Best Blogs of the Year

Swimming
To start out here’s a definition of swimming in my words. You could even call it a quote if you want to. “From the inside you can’t explain it, and from the outside you can’t understand it.” It’s a sport that you can’t just up and decide that one day you want to become a swimmer. You have to either grow up swimming, or it’s in your blood and soul.
There are multiple levels of swimming, starting out from the lowest/slowest level, Districts. It’s basically a meet that anybody can swim unless you’re too fast. The next level up is Junior Olympics where if you have these qualifying times then you can’t swim at districts. This is the level that average speed swimmers are at. After Junior Olympics comes states, the level that I’m at. This level is where fast swimmers are at and were most kids goals are. After states you get into the unreal territory which is Zones, Sectionals, and then Junior Nationals. My sister is a Sectional swimmer and my best friend Caroline is a Junior National swimmer. They are insane!
This weekend is the SMAC Last Chance meet, which is literally my last chance. If I don’t get the rest of my cuts this weekend then I’m going to have some problems. My parents have decided this year that if I don’t have four or more State Cuts then they won’t take me to states. I guess I can understand that mainly because they’re all the way in Grand Rapids which is two hours away. This weekend my goals are to get my cut in the 200 I.M., the 200 Back, and to go my time in the 100 Back. I haven’t gone my time in the 100 Back since November, at High School Conferences.
My coach Greg seems to think that I’m scared to swim and go all out because of my back, but that’s not it. I really don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out this weekend I guess. Maybe it’s my heart rate. I now know that if my heart rate isn’t high up before I swim then I probably won’t go that fast. Also my turns have been off, so I’ve spent the last week trying to perfect them, as well as my starts. The only thing I can do know is to visualize my races and focus. It’s not like I’ll be completely upset if I don’t go my time or get my cuts, but it would be really nice if I could.
www.uss-michigan.com


Just Relax
The wind was strong and the rain was cold; it was early spring. I was out on the beach with my friend, Christine. It’s funny how in Michigan the weather can change just like that. We had been kicking the soccer ball around when it started; the rain that is. For a second we just stood there bearing the wind and rain, then we started to run to my house. With our luck, the back door was locked so we ran quickly to the front door hoping it would be open, it was.
When we walked inside something didn’t feel quite right. It was my sister, the machine in her room that helps her breathe wasn’t running, and so we panicked. I sprinted up the stairs and down the long, dark, hallway to her room, where her door was wide open. When I looked inside everything seemed to be fine, she was in her bed sleeping and the music was softly playing from her ipod, but the machine wasn’t on. My sister has needed the machine to help her breathe ever since she got cancer, two years ago. I walked over to my sister and told Christine to turn the machine back on while I checked to make sure she was okay. The machine wouldn’t turn on and neither would the lights, so we figured the wind had knocked out the power
The opening of the garage door woke her up like it always did. My sister looked forward to my mom coming home from work everyday, even though most of the time she didn’t talked to her. I think she just liked knowing that my mom was there and she was safe. My dad wasn’t too good at comforting her when she didn’t feel good, or she was having a bad day, he was a lawyer and so he worked late most of the time so she didn’t see him much.
Christine and I went to the kitchen to let my mom know what had happened. At first my mom freaked out and got mad at us like it was our fault that the power had been knocked out from the wind; then she calmed down and went to make sure that Steph was okay, which she was.
After the whole freakish ordeal Christine decided to try and walk home – she failed miserably. No less then five minutes later, she came back in, soaking wet. It was actually kind of funny. When we sat down on the couch we realized some things. One, this had been the worst Saturday ever, Two, my sister was getting better and three, my dad should really think about getting a generator.

News

Thesis: I agree that North Korea should have international consequences for its actions.

Considering what goes on between S. Korea and N. Korea I think that the situation should have international consequences for sinking the ship. N. Korea wanted to keep the situation “business as usual” but they cannot do that anymore, mainly because it killed 46 innocent S. Korean sailors. If this goes on without anyone doing anything N. Korea is just going to think that they can do anything because no one punishes them. That would not be good because of all the nuclear weapons that they do have. Now all the countries have to do is to get China on board the plan so that it can go into action.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37269656/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

FREE WRITE!

Well, today the weather is horrid and cold. I can hear the rain that is pouring down on the school. I only like rain if it is a thunderstorm and I’m not at school. Other than that, the rain is very depressing.

I am also listening to my Ipod. Fuego is playing right now and it is one of my favorite songs. I really don’t know why it is because part of it is in Spanish and I have no idea what they are saying.

