To follow up to my last post, where I showed off my progress so far on our Metaphor Machines.

So, to recap…..

What is a Metaphor Machine?

So, a Metaphor Machine is a Rube Goldberg Machine, compressed into a small machine. Each aspect of said Machine is a metaphor for something.

What Revolution Did You Study?

We studied the Meiji Restoration, which will be explained in the video we made later on.

Making the machine was quite an adventure. It all started with getting sorted into groups, and studying our revolution. That went well, and we started to do a time line

The top line shows the cause and consequences of each key event in the revolution. The second line would show the steampunk aesthetic to it. The third shows how it relates in Crane Brinton’s Theory. We were doing well…….

Until the news hit that we had all of our information wrong, that is.

Yeah, not happy about that. We had to redo our entire timeline. But it turned out for the better, as the revolution made a lot more sense now.

Then it got to building it. It took three weeks to work on, starting with the base, to the floors, to the little details. But, in all, it turned out great

So….. what now? Explain in detail how the building went, show off each little bit and how it’s a metaphor?

Hah, I’m too lazy to do that. Let’s watch a video instead

That was the emotional roller coaster of our Metaphor Machine!

I hoped you enjoyed this post, the video, blah blah blah

Read ya later!

Ruby

My titles these days are slacking. I was gonna write a pun about bread but I though you’d find it stale…. Okay sorry about my pun-pernickles. I need to stop

Anyways, this blog post is about grade 9 bring your kid to work day. Now Ruby, you might be asking. What does that have to do with bread? Well, my dad works for Cobs Bread

The main Cobs Bread office for North America that is. I was pretty excited to go there, to say the least. I mean…. it’s bread. Food, I am happy around food.

So the day started at 7:45, when we left the house. The traffic was terrible, it was dark and rainy. The start of a bad horror movie type of weather

So we got to work around 8:00. My dad showed me around, introduced me to everyone. He works with nice people. We sat down in his office, blah blah blah emails

Above, my dad (the world’s largest ham)

That’s when he started to explain what he does. He showed me the sales for this week, how they’re doing (I feel like releasing them isn’t a good idea). They have their own website, only accessible to anyone who works at Cobs. It shows their sales, bakeries, franchisees, etc. The sales are quite complicated. They start with their annual budget, then it sort of goes through a metaphorical funnel. Parts of sales go into different things. Repairs, ingredients, maintenance, so on and so forth.

Cobs is actually doing a promotion for maple scrolls vs cinnamon buns. It looks like this:

It looks like the US presidential race. With pasteries! The marketing team actually didn’t mean for that to happen. But I suppose it’s fitting for the time. By the way, if you’re interested in voting, vote here

He then started talking about the bakeries. They’re trying to open one up in Fort McMurray, so he took me through the process. It’s like buying a house, really. He checks the price of how much it costs to put in everything, how much allowance the landlord has given. He subtracts that from to total price, which reduces the cost. Then he checks the agreements, and if he’s happy he sends it off the the landlord. About 8-9 months afterwards, they open up a new bakery.

I looked around his office, and noticed the Corporate Citizens Award on his desk. Apparentally they won that three years ago. My dad ‘forgot’ to put it in the trophy case out front

The trophy my dad possibly stole

He also talked to me about franchising. Apparentally thousands of people want to franchise for Cobs, hundreds get interviewed, but in the end only a few start to go into training and franchise.

Franchising, pretty much, is when you get someone else to run a bakery. 7% of the sales that the franchisees make for the bakeries goes to the office. They have to do serious background checks, such as if the franchisees have recently sued someone, they need to make sure they don’t do that often so that Cobs doesn’t get sued.

Fun Fact: Cobs originally started in Australia and was called Bakers Delight

It still goes on today, hence why my dad sometimes has to go to Australia for business.

My dad also does a lot of communication. He links in with everyone and gets every that they’re doing to connect to help the business running.

Now, his job sounds very fun, right?

Wrong

In his words; “75% of my day is spent on the phone, 25% is spent doing emails”. Fun, yeah… Though he does have a nice view of the skytrain, and Columbia College.

So the day went on. Somewhere around 11:00, one of the marketing ladies asked me to do a job. I had to fill out a survey, to see if it was user friendly. That took about ten minutes, and I got to see what goes into being a franchisee, like money, time, dedication. It takes a lot, trust me.

I also got to help with a brochure to get people interested in franchising a bakery in Tsawwassen. I was given a draft, that I was aloud to write on to see what could be changed. Very work.

