It was early July of 2010 and I was recovering from back surgery. It was also the soccer World Cup, a pretty idealic time to have to recover from surgery, lying in bed watching soccer games all day. But, there are only so many hours of soccer one can watch a day and I needed something else to do. It's also important to note that my brother was going into 10th grade and had to read a classic novel as part of his English homework. So naturally, me being a bookworm, decided to read his homework: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. However, I had only read a couple of pages before it was taken away from me; I hadn't put my hands on a copy since until recently, when I FINALLY got a chance to read it. Fast forward to 2014: it was the start of summer vacation and I already had the perfect chance to read it. December 23rd rolled around and I woke up with a pretty intense need to read. I got my copy of The Catcher in the Rye and got to it. It was finished in less than 24 hours. It was a very interesting coming of age story so to say, but I didn't feel the magic I once had felt when I first opened the book almost 5 years ago. The thing that propbably bothered me the most was the fact that Holden Caulfield was kind of brute. He didn't think through his actions and when he messed up, he didn't own up to it, he just kept digging the hole deeper and messing up more; honestly this is a trait in people that can really get to me. Oh, and also, he's admitted that he's a liar, resorting to lying for even the simplest of things. The one thing that could make up for these traits though, is the unconditional love that he has for his younger sister. It's not apparent at the beginning of the book but towards the end, his actions are noticeably carried out for the good of his sister. “I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.” Even though I didn't love "The Catcher in the Rye" like I had back in 8th grade, I still recommend this book. If someone asks me if they should read it, I will definitely say yes. There's just something about it, maybe the fact that it's a classic, that makes me feel like it needs to be read.
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I started playing the viola in EC-4; I remember my mom getting me from my class each Friday at 12:30, walking together to Mr. Meneses' classroom and enduring 45 minutes of "tortura china" along with frustrations and wonder at the noises I could make. Apart from the torture aspect of the classes to get my position correct, I remember the motto "practice makes perfect". I will guiltily admit that I was not the strongest follower of the motto, but sometimes I did practice, and when I did, it got closer to perfect each time. Just like practicing the viola, Blendz sales are getting close to perfect. At the end of our last sale this past semester, Ms. Juhasz came up to me and said "you've improved so much since the first time you sold; there was a lot more shouting going on, now you're really calm." I can completely agree with this. The first time we sold (and many times after that), setting up took us approximately an hour and 30 minutes, cutting it very close to opening time. And even though we took a long time to set-up, we were still missing things when it was time to sell. However, during our last sale it only took us 40 minutes to set up! We had completed everything so quickly, that we didn't know what to do for the hour that we had to wait before we could start selling. I remember our first sale as one of excitement, joy and some sort of stress. There were only 3 people manning the stand while the rest of us were either asking people questions about our first smoothies, taking pictures or observing the crowds' behavior. It was a whole new experience; exciting and exhilarating. We were allowed to practice over the last couple of months and we got pretty close to perfect. Unfortunately, our perfect didn't come around as fast as would have been helpful and we're on break right now, not really practicing. Two months is a long time to not be practicing, and it's a thought that scares me. It's not that I think that we're going to forget all the skills that we obtained during last semester, I just think we might forget how good we got and how well we can do. It will take time to get back into rhythm and it's a fact that annoys me, especially because I don't know what to do about it. #help?
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Author"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." Archives
June 2015
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