INTRODUCING....

Me!
J.Lynette, the other GREEN GIRL! It's been a long time coming, so here it is: my very first blog post!
I'll start off by recounting a little bit about myself: I am a high school student, a proud supporter of the David Suzuki Foundation, I'm fluent in French, and I'm a bit of a procrastinator.
Now, I figured that I'd introduce a few new and never seen before things at the same time in my first post.
1) Myself, and 2) this video.
I found it this morning and I thought it would be a good way to start off my blogging. From what I gathered from the video, she is an independent artiste who uses scrap bicycle parts to make really cool and intricate chandeliers.

There's also a feature page about her here, from Etsy with more info about her and her mission to "upcycle" thrown out bicycle parts to beautiful beacons of light.
So, that's about all for now, I'll add more as I go. If you guys can think of something that you'd like me to post about don't hesitate to make a comment!
Take care!
Signing off for the first time,
-J. Lynette

Gifted Refreshed

 Hey there! Alex here again. Well it's november now and here I am still in the gifted program, another year later, now in grade seven. :)  Anyway, you know how last year I reported about how the whole "fitting in to gifted" thing was going? Well I thought that I'd tell you  how it's better this year.

 Last year was pretty awesome. After I quit being sorry for myself and actually stepped up, things got better. By june, not only did I have friends and awesome teachers, but I also had a lot of great memories from sixth grade. This year, I was kind of unsure about at the beginning, but now that we've had a few months to settle in, I think this year's going to be a great one too. I really like the people in my class; they all get along well with each other and everything and that's a really key thing to have in a good classroom community I guess. My teacher's so far really nice too, not that I doubted her or anything, but she's been a pretty awesome teacher. I think that november and december are good times to actually report about school in general. I mean september, you're just meeting people and doing introduction things. Then in october you actually ease into the learning, and getting to know your classmates better. So by the november-december time, you practically know everyone a little bit and you actually get into the projects and actual routines. Plus, at this time of year is usually when you get your report cards/progress cards and all those other evaluation marks that have been collected up to now. And besides, at this point, you've had the chance to introduce  yourself your class and teachers, so they finally get a sense of what you are REALLY like, that they will most likely stick with for the rest of the year/

 Anyway, this year, I feel that gifted has kind of lost it's meaning a little. There are a lot of fourth graders that came in this year (and last year) who all passed the gifted test the year before that. It seems that maybe the gifted test is getting too easy or maybe that something in our regular habits or nutrition has affected our minds so that being 'gifted' is not as hard as it was before. But if you actually talk to most of the kids, for most of them, you can definitely tell that they should be in gifted. I guess another reason might be that this year, I am in the gifted 6/7 split class, and there is also a mainstream 6/7 split. As a result to recent polls done at our school last year, they have been trying to mix the gifted and mainstream even more. Sooo, for our science and history/geography classes, it has been decided that because we have more 7th graders in out split and they have more 6th graders in their split, we will be mixing in those two classes. For those periods, our few sixth graders will go with the mainstream sixth graders to, say, science, while the mainstream seventh graders will join us gifted seventh graders in the opposite class which would be history/geography. It works and it's pretty clever, but it seems that if we are both learning the same thing at the same time, that there never really was a certain "gifted" teaching method or anything. Just that we were branded and stuck in a different classroom. 

  Then again, there are totally times where I still do feel very gifted and very... different. And it's mostly a very good feeling. I really like this school, my class and the gifted program, though I do still miss my old school friends. I actually just talked with one of them the other day and I realized how much I miss them.  We're hoping to get together soon anyway. Haven't seen most of them in like two years. Well, I'm here now until graduation next year and then who knows if I'll see any of my friends in high school. Oh well, I live for the present I guess. 

 Wish me luck again this year! Hope it's a good one. :)

  -Alex L.

LONDON in ten days PART 2

More on our recent trip to London!!! :D

  What else did we really do? Oh, we went to the National Gallery one day.  The same day we went to the Westminster Cathedral I think.