I really enjoyed this. It was fun to help with marketing, and to find out what my dad really does. It was kinda boring to sit through phone calls and meetings, but my dad thinks so too (even if he’s not supposed to).

It really surprised me how much my dad actually does. He communicates, he helps with finances, real estate, and franchisees. I didn’t think he did that much.

I don’t think I’d consider my dad’s job as something that I would enjoy doing, as it’s a lot of sitting at a desk with numbers and emails, which I don’t really enjoy. Not that it’s dull…. but it’s kinda dull. Sorry pops.

Well, that was my day at my dad’s work. It wasn’t too

crummy

Okay I’ll stop now.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading

Read ya later,

Ruby

We’re halfway there! By there I mean done the metaphor machine.

Hold up. You’re probably wondering what a ‘metaphor machine’ is. Unless you’re one of my classmates, or Hughes or Willemes. In that case, hello. Glad you’re wasting your life reading my blog instead of doing work

Anyways! Metaphor Machines, I’m getting off track. Again….

Metaphor Machines are pretty much a giant machine, each part is a metaphor. Sort of like a mini metaphorical Rube Goldberg machine. Though it’s not metaphorical, just parts of it are literal metaphors…. I hope you get the point. If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine because you are Patrick Star and you live under a rock, here’s a link.

So, why are we making a machine? What’s the purpose, how is this school related? So many questions. Please, sit down. Well, I assume you’re sitting/laying down to read this. Unless you’re in the streets. Pay attention to where you’re going, you’ll run into a child. Or a car. Or a bus.

Well, we have to make a machine about a revolution. As you know, we’ve been studying revolutions. Our class was divided into different groups, and we got to pick a revolution to study. Our group chose the Meiji Restoration. Pretty much it’s about emperor Meiji bringing imperial rule back to Japan

I had to. It had to happen

So, the Metaphor Machine. Let’s explain this better. So, we chose the Meiji Restoration. This means we have to create a large machine with each aspect being a metaphor.

Example: Japan formed an alliance with Britain. Our metaphor for that is a sushi roll dropping into a tea cup.

Yeah. To add onto it, it has to have a steampunk aethstetic, and one working circuit.

So, we are halfway done the project! It’s been really fun so far. I’ve helped created the timeline for it, which pretty much shows what happened when in the revolution, also what the steampunk part is going to look like and how each part of the machine works.

I steampunked a mug, which I am really proud of

Thats all spraypaint. Quite proud of that, if I do say so myself.

I will keep you all updated on the machine in the next post. Until then…

Read ya later

Ruby

Woah, first maths post of the year!

So, if you can’t tell by the title, this one is about a dream house! Pretty much, we’re learning about scale diagrams. So, what involves scale diagrams? Blue prints!

Pretty much, we got to design a dream house. Everything we wanted, and more. It had to include a master bedroom, a bathroom, a laundry room, and a closet.

‘We’ wound up being Willa, Lucas and I. We designed a pretty cool house. And it looks like….

THIS

Sorry about the text all over it. I promise it’s my house, just the app doesn’t want you saying that you didn’t make it on that app or something like that. But you get the idea. Let’s do a quick run through of the house.

The hall has some nice chairs in it, along with a hat rack and some house plants. I like plants, don’t judge me

There’s the garage, which has a convertible, a normal car, a motorbike, a normal bike and my bus. My bus, I like it. It stays.

The master bedroom is nice, it has a king sized bed, along with a comfy charm two book cases and a lamp

An ensuite bathroom attaches to the bedroom, along with a closet. The bathroom has the essentials. A toilet, a bidet (essential), a sink and a shower.

There’s the games room, with a hammock, a lap top, three couches, a tv and more house plants.

The kitchen is quite large, with a refrigerator, an island with two stools, counters, a microwave and a wine cellar. I need wine, defiantly….

The dining room has simple stuff, a table with chars and more wine. Naturally.

Then there’s the best room in the house, the music room. That has one piano, a fooseball table, a pool table, a tv and a couch.

Thats the house! I really enjoyed this project, it made scale factors a lot easier. The house in total costs about $123, 000, and has 2, 068.09 ft.

Unfortunately, it’s not a real. So all of my dreams are dead

Read ya later!

Ruby

I’ve resorted to making train puns. *sigh*

So, I guess I’ve given away what this post is about. TRAINS!

