Too Many Words...

For about the past 2 hours, I've been trying to memorize 60 words for my English Test that I am taking tomorrow. I've been starring at my computer screen, trying to think oof what to write and I glance down at my vocab book and I decide that I can write a post on what I've done for the past few hours.
I've always had a pretty bad memory, so I absolutely hate vocabulary test. Everyone says there the easiest kind of test because all you have to do is memorize, but they are pretty difficult when you cannot remember a thing.
This year, we take a vocabulary test every couple of weeks and because I am not so succesful at them, I decided I needed to change my study method. In the past, I've stared for hours at my vocab book, repeting each word and it's definition out loud, but that was not a very successful method.
For recent vocabulary test, I've decided to try something new.  I write down all the words on index cards and then I go through each one.  If I know what a word means I put the card in one pile and if I don't the meaning of the word, I put the card in another pile. When I finished going through each word, I pick up the pile of the words I don't know and I go through the process again. I do it over and over again until all the cards are in the pile of Words that I do know.
Hopefully this method will work for my test tomorrow!



The process sometimes takes forever because there are so many words. Next time,I'll start it earlier...

Thrifting

When I was younger, a majority of my clothing came from thrift stores and consignment shops, I remember always feeling kinda embarrassed about it. In elementary school, all my friends would be wearing the "popular" brand- named clothes like hollister and aeropostale, and I felt out of place in my second hand clothing.

Recently, due to the economy and other reasons, thrift shopping has become more popular. That's why I am excited about making our documentary on the rise of thrift shopping.  It's interesting to see how times has changed. How in elementary I felt like I was the only one not wearing the named brands, however, now a majority of students have at least some clothing that they have purchased at a thrift store.

Now I am not embarrassed about shopping at thrift stores. It's cheap,you can find clothes in good shape, for less. Sometimes it takes a while and you have to do a lot of digging through clothes, but you can find something really nice that you might not of come across anywhere else


We found a website called "http://thriftstorerunway.com/" which holds contests every month, where people model their clothes bought at thrift stores. The only requirements are that you must spend under $50 on the outfit and most of the outfit has to have come from a thrift store. On the website, there are some really nice outfits where the person only spent $30

We decided it would be a great touch for our documentary, if we were to enter, so we did. Annaleigh modeled some thrift store clothing and we put the pictures up on the website. Sadly, we didn't win, but it was cool to do!

Here are some of the pictures we put up:

Silver Spring. Video Challenge.

Here is my video for the video challenge. I shot around downtown silver spring using a point and shoot camera. I used a song from jamendo.com. In the video, I interviewed my British neighbor named Greta. She is usually really loud, but she got shy when I turned on the camera, so her dad asked the questions.

Inauguration

Last Monday I went to Barack Obama's inauguration. It was one of the coolest experience. We had seating tickets, so we were able to be really close to the stage which made the experience even better.
At the inauguration, I saw celebrities like Rob Lowe, Mary J Blige,  John Mayer, Aretha Franklin and Newman from Seinfeld!

The whole thing was amazing, but my favorite part was Obama's speech. It had some lines that people will remember for forever. He focused a lot on "All men are created equal" and he metioned everyone. He mentioned the gays, straights, poor, rich, men,female which  admire him for.

The best part of the whole speech is when he said, ""We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."  

This line used such imagery, it was unbelievable. It had emotion. When he said, "through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," it really made me say "wow.'


I was so lucky to be at the nation capitol to witness the historic day.  I wish you luck on your second term Barack Obama!



Below is a picture my dad took of the inauguration. We were really close to Obama!

Starting 2013 on the Ground

It was 20 seconds until midnight, everything was ready. The four champagne glasses were on the table and the TV was turned to the station showing the NYC ball.With 15 seconds left, we realized that the champagne was still upstairs,so I ran up to get it. I ran back downstairs as the TV was counting down 10...9...8...7...6..5.... and suddenly... I was on the ground. Everything happened at once. Glass was shattered around me, Esther was bleeding, Samantha was screaming,my parents were yelling "Are you okay?" and suddenly we hear HAPPY NEW YEAR from the TV. it was defiantly an exciting way to start the new year. But I guess if you start the year on the ground, the only way you can go is up.

Documentary Review: Man on Wire

A few nights ago,I watched the documentary "Man on Wire" directed by James Marsh. It was a fascinating movie about high walker, Philippe Petit's journey which led him to walk across the twin towers. The movie captures the long years of preparation for only about 45 minutes of routine on the wire.
It really showed how determined Phillipe Petit was to complete his dream, he knew it was illegal and extremely dangerous, but he wouldn't give up.  From the time he saw an article in a magazine about two huge towers in NYC being built, he was determined to walk between them. He encountered many obstacles. For example, he and a few other people had to rig the wire in complete darkness with high winds and in only a few hours. His friends told him to give up, it's impossible to rig this in such a short time,but Phillip didn't give up. And finally it was a majestic moment when he walked across the wire between the towers.

I really liked that is it had a lot of different footage and it kept cutting back and forth between all of them. It had archival footage of the building of the World trade Center,present day Interview of Petit and all the other people involved, reenactments by a different actor who played young Petit which portrayed the preparation and ideo and still images of the performance between the Twin Towers. All these different shots made the documentary seem so much more real.

I enjoyed how they would cut back and forth between shots of the preparation of the performance ( practicing, discussing how they'll do it) and sneaking up to the top of twin towers.

The filming was great because it made it seem like an older film. In particular the reanactment scenes, were either in black and white or had a color tone that is used in many old movies.

I barely noticed the music in the movie. I found it odd because it used calming, soft music even in the more exciting parts like the walking between the towers.However,it somehow worked.

I really enjoyed the movie, it was was well told, creating a lot of suspense. I defiantly recommend this movie.


Here is the trailer for "Man on Wire":

BARCODE

A few weeks ago, we finished our dystopian trailers. Ours was called Barcode and portrayed a society with citizens who lacked a identity. Everyone dressed the same, they had earpieces to stop them from hearing, to communicate they had only a few cards with words on them and to identify themselves they had a necklace with a barcode necklace. Our main character fell and broke her earpiece and was then able to hear. She then realizes how much the government is hiding from them and wants to end this dystopian society.

What really set our trailers different from the others was the fact that the first half of our trailer did not have music, only a low drowning noise in the background. When the main character falls and her earpiece breaks, intense music starts playing to signify the upcoming battle she will go through. Another thing that made our trailer unique was our costumes. All citizens wore the same thing: A white shirt, jeans, the bar code necklace and a paper bag over their heads. On one side of the bags were two eye holes and a drawn happy face and on the other side was the two eye holes and a drawn sad face because the citizens only had 2 emotions. 

I enjoyed the project a lot, but it was very time consuming. To film we had to work on weekends and for editing, my group and I went in many days after school and during lunch. However during the project, I became more familiar with the editing software that we used, Final cut. 



I am really proud how our trailer and I hope to use some of the tools I learned about while making the trailer, in the upcoming documentary project.