A book review... I guess?

For the last couple years, I haven't read much, due to figuring out how computer work (which didn't happen until about 7th or 8th grade). But lately, I've picked up the habit again.

My books from amazon came yesterday, and already I've read all of Looking for Alaska by John Green. Sadly enough, I never would have heard of this book had I watched less youtube. Finally, youtube gave me something other than a place to go to procrastinate from homework. It gave me a book to read to procrastinating from homework. Hence why I just started my commentary for "Pied Beauty" today instead of a week ago like I should have.


Back on topic. So, this book is about a teenage guy, Miles, who goes to boarding school because he feels his life is immensely boring, and he wants to go find "The Great Perhaps" . He has an obsession with famous people's last words, and if I say much more I'd be giving away the plot.

I've learned enough about myself at this point in time that it bothers me when people make things flowery, claiming it to be realistic, etc. If somebody is going to write realistic fiction, then make it realistic! This book definitely was pretty good in that aspect.

I liked this book because it had substance. It was one of the best books meant for teens that I've read in a long time. There were no vampires, or popularity. It was about stuff that could happen, it made me think about things that actually are relevant to most teenagers. It's a weird mixture of stuff that teenagers usually go through and poetry, last words, religion, etc, but it somehow worked together to make a really good story. I would definitely suggest it to teenagers who like reading, as in there are some aspects of it that are 'mature', like drinking, smoking, about two 'more sensitive' scenes in it. There are some high schools that read it as part of their curriculum, though, so it really isn't that bad. It's not a main theme of the novel.

Sorry about being so vague, I just don't want to give away the story to people who want to read it. But it's really good, has a really good message, and I read all 221 pages of it in a day and a bit.

On to other things. Since I seem to have been focusing on negative things lately, I want to make a list of good things that happened in the last week:

• I had a lot less trouble with a French test than I thought I would.
• Halloween tonight! I'm dressing up as a garden gnome. Pics coming later this week.
• I'm collecting food for the food bank instead of trick-or-treating, because last year I barely ate any of my candy. 
• Katie has a boyfriend of whom I thoroughly approve.  
• I've had time to read due to the long weekend.
• I finished my commentary last night, I wrote this post over yesterday afternoon and today. 
• I watched Dirty Dancing (the main character's name is Baby. Que Justin Beiber references) and The Lion King with Katie squared and Sam, who I hadn't hung out with for a while. 
• I have nice warm mittens for the oncoming winter. 

Love,
-J-

Thoughts that come when I catch up to myself.

 When it comes to where to go on vacation, me and my family have differing opinions. My mom is a fan of scenery... but living in New Brunswick, I had enough scenery at the age of five to last me a lifetime. I view scenery slightly like I view "The Sound of Music": good about every five years, but not something I go out of my way for. In my life, there is simply too much scenery for me to actually appreciate it. I prefer cities, by far. Living in a small city (population: 80 000, including surrounding areas) for the majority of my life, I've always seen pictures of bigger, better places, where notable things actually happen, and I've been fascinated by them. I still am fascinated by them.

I went to Kenya when I was six to visit my grandparents for a month, when they worked at RVA, where my parents later went to work four years later. Going to and from Kenya, I passed through the Toronto, Amsterdam, and London (Heathrow) airports. I didn't actually go out of the airports, except in Toronto, due to an unfortunate thunderstorm and another plane crashing (everyone survived). I had been to Toronto before, but it was nothing new. I just saw it as Toronto, a city with little personality in my experience, and it never really occurred to me that I could actually go to other cities. In the Amsterdam and London airports, I looked out the windows, heard different accents, and saw pictures of the cities the airports belonged to. I was definitely interested in them, but because the rest of my family isn't too big on cities, I saw them as completely out of my reach.

On the way back from Kenya in 2007, my parents decided to stop in Amsterdam on the way back. This was an ignorant decision, on our part. I think my mom forgot how much big cities and crowds terrified her, not to mention that this was Amsterdam. Coming from a Christian boarding school in rural Africa to Amsterdam was definitely not the best vacation we've ever had. We didn't know what to do in Amsterdam, we were in transition, and Amsterdam is one crazy city. Now that I've been to high school in Canada, I think I could handle it. But then, I could not. And neither could my family. It was not a good time.

I probably would have enjoyed it more, had it not been for my mom's constant complaining and her general uncomfortableness. She also tends to become obsessive away from her comfort zone, and repeats things over and over again. This made us rather irritable.

This summer in London, the same thing kind of happened, but it was way more enjoyable than Amsterdam. It was at the tail end of our trip, and we were slightly disoriented after traveling for so long. I had a good time, though. I'm just getting to an age where traveling with parents is more of a pain than anything else. I saw Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and all sorts of other places that I've heard of but have basically thought of as fairy tales. I enjoy the chaos of the city. I like that the city goes on for blocks and blocks and blocks, as opposed to here, where there's about five streets I find interesting in the entire city. And I love the underground. Someday, I need to live in a city with an underground or a subway. I find that in big cities, there's always something new to discover, and I feel that my city has nothing that should keep me here for the rest of my life. I want to go see the world.

But unfortunately, I'm fifteen. I have two and a half years left of high school. I have so much to do before I can choose what I do, instead of what is required of me. I feel sort of stuck with limited options of what I can do. Level 1 or IB classes? To join choir or not to join choir? Do I wear the blue shirt or black shirt?

Traveling makes me feel like I'm doing something with my time. Realizing that there's more than what I've lived around my entire life, and that there's so much more to see.

Does this come with being young? Does it wear off with time, or are some people just stuck with the desire to see the world? Or maybe a mixture? 
With deeper thoughts than usual,
-J-

I need some hobbies, other than avoiding homework.