In class, we’re studying the Industrial Revolution. So, Mrs. Willemes decided to give us an essay on the railroads and his they affect the Industrial Revolution. Simple, right?

WRONG

We had to make a visual essay. Videos, moving images. Voice overs.

I hate the sound of my voice on tape, I sound like a nort. Is nort a word?

Oh. Not what I meant

Hey this is like the title! I shouldn’t get derailed here….

No, stop it Ruby you look and sound like an idiot.

So we did the thing!

Its up there, the big box. Watch it. Or not, this is a bunch of text, not a police officer.

Well, as you saw the beauty, I think some explination is required.

So, I was sick on the day Willemes assigned this. Not ideal, so I had to text her during the thanksgiving long weekend asking her ‘what’s this essay thing about’? Yes, I can text my teachers

So, we had to make an essay with three causes and three consequences involving the railways in he industrial revolution. Here’s draft 1:

So then we did critique. Willa told me that I needed to have a bit more information, that the typing sounds were a bit too loud, along with the music and that I actually need to include the causes. So I did!

So you saw the final product up there, I hope you enjoyed it. Pretty much it’s about how the railroads impacted the industrial revolution. It got things from A to B faster, it helped the economy and it helped bring people from different parts of Britain together.

Anyways, that pretty much concludes this blog post! It wasn’t a complete train wreck….

Okay I need to stop

I’m going to go cry into a slice of pizza

Why is there a gif for that. Help me

Read ya later,

Ruby

I’m back for another blog post. Though this one isn’t about my summer, or revolutions. No, this one is about something quite cool (not that my summer wasn’t awesome)

This is about steampunk

Now, for those of you reading this who may be confused, Steampunk is a style of literature and an actual subculture which started in the 1980’s, based off of books that involve a Victorian-Era based place with steam run machines. Quite a lot of gears and fancy metals

 

Thats an example of Steampunk outfits on some awesome people and a steampunk projector. As you can see, it’s a lot of gears and metal and Victorian based clothing. Pretty awesome.

**Side Note: A great example, if you’d like to see more of the clothing, would be the music video to The Ballad of Mona Lisa by Panic! At The Disco. Just click that link there, the lead singer wears some Steampunkish clothing. The song is also good

So, I had to dive deeper into this awesome style. Well, Willa The Fabulous gave me the idea.

Does the Steampunk style have anything to do with the Punk style?

And I did.

So, for this idea, I decided to look up the style of dress that Steampunk and punks wear. That’s when I realized something

The gothic style of clothing is very similar to the Steampunk style. So I added that in. I drew three different types of dresses. One Punk, one Steampunk, and one Gothic. And, if I do say so myself, they turned out awesome

(From left to right, Steampunk, Gothic, Punk)

The hair was an extra touch that I wanted to add in because otherwise they’d be bald. Not that bald girls aren’t awesome, but I like drawing hair.

So, I compared the similarities to these dresses

1: Corseted

As you’ll notice, all three have those weird strings going around the front. That’s called a corset, pretty much in the olden days it kept your waist small. In the Steampunk dress, you’ll notice that it actually is a typical corset. Since the Steampunk style is based around the Victorian era, World War I, that would probably be the purpose, to keep your waist looking thin, or to help fit into the dress. In the gothic dress, along with the Punk, I don’t think it’s there to keep your waist thin, but most likely just there for decoration because it does look cool

2: Boots

The boots on all three of these models are all about thigh or knee high, usually to protect the legs. But you’ll notice that the Steampunk one has heels. Heels were originally worn by men in old France to A) look fabulous, B) used by horse riders and C) worn by butchers to avoid stepping on blood. I’m assuming here that this model wasn’t a butcher, so probably wore them to seem taller.

3: Laces/Layers

All three of these models have quite short dresses, the gothic one being the longest at knee length. You’ll notice that they all have laces on their skirt, most likely for decoration. There are over the kinds of lace, all with different pattern. Lace doesn’t actually serve a purpose on the dress, but all three styles seem to use it for it to look interesting. The layers on the skirt tend to vary. It’s safe to say there is probably a few layers underneath the Steampunk dress to make it stick out like that, where as the Punk and gothic layers are all visible to make it look more appealing.

So, to answer my question, I think that yes, the Steampunk style does have to do with it the Punk style, in the clothing at least.

I hope you enjoyed this post, a third one will be coming up in the next week!

