It’s easy to see how people all over history were amazed with the stars.
Flying miles over the earth, I was exhausted. The flight was too long, my mum was telling me to just go to sleep. But I didn’t. For no absolute reason, I opened the window. The view actually took my breath away. It was the same night sky I saw every night, but it was just so huge! It seemed to go on and on forever, I was craning my neck to see beyond the view of my minute airplane window. It wasn’t a blanket covering the sky, but more like someone had spilt deep blue ink across it, staining everything, except of course, the stars. There aren’t words do describe how incredibly beautiful these shining dots of light were. They were everywhere, splattered across the deep blue, blinking, shimmering and gleaming. They were literally breathtaking. For so long, I sat staring at the beautiful night sky, I could see it so well because of a bright light, on the tail of the plane. I sat, trying to find all those constellations I had heard about, the folk stories that went with them. Learning about constellations, you don’t understand why people decided to join the stars together, but up in the air, where I felt so much closer to the stars, it seemed only natural to find shapes and stories in them. It was like the stars joined up before my eyes. I admit, I don’t think I accurately found a single constellation, I found the big dipper four times. Just as I reluctantly began to look away, something caught my eye. The tail light that made the sky bright, was very big. I looked closer but it was just so bright, that I couldn’t see any details or figure out what it was. I gasped (yes, i actually gasped) as understanding hit me. It was the moon. The moon, a massive, shining beacon of light, hope in the darkness, casting light on everything. I had no idea just how BIG the moon was, it was like the plane had allowed me a closer look to the sky and beyond, just for a few hours. Though I was beyond exhausted by now, I stared for as long as I could. Untill I fell asleep with my head against the window, dreaming content dreams.

We all need a holiday. Even if it’s just taking a break, and doing nothing. When we live our fast-paced lives,there is so much to think about,we’re constantly busy and there are a million and one things to remember, when sometimes all we want to do is forget. I’ve been in Malaysia for the past two weeks and it’s so relaxing to be able to just stay at home doing nothing; but still having the freedom to do anything at almost anytime. It gave me a chance to think through all those things I’ve been worried about, anything that’s been troubling me. It’s a chance to sift through everything and see that all those trivial things, they don’t matter.the everyday things, that upset us, that annoy us, things that make us furious or have us wallowing in self-pity. None of it matters. It took me two weeks of thinking to figure that out.

Here I am. In year nine now, so much older and more mature (well, hopefully). This will probably be my last year at this school, so I have to make it count. I don’t think I have time to do anything more though, now I’m dancing five days a week, I’m in the school band, in CAS, getting a LOT more homework and trying to get top grades all at the same time. This is the year when I start to decide what I want to do, whether I’m going to continue academically and get a normal job, or wether I’m going to really push myself and try to do even more dancing, and focus on that. I mean, I will still go to school and do all the normal things, but if I want to dance I’ll probably go to a performing arts school and have to be practicing about twenty hours a week! It really scares me sometimes, having to decide when I really have no idea what to do. I visited some schools in England this summer and I think I’ve narrowed it down to two, but choosing between them will be near impossible. I admit, I’m trying not to think too much about it, trying to focus on JUST the year ahead of me.

I got lucky this year, I think I’m in the best class in school. See, for the last two years the classes have always been split between the cool, loud class, and the boring, smart class. (I was always in the smart class. Hehee.) But this year, lots of people left and we managed to have a perfect mix of exciting and smart. I love it. We’re all getting great results, and I’m trying to hold on to my ‘Best student in school’ title I got last year. I know its, boasting, but I have to say it. Last year, they gave out awards to people that were best in each subject out of the whole school. I got SIX awards! I was best in maths, science, english, music and ICT. I was so happy! Then, they announced the best student in school, and even competing with the years nines and tens, I won!!! I was incredible! Now, there’s more competition with the new people coming in, but I want to be the best. That will be my year nine goal. Remind me of that in about seven months