National Gallery http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

 At the National Gallery, there are a lot of mostly like 1700's-1800's stuff, and/or possibly earlier dated paintings. Mostly un-interesting. It was definitely the front square business and entertainment that made it worthwhile.  For one thing there are a ton of people buzzing around; trying to meet their friends, just chatting or even practicing dances and such. Secondly, there's this huge statue/structure about 6 feet off the ground that practically half the people in the square were hanging around. There are these big lion statues on top of the big 6 foot tall base. Once you're on the back of one of those, right at the edgy corner about maybe 8 or 9 ft off the CONCRETE ground, it's kinda scary. You trip, you splat 9 ft onto a solid cement floor. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was pretty intimidating. And lastly, there are some awesome street performers and such. There was this one guy playing an electric clarinet. Pretty cool. Though not sure if any actual breathing skills and tone are required to play one of those. It seemed kinda hard and kinda easy-ish too. There was this other guy who was making black and white sketches of famous women and quotes that came from them too. Those were so realistic and beautiful, his colleague kindly had to ask people to avoid stepping on them... Another one we saw was an amazing street show with all sorts of acts. It started out with a guy with a Jamaican accent in a green and black leotard introducing a yoga act and turned into a full-fledged circus-type act with a guy juggling chainsaws and riding an extreme bike and all that.

Picture of the afore mentioned chainsaw juggler

  But I think the coolest thing about the National Gallery was that they had a huge life-size growing model of Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield of Cypresses" made of ACTUAL, LIVING plants! It was sooo awesomely AMAZING!!!

 Isn't it cool?!?

  Another AWESOME museum we went to was the V&A-Victoria And Albert-museum. :) I'd have to say it's one of the best there. They have a bunch of great activities for the whole family, and I'm not just saying that like one of those 'Ontario Place' commercials or something. No, I really mean it.

A beautiful piece of chandelier art hanging
in the main lobby of the V&A museum

 There's lots of information that would definitely interest adults and kids my age...maybe. Well I found it pretty interesting. But for younger kids they have these cool programs for them to interactively participate and learn throughout the museum. One of the programs included going around the gallery with a 'time-travel' pack where there's cool crafts and activity sheets to help them understand the parts of the gallery. There's another one where there's supposed to be sea creatures all over the gallery and as you are looking around, you can sketch them, then later on make them with construction paper, pipe cleaners, glitter and all those other great craft things. It's a pretty cool place. I'd say it's kind of like the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), but for London... and way bigger! It has classic ancient displays but there are still lots of other great modern pieces and exhibits.

View of part of the museum from the V&A courtyard :) 

All around the different exhibits at the V&A museum, there are these little activities for people to do as they pass by. For instance, there was one where it said to "...write a short story about a huntsman and a stag (a dear)". Or another one we passed was something like "...describe an object/objects you own that makes a statement about yourself". That was one of the few activities that I actually wrote/completed. I did mine on shoes. It was something like...
  " My shoes make a statement about me because I can change them very much to fit different environments, societies and needs"
  What do you think? Yes, no..? I thought it was ok. Maybe they will put it on display in the example book. See, once you have written whatever you had to write about, you submit it into this little box where they'll read it over and publish it this little booklet at the museum right above the desk where you write, so that you can refer to it and use it to help make yours. There were quite a few good ones, hope to see mine there if we ever go back soon. If you go there anytime soon, maybe you could see it in the display booklet on the... second floor, I think. Either the second or third floor. It's in this circular room with a tall ceiling that has a bunch of silhouetted instruments on the skylight above. *Hey, you could think of one and leave it in the comments there for us to read. Love to hear some creative minds make great statements.*
  So if you are going to London, England anytime soon, don't JUST crowd yourself into museums all day, you definitely HAVE to go shopping!!! There are A LOT of great shops in the downtown Victoria-South Kensington area. If you're going, I'd recommend a few stores for your divine benefit :)
  -Harrod's, of course! Great with tons of interesting things
  -Hamley's, a toy store. Not just ANY toy store it's like the BEST toy store in London!!! Six levels of absolute childhood madness!!! It's pretty impressive.
  -The National Geographic store. Didn't think there was one, did you? Well there is! It's pretty cool too. It has lots of great buys like eco-friendly National Geographic brand name clothing, books, pottery, bags and a lot more. I bought a little drawstring bag from the National Geographic store, just to show that I was there. :)
  -NEXXT, a European brand, I think. There's some pretty nice stuff there. (It's a clothes store in case you were wondering)
  -Zara. Zara home, Zara women, Zara kids, it's really nice. It's kind up like an upgraded H&M. Really cute stuff. Got a hat. :D

