Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I was overall, really impressed with the level of talent that was displayed on Strictly Come Dancing last Saturday. Obviously, some significant changes had to be made to the show so that it could be continued in the safest way possible. However, I don't think that any of the dancers lacked in energy or performance value and I think that that made it all the more enjoyable to watch. There is of course room for improvement but I was impressed by the starting level of talent that was displayed. I was particularly impressed with Maisie and Gorka's samba and Harvey and Janette's jive. Maisie and Harvey were the two celebrity dancers who really caught my eye on the opening show and they did not fail to impress me on Saturday. Let's break down how they did. You can tell that Maisie is an actress because in terms of performance value, she really brought it to the dance floor. I found myself really watching her face through

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Friday afternoon, me and my family packed our bags, got in the car, and left for the industrial seaside town of Harwich. If you don't really know my family well, then you won't know that we often do these sort of spur of the moment things where we spontaneously get away and either have a day out or a short weekend away just to relax and have fun. On Friday, we thought it was a good idea to begin our half term holiday with a short weekend away. I knew that this was something that we were going to do but I only found out on Thursday that we were going to Harwich so it was kind of a nice surprise. I was headset on not doing any work on the holiday so I literally brought nothing in terms of school work with me. My mum insisted that we all just enjoy ourselves on the weekend so I literally made it my mission to basically chill out and do nothing. It was very refreshing and I'm glad I did it! I feel like the first term of

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, What's it like learning standard level Japanese at sixth form? This is a question that I get asked a lot so I'm going to answer it for you today.  For me at least, when it comes down to this course, I really enjoy the Japanese lessons but I do find the language quite difficult to grasp. If you don't already know, I do actually have a strong Japanese heritage. My dad is half Japanese and although he spent most of his life living in England, he was actually born in Kyoto, Japan. However, he was unfortunately not taught how to speak Japanese so when I was given the opportunity to study the language at a beginner IB level at college, I took the opportunity to do so. I think what I find most difficult about Japanese is learning all the alphabets. I would say I'm beginning to understand more words in Hirigana but I do find myself mixing up a couple of the letters in Katakana and I can barely recognise anything that's

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Saturday, I watched the first episode of Strictly Come Dancing 2020. I was hoping to write a whole lot of reviews for this year about each of the celebrity dancers on the show, like I did with the dancers last year. However, with Covid-19, I wasn't even sure if the show would continue this year. When they announced that there was going to be a show, I was happy but there were clearly many changes that the producers of Strictly had to put in place. Firstly, Strictly started a little later this year. Secondly, the partners all met a few months before the opening night and have been living together as a household. Thirdly, apart from a few people, there is no live audience. Fourthly, there are fewer contestants and all the group dances have been pre-filmed to reduce the transmission of the virus. All this has been put in place to ensure that everyone can stay as safe as they possibly can but I must admit, when I saw all these

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If there's one thing that makes me very happy, is watching All Creatures Great and Small on Channel 5. If you've had a bad day and need to watch some classic British television, All Creatures Great and Small is the best series to go for. Obviously this series is not the same as the 1980s version of All Creatures Great and Small but you will be surprised by how great it is once you've watched it. If you don't know who James Herriot is, he is a Yorkshire country vet who worked at Siegfried Farnon's veterinary practice from the 1930s onwards. He is a well-known figure in British culture because he made a collection of memoirs about the ups and downs of being a vet in the countryside and some of his stories are really quite funny to read. Although James is a real person and his stories are true, his comical life adventures have been documented by actors on TV, hence the newest adaptation of the TV series All Creatu

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, As I've briefly talked about recently, I have been considering going on this amazing trip with my school to Northern Tanzania in the summer of 2022 and I've just spent 2 weeks consolidating my decision. Well, long story short, I've decided to take the plunge and go for it since there's probably not going to be many other opportunities like this in the future. This trip will count towards, hopefully, many parts of my CAS experience (school enrichment programme) so it's an important part of my education and my overall IB qualification. I was a little bit unsure as to whether or not I should do this trip because it is such a big commitment. The preparation for this trip is a lot of work as you have to attend weekly meetings, organise fundraising, and probably work to earn some money but after attending one of the virtual meetings on Microsoft to find out more about this trip, I realised that there was a lot to gain

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to talk you through another couple videos that I watched from the Royal Opera House. However, this time, it's not necessarily going to be about dances but actually costumes. I feel like people really underestimate the power that a costume can give to a performance and I think that's partly because we're so used to costumes being tacky and not very well made. The word costume itself kind of connotes your thoughts to something like Halloween which isn't really the full picture when you think of dance. When I've done dance shows, my costumes haven't been anything particularly special because I was mostly asked to where a lot of blacks and whites and it was all mostly about uniformity. However, when it comes to big dance companies like the Royal Ballet, it's really important that the costumes are of good quality so that the whole performance is striking enough to the audience who's p

  Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, For one of our Theory of Knowledge lessons (Philosophy in other words), we have to write a 250-500 word essay every 2 weeks to consolidate our knowledge and add to our Theory of Knowledge journals. It can be about a current affair, a piece of artwork, media, or a personal story that links to our aspects of knowledge (perspective, culture etc). It's not the most interesting thing to do in the world to be honest but I decided to therefore write something interesting that I could get a lot out of. It's not the best entry for a TOK journal as it doesn't fill all the necessary requirements but I wanted to share it on here because I thought that the message was important. I hope you enjoy reading it and find it interesting!❤️ A current affair that has been of particular concern to me recently is the treatment of the  Uyghur   Muslims  in China and what  we as a foreign country ha ve  decided to do in  response to this. I wa