Silly Bands

"Hey, is that a silly band?"

Yadira was pointing with a surprised expression on her face at a thin blue bracelet that was around my wrist.

"Yes, it's a turtle. I see you have a few on your wrist as well," I replied, trying to make small talk with her while finishing writing review problem from the nine times multiplication table.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out a tangled mess of what I realized were a lot more than "a few" silly bands.

"I have hundreds and hundreds. I collect them from my friends. I have a turtle too, but my favorites are the fairy and the princess ones."

"I hope you're working over there," called out my supervisor, noticing the jumble of rubber bracelets that had exploded onto the social scenes of all grades. I had gotten the turtle silly band from a friend during our junior year AP English Language Class. She had decided to give one silly band to my friend and I, so we could "unite" every time we had class. They were small, thin bracelets, that when removed formed a certain shape: a dinosaur, a wand, a trumpet, almost anything. They had started out as a middle-school fad, but by this time, everyone had silly bands, from first graders to twelfth graders.

I motioned for Yadira to put away her bracelets, and pushed the notebook towards her. "Come on, Yadira, you have a math test tomorrow, and we want to make sure you get 100%, right? Because then your teacher will give you a pretty sticker. So we have to practice, alright? Finish these few problems for me. I know you'll do well," I smiled at her, hoping that her self-confidence would increase.

As she worked on the problems, I looked at my fellow mentors. The mission of the mentoring program, A2Z Mentoring, was to help underprivileged kids with not only their school work, but also their self-confidence and self-esteem. Although I had only been at the program for a few weeks, I could proudly say that yes, at the end of each lesson, a bond had formed between me and whoever I was mentoring. It was something that couldn't be explained. We were supposed to mentoring them, but looking back, it was really a quid pro quo relationship.

"All done, Nikki."

"Well done, Yadira! You got them all right. Looks like you get a sticker," I smiled as I gave her a high-five. She was bouncing in her chair, trying to get the supervisor's attention. As soon as the supervisor came over, she pulled my arm, "Tell her how I did! Tell her how I did."

"Yadira got all her math problems correct, " I said, watching Yadira's smile grow even bigger.

Yadira received a sticker, and after she decided where she was going to put the sticker (the top of the front cover, the center, next to the blue sticker etc) we worked on her other homework. She had a social studies test on the structure of government-we read the textbook aloud. She mispronounced many words, looking up every time she couldn't pronounce words like "representative" or "democracy", hoping that I wouldn't notice.

At the end of the lesson, as she was packing up her school things and waiting for her mother to sign her out, she pulled something out of her pocket.

"This is for you, " she smiled as she handed it to me.

It was an orange silly band.

Gotta tell them that we love them while we got the chance to say

Live like we're dying-Kris Allen

Alright, so it's approximately 11:24 pm and I'm taking a break from studying for the ACT, so I decided to post something else. I definitely do my best thinking when most people are asleep, so if this post gets too philosophical, blame the late night.

The title of this post is actually one of my favorite lyrics from my absolute favorite song. But when I was listening to this song and actually listening to my lyrics, I realized that I didn't agree with one of them. In the very beginning of the song, Kris Allen sings, "How come we don't say I love you enough?" But that's absolutely wrong. In fact, I think we say I love you too much.

I'll draw upon my own experiences as a high schooler for this one. Many times throughout the school day, I'll hear someone say, "Love ya!" or "You're amazing, I love you, " or even, "I hate you. JK, I love you." Before I begin my rant on how "I hate you" is also over-used, I would like to say this: "I love you," when said truly and honestly, is one of deepest things that one can ever say. To be in love is one of the greatest things in life, and I love you is a part of that. To hear people throw around this phrase is something that's a little bit sad. People have forgotten what it's like to actually be in love, so they throw the phrase around, testing people, seeing other people's reactions, hoping that one day, someone will say it in the full sense of the phrase. to them. and only to them.

I can't say that I'm not guilty of saying "I love you" too lightly, in fact, I'm probably guilty of doing everything that I've said in the last paragraph. But what I can say for sure is that I'm going to go listen to "Live like we're dying" by Kris Allen.

WAMUNC experiences

WAMUNC- Washington Area MUN conference

March 25th-28th, 2010

Alright, so first of, let me start by saying that WAMUNC was amazing. It was definitely one of the more fun conferences that our school goes to, and the people that I met were some of the most intelligent but fun people that I met. To me, WAMUNC was more than an MUN conference, for the 4 days that we were there, I learned something about life. It's clichéd, isn't it? That I went somewhere for one purpose (academic) and came out achieving another.

Somewhere in between committee sessions, our excursion to the Taiwanese Embassy, and just chilling with my own club, I realized this: we (high schoolers) tend to think that high school=universe. Instead of thinking that high school is a microcosm of what occurs in the "real world", we believe that high school is everything-that everything and everyone that's important and that exists goes to the high school that we go to. Which is wrong. Completely, utterly, truly wrong. The friends that I made at WAMUNC don't go to my school. In fact, they're not even in my state. If you had told me a month ago that I would make friends at WAMUNC, and maybe even become good friends with some of them, I would have called you a liar. But it's true. My WAMUNC buddies have truly become an integral part of my life. When I login to my Gmail or Facebook, it's their emails, their notifications, and their messages that I tend to. You may say that I'm going through a "withdrawal" from WAMUNC (it's been known to happen). You could be right. I can't tell you right now. But what I can tell you is that I'm going to check my Gmail right now to see if they commented on my wall post.

First time using blog ever

Hey,

alright so this is the first time I've ever used a blog, and so I'm still kind of confused about the purpose of one. Are they used for entertaining? to rant about someone/something? to philosophize about something or another? This blog will probably be used to do all of these things at one point or another; hopefully more of the first and the third, and less of the second, but we'll see.