So yeah, we had a GREAT time in London. You should really go sometime. Recommendations? Here:
  -The Natural History Museum  http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
  -Wagamama! An awesome noodle place :)

  -The Victoria & Albert museum  http://www.vam.ac.uk/
  -National Gallery  http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/
  - Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum (we didn't go inside this one but it seemed pretty cool from the outside)  http://www.ripleyslondon.com/
  -Buckingham Palace  http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=30

All in all, we really enjoyed ourselves on this European adventure. Hope to go back soon. Thanks and I'll write again soon! Oh and remember, when facing a life-changing obstacle...

Haha, just kidding. Bye!

  -Alex L. :)

LONDON in ten days PART 1

A mere seven hours and a whole ocean away, we've just returned from our exclusive ten-day trip to London England. Sorry for not writing any sooner, but we've been really busy these past few months. Finishing school, driving down to the States and most recently; our trip to England.

  Left the house at around 5:30 to go out to Japanese with our grandparents before we left. Had to hurry to arrive at the airport 3 hours before our11:00 PM flight. After packing all of our luggage into the mini-van, my dad's dad set off to drive us, an aggrivating 30 minute drive to the Toronto Pearson, squished in the back of a stuffy van with tired siblings. Clearing customs was a breeze and before we knew it, we were on the plane waiting for lift off to Europe.

  After a looong and most tiring flight, we finally touched down at the Gatwick Airport outside of London. Not too far from the airport, we arrived at my uncle's house in Purley, London; a town semi-close to London Victoria. They have a nice house; small house but big yard with cozy furnishes to accomadate the two of them-- my mom's uncle and his wife. Not the biggest house for a family of six, but it was nice anyway.

  Didn't do much when we got there because with the five hour time difference and the seven hour flight, we got there technically twelve hours later. So we just stayed home and went to the park.

  Second day we actually got to sight-seeing. We took the train to London Victoria, kind of like the GTA of London. We walked around a lot that soon we walked into the Westminster area. Tried to see Westminster Abbey, but it was closed by the time we got there, so we went to Westminster Cathedral instead. It's not as big but still pretty impressive.

  Third day, we went back into town, taking the train and subway everywhere. It was pretty rainy and sluggish, but still an eventful day...ish. We tried going to Buckingham Palace, but again, it was closed; sold out by the time we got there. So we bought tickets for the next day and kept on walking around. Soon enough we stumbled across the largest department store in all of London--Harrod's!!!  

Harrod's is like a HUGE expensive 6-level Sears that sells practically EVERYTHING! Security's pretty strict, but you can certainly see why. Most of their clothing line is composed of labels like Armani, Hugo Boss, Burbury and D&G. Believe it or not, they even have designer brands for kids--Armani Jr, Hugo Boss, Burbury and a lot more just for kids.

Even a simple t-shirt you could find at the GAP for like $5.99 is now 62.95 in pounds, keeping in mind that the currency exchange is almost 2 times the dollar for one pound. Of course, they'd argue that this quality is much better than the GAP, I don't notice a difference. But Harrod's just doesn't sell childrens clothing, they also have a whole level for perfume and fragrances, another for woman's wear, one for men's wear and of course a HUGE level reserved just for toys. The toy selection quite impressive as well too; shelves and shelves of endless games and new innovative toys. Kind of like Costco, they have stands all around the floor where you can go and try the product. Not so much as try but see all of their toys' awesome abilities.There was also this huge, tall little hall thing where all the accessible escalators were to the many floors. Apparently this was like their "Egyptian Escalator Area", so of course being sooo high-end, they just had to top any NORMAL escalator area. Decorated with an all Egyptian theme and all that, there were twinkling lights on the ceiling, intricate designs on the marble coloumns and of course an opera singer singing from the 3rd floor balcony. No joke. There was a professional young opera singer with background singers and a whole little symphony playing on the balcony for you to listen and awe at as you are going up and down the escalators. As impressive as it was, we didn't really buy much. We bought a few things from the toy section but I think we mostly visited Harrod's for the experience and to see the marvel that is Harrod's.

