other places and, years ago, this was a main area where people traded slaves stolen from Africa and other places. When the slaves would get a break from work on Sundays they would go and tell stories or make music. So we got African music and it mixed like gumbo and evolved into the Jazzy music that we know and love today.

Finally, our food is very greatly impacted by our position on the gulf. For emample we get many sea foods incuding crawfish, shrimp, lobster, crab, many other types of crustacions, fish, and even alligator. We use these in many dishes. For example we make crawfish monica or stuffed crab or shrimp etoufé. We also, for reasons unkown, tend to use alot of spices in all of our foods. My dad just told me it was to preserve the food.

And so, our location or the location of any community will greatly affect how the people in that community live.

My mom went ,tonight, to my report card conferences (don don don don). But, to my great surprise, she came back with a smile on her face. I have gotten all A’s on my report card!!! I am so happy! So now I get all of my privleges back! I am also getting a Wii. Go me! Go me!! Go Kalypso!!! Go Kalypso!!! I ROCK:)!!!!!!!!!!!:)

In social studies each class had a geography bee. The winners of that would make it to the school geography bee. Thirteen people in sixth grade made it to the school geography bee, and I was one of them. Five sixth graders showed up at the actual competition, though 15 eighth graders were there. I made it to number one in sixth grade and I was tied for number five with four other people for the overall competition, all of whom were from the eighth grade. So I don’t get to go on from there but I feel awesome. And if you are reading this and go to my school and are in sixth grade… Ha!

My new school’s name is Sunset Hills Elementary. It is a nice school with lots of nice people. I love it. It is the same school that my dad went to. I enjoy it very much and my brother goes there too. He also enjoys it. But moving to a new school is tough, not to mention in my case, a new city and a new life. But it has been suprisingly easy. So, my teacher’s name is Ms. Sofia. My friends’ names are Katy and Marissa, my best friends anyway. I have lots more. I love my new school.