Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  A few months ago, one of our chickens called Roast became a very broody hen. She was always a particular chicken that always used to runaway from us everytime we came up to her but one day, as if over night, she changed personality very quickly. It was like watching Dr Jekyll turn into Mr Hyde. She sat in her egg box, ruffled up her feathers, and became very defensive everytime we tried to lift her up and put her outside. She was sitting on eggs that weren't even hers and this marked the beginning of the month-long struggle to snap her out of her attitude. We thought that it would all be over after Roast but one day, we found another certain someone still inside the egg box by midday. We opened the hatch to find an angry, brooding Parsnip, sitting on top of eggs that weren't even hers, with a MEGA attitude. She looked super defensive and she kept on splaying her feathers like a cat hunching it's back, everytime we trie...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I can't believe that I finished my first week of my first IB mock examinations. It sounds a bit silly to say but I could not see my exams ever ending. The work was piling on and I found myself gradually getting more nervous about the prospect of sitting these exams as I got closer to the time period. Last year, I did sit all of my GCSE mock examinations but I still feel like I was at a bit of a disadvantage for these IB mocks, having not done my real GCSE exams. There was so much time in-between last year's exams and now that I must say, I did forget what it was like to sit a paper again. However, I did it despite the odds and I feel a sense of pride in that regard. Some of my exams went better than I expected and others didn't go amazingly to say the least. I was probably the most worried about my history exam because there was so much to remember and so much to do in the exam. The first paper was the source-based pap...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, In the very limited amount of free time that I have had these past couple of weeks, I've been writing a story for fun. Recently I've just finished reading the book Dances and Dreams on Diamond Street by Craig Revel Howard and I really enjoyed it. I didn't know that Craig was a writer but after I read the book, I was really inspired. I liked how he had a set of main characters that he jumped between to show their different perspectives of their surroundings. I also liked the fact that the book was all about dance and performing because that's obviously what I really enjoy doing. After I read the book, I wanted to magpie a few of the ideas for my own story. My story is going to be about a girl who joins a new dance studio. At her new dance studio she meets dancers that are all of the same calibre and she begins to look for something a little bit more diverse. Consequently, she creates her own dance group with dancers ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  There are two very good speeches that are delivered by Sylvester Stallone in his Rocky Balboa movie. The first speech is the one that Rocky delivers to his son where he talks about never giving up despite how difficult life can get. The second speech is the one that Rocky delivers to the medical advisory board where he demands a licence to compete in boxing again. Today, I wanted to talk about the second speech because it shows the type of attitude that in my opinion, you should always have towards life. In the Rocky Balboa movie that was aired in 2006, Rocky is a middle-aged, ex-heavy weight boxing champion who despite his age, goes out and proves to the rest of the world that he is still a champion. In his second speech, the medical advisory board denies Rocky's request for a licence because they think he is too old to compete, and therefore should retire. However, despite the decision that the board makes, Rocky respectfull...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On the last Friday before the half term holiday, I'm going to be doing an IB dance mock exam. This mock exam will consist of me coming up with my own choreography that I will perform as a solo piece in front of my teacher. It's not going to be as formal of an examination as the rest of the exams that I'm going to be sitting but it's still a pretty big deal since I am still going to get awarded a grade at the end of it.  My day on Friday will begin at 9:00am and for the first part of the day, I will be working on my solo and coming up with the choreography. I think for the rest of the day we will be spending some time catching up on some theory and working on writing up the rest of our dance investigation as part of our coursework. The day will be 5 hours long and will therefore finish at 2:00pm! Ohh joy, I do love my life. However, at the same time, I am still excited to do some choreography because I love coming u...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Next week, I begin my first set of IB mock examinations and, as I've mentioned plenty of times before, I'm very nervous. I'm nervous because I've never done IB exams before and perhaps I'm a little bit afraid of the unknown. I'm also nervous because there's so much to remember and I don't have photographic memory. 😂 I'm also nervous because I want to do well and anything below my expectations is not going to be good enough for me.  