  On the fourth day, we went to the Natural History Museum, a free museum in South Kensington.
 Actually, I think all museums and such are free. Anyway, the Natural History Museum is HUGE filled with so much awesome interactive stuff, we hardly got to see that much while we were there. 

Giant replica of a baby in it's mother's tummy after nine months... in the Human Biology exhibit

If you are going to England sometime soon, I definitely reccomend going to the Natural History Museum because there's lots to see for people of all ages. If you're going to swing by, I'd suggest going to the Coccoon (a large coccoon looking building in the museum about biology), the Human Biology exhibit (a really cool exhibit with lots of interactive games and displays), the Mammals exhibit (statues of lots of mammal species, including a gigantic, life-size blue whale) and of course, the Dinosaur exhibit with life-size, chronic, moving models! http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

  We also went to Buckingham Palace that day. I must say it was impressive and quite historical. We grabbed some headsets at the front desk and took the audio tour, nearly everyone there was taking the audio tour. The audio tour, led by an electronic voice really told you a lot about each and every room you'd pass through, including all the state rooms, music rooms, and galleries on the tour. Buckingham Palace was very educational but not quite as big and royal as I anticipated, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, including the gift shop. The gift shop had all sorts of random stuff you wouldn't expect to see at a gift shop. Giant gold coins, bath towels, pajamas patterned like a guard uniform... What's weirder is that they just slapped the royal couples faces anywhere; on thimbles on magnets shaped like mugs even on tea towels.

  The 28th, we left for Cambridge, where my mom's aunt lives with her husband and 14-year old daughter, Claudia. Technically then, I lied about the whole "LONDON in ten days" thing since we did go to Cambridge at one point, but yeah...Cambridge is kind of small, but it's nice that everything is always close and within walking distance. We walked around a lot looking at all of the fascinating universities all around. Cambridge apparently has the #1 universities in the world! We didn't get to see much of the colleges themselves, but we did get to see the churches and cathedrals in which the universities are now built in. They're pretty intricately designed and of course, very historical.
  We didn't stay in Cambridge for too long, only a few days. We got back on day 7, I think. So we went back into town of course! There's so much to see in London, we didn't know what we would spend our last days on. We decided to go to around the Central London area, to go see the London Eye!!! All around the London Eye area, next to the Thames River, there's lots of street performers and other buskers. As I was so recently told, buskers are people who set up small acts of some sort on the street in hope to collect money.  It was pretty cool. There were all sorts of different acts going on; painted metal people on metal painted toilets, costumed Darth Vaders ready to pose for pictures even a man with a painted dog face pretending to be a dog inside a dog carrier! There's some pretty insane stuff out there.

Believe it or not, there's a man in that big lizard! Yeah...

  The London Eye was soooo amazing! Being 135 m in the air overlooking all of London city, the Thames River, even Big Ben, it's just sooo...picturesque. Just like what'd you see on a post card in a gift shop.  From the very top of the London Eye, you could see everything below; the street performers, the boats, all the office buildings in the distance along the horizon!! SOOOO AWESOME!!!! After safely arriving back on the ground 135 m back down, we went on a river boat ride along the Thames. It was pretty cool just cruising down and seeing all of central London and learning interesting facts on the way. Tower Bridge, Millenium Bridge (built in the year 2000, hence millenium, but was closed after a day when passers got sick from it being too wobbly, but rebuilt after a couple years, not as wobbly...)  and of course the ever popular, but utterly boring; London Bridge.