It seems that ages ago I was writing about warming up to year eight, getting used to the homework, the teachers, and here I am now. Four weeks from the end of it. A week from turning thirteen. Three days from a ballet concert. And three months from being in year nine. Time has really passed, I wouldn’t say that if you asked me even a few weeks ago, but coming to the end of the year and looking back, time has flown by. I’ve grown too, I’m a lot taller, I don’t fit my old clothes or shoes, my hair is longer, everything is different now. I think my writing has changed too. Remember the English/Humanities teacher I was complaining about? Well I got top marks on two of his tests and did really well on the other, I’m proud of myself. Test week is over and I got excellent results, so all that year of studying seems to be worth it. Feels like the teachers think so too, they barely give s any homework (not complaining) and everything we do in class is easier or more exciting. we’re learning about holidays in French, doing loads of physics experiments in science, watching a film in English and History, and using the computer for Maths. I love it. It almost makes me feel like the teachers really do appreciate our hard work and are trying to reward us. I also love the ECA (Extra Curricular Activity) I joined. I called CAS and stands for Creativity, Action and Service. It’s basically a community service club where we come up with how to raise money and which charities it should go to. We have connections with a school in Turkey that we are trying to raise money for, theres going to be a Crazy Dress Day in two days and all the proceeds from that will go to the school. Also, we’re opening a small tuck shop (that we get to run) and any money coming from that will go to Turkey. We were trying to find out what charities we wanted to make connections with and I, naturally, really wanted to continue helping Daraja Academy. Our last years English teacher (Mr.R) has a friend who was the owner of Daraja, so we were learning about it and starting raising money for it. Unfortunately Mr.R left and the project was sort of . . . forgotten. Now I have this opportunity to bring Daraja back into the picture I jumped at it. I hope we do decide to support it, well I’ve decided to but the club is a little harder to convince, then maybe we could even have a fieldtrip to go help out there. I would be over the moon if we got to do that, it’s like a dream to meet the famous Daraja school girls, the teachers, even Jason Doherty. Well I can only hope, and try to convince the club. If any of you reading this would like to support Daraja, here’s a link to their website.

I’m sorry. I haven’t written anything in a long time and it’s because I was scared. After two weeks of writing nothing it felt weird to blog thinking everybody would have given up reading this. The longer i waited, the worse it got. So, I’m going to write today, I don’t exactly know what I’m going to write about, but it doesn’t matter. I guess I can start with my holidays. Like I said, I’ve been doing nothing all break but today I’m going camping!!! We’re going to be in the desert for one/two nights and I can’t wait. We’ll have to go through the extremities of the desert, hot in the day,freezing at night. It won’t be too bad though, Qatar isn’t really famous for it’s extreme climate is it. I feel as if I’m writing an email, just writing whatever I happen to think of. I’m blank right now, so I’ll stop. If I don’t see you again, Happy New Year!!!

For every student in Qatar, it’s the holidays!!! Except for the kids in my school. We had an extra long summer break so now we have an extra small winter break. This doesn’t seem fair to us, because we all LOVE the winter and would rather spend more holiday when it’s physically possible to go outside. Why can’t they do this? Yes, the Qatari law said that we need a longer summer but a couple of schools got away with a short summer and a long winter, why not us? Life’s not fair, lots of people will say, but I hate this expression! Why isn’t it fair? Why not instead of just saying ifs’ not fair, try to make it fair. There’s many sayings like that, that I despise. “Still!”, “because I said so!”, “just do it!”, all excuses for no argument. The thing I hate most, is that these arguments usually win. They end the discussion on a high for the otter person. Now, I’m not saying I have never used these sayings before, but I only use them for small things that nobody is ever going to care about again. It doesn’t make a difference. Whereas a law aiming to end all winter holidays, that makes a difference.

Next week, our school is going to have a christmas concert, and I get to play in it! I’m going to play three songs on the piano (two of them solos!) and we have to sing (no!) one song. Piano is so much fun, I only just started and I’ve already learned to play a few songs. Here’s one of them:

The Fairies Harp

I have a really old keyboard so ignore the squeaky keys. =)

I love music. Music makes everything seem okay, and it makes you feel so much better. Music makes you think. It makes you think about the lyrics of the song and what they mean to you. Music can describe a person. In school, we each have a “song” that everybody agrees on that describes us best. The song I got is Sneakernight by Vanessa Hudgens and I hadn’t even heard about it before last week. Do you think it describes me?

I can’t come up with anything to write about so here’s what I’m going to do instead. I’m going to give you a riddle describing somebody in my year, and see who can guess who it is. I may do a few of these if they go well. Anyway, here goes:

The old know the old, the new know the new. There are those, though few and far between, that hold the knowledge of new and old.

Who is it? Comment below!

We learned about the weather today. About different types of clouds, what they look like, where they are. Also about rain, different rain cycles. Guess what happened at the end of the lesson? It started to rain! It was the end of the day and everybody in school ran outside for the rain. It wasn’t as exciting or heavy as two weeks ago, but was amazing. Just a couple of raindrops, and you can change the atmosphere of the whole school, maybe even the whole city. Te air feels so much fresher and cleaner now. The sky is filled with colour and water is dripping from my bike. It just feels so nice. No other way to describe it.

I was going to put up a picture of it here, but my camera’s out of battery so while I was trying to figure something out, it started raining again! I immediately stopped writing and took a video of it. It’s not very much to look at, just the view from my front door, but I love the sound. If you put your volume up you can hear the constant pater of rain and it’s one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. Enjoy.

Rain.

I can just close my eyes and imagine being in the rain. Hiding in the shade letting the rain fall. Close your eyes and let your mind wander, see where you find yourself.