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This week I have started on my project for english about the global issues. I think that it is actually coming along quite well. Sissy and I have decided to make a song about the issue. So far, we have written out and recorded the guitar, which sound great if I do say so myself. This weekend I hope to record drums and vocals with Sissy. The hardest part is coming up with lyrics that are really serious. We have come up with a few lyrics, but they are not good at all. They sound silly and don't fit the guitar parts as well as they should.

Hopefully we can get a few ideas from other songs about human trafficking, or my brother who is a musical genius.This week I aim to finish recording and mixing the song so that it sounds flawless. The hardest part is actually trying to learn how to use garage band. I wish their was an easier way to record, but this seems to be the easiest. Regardless of how the song turns out, I hope that it spreads a message that will stick to the people that hear it.

Reading Grendel and the Book of Not

This week along with The Book of Not, I have decided to read the book Grendel by John Gardner. The book of not is really dark and has a lot of graphic content...I am really considering giving to the next taker. I don't want these thoughts to linger in my head for an extended period of time. Dangeremba spared the readers no explicit content throughout the book. She writes this novel very graphically and it really bothers me. In fact, now I think I will give it up.

Grendel is actually a book that my brother gave me from his AP English class. This book is actually very hard to read because of the difficulty of the language it is written in. Grendel is the story of Beowulf told through the eyes of the antagonist, Grendel. Grendel is a monster in this book who kills people because he is trying to find an inner purpose. Grendel is feared among the eyes of people, which adds to the intricate detailing of the plot. This book, so far, has turned out to be a really good one. I hope to finish it next week. 

Surgery this week

On Wednesday morning around 4:30, I awoke with an unshakable feeling of pain in my stomach. No matter what I did I couldn't shake it off. I went to my dad's study room and asked him about it, and as he ran a few tests on my, he discovered that that I probably had an inflamed appendix. The appendix is a useless organ, and it beats me why we still have it, but anyways, he drove me to the ER and they performed surgery on it to remove it. Once they had removed it, I spent a miserable night in the hospital, and still drugged up on medicine, I didn't know what I was doing or saying. It was a terrible experience.
 Apart from the whole ordeal, I missed 3 days of school. To some people, this may be a blessing, but to me it was not. I missed out on so much work and projects alike, and now I am really behind. I wish I didn't have to get that surgery, because it messed up my school schedule and everything.

Finishing Black Voices and Starting the Book of Not

 I have finally finished Black Voices. This is one of the most difficult but probably one of the best and most well written books that I have read in a long time. On Monday, I received a book from Dr.D which turned out to be the sequel to Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not. So far this book is very interesting and filled with a dark tone. This book contains many of the same characters in Nervous Conditions, but the book is on a whole new level of darkness. It seems like every other page is filled with blood and gore. The book itself is very good, but I'm not sure I want to keep on reading it purely because of the dark and depressing content. It's so bad that even the first page starts out with and amputation.
 If the book continues to be this way, I will probably give it up to Jerry or whoever was next in line to read it. I like how this week we started to read in class (that's what I heard). This way I will be able to work more on homework at home and spend less time reading. I hope that next week will be fun and that we start on our poetry unit. Next week, I also hope that we can get class time to work on our projects.

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It's finally the last quarter! I cannot wait for this summer to come. This year so far has been fairly good except for a couple of events that have happened, but never mind those. I think that next year should be easier because I think that I am finally adjusted to how high school works and how the workload is. Next year I am taking pretty hard classes, which translates into me just having to step up to the plate and work more. I think that being a sophomore will be more fun than being a freshman because of the many privileges and the freedom that we will get. I plan on visiting more and more colleges as this and next year role by so that I will have a wider perspective on what to look for in a college.

I really hope that this last quarter flies by. I only have one break left before summer and it is spring break. Te only thing is that I can't spend it with my family because I am going on the band trip to Europe with the High School band students. I hope that the trip will be a lot of fun. I am not looking forward to exams in the slightest. For this next quarter, I want to try and get all A's and try really hard to pay attention in class.

What I've been reading since after Nervous Conditions

After we read Nervous Conditions, I didn't know what I was going to read, until I stumbled upon the book that I had reading before Nervous Conditions but never finished. The title of this book is Black Voices. When we started reading Nervous Conditions, I was only about halfway through the book, and I still have a long way to go, but it is a very good read that i recommend to anyone.

I am kind of happy that we don't have any more true novels left in this class. I was getting tired of reading the class assigned ones. I want to start reading Macbeth to see how good of a play it is. I hope that next quarter we start to work on our global analysis projects. I am really bored of just taking notes and tests. I feel that we should do more discussion related activities or something more active rather than take a bunch of notes.

Free Post: Track Meet

Saturday morning I woke up and got mentally prepared for my first High School track meet. This week I had to do three events, the javelin, the 100 meter dash and the 200 meter dash. I was so anxious because I din't know how the meet was going to be nor if we would win or how well I would do. As soon as we got there, I discovered that the weather was frigid and there was a down pore of rain, two things that make me a worse athlete. I knew that this wouldn't be a good meet for me at all. 

The meet started out with field events. The weather made everything worse, but I still had to throw. I had four chances and every time I embarrassed myself tremendously. My best throw was 76 feet, which if you don't know anything about javelin, that is a terrible distance to throw. I at least redeemed myself in the 100 and 200 meter dash. I think that I got a ton better at sprinting, and in my heat for the 100, 3 students from our school, including myself tied for first place. I liked the meet, and now I need to focus on throwing more so that I can get better at the meets.

Nervous Conditions Update

We are almost done with Nervous Conditions! That was a really good book that I think taught most of us to not take many of the things that we have in life for granted. I really enjoyed how we used different skills to talk about the book and analyze it. These skills will keep us in shape for the rest of high school. I liked our discussions the most, I felt that we came closer together as a class through them. I hope that next quarter as we move on to poetry, we do the same routine of class discussion and evaluation. Next quarter I also hope that we have some sort of paper to do in the class.

I wonder when we need to do our English project for the Global Analysis Paper. I am really anxious to get that unit over with because I feel like We have focused on it for such a long time. I also have a pretty cool idea for the project that I will work on with Sissy and Mia. I feel that we should make a human trafficking awareness website. The site will focus on facts and preventative ideas for the issue at hand.