Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I recently sat down and watched Dynasties by David Attenborough with my mum and my sister. The most recent episode was on lions and what they must do in order to survive and bring up their young. The episode before that was on the harsh life that the emperor penguin must endure. It was definitely hard to watch! The first episode, however, was on chimpanzees. This episode I found the most relatable in how we act as human beings. As humans, we have quarrels and fights and even wars. None of them are obviously nice but they're harsh ways to sort out who is the fittest and strongest. When I watched the very first episode, there were two groups of chimps. One owned a huge patch of land whilst the other was rapidly trying to take over that land. They ended up getting into fights and the leader of the group ended up getting seriously injured. The leader even got separated. However, it was the way he bounced back that struck me. He l

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Blogmas is back everybody! I am going to be posting 5 days a week, counting down to Christmas. You will be seeing 2 extra posts! Blogmas is starting on the 1st of December so stay tuned. Some of the posts are: setting up our Christmas tree, my winter night routine, and my Christmas film recommendations 2018.  Have you got any post recommendations? Let me know in the comments below and I will be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you! My social media handles: My Instagram My YouTube channel My second blog: The Book Hub

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, My dance schedule at the moment is very busy. I've signed up to do a play production at school called 1918 which is all about WW1. I'm doing a dance section which is all about the suffragettes. I thought it was a really important part of history so I decided to do it. We do however have limited time to prepare because the shows are on the 16th,17th, and 18th so we really need to try and get the routine done. I'm staying behind after school on Monday to try and get it finished. Next week on Sunday is my winter medal test. I will be doing 4 dances in total. It sounds like a lot but it's really just 2 dances in street and 2 dances in ballroom. In ballroom I'm doing waltz and paso doble. In street I'm doing house and break dance. I enjoy all my dances! What's your schedule like? Let me know in the comments below and I will be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you! See you next time, Bye, XO

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I read this great article from my local village newsletter about this woman who tried to live an entire month without plastic. I don't read the newsletter often because I don't usually find interesting articles in it. I would modestly consider it as something tailored more towards old people! But my mum was talking about this particular article and I decided it was worth a read.  We go on and on about how we should use less plastic without thinking about the many useful things that are actually wrapped in plastic. In the article, the author Catherine Burch, states that she could only buy wine,beer,posh chocolate in cardboard packets, eggs, and a couple of over-ripe tangerines. For her family of 5 people at dinner, there was nothing to cook. Coming to think of it, there are so many things you cannot buy because it's all wrapped in plastic. Sliced or whole loaves of bread, milk cartons with the plastic cap, fruit and

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I have had a lot of friends in the past. I would probably say that since the beginning of school, in reception, till now, none of them have stayed. That's okay. I have made new friends. Those friends from the past have chosen different paths to me. Some paths I would disagree with but we have to accept that we are all different people with different aspirations in life. Within my current friendship group, there have been arguments and ups and downs but we also have to accept that that is part of any friendship. It's not all rocky, we have great and fun times over the majority of the time. I would say that now, I know who are my real friends and who are not. That is because I've learnt the art of freeing myself from friends I do not want to associate myself with. There have been times when I've just been clinging onto rude people in the hopes that they'll come round. In the end I just found that I was wasting m

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, As some of you may know, I will be taking another medal test in December doing ballroom and street. I know that some of you guys may be doing the same so I just wanted to share a few tips with you guys to help you on your way! Let's get started. Repetition-I think that whenever you want to master a choreography, it's really important to keep practicing and keep running it through just for movement memory. Run the routine through in front of someone- I know that with my medal tests, I have to dance the routine by myself so it's really important to practice the routine in front of a friend or family member so you know what to expect. Practice in front of a mirror- This helps me because I can see if I'm using enough of my face or not. Ask for the music- Before every medal test, I always ask for the music used so I can really visualise what it's going to be like and so that I can run the routine through prop

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Earlier last week, my sister told me about this advert that Iceland made which stated that their products were going to have zero palm oil in them. Me and my family have only recently found out about the devastation palm oil can cause to the habitat of orangutans. To get palm oil, you need to take away all the trees because it's a big business that needs lots of space. This has fueled rainforest destruction in places like Indonesia and Malaysia which together account for 85% of the world's palm oil production. You can find palm oil in practically anything like baked goods (e.g. cookies,puff pastry, bread,crisps, and chocolate) as well as in soaps and shampoos. There is no escaping it. But as always, there are 2 sides to every story. Many of the people who work in the palm oil industry are extremely poor and are desperate to grasp any money they can find. Many have families that they need to look after so they cannot aff