Now that I am finally warm, the air decided to turn back on, Sarah and I sit right by the blower so we are getting the full effect of it. Now that I am on the topic of being cold, I feel like stating that I am very glad that winter is over. It felt like it was never going to end because it was so cold and it was always cloudy. They just seem to get longer and longer as I get older, which I think I because I don’t do as much outside because I don’t go sledding anymore.

I also just realized how sore I really am from swimming, I can hardly move my legs and it hurts to move my neck because the muscles are so sore. The only reason why their sore is because I took this last month off to take Drivers Ed. So I haven’t been in the water. Now that I am, I feel like I’m going to die at practice because I’m so out of shape. We also do dry-land during swim practice, that’s probably the main cause for me being so incredibly sore. That’s the one thing I hate about taking time off from swimming, is getting back in shape because it requires so much effort and sometimes I just don’t feel like giving that much.

Now, I don’t know why I thought of this but my sister is going to prom and she tell’s my mom at the last minute that she needs to know what color dress she needs. She’s not the smartest person and she needs to know because her date is going to get his tux this weekend so he needs to know what color tie he should get. That’s why tonight my sister and I are going to go shopping to see if we can find one, so that should be fun. I’d much rather shop with my sister then my mom because my mom is very picky about what we get and my sister doesn’t really care. I hope that we can find a good dress with such a short amount of time.

http://www.weather.com/

SIMUN's Final Thoughts

My first thoughts of SIMUN were that it was going to be really hard and it was going to be challenging because the research that we had to do was hard. Well, that was before we started SIMUN, my thoughts changed on the first day of SIMUN when we were actually in the room. I was in Mr. Goble’s room so it was a different environment which made the experience even better. When I first started it still was a little challenging but by the second day it was better because I felt more comfortable. All in all it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t super exciting or anything.

I was quite proud of myself after SIMUN and I thought that I did a pretty good job for being a freshman. I tried my best to ask questions a lot, but sometimes that was hard because someone would always get called on before me with the same question. I also tried even harder to give speeches about my position and what not. In that area, I thought that I did really well because I’m not the greatest at talking like that and now I feel a lot more comfortable talking in groups of people. Maybe next year I will think that I did even better because of the experience that I had this year.

I prepared in a multitude of ways, one was by researching a lot on the computer. BY doing this it helped me get a lot of old news that had to do with my situation or my county. AT first it was kind of hard good sources on the internet but then after about an hour I knew which ones were good and which ones were not so good. The second way that I prepared for SIMUN was by asking my friends that knew more about the subject what I should know or what I should research. There was only one of the situations that I got that I had a hard time involving myself due to not knowing enough information on it but I felt that I did a decent job on preparing.

There are a number of things that I will do next year to prepare and that is by one, taking it more seriously in the beginning. The second thing is, trying harder on looking for good information which I didn’t do too much of this year. Then finally the third thing is to not procrastinate for so long because when I found out about the extended due date for some of the questions I again continued to wait till Monday night. I feel that if I actually do these things next year it will be a lot easier for me to give speeches and maybe come up with questions faster so that nobody takes mine like people did this year. The last thing I want to say is that I’m looking forward to SIMUN next year.

Pakistan

I agree that the United States Pakistan should secure nuclear weapons from the taliban. I think this because if the Taliban gets ahold of the weapons then that would be very bad for most of the Middle Eastern Countires. It would be bad because then they could start a war with say Iran, and they have nuclear materials in their country. This would elad to the Taliban getting more weapons which in turn could lead to a third world war.

If we secure the weapons from the Taliban then we are in a way saving the world from disaster. If the Taliban got the weapons and decided to go to war with one of the Middle Eastern countries then they could get more people to be on their side. If they got more people on their side, their is more of a chance that one of those people could plan to try and take out the Pentagon again and if they would suceed at that, then our country would be in touble too.

If the United States goes with Pakistan and secures the weapons from the Taliban, nothing bad could comd of it. Think about it. What's so bad about secureing the weapons? It would only help the world stay a safer place. Now I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, if the Taliban got ahold of Nuclear weapons then the whole world would be in toruble,except for maybe Australia, they don't seem to have anything to do with what goes on.

The Cage freewrite blog

The Cage is a book that focuses on the Holocaust and what happened to a young girl and her four brothers. The book so far has done a great job on explaining the Jewish culture, and the holocaust. I have been thinking of a thesis while I have been reading and so far I have not come up with one yet. The problem that I have been having with the thesis is that the book talks a little too much about the holocaust compared to the Jewish culture and way of life. I have gathered a list of facts about the culture but it is not very long yet, it has about seven to eight facts.

