Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Saturday, my parents thought it would be a good idea to take me out to the beach, as I had a pretty stressful week and they thought it would be a good way to get me feeling relaxed again. My sister Alice was also out in London that day with her boyfriend Tom, celebrating her birthday, so they didn't think it was fair to leave me at home by myself with nothing to do too. So off I went to Felixstowe with my parents and it turns out that I actually had a pretty good day. I had fish and chips, went on a boat ride around Felixstowe Ferry, and went on a lovely beach walk in the sunshine. It was a lovely sunny day that really lifted my spirits. But when we returned home, we discovered that the chickens had a little adventure of their own too. Before we went to the beach, my dad put the chickens in the confines of the electric fence with some food and water, so that they were in a safe situation whilst we were all away. But where d...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, The end is very near, thank goodness! There are only 2 more weeks left until it is the Easter holidays and then before long, it will be the actual exams. It is equally terrifying as it is relieving because the exams will officially mark the end of a very long and difficult two years, which I have both loved and loathed as I'm sure you could tell. However, the school still enjoys throwing last minute stresses at their students nevertheless and I have certainly been feeling the brunt of this. For a good month or so now, I have been asking my maths teacher on multiple occaisions to talk to me about my maths IA because she brought up a few issues before we broke off for the Christmas holidays, which she said needed to be dealt with. However, she has ceased to talk to me until Friday, a week before the whole IA was supposed to be due in and she said I need to change part of data. This was partly because she is the head of year at my...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As you all know, for the practical section of the IB Dance course, you are required to film a solo, duet, and group piece. A few months ago now, I filmed the rock 'n roll duet with my partner and it went really well. We had lots of energy and I think we came up with a really fun routine overall. More recently, we filmed our solos and the commercial piece. The solo was choreographed by my dance teacher Orris and a guest teacher called Kate. At first, I wasn't particularly fond of the routine because it was a contemporary routine and well, we always do contemporary. My initial dislike for the choreography was probably visible in the rehearsal process because I don't think I gelled with it at all. However, as the lessons where we were learning the routine went by, I gradually grew to like the choreography and I think I really found myself in the movements in the end. Kate told us that in order for us to get the best out o...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I was listening to another one of Professor Jordan B Peterson's interviews the other day. This time it was with a historian called Professor Frederick Kagan and the pair discussed the unfolding situation in Ukraine. It was quite interesting because although Kagan had studied Russia's deep and complex history in a huge amount of detail, he actually admitted on the podcast that he had made the wrong prediction about Putin and his war with Ukraine. Although Kagan correctly predicted that should Putin actually invade Ukraine, he would be faced with many problems and challenges that would begin to overwhelm the Russian forces, he didn't actually believe that Putin would actually invade the country as he eventually did, in the first place. To be honest, I've heard many similar stories. My mum said that she was listening to an interview on the radio recently where this woman discussed the general emotions that were displa...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen the photos I had put on my stories recently of me going to watch George Orwell's Animal Farm as a play at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and me going to watch a concert with friends at the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge. Today, I thought it would be nice to tell you about those two experiences.  O ne of my friends Celena is Russian and she is a very smart, intelligent, and cultured person. When my dad came to pick me, Teresa, and Celena up after the play, it was actually the first time that he had met Celena, and he was amazed by how eloquent and switched on she was. She was talking about how she studied in New Zealand and came to England from Switzerland to study the IB, and also about how she wanted to study psychology in the future. So you can understand why it was Celena who invited all of us girls to these two very intellectual events. 😂💜💜 F or Animal Farm, it was actu...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I read an article on Dance Plug recently by a lady called Chelsea Hupalowsky, where she discussed the topic of retirement in dance. In her article, Chelsea said that whilst dance is a very short-lived career, the idea that once someone has reached the age of 25 years old they should quit dance all together, has become a rather outdated way of thinking. Personally, I couldn't agree more. Retirement in dance is a difficult topic to cover because as dancers, there will be a time in our lives where we will reach our peak performance, where we nail every show that we do and we will enjoy everything that we do, but then after that, naturally, we will also perhaps start to lose our physical capabilities because that's just what comes with age. However, I still firmly believe that some dancers could still continue their careers for much longer, if they respect their bodies a bit more and learn to adapt their movement to their chan...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  A couple of weeks ago, I posted a poem on my Instagtam which used the analogy of gold to describe the journey of success. It seemed as though people liked it and I'm sure many of you are now probably wondering what the poem was about and what inspired me to write it. Well, at school I had been writing my English Higher Level Essay on William Blake's poems and although it took a while for me a while to understand his work (because it was very complicated, in all honesty), I eventually found that I enjoyed analysing the language and techniques that he used to create his work. In the end, I had spent so much time analysing his work that I developed a good understanding of what a poem was supposed to look like and I thought I might as well write my own. And the end result was amazing. I chose gold because its one of those things that people prize over and commodify. In the poem I compare gold to success because I tend to find ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I told you guys a while ago now that I worked at a chocolate festival over the February half term holiday but I never went into full detail about what exactly it was that I did so I thought that I would do that today. Basically because my mum bakes and cooks for a living and runs her own business, she got told by one of her friends, who was also in the catering business, that she  would be hosting a chocolate festival in Histon over the half term holiday. My mum's friend is the owner of Bumble and Oak, a small business that sells artisan chocolate in Cambridge, and she decided to set up the Cambridge Chocolate Festival to celebrate all the chocolate makers and lovers in the area.  It turns out that since this was the first time that Cambridge Chocolate Festival had happened, the team was a bit short of staff so my mum asked me and Alice if we would be willing to help out her friend during the weekend. Alice already h...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I have been looking into the possible things that I could do during my gap year, which would allow me to pursue my main interests which are writing, history, and dance. At the present moment, I am still undecided as to what job I would like to get. I have been looking at a variety of different career options such as punting in Cambridge and working at historical National Trust sites in the area such as Anglesey Abbey. However, I'm unable to apply to many of them as my current focus at the moment are my finals for my IB studies and I feel the need to dedicate as much time to that as possible so that I don't have to ever come back to it again. However, I'm continuing to tweak my CV and I'm continuing to look around, just in case that magic opportunity does present itself. However, w ith regards to dance, I have been looking at a lot of things such as conventions, masterclasses, and competitions that are tak...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Firstly, I would just like to say, I hope that you're doing well during this incredibly difficult time period. I know that the situation in Ukraine and Russia is incredibly unstable right now and the general feeling of despair seems to be ricocheting across Europe and the rest of the world. But we must remember to take the time out of our day to be kind to one another. This war began because one incredibly narcissistic man chose to get a bit too big for his boots, and now some people are turning on one another. All I can say is, don't let it be you. You may not be able to control society but you do have autonomy over yourself and your decisions. Choose peace and love wherever possible and ask others if they are okay. Let me know how you're coping in the comments below. I would love to open up this line of conversation. 💜💜  Anyway, onto the real reason that you clicked onto this post, which was to find out how I faire...