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I don't know if people outside of Britain have something like this in schools but here we have a thing called conference day which is a day where you learn something unconventional and would probably not do in normal everyday lessons. For this conference day, the topic was life skills.  In this one part of the day, we learnt about mental health and depression. Why this had anything to do with life skills, I do not know. It was going pretty smoothly at first. They were talking about what effects mental health problems had on people and those around them and why it's important to speak about these sorts of things. Then as the teacher flicked over to the next slide, things turned sour pretty quickly. This slide was labelled "Things you cannot say incase it offends someone with a mental health problem." Now some of the words I could understand why they were mentioned like "psycho" and "idiot" but

"They shall not grow old,as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them,nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." To the 60 people that died during WW1 in my village. Many of them were either buried in the location that they fell or were missing and never found.  "Their name liveth for evermore." Rudyard Kipling From my trip to the Somme and Arras. In Flanders fields- John Mccrae In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses,row on row, That Mark our place; and in the sky The larks,still bravely singing,fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived,felt dawn,saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved,and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not slee

Dance diary   18/10/18   We began class with our standard warm up which I went into more detail in my jazz strides entry.  Our focus for the lesson were jazz turns.  We did our preparations first with no practice and we found that there were things we needed to work on.  Firstly, we needed to make sure that we were not turning out like we do in ballet when we stepped out to the side  in jazz second . We had to keep our hips in the same position just moving our left leg out to the side.  Secondly, when we stepped to the back with our left foot behind and our right foot forward, we had to make sure to bend both legs.  Keeping our right leg bent, we lifted our left toe up to our right knee and with our arms in a slight circle in front of us, we had to pull up in our back.  We tended to lean forward whilst doing our turns which wasn’t correct, we had to keep low but still pull up in our back. After some practice, we did the preparations for the turns again and improved from our first

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I recently sat down and watched Simon Reeve's documentary on the Mediterranean with my mum and my sister and was shocked by what I saw. The journey of the migrants crossing over Ceuta, the busiest shipping lanes injuring passing dolphins, and the amount of plastic that fishermen dig up from the bottom of the seabed is just horrendous. But what is more shocking to me is how ignorant we are about this one particular subject. It made me realise that in the grand scheme of things, nothing is cruelty free. On one of his trips, Simon visited greenhouses that grow and cultivate the majority of our fruits and vegetables. The workers were all migrants that had crossed over from neighbouring Africa. These greenhouses are made up of large plastic sheets - a cheap but successful alternative used in mass production of our produce. These greenhouses provide the work migrants need to survive and although the business is successful, it

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I have been on some terrible school trips throughout my time at secondary school. One was a language trip where I visited a fake town. The other was a canal trip where all we did was opening and closing locks. Want to hear the full stories? Please keep on reading. I think it was in year 8 when I went on this languages trip. Not many people I knew went but I still had my good friend Emma to sit next to on the bus. Firstly, the drive there was like 2 hours long so by the time we actually got to the place, I was expecting something good. When we got inside the building, we went inside this room and did a French quiz which was really boring. Then we were told a few safety measures. We were also told that they hired an actor to pretend to be a robber and steal all the fake food from the shop and we had to try and find him. We were given a list of French and German things and we had to go to the different fake places in the fake town

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, If you are choosing dance as a GCSE/BTEC option, you are going to need to know how to come up with a routine. I know That in BTEC dance, you might need to come up with a solo or a group routine to show the examiners what you can do. So it is always a good idea to get devising under your belt. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you on your way. Choose a style that your comfortable and confident in. By doing this, you are eliminating your chances of getting things wrong with your technique. If you are confident enough, you can try combining together 2 different dance styles. If you can make it work, you will really impress the examiners. Choose a storyline that reflects something that has happened in your life. By doing this, you are really bringing a lot of emotion and feeling to the dance. If you're struggling to come up with moves, turn on your favourite music and start improvising. This will really help with deci