One of them is that they have much larger families then we do in the United States of America. Most of the families consist of five to eight people and they are very close to each other. Another fact about their culture is that they value education and religion just like us, but they value religion a lot. In the United States of America we probably wouldn’t risk our lives to get an education like they did in Poland during that time period. What I have concluded from my reading so far is that they truly value their Jewish culture, enough to even die for it.

Reading the book The Cage has taught me a lot so far about the Jewish culture and the culture of Poland. A cultural fact that I have learned about Poland is that the majority of the people live in apartments versus living in houses like we do in the United States of America. I really hope that later in my book I will come up with a thesis because right now I have no idea what one could be, and I also hope that I learn more about the culture of Poland and the Jewish people.

Heroes save the day; heroes save your lives; heroes put your lives before theirs. They don’t kill their men and cheat on their wives. Is Batman a hero? Did he cheat on his wife? Is Superman a hero? Did he kill his friends? It’s those bad qualities that Batman and Superman didn’t poses that made them heroes unlike Odysseus’ selfish qualities. He wasn’t a hero, though he did heroic things; he wasn’t a hero because of all the stupid things that he did. Just like cheating on his wife. Would a hero really do that?

Cheating seems to be an occurring problem with Odysseus in The Odyssey. When Odysseus goes to see Circe to get his crew members to be changed back into human form he runs into a problem. When he climbs up to see her she says “the only way I’ll turn your soldiers back to men, is if you take me to bed.” I’m sure that if Odysseus tried, he might have been able to persuade her to just turn them back, which is what a hero would’ve done. What made this so wrong is he didn’t even try, he just got up and did it. The later in the movie Odysseus and his men get caught in a horrible storm and he looses all of his men. When Odysseus finally reaches land he comes to Calypso’s island; which happens to be an island of all women. When he first arrives calypso is there to greet him but after he asks her for a ship she says, “No one comes or goes from our island. You are home now.” After all that, Odysseus probably thought that it was true so he just let himself sleep with Calypso. A hero wouldn’t have done that, he would of never gave hope; built his own ship; and get off the island. Then not only did he cheat he did something worse than what a hero would do; he killed his whole entire crew.

When Odysseus finds the cave of the Cyclopes with his men, instead of just going in and getting food or what not, he wants to see it so they wait there until he comes. That was a stupid idea; when the Cyclops finally gets to his cave he says “our father is the mighty god Poseidon.” This should have been a warning that he is not going to help him since Poseidon is mad at Odysseus. Instead they stay and don’t try to escape; leaving the Cyclops to eat his men for food. Later in the movie after they get away from the Cyclops; they come to a cave full of monsters, and at the end of a cave there was a waterfall and instead of Odysseus being brave and telling his crew to go back, they keep going and all of his men fall and die. This is not heroic at all because heroes are brave; unlike Odysseus was.

The wind was strong and the rain was cold; it was early spring. I was out on the beach with my friend, Christine. It’s funny how in Michigan the weather can change just like that. We had been kicking the soccer ball around when it started; the rain that is. For a second we just stood there bearing the wind and rain, then we started to run to my house. With our luck, the back door was locked so we ran quickly to the front door hoping it would be open, it was.

When we walked inside something didn’t feel quite right. It was my sister, the machine in her room that helps her breathe wasn’t running, and so we panicked. I sprinted up the stairs and down the long, dark, hallway to her room, where her door was wide open. When I looked inside everything seemed to be fine, she was in her bed sleeping and the music was softly playing from her ipod, but the machine wasn’t on. My sister has needed the machine to help her breathe ever since she got cancer, two years ago. I walked over to my sister and told Christine to turn the machine back on while I checked to make sure she was okay. The machine wouldn’t turn on and neither would the lights, so we figured the wind had knocked out the power

The opening of the garage door woke her up like it always did. My sister looked forward to my mom coming home from work everyday, even though most of the time she didn’t talked to her. I think she just liked knowing that my mom was there and she was safe. My dad wasn’t too good at comforting her when she didn’t feel good, or she was having a bad day, he was a lawyer and so he worked late most of the time so she didn’t see him much.

Christine and I went to the kitchen to let my mom know what had happened. At first my mom freaked out and got mad at us like it was our fault that the power had been knocked out from the wind; then she calmed down and went to make sure that Steph was okay, which she was.