However, although I'm stressed, I have high expectations, and I'm naturally anxious, when I take the moment to pause like I am doing now and I look back on what I was able to achieve despite the odds that were against me, I do have to give myself a little bit of credit. If someone told me back in year 7 or in primary school that I would be doing the course that I'm doing now, it sounds very cliché to say but I honestly would have thought that they were cr...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Monday, the day that you're reading this, I will be having my first ever Japanese listening exam and I'm super nervous. A few months back, I wrote a post explaining what it's like learning standard level Japanese and if you've read that, you'll know that I did say that I found it quite difficult. This was mostly because at the time, I found learning Katakana and Kanji quite difficult because no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't remembering it well at all. The good news is however, that I have improved a lot in Japanese since then. I can read Katakana pretty well and I'm beginning to at least recognise some of the basic Kanji so that is something positive. However, listening in Japanese remains my nemesis. This is mostly because, like all new learners of a language, I find that the people are speaking way too fast and I can't quite catch what it is that they are saying. I'm also struggling sli...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As I've mentioned already before, back in March, I did some teaching for the Inspirations School of Performing Arts in Cambridge. I was teaching young children some street dance routines and I helped assist with their acrobatics. Although I had never assisted an acro class before and although I had to teach outside because of Covid-19 restrictions, it was still a lot of fun and I really enjoyed my week there.  When I had finished doing the teaching with Inspirations over the Easter, I wondered whether it would be a good idea for me to do my IB work experience placement with them at their studio. If you've been following my blog for a while now, you will know that I've actually already done work experience in year 10 when I was still in secondary school. I was initially confused as to why we were doing work experience in year 12, when I'm in sixth form, but I guess it's just another part of the IB course that we...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Thursday, I found myself in a bit of a predicament when I realised I had taken on way too much and I needed to reorganise my calenda r! (I know, it took me this long to actually come to that realisation 😂).  Thursdays are my busiest days. On the worst week (week A) I start at 9:00am, have one free period and stay in until 5:15pm and I'm sure that I don't have to tell you that it is exhausting to say the least. On top of that, I would have ballroom and Latin straight after school and I would need to be there by 6:15pm and so you can begin to see my massive problem. This means I have to go home by car so I get there on time, get dressed, pack my dance bag, and rush back out the door to get to Cambridge. I dance for an hour and by the time I get home, it's 7:30pm. Consequently, I've decided to stop for now, because I barely have time for myself. 😂💜 Now I observe my schedule even further, I can see that Thursdays...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last week, I helped some of my friends from sixth form, do a litter picking of the school grounds. Some of you might already know this but for those of you who don't, one of my friends started an environmental awareness group as part of a group CAS project that included me and some of my other friends. In this group, we endeavour to look after our planet and our local environment by spreading information on things like climate change and wildlife destruction, as well as the initiatives that different groups of people have created to help the environment, in order to spread the message of change in a positive way. As I've mentioned before, I'm a firm believer in changing your own actions and educating yourself, before preaching activism to others, and what better way to do that than to do a litter picking of the school grounds? The very fact that we had to do litter picking meant that not enough people were choosing to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Sorry for not posting on Wednesday. I had a post already written up for that day, but I left it too late during the day to publish it so it might go up on Monday instead. However, today I wanted to talk about challenges and how they can help you to grow in the dance world, as well as in your everyday life. For the past few weeks, as I've mentioned before, I've been practising my lifts in dance and they are very challenging. I'm not the most muscular, well-built dancer anyone has ever seen so when it comes down to executing lifts, I really struggle to do it. I know I have to use my core and lift my partner in a particular way in order to lift them properly, but I find that rock 'n' roll music is quite fast and I can't always keep up. I am having fun and I am enjoying the dancing but I feel like I'm forgetting quite a few of the steps. In the past, I've always been quite good at remembering the steps ...