Circles and Triangles

     Circles and Triangles are shapes that may or may not be your favorite. An isosceles triangle is my favorite, I can't remember why.
      Circles are often said to represent forever. "A circle is round it has no end. That's how long I want to be your friend!" One could take this as an unstoppable feeling like love after all wedding rings are round. Circles can get you places, they roll and we put them on cars and trains to move and do and see. Circles can be playthings, you can make snow balls and snow men and if you try to draw those things odds are you draw a circle, you sit in a circle to play Duck, Duck Goose and you hold hands in a circle to play Ring Around The Rosie.
     Triangles are strong shapes. Triangles are used in construction. You can also use triangles to get places, just use them as a sail for a boat or a glider. There are triangle games too! The peg game you find at the Cracker Barrel on the tables.
     Both shapes could also be negative. Circles are found on steam rollers that crush things. Love TRIANGLES like in "Twilight". Triangles are also wedges that can split things apart. Does that make any of these shapes good or bad? You decide.

Halogen bulbs

     Yesterday in World History I was going ON AND ON about how someday I might own my own tulip field. I find tulip fields beautiful and have only heard of them because of my World History class when there was a bit in the book about tulipmania.
      The teacher asked me yesterday if I would plant any halogen bulbs in my tulip field and I told him that I was unfamiliar with that type. This teacher is very funny and often jokes and I can usually tell when he is. I thought his joke this time was a different type of flower bulb so I went home and Googled "halogen bulbs" and found out that they are light bulbs.
     Today I went into his room early this morning and told him about my findings and he cracked up. In class I picked on my self and gave others permission to do so as well. I deserved it for a change because I often confuse people so I am not upset but amused.

My alphabet and word game

     Today in Biology I had to give an answer so I said "A as in Argentina." this statement received strange looks from my classmates because everyone is so used to "A as in Apple." Argentina was the very first thing that popped into my head and I'm feeling silly enough today to make an alphabet of the first things that pop into my head. The first row is the first thing that pops into my head that starts with that letter the second row is the first thing that pops into my head when I think of that word the third row is my one word thought on my one word thought (my thoughts on these things change all the time so this will be in accurate as soon as I move onto the next word probably).

A is for Argentina                    Spanish                                  language                           
B is for brown                          pudding                                  lemon
C is for chocolate                     Belgium                                  culture
D is for dog                              fetch                                        play
E is for eggs                             chicken                                    eat
F is for fire                               camp                                        ground
G is for grand                           hotel                                       lobby
H is for hospital                       sick                                         day
I is for ice cream                      CAKE!                                    frosting
J is for joy                               love                                           family
K is for Knit                            lion hat                                      fun
L is for lion                              Gryffindor                                 wins
M is for magic                         muggle                                       exasperation
N is for nargles                        Luna                                            moon
O is for open mind                  culture                                          food
P is for pain                           poppies                                           field
Q is for quasar                       space                                              planet
R is for ridiculous                 absurd                                            Snape
S is for slime                         sock                                                 elf
T is for time                          waste                                               rubbish
U is for umbrella                   bird                                                chirp
V is for vulture                      dead                                               cat
W is for whale                       Eaaooooeeeee (whale noise)         Dory
X is for xylophone                man                                                office
Y is for yell                           megaphone                                   air plane
Z is for zipper                        pants                                            feet


What do you think of when you think of the alphabet and then words? Do you also change your thoughts on the words and letters?

     

Language

     I was sitting in Chinese class the other day and decided to entertain myself by taking apart my pen and watching how the ink moved as I tipped the pen back and forth. As I stared at the liquid that would one day end up on paper as characters representing sounds and ideas I realized that the majority of what I was experiencing then was made by humans. The flags representing areas claimed BY HUMANS, the language FOR HUMANS, the lesson I was sitting through was entirely based on HUMAN discoveries. Later I took a walk and noticed a robin with a broken wing and thought about how it would not receive any medical attention but if it were a human it would get every bit of attention it would ask for.
    On my walk I was thinking about my explanation on an essay. In this essay I went a bit off topic and went on and on about how babies acquire language. Babies make sounds found in every language but after a while the people around the baby will encourage the sounds they recognize as part of their own language. Soon the baby will forget all the other sounds it used to produce and be able to string the encouraged sounds together into words and then sentences.
     What are letters? I think letters are just characters that represent sounds that we string together into words. What are words? Words (to me) are just things to string together to communicate an idea and try to make other people understand. Sentences? More complex ways of stringing together our words. Grammar? Ways to regulate how we form those sentences. Punctuation? Those are just ways to show the pauses we make and show the emotion we usually communicate through our facial expressions and other body languages. What about those languages that use entire characters to represent words? Just another way to communicate the same idea.
     Why should it matter if the word "moon" looks like "maan" or like 月? It all is the same thing just different ways of showing it. How sad is it that we discourage future polyglots at first? We discourage learning another language (most of the time) until the child learns a language we recognize and then later in life we tell the child that becoming multilingual is an important part of becoming a world citizen.
     Young children are able to learn languages much more easily than adults or even some of my peers (maybe among my peers its a lack of effort to learn). I believe that we should encourage young children to learn different languages so that we can better the world and their future.
     Also we are so intolerant of people who are different than us. Who cares if you believe a different religion or speak a different language? It shouldn't matter what color skin or hair you have, what color eyes you have or the way your teeth look. Why does it matter if you are different? Being different is what makes everyone important! We all bring something special to this world and we should celebrate that. We should celebrate ourselves and others, we need to try new things and love the world's humans for who they are.
     I celebrate myself by not letting anyone change me into something I don't want to be or know I'm not. I celebrate others by not trying to push my ideas or beliefs onto them and letting them be their own person.
    How do you celebrate yourself? Let me know in the comments.  