After the whole freakish ordeal Christine decided to try and walk home – she failed miserably. No less then five minutes later, she came back in, soaking wet. It was actually kind of funny. When we sat down on the couch we realized some things. One, this had been the worst Saturday ever, Two, my sister was getting better and three, my dad should really think about getting a generator.

Big fish blog

Shaelyn Dolinski
Hr.4

A Closet Surprise

“Let’s play Hide and Go Seek”, is what started the adventure. It was my cousin Hanna who came up with the idea. We always got really bored at Family get tog ether’s, but this time would be different. My cousin Steve tried to get us to do something else because he thought that Hide and Go Seek was boring, but Hanna and I were only eight, and Steve was only ten. Since Steve was letting us play Hide and Go Seek, we had to get all the kids together. All six of them, including us. After we gathered up all of the cousins, Kaylee, Steve, Hanna, Nikki, Dominic, and I. We all went up the stairs and into the guest bedroom where we would decide who was going to have to come find us. It ended up being Dominic, the youngest of course, and at only age seven he got really upset and said that he wasn’t going to play, but Nikki, being the oldest got him to calm down and just do it.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5…” That was our cue to start looking for a good hiding place, which wouldn’t be too hard, my grandma’s house had tons of great spots. Hanna and I decided we would try to find a spot in my grandma’s bedroom which was bigger then my house. I came up with the idea of hiding in the closet so Hanna followed me. When we first walked in it just looked like a normal size closet. Then all of a sudden the closet turned into a huge shopping mall filled with elderly women’s clothing. We ran into sears and looked for the dressing rooms so we could hide in one of them. Then we heard Dominic on the loud speaker saying “ready or not here I come.” So we ran into the nearest one. Then we thought we heard something so we quickly ran out of the store and into the main part of the mall.

We hid behind the water fountain shaped as a whale. It was so huge that it had to be the same size as a literal whale. The water that was spewing out was like a huge wave crashing into the ocean every time it landed it the bottom. Then all of a sudden we saw Dominic coming so we sprinted away to keep from being found. We were running faster than a Cheetah chasing its pray.

We finally found a great spot to hide behind the shoe rack which stood taller then a skyscraper and wider then the biggest boat you’ve ever seen. Then we decided we didn’t fit so we tried to find somewhere else to hide outside of the closet, in the bathroom. We just couldn’t let Dominic see us. When we ran out of the closet we passed Nikki and Kaylee sitting on the ground who told us Dominic had found them and He was in the spare bedroom looking for Steve. That’s when we heard a loud crash come from the spare bedroom and my grandma come up the stairs looking as mad as a Wolverine who just lost it’s prey. Then we saw Steve coming out of the bedroom laughing harder than a Hienah, but when he saw my grandma’s face he stopped and looked really scared.

I guess what happened was Steve thought that it would be funny to hide and then push Dominic when he got in the room. Well it clearly worked, but the only one laughing was him. It turns out when he pushed Dominic into the nightstand, which had a glass light and a fancy alarm clock that must have belonged to the Queen of England. They both shattered into a million tiny pieces when they hit the hardwood floor. It took Grandma twenty minutes to get it all cleaned up. Steve was also grounded. All in All it was a fun time, but Steve never wanted to play Hide and Seek with Dominic ever again.

Free Write Blog

Swimming

To start out here’s a definition of swimming in my words. You could even call it a quote if you want to. “From the inside you can’t explain it, and from the outside you can’t understand it.” It’s a sport that you can’t just up and decide that one day you want to become a swimmer. You have to either grow up swimming, or it’s in your blood and soul.

There are multiple levels of swimming, starting out from the lowest/slowest level, Districts. It’s basically a meet that anybody can swim unless you’re too fast. The next level up is Junior Olympics where if you have these qualifying times then you can’t swim at districts. This is the level that average speed swimmers are at. After Junior Olympics comes states, the level that I’m at. This level is where fast swimmers are at and were most kids goals are. After states you get into the unreal territory which is Zones, Sectionals, and then Junior Nationals. My sister is a Sectional swimmer and my best friend Caroline is a Junior National swimmer. They are insane!

This weekend is the SMAC Last Chance meet, which is literally my last chance. If I don’t get the rest of my cuts this weekend then I’m going to have some problems. My parents have decided this year that if I don’t have four or more State Cuts then they won’t take me to states. I guess I can understand that mainly because they’re all the way in Grand Rapids which is two hours away. This weekend my goals are to get my cut in the 200 I.M., the 200 Back, and to go my time in the 100 Back. I haven’t gone my time in the 100 Back since November, at High School Conferences.

