HOLIDAYS & vacations !

Everyone loves holidays! (I haven't met anyone who hasn't anyway) But the best holidays are vacations, when you get to go overseas or to a different place. I L O V E going overseas! It is my most favorite thing to do in the whole world, so an overseas vacation is absolutely GREAT. Here's a list of reasons why I love holidays / vacations overseas...

1. The feeling. There's a feeling you get inside for every country, and they are all completely different! I remember them long after the trip is finished. The feeling I have when I'm in the States is so different to the feeling of being in Thailand.
2. Everything is new and different. New customs, new cultures, new tastes, new smells, new sights, new sounds and it is so exciting! And all are so different to New Zealand, making it seem like the most boring country in the world (which everyone would think about the country that they are living in probably).
3. Meeting new people. I have made quite a few friends over the years, from different hotels. But it's always sad saying goodbye to them, cause the chances are you're never going to see them again. It's also fun meeting the different taxi drivers, some are completely crazy and act like you guys have been best pals for years! (this is really funny when it happens in places such as Singapore, Malaysia or India).
4. You can do a n y t h i n g you want to do. You're not going to see these people again, and you don't know any of them, so if you want you can walk around like a duck or a mentally retarded person. It's really fun : ) ! Because nobody knows you, in countries in Asia, they all assume you're really rich so you can just waltz right on into all of the designer shops and try on garments which cost MEGA BUCKS!
5. SHOPPING. Overseas you're going to find things that nobody else has back home, and everything is different so it's a great time to shop!
6. Staying in hotels and resorts. There is nothing better than staying in hotels and resorts, all the staff are so friendly (especially in islandy resorts) and everything is just so nice looking! The beds are incredibly comftorable and the MEALS!!! Every time I go away on vacation I swear that I put on at least 10 kilograms! There are always so many different restaurants to eat at in this one hotel or resort! With buffets of endless dishes, desserts and all. It's hard to tell yourself when to stop! The swimming pools!
7. Going on the airplane. When I'm on the airplane (Singapore airlines is the best!) and am on my way to my destination I am so excited! I have my whole vacation ahead of me! But the way back is another story.. I am always completely depressed it's over and CANT BELIEVE how fast it has gone!
8. Eating out! When you're on vacation you eat out alll the time, because you don't have a kitchen and your mum doesn't get boring old food from the supermarket! So its restaurants galore! ! And overseas they always have interesting and cool ones, some being food from their culture and some being food from other cultures.

I L O V E travelling !

What I'm looking forward to RIGHT n o w

This is what I'm looking forward to right now : (in order from most excited to just looking forward to the event)
1. S U M M E R - Everything about summer! Walking to JENNA'S after school : ) JUST wearing a t-shirt and roman sandals to school, not ten million layers! Not being F R E E Z I N G when I get out of bed in the morning or at school. Summer Holidays!! Spending full days outside under the BURNING HOT summer sun! Getting the blackest tan the world has ever seen! Listening to Tash and Elise fight over whose tan is blacker. Christmas ! Going to the manly cliffs and jumping off them. Not having any set plans. (There is so much more!! I'll add some when I think of them)
2. Suburban - this weekend a whole bunch of people are going to suburban this weekend and then some of us are staying over at Cerise's afterwards. It's gonna be fun : ). Me and Tash are gonna probably stick together (in case its .. weird).
3. Furniture ! - I'm f i n a l l y getting some new furniture for my room ! ..soon hopefully
4.Coming Home from school after the day is finished
5. Seeing the pictures from me and Bree's ASIAN THEMED BIRTHDAY
6. Taking the next bite of my breakfast
7. Abby coming to New Zealand next year ! ! ! (if she does)
8. The weekend
9. Soccer this weekend : )
10. Waking up on Saturday morning, knowing that I don't have to get up

Lemon Meringue Pie !! Yumm

I love all sorts of desserts, cakes, pies, squares, slices and muffins. Sweets = d e l i s c i o u s ! One of my favourite desserts is lemon meringue pie! It triggers all of your taste buds, the sweet base and meringue and the sour of the lemon. Here is a recipie of this absolutely scrumptious treat (try it!!) :

Lemon Filling:
4 egg yolks (reserve whites for meringue)
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
1 (9-inch) pre-baked pie shell
1 recipe Meringue, recipe follows

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Whisk egg yolks in medium size mixing bowl and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine cornstarch, water, sugar, and salt. Whisk to combine. Turn heat on medium and, stirring frequently, bring mixture to a boil. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and gradually, 1 whisk-full at a time, add hot mixture to egg yolks and stir until you have added at least half of the mixture.

Return egg mixture to saucepan, turn heat down to low and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 more minute. Remove from heat and gently stir in butter, lemon juice, and zest until well combined. Pour mixture into pie shell and top with meringue while filling is still hot. Make sure meringue completely covers filling and that it goes right up to the edge of the crust. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until meringue is golden. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. Make sure pie is cooled completely before slicing.

Meringue Topping:
4 egg whites
1 pinch cream of tartar
2 tablespoons sugar
Place egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form and then gradually add sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form, approximately 1 to 2 minutes. Use to top lemon filling.
Yield: topping for 1 (9-inch) pie

Winter

Winter gives me the blues. There is almost nothing good about winter. I h a t e it. I think that we should just skip winter and have summer all the time. Here are the bad things about winter :

1. Rain - it rains all the time in New Zealand, during the winter period. When we are at school and are wet, it is not very plesant to be walking around soaked through. When you are standing outside in the rain, there is just something about it that makes me insane. When I am in the mood to play around in the rain and get wet (which is only fun if there is a change of clothes waiting for me afterwards!) then it is good, but it is not very often that I am in this mood. One time when I was, i really regreted it afterwards when i was sitting in English and having to lift my cold skirt off my bare legs. It is absolutely horrible and makes me feel yuk, and gets me sick!! If it is winter, then it should snow, not just rain! It is pathetic!!