I'm currently doing something I do far too often... listening to Cher and Family Force 5 while procrastinating from homework. BLARG TO YOU HOMEWORK! Blogging is so much more appealing that studying for a French test. A hard French test.

On that note: I'm starting to like Pride and Prejudice. Of course, this took until about the 40th chapter, and  I broke down and watched part of the movie to get things straightened out. Strangely enough, I went for a day of two where I was thinking of the characters from the book as my friends. It was so weird.

I have some books coming from amazon in a few days. I'm so happy, because I haven't read much (for leisure) lately. I'm getting the second book in The Hunger Games series. I borrowed the first one from Katie and really liked it, in a weird sort of twisted way. Considering it's based on the idea of 24 randomly selected teenagers killing each other on reality TV in post-apocalyptic North America , it has to be twisted.

Song of the day: Vertigo- U2
Love,
-J-

"My train of thought derailed, but it just keeps crawling along anyway."

I totally haven't posted for two weeks. I blame homework.

Yesterday, I went to go see Marco Polo the musical, a local production of epic proportion. At one time, there was an entire choir, a quite large orchestra, background actors, leading actors, and occasionally interpretive dancers on the stage. It was surprisingly good. My school was giving away free tickets at the office, so I figured I may as well go, and Katie is holding me accountable for making her go. We had seats right in the middle of the third row on the floor, so we conveniently arrived two minutes after everything started. We stepped on several toes and irritated a large number of people. I spent a whole lot of time after that pondering whether the side burns and mutton chops on the actors were fake. I came to the conclusion that yes, they were.

 Lately, my hatred of being the third wheel has grown. Immensely. It's not something I have to put up with every once in a while, it seems like it's every bloody day. Meh.

The biggest stoner in my class last year showed up at Sunday school today. I was pretty thrown off by that. I can't say I've come up with a conclusion of why he was there, yet. 

I've been told on several occasions that I would make a good gargoyle. Possible career path? I think so.

May this piece of carrot cake brighten your day. And this song: Don't Unplug Me- All Caps. Oh, how I love youtube.
Love,
-J-

P.S.- As my hair is no longer blond, I feel that my blog title needs an alteration. Any ideas?
 

My brother knows almost as much of "The Sound of Music" soundtrack as me. I love road trips.

I'm chilling at my grandparents house after a day full of eating and visiting my other grandparents. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter we do a sort of loop from my grandparents' house, my mom's parents, then Aunt Kathy etc. Today was visiting my mom's parents, slightly stressful and awkward for everyone, but now over. We're at my grandparents' now, here for tomorrow and going to their church tomorrow(awkward for me because being a missionary kid means that everybody knows me, but I don't know them). Monday we visit Aunt Kathy in her disastrous, incredibly laid back house . A nice change after my mom's parents' today with their sanitized, take your shoes off at the door or else houses.

Pride and Prejudice awaits me, as usual. Since it's 10:30pm, the only time this house is silent when we're here, I should go for it.

I love Mario cart, but I really suck at it.
-J-

Know why Canada is awesome? Because we have thanksgiving in October. I <3 five day weekends.

Nothing really interesting has happened lately. I think I'm going to have a musical-athon this weekend with Katie squared and possible Sam. Definitely watching The Sound of Music. I kind of wonder if we're going to have time for any other awesome musicals after that.

Anybody listen to any good music lately? I have 1321 songs in my itunes library, and somehow I'm bored of the majority of them. I seem to have hit the point in time where I have downloaded all the songs that I kept reminding myself to get. No good music has come out lately because the music market has been taken over by electronic crap about stuff I don't feel like disgracing my ears with.

I was told that I was normal today while singing Bohemian Rhapsody while Sam did an interpretive dance. That's what I get for hanging out at the stairs.
-J-

I was doing homework a few minutes ago, and I decided I wanted pancakes. I love weekends, because I actually have time to go and spontaneously make a pancake.

I also decided that I like my glasses, for no apparent reason, other than I can see without going to the effort of putting in contacts. They go nicely with my purple hair(which I re-dyed today with hopes that it won't wash out this time). 

I need something to do with my time. I do believe I'm going insane. *hits head off wall*. For one thing, I need to stop procrastinating.

I need sleep. Hopefully have a more eventful day tomorrow. I blame Pride and Prejudice for ruining my social life.

Also, I'm, getting my hair cut sometime this week. Should I get straight across bangs again like I had last year?

*ponders*. Please, I don't know what I want to do, so I want your opinion! Should I keep the side bang, or get them cut?
-J-

Finally... weekend. School is so exhausting, but I think that I've gotten over the hump of not knowing what on earth is going on. All of the sudden in the last few days, everything is starting to make sense. Hopefully this lasts, because it seems like so far, if I seem to be catching up with my work load, more stuff suddenly comes out of nowhere.

School has taken up so much of my time lately that I've gone out of the house about two times in the last week, except for school. I went to the mall on Monday for the heck of it (I saw toenail clippings on the city bus for the second time a month), and I went to youth group on Wednesday (also on the city bus... I make a wrong turn from the bus stop, and ended up three blocks in the wrong direction).

Best/ worst song ever: Vengaboys- We like to party. Katie and Allan have been singing since Wednesday.

The power went out on Wednesday at school, and my social studies class sat in a big circle in the middle of the room and played would you rather. It just kept getting worse as the game went on. I'm not totally sure that I'll ever fully recover from the terribleness of it.

There was a funny moment in French class when the teacher noticed one kid wasn't playing attention, so she stared at him. He noticed this and picked up his textbook and flipped to a page. He didn't notice that it was upside down, but the teacher did and found it necessary to mention it to the class afterward. It was great.

I was walking in the science wing today and heard somebody say,"Hey, does anyone want to play 'Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock?" The Big Bang Theory references FTW.
-J-