My coach, Greg, seems to think that I’m scared to swim and go all out because of my back, but that’s not it. I really don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out this weekend I guess. Maybe it’s my heart rate. I now know that if my heart rate isn’t high up before I swim then I probably won’t go that fast. Also my turns have been off, so I’ve spent the last week trying to perfect them, as well as my starts. The only thing I can do know is to visualize my races and focus. It’s not like I’ll be completely upset if I don’t go my time or get my cuts, but it would be really nice if I could.

http://www.uss-michigan.com/

The Chinese should raise their currency value.

Believe the Chinese should raise their currency value and make it accurate. If they did that then it would help their economy by getting them more money from what they sell. According the New York Times, the United States thinks that they are just doing this as a show of confidence. It’s a show of confidence for them because their basically saying that with their not so good economy can still run with a lowered currency. What their doing is not a good thing because if their economy gets really bad all of a sudden then no one is going to try to help them. Their currency also won’t be worth enough to save themselves.

The Chinese should also raise their currency value because it will allow them to get more money from us. Our money would therefore be worth more if they increase the value of their currency. We just need to get them to do it in a polite manner because what were doing now is just making them not want to raise the value even more. For example selling the arms to Taiwan, that isn’t going to help China and their decision it’s just going to get them more upset with us.

Some people may argue that all were doing is making China mad. They may say that the only reason why were doing this is so that they will put up sanctions with Iraq. That’s not true by getting China to raise their currency value it will help the world because then everyone’s currency will be accurate and your getting what you paid for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/asia/05diplo.html?ref=asia

The Power of One

My reaction to the film was that I thought that they did a great job of showing what life is like there. Also I felt shocked by what they do to the poor African's who have done nothing wrong. The parts that to me were difficult to see was when the main character, Peekay, was at the school and all of the kids hated him and they killed his chicken. The parts that were inspiring for me to see are when Doc told the officer what they were singing at the jail right before he was beat to death. The part was both difficult to see because he was being beat to death and inspiring because it showed me that you should be able to stick up for yourself and to speak the truth. Anther part that was inspiring for me to see was when Peekay was fighting with the black kid and Peekay beat him but the guy took it quite well and he made Peekay seem like a hero to the people of his town. This film was a lot like Hotel Rwanda because they were both about the mistreatment of other types of people. It was also like Hotel Rwanda because there's a hero in both of the films and they are both just regular everyday people. That's part of why I liked it so much because it is realistic and it definitely can happen. It is also like Hotel Rwanda because in both movies one person helps thousands of other people by doing simple things.

The Holiday Season

For the holiday of Christmas my mom my sister and I have a tradition of watching cheesy Christmas movies on lifetime when we go to Ohio. Normally my grandma doesn't join us and she goes on the computer and plays euchre, but this year she joined us and we had a great time. Another tradition for Christmas would be going to Christmas Eve mass every year. We always go to the five o'clock mass and then after we go home and eat a home cooked meal, which usually is backed chicken or turkey. I'm not a huge fan of backed chicken which is what we had this year, but it's not bad. Another tradition that I have with my family around this time of year is on New Year's Eve we always go over to my friend Katie's house and our parent's play cards while we go in the basement and watch movies. Then we come upstairs and watch the ball drop. That’s been our tradition for a long time but this year we didn't do it. Instead I had my friend Ashley over to spend the night while my parents went next door for a party. Katie went out to eat with her parents then they went to the movies. I guess you can say that tradition is no more. My family has never been big on traditions we just usually go with the flow and do what we have time for but the few that we are special to me.

Happy New Year

I brought in the New Year by playing game cube with my friend Ashley. We meant to watch the ball drop but we got really into our game so that when we looked at our phones to check the time it was two after twelve. It was actually kind of funny. Before we had started to play GameCube though, we watched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. The great events that happened to me in 2009 were when I got to stop wearing my back brace three months after my surgery. I think that that's a great event because it was a sign that I was getting better and moving on. Another great event that happened to me in 2009 was when I got to go to high school swimming states. That was a great experience even though I got last. It was a great event because I didn't think that I could do it. I am happy to leave behind is the recovery from my surgery because it was so painful. The things that I'm looking forward to in 2010 are going to my USS state meet in Grand Rapids in March. I'm also looking forward to summer which means going to Myrtle Beach with part of my family. Which are my aunt and uncle, my cousin and his three year old son. I'm mainly looking forward to that because I love the beach and there's so much to do there. I don't have any New Year resolutions, I never have any because most of the time if I make one I won't follow or do it.