Read Ya Later

Ruby

So, over the past few days, we have learned about the magicness of Revolutions. This is all tied in to a large project we’re going about a Metaphor Machine. But let’s save that for another post

So there was this guy called Crane Brinton. Quite unfortunate to be named after a bird, but he made this theory about revoltutions. What if they all followed the same pattern? I have made a video that you can see down below to explain his theory:

All caught up now? Good. So, I had to ask myself a question about this theory

Do all revolutions apply to this theory?

Let’s find out.

Lets take, for instance, the American revolution. I’m going to split this into stages, to make it easier

Stage 1: 

So, the tensions between the British and the colonists have been building up. Not any violence yet, but the colonists aren’t doing so great because the British are trying to tax them

So, following it so far. Small tensions, realizing injustice.

Stage 2:

The colonists went to violence in 1770, and the British shot at a group of protestors, killing five men. In response, the colonists dumped tea into the Boston harbour

How dare they

A group of colonists, who I think included George Washington himself, denounced taxation.

But, this is where the theory slightly falls apart. Sure, there were protestors, but no one really splits up into groups about what to do with the British. And it goes to violence quite quickly….

Stage 3:

When the group with Georgey (not calling him that again) met up again, they formed an army. War broke out, and a lot of people died. The Declaration of Independence was drafted. Some people even came to Canada to run from the violence

So this gets quite violent. It makes sense for stage three.

Stage 4:

People become less violent as the British start to retreat. The Americans sign peace treaties with Spain and France. Things die down.

And this makes sense for stage four. A new ruler comes in, less violence.

In conclusion, the American Revolution doesn’t entirely fit the form of Crane Brinton’s Theory, but hey. No one is perfect.

So I hope you enjoyed another fun filled blog post

Read Ya Later

Rubes

You thought you got rid of me. Hah.

So Summer’s ending. I hate to even think about it, it makes me cringe. But it’s ending. Which means it’s time to look back on the good old summer days and cry because it’s not happening for another year. So let’s go before I regret this.

I went to Europe! Europe is that place where they say things strange and Britain left it. But my trip there was great. I went to Ireland for three days first, and then to Italy for TWO AND A HALF WEEKS. Yes. I am blessed with these wonderful opportunities. But let’s go look back on my trip and by the end I’ll be buying a ticket to live in Italy.

Day 1: We got to the airport at 11:40. We took a taxi and the driver talked about how bad Rogers cellphones are and Pokemon Go [which I am in love with]. So, nothing too bad about getting the airport early, right?

Our flight was at 2:30

Thanks mom. So we went through security [which I will always hate because I’m always scared they’ll drag me into one of those interrogation rooms and ask me questions which I don’t know the answer to] and then got to the gate. With three hours to spare. We got A&W, and the lady behind us asked what poutine was. And then I realized I’d be deprived of poutine for three weeks. I almost cried. So we got on the plane, and headed off to Dublin!

So we got there, and I counted about 20 hares in the airport fields. It was ridiculous. So Ireland is about eight hours ahead of Vancouver. I tried to sleep on the the plane, but I didn’t. So my entire family was exhausted for the entire day, as for us it was 4:00 am in Vancouver when we landed, and it was noon in Ireland. Augh. So we met my Granny Finola at the airport

And we went off to the small town of Skerries. Skerries is a half hour drive from Dublin, and is the town which my dad grew up in. It’s quite a beautiful place.

We took the first day to tour around Skerries. I had Ribena, which is only the best British drink since tea. We toured around the harbour, and had ice cream from a place called ‘Storm in a Tea Cup’. Which makes really good ice cream, by the way. We went back to my Granny’s house, had dinner, and went to bed at 6:30 out of exhaustion.

Day 2: We went into Dublin. Now, two things you need to know about the Irish. Point 1: Rule are just suggestions. The best example of this is when we went to get on one of the double decker tour buses. Really interesting and educational, I’ll tell you about it later. But so we go up to the guy who sells the tickets, and we’re all like ‘yeah four tickets. Three adults, one youth’. And the guy takes a look at my sister, and asks how old she is. ’16’ she said. The guy nodded. ‘Yeah. Now you’re fourteen, you go free now’. Ireland is great, man. Anyways, point 2: They run on Irish time.

Pretty much if you tell someone you’ll meet them at 2:00 in Ireland, they’ll get there between 2:00 and 3:00.