Royal Mail Steamer Titanic

     102 years ago today at 2:20 in the morning the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic disappeared into the cold waters of the north Atlantic. She took with her 1,500 lives of men, women and children. She was sunk by colliding with an iceberg. Titanic was ordered to "hard a starboard" causing her to cut a large gash in her side, popping many rivets and taking on water quickly the water tight doors were ordered shut. The gash was much to long and too many compartments were flooded.
      People on the ship didn't know what was happening until the name "Titanic" on the bow was toughing the surface of the freezing water. There was only enough room on lifeboats for half of her passengers. Most life boats left half filled because people thought the ship was "unsinkable".
     Margret Tobin Brown was on lifeboat number 6 and threatened to throw quarter master Hitchens over board! Hitchens refused to turn back to find people still living saying they would only find "stiffs" and that was part of what upset Margret Tobin Brown so much.
    

COMIC BOOKS!

     Belgium is home to more comic books than anywhere else! You may even be familiar with some of the characters that live in those comics. I am not overly familiar with most of the comics out of Belgium so I will focus on two.
     Who doesn't know what a Smurf is? These little blue critters were created by Peyo. Smurfs live in a village made of mushrooms. Popular Smurfs seem to be Papa Smurf, Smurfette and Brainy Smurf. Most Smurfs are named after their personality and love parties and cakes.
        Tintin is my personal favorite. Tintin was created by Hergé and first published on January 10, 1929. Tintin is a reporter who is rumored to be about my age. Tintin has a wire fox terrier named Snowy who tags along on all of Tintin's adventures. Tintin is very curious and smart. Some of Tintin's other friends include a sea captain: Captain Haddock, a scientist/inventor: Professor Calculus and an opera diva: Bianca Castafiore.  Tintin loves adventure and I'm pretty sure that if he didn't get an adventure or mystery he would melt. Tintin also played a part in my decision to become an exchange student.

Rain (again)

     Yesterday we got a storm that was pretty nasty looking but it didn't last long. Today I have finally been able to enjoy the sound real rain makes! I am very excited to see rain instead of snow and hear it hitting the window. I'm so glad the weather is getting a bit better.

Asian grocery store experience!

     The other day we went out and had a shopping day. We walked around the mall and then had to go get my sister's some running shoes.  While they were getting shoes Debrr and I went into the Asian grocery next door.

This was my first time in an Asian grocery so I had a LOT to take in. There were all sorts of things I couldn't read and in languages I've only ever heard a friend speak but  not written.  There were also very many interesting foods including a fish cake on a stick. We ended up buying: some chips with the texture of Cheetos but one flavor tasted like banana (I enjoyed these very much) another flavor tasted like spicy shrimp, VERY mild kimchi, noodles, dried mushrooms and delicious red bean jelly.

 

 

 

Some things Belgium is known for

     We have all probably heard about Belgian: waffles, chocolate and beer but Belgium is so much more than that so here is a list of things from Belgium. Please remember that I am only putting them on a list and not ranking them in any sort of order.

• "French" fries
• the big bang theory (not the show the actual theory)
• inline skates
• billiards balls
• diamond processing
• comic books (I will probably go on about these later)
• art
• Waterloo
• the saxophone
• Body Mass Index
• first car to hit 100km/h
• oil painting 
• first plastic
• modern asphalt
• ... 

  http://belgiumbeyondexpectations.be/index.php?language=en

Belgian cookies!

     The day before my science competition this year, Momma took me shopping and I saw... SPECULAAS! For those who don't know speculaas (speculoos if you speak French or English) are a type of spice cookie that may or may not have a Belgian origin (its often hard for me to tell if things are from Belgium or the Netherlands) and are popular among my family for being "Dutch windmill cookies" that taste fantastic in coffee.
     Anyway back to the story. We were looking for snacks to give to the Science Olympiads and wound up in the cookies and cracker isle when I found all sorts of Dutch cookies from speculaas to some types I've never seen before. I saw that one particular type of speculaas s coated on one side with Belgian chocolate. Momma agreed to get them!
     On the car ride home I was surprised when I turned over the package and saw "product of Belgium" printed on the back. Sure I wasn't IN BELGIUM but I did get a small taste of it and I LOVED it. The actual cookie is a bit like a graham cracker and the chocolate may be a bit bitter compared to what I'm used to (Hershey's and other American brands) but I enjoy them. They go great with a Tintin comic or my Harry Potter book in Dutch.
     The food is actually one of the things I'm most looking forward to when I go because I have read that "the Belgians eat like the French in quality and like the Germans in quantity." Also who doesn't love waffles or fries? What interesting food have you tried?