Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Saturday, I had a fun day going to the stables and spending some quality time with family. Although it was dappled with a bit of homework and a bit of revision, it was still relaxing and enjoyable nevertheless. On Saturday evening, I posted a picture of some ponies and horses that I saw at the stables that morning. During the week, my sister is fortunate enough to work alongside these animals in this youth support group that she is now a part of. She keeps on coming home everyday, telling me about her adventures feeding and brushing the horses, mucking out their stables, and fussing over the cat that lives there. For an animal lover like me, that makes me feel ever so slightly jealous but since my dad needed some manure for the garden, I was given the perfect excuse to go and see the animals too. Although I had quite a bit of work to do, I decided to go because as my dad said, it's okay to have a break every now and then! M...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to be updating you on all the things that I'm currently doing in dance, as part of a mini dance diary entry. I hope you enjoy!🙂💜 As I've mentioned last Saturday, I'm now doing weekly street dance classes with a girl called Ivy, who joined my Easter and February half term street dance workshops that I hosted as part of my fundraising for Tanzania. We began the sessions on Tuesday this week at 4:30pm and it was a really fun hour-long session. I did a warm up and a cool down and I included some elements of technique in the class; we worked on our splits and general flexibility. Just some more in depth dance elements that I thought would really improve her performance. I also taught a new routine to the song Now or Later by Sage the Gemini. It was really challenging because it was really fast and quite technical but I think Ivy really enjoyed it nevertheless. I'm glad I get to work with her on her...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I got given the opportunity by my school to take part in the Lessons from Auschwitz Online Project, to further my understanding on the events that took place during the Holocaust. I was joined by over a hundred other sixth form students from across the UK and I found it quite amazing that so many young people, whether they already had knowledge on the Holocaust or not, had decided to get involved and educate themselves on such a raw and often confusing historical time period. However, whether selfishly or unselfishly, I decided to take part in this project set up by the Holocaust Educational Trust for myself. I am a big believer in educating and bettering yourself before taking the responsibility of preaching your truth to others, so although I already knew a lot about the Holocaust, I endeavoured to find out more so that I could pass on my valuable knowledge to you, in the hope that you can reciprocate the action fo...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I've been playing the world's biggest juggling game of revising, doing homework, working, having a social life, and trying to live, and it's only been the first week back from the Easter holidays! I don't even like to remind myself of this fact but in a few week's time, I have my first set of IB mock examinations and I feel as though I'm walking into them with a blindfold on. I'm probably feeling this way because, like many other people, I am walking into this blind. I have a vague idea of what the papers are going to look like but really, until I set foot into that exam room, I'm never really going to know for certain.  The areas that are most making me panic are history and nature of science because there is a lot to remember and there is a specific way you have to answer each question. In history, for the first part of the exam, we have to work through some source-based questions and th...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, As I mentioned last week, I asked one of the girls who joined my last two holiday virtual street dance classes, to see if she wanted to take a class with me every week. Her mum emailed me back saying that she was actually going to ask me to teach her daughter every week but I beat her to it, so I guess that's a good sign. This means that starting from Tuesday at 4:30pm, I will be teaching street dance as a weekly class on Zoom and I'm really excited.  I will be charging £4/hour for each class like last time, just as an introductory sum of money, but that will probably go up slightly later on if the classes are successful. It's still a good way for me to fundraise for my Tanzania trip next year and it will still help to contribute to my final sum of money. Since these classes will be more of an official thing, rather than just a casual workshop session, I'm hoping to do more than just teach new routines each lesson. ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Quite recently, me and my family watched series 4 of the Welsh drama series, Keeping Faith. To our slight disappointment, we realised that the ending was not quite what we were expecting or wanting so today, I'm going to run you through how I personally would have ended it.  Not to spoil the story for those of you who have not yet watched this series before, but to give you the briefest of summaries of the later storyline of Keeping Faith, Evan Howells, a lawyer, goes missing in the first series and because of some of his actions, he goes to prison in series 3 and we find that he gets released from prison in series 4. Faith Howells, Evan's wife who is also a lawyer, has to look after 3 kids, Alys, Megan, and Rodrey, in the midst of all this chaos. She's a bit controversial because whilst Evan is away all that time, she meets an ex-criminal called Steve Baldini, who helps out the family and ends up falling for Faith. Th...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I'm going to be talking about my undergraduate choices and the options that I could take regarding university and work in the future. It feels weird to talk about this now, as I've only just started sixth form in September but one has to bear in mind that sixth form only lasts for two years and applications for universities will probably have to be submitted late this year, when I start year 13, so now's about the time to start having a look around.  Some of you may or may not know this, but my older sister Alice just turned 19 this year, and last year when she finished sixth form, she decided not to go to university and instead do a gap year and travel as she was still unsure of what she wanted to do in the future, and thus wanted to take a year out to think about it. Obviously, with the pandemic, she couldn't travel and so she's just been working in many jobs instead, to raise money so that she can hop...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As most of you will already know, this week, from Wednesday to Friday, I taught in my online street dance classes and it was a lot of fun. My first go at my virtual street dance classes was really successful because I got a lot of responses, I managed to get 11 students, and there was a lot of good, positive feedback that I got in the end, which was really nice. However, this time, I only managed to get 2 students. One of the students was a 10 year old girl who had joined in over my February half term set of classes and on the Wednesday she had also invited a friend so they both joined in. It was only her who joined in on Thursday and Friday, but it was still nice to have one extra person for the first day. Although I didn't have as many responses as last time, for me, it's not always all about the numbers or the money, even if I am supposed to be fundraising, because teaching and choreographing is something that I love to...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  About a week or two ago, I began watching Demi Lovato's 4 part documentary, Dancing with the Devil. The documentary was about Demi Lovato's journey through to recovery and sobriety after she had relapsed on heroin back in 2018. It was certainly difficult to watch because I hate seeing people become controlled by their addiction, but at the same time, it was very insightful because it made me realise what was required for someone to overcome their drug addiction.  If you're not familiar Demi Lovato before, she is a 28 year old American pop-singer who became very famous at quite a young age through her appearances on Disney Channel and the release of her popular albums like Unbroken and Confident. I personally remember watching Demi on Disney Channel movies like Princess Protection Program and Camp Rock. I would say that around 7 or 8 years ago, she had already accrued a global audience and was seen as a huge role model ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  This year so far has been great on so many levels and has yet also been very sad on so many other levels. It's been great because although life has often feel like I was standing on a pit of quicksand, with the ever changing climate of the pandemic, I also feel as though I've achieved a lot of things that I didn't think I could during these challenging times. I don't often like talking about how much pride I have for the things I've done because I hate to sound big-headed and I prefer to let my hardwork speak for itself. However, I've honestly shocked myself because these past few months I've still gone out their and worked at Project 21, persevered through 2 months of online learning, set up my own online dance classes, taught choreography and just generally showed some sense of resilience despite all the obstacles that were in my way. I think that sometimes we've just got to be our own biggest fan...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If you follow me on my Instagram account (@jujupage1), you will know that this past week, I've been working as an assistant dance teacher for the Inspirations School of Performing Arts right here in Cambridge. Last week, I revealed that I was feeling a little bit disheartened at the fact that I didn't have half as many children joining my online street dance class, as I did during the February half term holiday. Although I was never going to give up on this virtual street dance class, I was still really happy to get an email last Saturday afternoon from Inspirations, asking me if I wanted to assist one of the teachers in the acro outdoor dance classes that were happening the following week. Well I guess, some things just happen for a reason. I had actually consulted the dance school a couple months before about potentially doing some dance teacher training alongside them, after seeing an advert on Facebook that they posted...