Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Around Wednesday last week, my teachers sent me some work online to do at home. They needed a bit of time to get everything prepared so that was why it came midweek but nevertheless, I got down to doing some English first thing in the morning. Although the work is going to be useful for the next stage of our education (sixth form and apprenticeships), since we require our knowledge from GCSE in order to move through school, it did take a while for me to get in the mode of independently working from home. As much as I know how important it is to do this work, there's still part of me that does feel like its all a bit pointless to be honest, even though it isn't. I guess it's because we've been conditioned to work for mainly the exams. However, as my history teacher said, it's good to work for the sake of learning sometimes because as much as it's drilled into our heads otherwise, the exams are not the be ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, A crisis as big as this pandemic puts a lot of pressure on many people. Currently, it's very difficult for anyone to cope with this pressure that is also putting a significant amount of financial debt on many countries. However, I'm a firm believer that during difficult times like this, you can either fall or take the opportunity to do something new or something that you've always wanted to do. For me, it's been difficult to come to terms with this bizarre situation but sometimes you've got to rise to the occasion and find the open door inbetween all this chaos. I've still had to do some school work this week because my teachers don't want a 6 month knowledge gap so that has been taking up some of my time but inbetween that, I've tried coming up with the basis of a dance routine. Although I'm not the biggest fan of contemporary because I think that it can become a bit depressing, I chose this s...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Despite the social distancing and quarantining, I think that I can confidently say that we celebrated both Mother's Day and my sister's 18th in style. Currently, the UK is on lockdown because of the number people who were not social distancing but strangely on Sunday, we were able to have a great time, whilst still staying at home. My dad put a candle and some wrapping paper in my room at 7:30 in the morning, whilst I was still asleep, so that I could wrap it up later on. Luckily I was still asleep because I tend to struggle with having lie-ins on weekends since I'm just so used to waking up early in the morning for school. I, rather messily, wrapped up the candle and finished writing the Tatty Teddy 18th birthday card. I quickly deposited my gift on the table in the living room and came back upstairs to sign my Mother's Day card that my sister made. I'm so thankful that my sister's an artist because sh...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Before I continue with this post, I might as well explain what I mean by relational capital. It's a term that my dad actually used the other day and it basically is a reciprocal relationship, where your bank of good things that you've done for other people when they need help, is used when you need help. Back in year 10, we were all told by many of our teachers, how much our mock exams matter. Even though this was a message that was drilled in by our teachers, many of us didn't take that message seriously. Even though I was doing a lot of revision for my exams and I was getting myself prepared for them, I knew that the mocks weren't going to be the final exams so even I didn't take them completely seriously. Obviously, when we all heard the news about the cancellation of our actual GCSEs, many people were worried because the grades would now be based on predictions and the teachers' input. I don't mea...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I began this week, thinking that we were still going to have school for a couple weeks. It ended with me finding out that because of the Coronavirus, our exams would have to be cancelled and we wouldn't have proper school for a good six months. I'll be honest, I knew that maybe the schools would be shut down but I didn't realise that the government would go to the extent of cancelling the exams but it makes sense, since it means that everyone is social distancing. However, this means that I've finished dance completely at school. We were supposed to come up with our final group piece for the dance show, to complete our external component but that can no longer happen because of the situation. There have been a lot of issues in my group for getting everything done so when I heard the news, I guess I was kind of relieved that we wouldn't have to do it. That does put a massive question mark on how we'll be g...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I'm certain you've heard about the Coronavirus pandemic all over the media and the news so I'm sure you all already know what it is. When I first heard about it, however, I didn't really know much about the virus or how quickly it would spread. I now know that it originated in China because people there live in close proximity with their animals and their low levels of hygiene caused the virus to mutate and evolve to become a potential danger to humans. I thought that the virus spread because people travelled and whilst that may have been how it started, many people seem to be just randomly getting the virus. This includes a couple people in my area, Cambridgeshire. It's not the worst a pandemic could get because despite how contagious it seems to be, the death rate on the grand scheme of things is pretty low and it only seems to affect the elderly or people with underlying health issues like where their immun...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  The first ever Studio Ghibli anime I watched was My Neighbour Totoro. My Japanese grandmother came around and usually she just brings the usual, traditional, Japanese food with her for us to eat. However, this time she also gifted us the DVD version of Totoro and it was great. If you don't know who Studio Ghibli is, he is basically just this brilliant Japanese anime artist, who created all these amazing hand-drawn animations. I can't remember exactly how old I was but I was pretty young when I watched Totoro for the first time. It's about this small family, who moves to an old house in the countryside. The two sisters live with their dad and their mother is in a hospital. The youngest, Mei, finds a spirit of nature called Totoro, whilst she goes out and explores the garden. Satsuki and Mei  encounter this big, fluffy tree spirit multiple times throughout the film, especially when they are in need of help. This film i...