So, we got on one of those big tour busses

And we were off around Dublin. Our tour guide who narrated the tour was called Patty. Like he could,not get more Irish, he might as well have been eating potatoes and Guinness. We went past quite a few cool places, including a college. Nothing too fancy about it, right? Wrong. There was a funny story about it. The founder once said “over my dead body will a woman educate herself at my college”. He died, and that same year the first woman was sent to learn there. Huh.

Fun Irish Fact: St. Patrick, contrary to popular belief, didn’t drive the snakes out of Ireland. There was never any snakes in Ireland, he drove out Paganism, represented by the serpent, and brought in Christianity, the main religion in Ireland nowadays.

We went past the Guiness factory, which we didn’t go into as no one in my family drinks at all. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what Guiness is, it’s pretty much the world’s strongest beer. It’s close to black in colour and is quite strong. Not that I would know

Once we were done in Dublin, after getting off the bus and enjoying the sights and all the Irish things and having ice cream for dinner [oops] we got back, and relaxed at my Granny’s place, then went to bed.

Day 3: This was the day that my Granny finally said something about the weather. Usually, it’s awful in Ireland. Raining, cloudy, cold, miserable. But the three days that we were there, it had been 25°-30°. Yeah, we hit a good spot. So on the third day was all about historic stuff. Now, when I say historic, I don’t mean 18th century buildings. I mean older than the Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids

Newgrange, Ireland, EU, Planet Earth. Built around 3200 BC. It was actually a device built by the ancient people who worshipped the sun as a god.

How it works, is during the winter solstice, the sun will shine through the passage directly and hit the back wall. Our best guess as to why the peoples of old, old, old Ireland did this was because they worshipped the sun, and they feared every year that the sun gods would leave them and plunge the world into eternal darkness. This device proved that the gods would rise like the sun and not leave them in the dark. And we got to enter it. The outside looked like this

We entered through the hole on the bottom, and it was so small even I, Miss. 5ft, had to duck to fit in. It was really cool. My mum, being the typical tourist, insisted she took a photo of me sitting outside of it.

But that was cool. After that, we went to my dad’s old college! It was an all boys school, where my dad and his twin went. Yes, they got in trouble a lot. They even had a golf course! Like, what? The building itself was quite impressive,

But then you saw where the priests lived.

An actual castle. Yes, there were priests. It was a religious school, very Catholic, very strict. So my dad didn’t do well there. There was this really cool tree arch where people used to hand out in the hide form studies sometimes. So probably the best school ever [sorry Seycove!]

We had dinner at a place called ‘Stoop Your Head’ and had the best chowder ever.

Day 4:

I woke up at 12:30 at night. Thanks universe! So I was laying there, questioning life for about 2 and a half hours until my mum came in. We were supposed to leave at 4:00 am, which no one was happy about, to go to Italy. We got up, and got all packed up. We opened the door for the taxi…. And it was pouring rain. The day before we got to Ireland, it had been awful. We got there, and it was the best it had been all summer. The day we leave, the heavens opened. It was great. The flight to Pisa was only about two hours, so we got there in no time.

And we were in Italy. One hour ahead of Ireland, shaped like a boot, makes the best pizza, pasta, and leather. I was happy, to say the least. So we got off the plane, and my dad tells my family to stay, and he and I went to get the tickets to get a train down to Florence, where we were staying. No, I didn’t see the leaning tower.

So we get to the ticket stand, and my dad asks the lady which is faster, train or bus. The lady, who obviously didn’t understand two words he had said, prints out some tickets, says “you take bus” and holds her hand out for money. So we took the bus to Florence. I slept through most…. Okay all of the bus ride. I was tired!

So we get to Florence, and we call a cab. Things you should know about Italian driving: it’s terrifying. People walk in the streets, there are more people walking than driving. So being in a cab is awful. He almost mulled over three bikers and two hundred people. So we got to the hotel, and we realized something. Italy is hot! Seriously, it was 35°. So we got into the [thankfully air conditioned] hotel. The people at the front desk were great, showing us everywhere good to eat, where to go, and gave us a thing to fill out about breakfast.

We got into the room, which was also great, and unpack. Then we look at the breakfast menu. It was all normal stuff. Orange juice, bacon, eggs, coffe, fruit salad, cake. Wait a second….

Yes. One of the options was cake. So I naturally decided to have cake for breakfast. As you do in Europe. So we went out for lunch, and had it at a nice panini place

For first Italian food, and it was great. It was giant, but great. We went onto the Ponte Vecchio, which sells a bunch of jewlery and watches and stuff. My dad said “be natural” and tried to take a photo of me. Well… I’m not a natural human being.