Tower Bridge

"If the lion drinks, London sinks"--an old London
saying; if the water level gets past the
lion, there'll be floods

In it's most recently built state, London Bridge is actually just a plain old grey bridge over the Thames river with the inscription 'LONDON BRIDGE' on the inside as you pass under. Not much to look at really and definitely not what I expected of it anyway. There are some pretty interesting office buildings and historical landmarks all along the river. Pretty cool. :)


K then, I've written a lot and I still have a lot to go so I'll write more after! Stay tuned I guess...

-Alex L.

Second is the best..!

          Hey there! As you may or not know, I am 'The Garrulous Green Girls' other co-author. Not yet having formally posted something yet, this is my first official blog post. Well now, it's been nearly three and a half months since school started, and for me, it's been a mix-up of different feelings. 

I have re-started the gifted program this year for grade six. You see, I tried it before for grade four, but absolutely hated it...but that probably occurred because my teacher wasn't all that great. After about three weeks, I had had enough and fled back to my previous school. There I spent a few joyous years, growing a tighter bond with the people all around me. But as time passed, and my parents kept wearing me down about it, I came to the end of grade five and the end of my time at that school. My parents kept nagging me to return to the gifted school, so as this summer came to an end, I found myself not going to the school my peers were attending, but the school for the different-minded students. 

To give you a little insight before I continue, you see, being 'gifted' doesn't necessarily mean being a smart Aleck, know-it-all, it simply means that we think differently. Maybe not 'differently', but our brains can absorb and handle more knowledge than usual. In some cases, it does mean being slightly smarter than others, but it's very rare to be a Leonardo DaVinci and be gifted in all categories. Most gifted students might just be gifted in one or two specific areas. Me, I'm not exactly sure what my strong suit is, but I'm not bad at creative writing. :)

Anyway, now in sixth grade, I am here at this gifted school, with not many friends. But I must confess, it's much better than I remember it from fourth grade; the people are much nicer than before and my teacher is a lot more experienced and thoughtful than the one I had in grade four. Still, I don't have many friends... I mean I have buddies, but no one to close to call a 'best friend' or anything. Pushing through this, but it's hard being at a new school where you barely know anyone. :(

I miss my friends dearly, the people of whom I grew a tight bond with since grade four...I was even friends with some of the guys; we had a gang of girls and guys of which we would always hang out in. It was awesome, but those happy days are behind me. The gang has split...not only me but the gang members as well. Some have gone to different schools, just as I have...Just won't be the same any more to me.

I'll keep posting! Wish me luck at my new school!

-Alex L.

Our first blog post!! - A BAD BEGINNING

Today my family and I went to the dentist for a check-up. The family includes me, my two sisters, my baby brother and my parents. Now, you should know that the dentist's office is an hour or so away from where we live; it's not that there aren't any dentists closer by, but this is a family friend dentist, he and our grandma grew up together.

     Anyway, the dentist appointment went along as a normal appointment. Oh, let me just add that my mom, my younger siblings and I came in a different car than my dad, because he was at work, and came to the dentist via subway. That last part wasn't good, because we had to squish five people including a car seat into a smallish car. This proved to be difficult coming home because we had to drive on the highway for at least a half-hour while the three girls were crammed into the back of the car with a big baby car-seat.                    

     To make matters worse, ten minutes or so into the ride, my little brother started spitting up.Then he was all out throwing up. At first, Alex who was sitting next to him, the second oldest, didn't know what to do; should she put her hands underneath his mouth and catch the cascading discharge? Sit there and watch and wait till it's over? She settled on telling our parents what was going on and waited for instructions.

     He continued heaving for a good five minutes. When it was over he started crying and my sister started wiping it up with tissues, grocery bags, wipes and whatever else she could use. At this point, the whole inside of the car smelt like vomit, and Alex was trying her hardest to clean it all up, and believe me it was no easy task with very little space to maneuver around in in the back seat. She finally managed to get him cleaned up and calm enough to fall asleep. At last we arrived home and we were allowed out of the cramped car and into fresh air, and as for the young boy, he went into a much needed bath. : )  

- J. Lynette