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Tuesday after school, I went to dance on my own because my sister was ill. The routine we did was a more mature piece because my sister had asked to do a more challenging routine. Even though my sister wasn't there, I still really enjoyed the dance. We began the lesson by doing a quick warm up and stretch to ensure that we were ready for the dance. The song for the routine was Light It Up by Major Lazer. I liked this song because I saw Mina Myoung do a dance to this at 1 Million Dance Studio and it looked great. There were some sections that we did on the floor which kind of involved a bit of break dancing but for the most part, the routine was very commercial and I liked that. Since there's a mixture of different ages in my class, we usually do choreography that is more simple to enhance everybody's abilities. However, there's three older girls in my class: me, my sister, and another girl and we all wanted to...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I'll be honest, there are very few political leaders and activists that I appreciate. I'm not a fan of politics because I think it can turn into a huge fight for personal gain and people always try to one-up each other. I also don't pay attention to the news much because politics is streamed all over the face of it. However, I've been reading Becoming Michelle Obama, as some of you may know if you read my book reviews on my second blog, and she portrays these really inspirational ideas and one of them I thought I would share with you today. I didn't really know much about the Obamas, prior to reading this book but after reading a few chapters, I understand the amazing story behind the First Lady herself. Having met Barack, Michelle accompanied him on many different talks that he did in some of the deprived parts of Chicago. One talk he did, he was speaking to members of the local community, who had faced fina...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If you've read my post from Wednesday, you'll know that for some reason, last week did not go entirely to plan. I've been having a lot of issues with coming up with a final piece for dance and my group has struggled to come as one and co-operate. I really want to do well in this, since it is my GCSE and I'm hoping to do dance as an A-level but I'm not going to lie, I was a bit worried this week. However, I soon found out that most groups in my class were in the same position and we were not alone. On Friday after school, I got with my group and we actually got a minute and a bit of our routine done. The future is still uncertain but this is progress. I'm hoping to maybe get at least two minutes done this week. This year in general has been challenging because this is my final year of secondary school and really, it's all been about getting me and everyone else prepared for the exams. It's not only ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I've performed a lot of dance styles in the past and I found that most of them are very similar to each other because they're mainly performed individually. However, when I first started dancing ballroom and Latin, I realised the style was completely different. When we watch shows like Strictly Come Dancing, or we see ballroom and Latin dancers on shows like The Greatest Dancer, everything seems so simple and easy to do. In effect, once you've learnt one set of steps, the next time you perform that dance you'll probably do the same movements. However, the great thing about ballroom and Latin dance is that it isn't just about how you dance as an individual but also how you dance with your partner. Before we even get to the partner work at dance, we rehearse the steps on our own in dances like the waltz, so we know exactly how to do them when we do eventually perform the dances with a partner. However, this is ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  This week has been challenging so far. From Monday, I feel like a lot of things went wrong. This is a natural process, things can go wrong for everyone and we just have to learn to deal with the problems and adapt to them.  For the past probably month and a bit, I've been struggling my way through my own dance that I came up with in my group and unfortunately, sufficient progress hasn't been made. This was mostly due to our complicated ideas. The theme of our piece was We Live and We Learn and we had to come up with a routine that represented the diversity of people within our local community, under that title. Our original idea was to talk about basically everyone (LGBTQ, different cultures, and the poor) through the mediums of different dance styles. From the beginning, I wasn't really 100% on the overall theme of our ideas; I thought that maybe it could work but everything just seemed a bit cluttered and I thoug...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  The 1st of March is my mum's birthday and this year, we began the celebrations a day early because my dad reserved a table at this Japanese restaurant on Saturday as it was not open on Sundays. Consequently, we all got ready to go out for a nice Saturday night meal on the 29th of February. I think both my mum and my sister's expectations were high because we went to the Ivy last year and that was fancy, so they were both getting ready an hour before hand because they didn't know what this place was going to be like as we've never been there before. In comparison, I got ready about 15 minutes before hand because whenever we go out, I try to be bothered to make the effort but it doesn't turn out that way. Last year that kind of mattered because we went to the Ivy and I wore fuzzy socks in my boots because it was cold and my appearance was probably shocking to many people. However this time, the restaurant was a...