But if you can see at the top of the phot, there’s what looks like a tunnel. That’s where all the aristocrats walked so they wouldn’t get muddled up with the peasants down below. Italians were petty, wow.

So then we went to the Piazza Signoria. It was really beautiful, with quite a few statues and a large clock tower.

So inside of there, we got Firenze Cards. Pretty much, this allowed us to skip the lines in every museum, art gallery, anything touristy in Florence. I know, awesome. So we got into this place, but we didn’t get to see much, as there was a choir performance on. My mum and sister stayed for that, where as my dad, my Granny and I went back to the hotel for a bit. We went out to dinner, and I got a new iPad case!

Day 5: Our breakfast came:

Yum

We met up with my cousins, Amy and Aoife [pronounced Ee-fah] and my Aunt Aisling [pronounced Ash-ling] and Uncle David [you should be able to pronounce this I hope]. We went into the Uffizi Gallery, which had really impressive works of art

We also went to the Duomo. This was an issue. So we got in the long line up… And we weren’t aloud in. No shoulders showing, and nothing above the knees. We did get in, after buying scarves. It was worth it to get it. Though I didn’t take any pictures, as my dad had his phone and he waited outside with my sister, who didn’t want to go in.

We had dinner at a pizza place, and took this wonderful photo without my knowing

This is why you tell me when photos are happening. |:/

Then we had ice cream. Italian ice cream is the best, I can promise you. Though, we went to a really expensive ice cream place on accident. 9 euro for one ice cream. And there were seven of us having ice cream. You can imagine how much that cost. I’m not doing the math, use a calculator.

Day 6: We went to more chapels, which I didn’t take pictures of.

Yes. Leave it to Ruby to go to Italy and not take pictures. So any evidence that this day happened was lost. But we went to a few more churches, including a mosque, which was really cool. This was also our last day in Florence, which was sad. But we got this wonderful view of the Ponte Vecchio

Day 7: We had to say goodbye to Florence. 🙁

But, we rented a car, and drove down to the small town of Bucine [Boo-chee-nee]. We had coffee, and I discovered my love of lattes. We were one of the first people at the wonderful house, which had a giant pool. Then it started

The Week of Family

This entire week just sort of melted together. In total, our house [rather castle] had 20 people in it.

 

Thought the Week of Family we had a lot of time in the pool

 

We went on a ‘scenic adventure’. Also known as my dad seeing some sort of castle in the distance and trying to drive to it. We got to a small town… And took a picture in someone’s backyard.

It was a nice yard, to be fair.

On I think it was the second day, we found a bat on the ground! My cousin Orla insisted on keeping it alive. For size reference, the piece of fruit was maybe an inch and a half long

And…. I died my hair!

We also recreated a photo from thirteen years ago! It was really fun to see how everyone had changed

So, after a well of lounging around by the pool, it was time to move on. See you again in four years, family! 👋🏼

Day whatever number we’re on now: We left for Sorrento. No, not the car. The place in Italy, home of limoncello and black pasta. It was great! The first day we roamed around the shops mainly, and had a pizza dinner in a semi-fancy restaurant, wearing shorts and tee shirts. Let’s play find the tourists.

Day after the last one: We went on a boat cruise! It was really fun, seeing as I love being on boats. The boat itself was nice

And the driver was a fun guy. We went swimming twice, and my parents got dunked underneath this water fall that was supposed to bring good luck.

We stopped off in Positano, which was super hot. But we saw a chrurch with a set of stairs out of the Godfather

We got back on the boat, went swimming again, and then stopped off on the Amalfi Coast. It’s a beautiful place, really. We went into a shop that sold homemade paper, which was interesting

Then we went home

Day before the last day: This was probably the highlight of Sorrento for me. We went to Pompeii. For those of you know don’t know, Pompeii is a Roman city that was covered after a volcano exploded and killed everyone. Fun fact: the volcano let out no lava. What happened was the city was covered in gas which asphyxiated them all, and then they were covered in volcanic ask which solidified over time. A bit like Atlantis but on land. At-land-is…

Yeah that was bad. But we went there, and it was SO HOT. But it was interesting to learn about it. We actually got to see one of the bodies

The Last Day: We left our hotel 🙁 and went to Rome. It was a long ride, about three hours, but we passed the time

So we got to some, and got on one of the tours busses. We toured, it was fun, and we got off and had ice cream. By then it was about 4 pm already. We say Vatican City, though we couldn’t get inside because we didn’t have the proper wear. We had dinner, and took the train back to our hotel for a nice sleep before getting up at 6:00am to leave

And that was my trip! I think that’s one of the longest blog posts I’ve ever written…. Wow. But I hoped you enjoyed, if you made it this far. And, I look forward to writing to y’all this year!

