Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Monday, there was obviously the good news delivered by Boris Johnson that the government was going to make a conscious effort to get every pupil across the country back into the classroom following the 8th March. I've just heard from my college that I will be returning on the 9th March due to the staggered entry system but nevertheless, I'm still really excited. One of the things that my family have noticed during this 3rd national lockdown, was that dust was collecting up around the house and I think it was literally because we've been congregating in one place for so long now that dust from our own skins is literally building up around us. Probably a bit too much information but it's true! I can't wait to get back on the bike again and be in the fresh air and I'm sure whilst my parents will still mostly be at home, they'll be happy to see me back in college and my sister back at work. I am going to...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As some of you may already know, if you've read last Saturday's blog post, over the past week between the 15th and the 19th of February I taught street dance to children aged 7-12 years on Zoom. Overall, it was a very valuable and interesting experience because although my parents both run small businesses and although I took business studies as a GCSE, I never really knew quite what went into teaching dance until I did it properly. I really enjoyed my experience and I was really lucky to have been joined by 11 amazing students who all worked really hard and gave it their all. However, there were some little improvements to be made that I will take with me when I hopefully do more street dance classes over Easter or summer to better my learning environment. Firstly, although it sounded good on paper, I do believe that the age range of 7-12 years, looking back on it, was a bit too vast. The oldest girl I had at my class was...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Sunday, we celebrated my dad's birthday. It also happened to be Valentine's day so my dad bought something for my mum too. I always find that part a bit funny. I don't think that he will like me saying this but just so you know what age he now is, he is 50, the scary mid-life crisis age. 😂 💜 No, I mean well but one likes good humour. Hahaha. Anyway, I do think that the day was celebrated well. Aside from nearly leaving one of my presents hidden in one of my drawers and leaving the price on some of the birthday cards, opening the presents and the gifts was joyful. No, it wasn't socks that were gifted this time. My dad got some nice jumpers, a few Cuban cigars for special occasions, some books, some alcohol, and a swanky shaving set with a brush! I think that he liked the gifts very much! :) For breakfast, me and my family ate some good quality bacon and black pudding from Burwash Manor in Cambridge. I wasn'...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I've watched a video that included the American "plus-sized" model, Tess Holliday. In the video, Tess spoke about her involvement in the "body positive" movement which included her aspirations to become a model when she was younger and her own struggles with bullying. From the video, I could tell that Tess was a very bold, liberal, forward-thinking person who joined the campaign for the promotion of overweight women in order to embrace what the beauty and modelling industry was not showcasing. In her interview Tess quite proudly said, "If designers don't start being more diverse and inclusive with their campaigns, I do believe that they will be left behind." Now, when it comes to body positivity, I agree that in the modelling world, there tends to be one type of person represented. Most of the time, this person is fairly slim, athletic-looking, and may have what we consider to be an ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As you might already know, if you've read my post that I published on Monday, I started up a half term street dance class for children aged 7-12 years to help me fund my expedition to Tanzania in the summer of 2022. So far, I've got a lot of good feedback and support from the advert that I started putting out to people last week. I got a couple responses from my Facebook advert and I also got some responses from the advert that I got my World Challenge co-ordinator to put out to the lower school. I've got three confirmations so far but I'm awaiting a direct response from a few others so we'll just have to wait and see. I know that some parents are quite busy so they might change their minds with these things. However, this past week, I've been working on trying to get some routines down so that I can start teaching them to the students. I've found it quite challenging because of the time pressure, the m...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I will be talking about the one and only, Sylvester Stallone and his epic film series, Rocky. Why am I going to be talking about him? Well, me and my family have been getting hooked onto the Rocky series. So much so, that we've watched Rocky 1 that aired in the 1970s all the way up to his last film in the epic series called Creed, which aired in 2016, in the space of about a week. In case you're wondering the scale of that, each Rocky film is about 2 hours long and there are 7 films that Sylvester Stallone screen wrote in total. So, yes, we've consumed a lot of ROCKY in the space of nearly 7 days. It means we've watched 1 film every evening which has got to mean that it's good. And it definitely was! When my parents suggested watching Rocky I was nearly disgusted. I thought that it was going to be this tacky, cringey, 1970s film that I was going to fall asleep watching. Yes, it was tacky, I'm not goi...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  There have been some improvements regarding fundraising for the Tanzania expedition. About a month ago, I started rummaging through my chest of drawers trying to find some old clothes that I could potentially sell and I've managed to find a few items. I found some faux-leather jeans, some shorts, and a top that either no longer fit me or I no longer wear so I thought I might as well sell on Facebook Market Place. I also have a pair of old tap shoes to sell and my sister gave me her old Bloch trainers that I can also give away, which might give me some extra money as dance shoes are always quite expensive. Now that I've got a new tablet, I'm also going to sell my old one online for around £90 so I can get in quite a bit of money that way. However, I've also come up with two other innovative ideas that I could use to help me fundraise. Recently, I've put out an advert on Facebook for tutoring GCSE French and spea...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last week on Saturday, I had a virtual contemporary dance workshop with London School of Contemporary Dance. My dance teacher at college is kindly giving us the opportunity to work with dance schools, artists, and companies from across the UK and London Contemporary and Dance Ed are to name but a few places. I guess one of the main positives of online learning is being able to quite easily meet these sorts of people without having to go all the way down to London or anywhere else just to take a class. It did mean that I had to miss a Project 21 lesson but I'm just volunteering at the moment and everyone understood anyway that this was optional but also quite an important part of my course.  It was quite fun actually. My class was led by a man called Baptiste and he is one of the many dance teachers at London Contemporary. We first learnt a simple phrase to just warm up our bodies and it consisted of rolling down into a pr...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Thank you for your viewership and your support in yesterday's blog post. It was supposed to go out on Monday but I guess finding the right words in these sorts of situations takes time. I'm happy to have shared the message though. It has made me feel a lot better. If you want to read that post, please click the link at the bottom of this page. However, in light of yesterday's blog post, I wanted to deliver something a little bit more cheerful for today's edition. As I've briefly mentioned before, me, my mum, and my sister have all been watching the British Netflix series, The Crown. I was recommended The Crown by some friends who are big fans of the series and so far, it has been brilliant. Granted, it's not everyone's cup of tea. My dad doesn't watch this because royalty isn't really his thing and I know a lot of other people would be put off by that aspect as wel l. However, it is actually surp...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I'm just going to be completely real with you right now, whilst staying as respectful as possible to the people whose stories I'm about to tell. If you do not wish to hear this now, I'm not forcing you to read on. It's just that I've not been feeling completely myself this past week and a bit because there's been a lot going on at once and you might have already picked up on that. Unfortunately, I have experienced the deaths of two people in my life, one of whom I've known for a very long time and the other is an acquaintance but also the son of a lady I also knew for a fairly long time. I was contemplating whether or not to post this because this isn't necessarily just about my life, it involves very personal matters in the lives of other people. However, with the news that I'm going to be doing online school for another month and everything else, things have just accumulated so much that it re...