2. Cold - with winter, obviously comes the cold. When the wind is blowing, and you are at school, there is nothing you can do apart from hudle up and complain about how cold it is! When it is cold, the heater is good, but there is nothing worse than when you have to pull yourself away from the wonderful device. Getting out of my warm bed (heated by my electric blanket!) is also horrible, the cold hits me like a slap in the face! And similar to this, is when stepping out of the shower..

3. No sun = no tan - in the winter, it is almost always grey and the clouds are covering the sun. This also makes it very cold, and just having a grey sky seems to keep everyone down. Nobody is happy. With no sun, that means there is no tan. As summer fades into winter, so do our G L O R I U S summer tans. I almost cried when I noticed my tan fading. It's almost a crime.

So to sum up winter is bad because there is bad weather, which means bad mood. Everything is just bad bad bad. (ESPECIALLY if you're at school!)

Kim Possible

Kim Possible is a great show on Disney Channel, made in America (and is set there, in Middleton). It is so great, and loved by many, that it is an Emmy awward winning American animated television series. It stars Kim Possible who is a teenager that fights crime. Every day she faces challenges of saving the world, with family and normal school issues. Kim Possible is always on the go, so it is of the action genre (and is suitable for kids =]).

Kimberly Ann Possible is an adventurer, and deals with supervillians every day. The main supervillans that she deals with is a monkey man, a scottish man, a crazy trucker dude and Draken and Sheego (who are her main enemies). The main characters in the show are Ron, Mom, Dad, Tim and Jim, Wade, Roofus and Bonnie. Ron is her best friend, who is a boy that is a complete dork. He never does anything right, and is a wimp. Kim's Mom is your typical Mom, who is a doctor and her Dad is a scientist. Tim and Jim are her younger twin brothers who are always inventing things and get on Kim's nerves. Then there's Wade who is a super genius and tells Kim what to do, where her missions are and gives her the equipment. Wade does this all without leaving his room, and contacts Kim Possible with a comunicator. Roofus is a naked mole rat, who sits in Ron's pocket all the time (because he is his pet). Roofus is quite smart, even though he is a little rodent, and is one of Kim's sidekicks and goes everywhere on her missions. Bonnie is not that much of a main character on the show, but she is the mean popular girl who is on Kim's cheerleading squad.

There have been four seasons of Kim Possible, and six DVDs are available to be purchased, there are also six Kim Possible video games. Kim Possible is now very popular all around the world. It has been aired in China, in mandarin, in Dubai, in arabic and in France, in French.

They have a catchy theme song!!

Me and Emelia's India Presentation!

In Social Studies our class is studying Brazil, all about the country, but it is mainly focusing on it being a developing Country. Mr V. wanted us to extend this even further, by getting us to choose our own developing country and make a presentation on it. There was no major outline, only one rule, that the presentation HAD to include one multimedia aspect. For this project we had to get into groups of two, and I went with Emelia. We chose.. India!!

The first period that we were given time to work on our presentation in class, me and Emelia decided to categorize and figure out what we were going to research and talk about. We made five big headings, which was 'Culture', 'The People', 'The Land', and 'Way of life'. Under these categores we talked about the following things, food, clothing, religion, population, government, geography, India as a developing country, economy, plants, animals and the weather.

We weren't given very much time at all to do this! (less than a week!). Due to this fact, me and Emelia decided that it would be a good idea if Emelia came to my house on Saturday and do some work on it. We thought that we would be able to get this over with in a couple hours, max. But boy were we in for a wake up call! We were no way NEAR close to finishing after working cold flat the whole time. She ended up coming to my house on another Tuseday (after I had spent.. L O A D S of time on it) and we finished most of it up.

We had so many pictures to print, I had three inches of paper filled with pictures! I was cutting for hours on end and organising when we had to show the next picture or hold up the next title.

On the day we weren't nervous at all, but we had NEVER practiced it, and Emelia didn't know how it worked, it would be a complete gamble. When we started, it was all going well (we played Indian music when we were showing the titles). It went really smoothly and I think it looked like we knew what we were doing. We had a lot of different things that we passed around the class. The only thing was that we went WAYYYY over time, because we had SOO MUCH WORK! We ended up having to speed through the end, but I must say, it all went quite well. =]

Poetry

Today we have started a new unit in English, at School. It is poetry, which pretty much falls underneath the creative writing and writing category. Ms Wilson says that she doesn't like it very much, but some people say it is the most intellegant way of writing. There are so many different ways for people to interperate a poem, they can take from it what they like, which is a main reason why lots of people like poetry.

When we were little, poetry was just a bunch of rhyming sentences crammed together on different lines (which are actually stanzas). Then it was so easy to write them, so simple. Now, poems can be one of the most difficult things to read and understand in the whole world! (I think at least..) Depends on the type of poem, they can let you make it into what you want it to be. Lots of times there is not really any right or wrong answer. It really depends on the personality of the person, and their intrests, to see what they will take from it. For some people it is really light thinking, and they just think black and white, the obvious answer of what it is. Other people go into really deep thinking, and come up with COMPLETELY different answers of what things mean. But like I said before, there really is no right or wrong answer.

I personally don't really like poetry that much, I don't understand the things that some people can get from it. Although I prefer writing it much more over creative writing. I can never finish my creative writing stories, because they will be too long, and I think that a good piece of creative writing has to be of reasonable length.