Read Ya Later

Ruby

Hello! I’m returning with another SLC post! Because apparentally we need two. So, anyways, in this post I’ll be talking about:

One Thing I Am Proud Of

One Thing I Am Not Proud Of

My Reflection On My Work

Let’s do this.

I am most proud of:

My Shakespeare Play. Pretty much, if you didn’t hear about it from this post, what we had to do was take a scene or two from the play “The Tragedy Of Julius Ceasar” and then make it modern. We chose the scene where Brutus kills himself and then Antony and his men come along and stop the battle because they realized that the battle is causing too much blood shed and all that. It’s a really emotional part of the play, as it’s the final act.

So we made it modern. We made all of the characters rivalling gang members, and then made Brutus, who we named Bruce, jump off a building. It was really well done, and we had all of our lines memorized. But our actual Preformance was done first thing Monday morning as Sam hadn’t been there on the Friday. It was hard because we had limited space and Spencer forgot what to do. It would have been much easier to just have someone sub in as Sam on Friday when we were ready.

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I’m really proud of this because we worked hard on it, and I think if we had done the Preformance on the Friday it would have been one of the best ones there.

I am least proud of:

My science project. So, for this science project, we had to make a project that told the story of how Raven brought the light. Sounds easy enough, right?

Yeah. It was one of those moments. I had a nice plan to do a lamp shade with all the aspects of how Raven brought the light. It would have been really cool. Then we were informed that our project had to include:

• colour
• opacity
• translucency
• Transparency
• A prism
• a cylinder
• reflection
• refraction
• something about Ibn-al-haythem

Yay. That made my job a lot harder now. The final product of Thai wasn’t very good. I didn’t even take a picture I was so ashamed. It was pretty much a sad little tissue box painted black, with a glasses lense in one end with the silhouette of a raven, and then a few tinfoil stars. Not impressive one bit. I didn’t even have the written out description that we were supposed to have.

If I were doing that now, I probably would have prepared a bit better and maybe put a LOT more effort into it.

Reflection on my work

I think this year my work has been quite good. I could have worked a bit harder on a few things, like my worlview EE and my Science project. I think that looking into the future, maybe working a bit harder on assignments I didn’t want to do and handing my work in on time would be smart. I’m going to really try and work on that next year.

So, to sum it all up, this year has been a great year for me. I’m proud of most of my work, some not so much, and I’m going to try and work on doing my work better in the future by working on it more.

So that’s all folks! Thanks for reading this, and if I’m presenting this, thanks for being here. As always

Read ya later

Ruby

Blue Sky Projects. Pretty much, a project where you can do and make anything you want.

I was so excited to do this one. I had sticky notes all over my wall for ideas, and billions more in my head. Maybe something around Harry Potter? Maybe a stop motion? Maybe both! I was so pumped. And then…. The news came.

It had to be around a problem. My world crumbled. There went literally ALL OF MY IDEAS! I had to think of something completly new!

So I started to think of problems. I handed in my first one, which was about making a video about stereotypes. That was denied because it was a research project, not a design project. Denied

Then I decided to do a video explaining Tae Kwon Do. But that already existed. Denied.

Maybe a DIY SnapBack tutorial? Nope, not a big enough problem. Denied.

Come on, there has to be something. A video explaining how maybe some science fiction could be real? Making an iPad case? A quiz app? A new type of pop? NOTHING WORKED!

And then, it came to me. A nozzle to put on milk jugs to stop people drinking out of the carton. I was a genius! IT WAS FINALLY APPROVED!

But, here’s the downside. I had TWO WEEKS to pull it together! So, myself, being the procrastination queen, did the entire thing the night before. Okay, not the entire thing. But I made the video the night before.

That’s my project. It’s a nozzle made out of plastic and a bite valve [from a camel pac] which keeps milk fresh and you can drink out of the jug without getting a cup or being unhygienic. I really enjoyed doing this, and I look forward to next year, where we’ll be doing HARRY POTTER THEME

Well, that’s all folks!

Read ya later,

Ruby