Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  It's been a while since I last updated you guys on my fundraising for my expedition to Tanzania next summer, so I've decided to tell all today. I would like to say that for most part, I'm doing okay with my fundraising. I'm cashing in on money where I can, amidst my hectic and often busy schedule for year 13 and things are gently ticking by. Recently, I was able to get a babysitting job with this family that lives in my village. The couple have a 4 year old son and two beautiful huskies. When I first visited their house for my first mini introduction session, I was offered a glass of water which I took gladly but as I walked into the living room to be seated down, the two huskies came bounding up to me, causing me to spill most of my water on the floor! I was clearly not used to big and boisterous bundles of energy. I felt bad for causing a bit of a mess but luckily no one seemed to mind. When I returned to the hou...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Yesterday, from when I'm writing this, I got a text message from the principal dance teacher at Inspirations School of Performing Arts about a potential dance teaching job for the next academic year. As you all already know, during year 12, I did some work with Inspirations. I took part in some paid and unpaid work experience with the school as a dance teaching assistant and it was really fun and it gave me a lot more experience. As I've been working with the school for a few months now, I got asked if I wanted to help teach some ballet, acro, and street dance classes over the next academic year. Unfortunately, I wasn't given too many details on when or where I would be teaching these classes, or how much I would be paid, but if I'm available to teach and the pay is good, I might just take up the offer. At the moment, I'm just waiting to get my school timetable for year 13, so I can let the principal know when ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I just found out some rather annoying news that may disrupt some of my original plans for working over the summer. Over the holidays, I was supposed to be working a couple days with the Down's Syndrome charity, Project 21, through helping out with their day trips and dance sessions. However, because my school schedule was quite busy, I obviously didn't sign up quite quick enough for the days that I had wanted to do so other people got there before me. As my boss has already got members of staff for those days, I can't work there over the summer. My boss did suggest working on the 21st of August, assisting with the Matilda workshop at the Jerwood Dancehouse in Ipswich, but I would be coming back from holiday on that day, so it's not really possible. I was a bit annoyed at the situation but I suppose lesson learnt. If I really wanted the job, I should have perhaps applied a bit quicker because everyone is l...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On my holiday in Wales, I went on a lot of walks to keep up with the distance that I need to complete for my sponsored walk. This is a part of my fundraising for my expedition to Northern Tanzania in the summer of 2022. If you would like to give a donation, the link to the fundraising page, along with all the information, will be at the bottom of this post. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of this post. 😊 If you follow me on Instagram (@jujupage1), you would have already seen the photos that I took of my hike up the Penygader mountain, whilst I was on my half term family holiday in Wales. As I'm writing this post, I've just got back from my holiday and I'm ready to tell you what I learnt from hiking the Penygader mountain. Penygader mountain was located approximately 20 minutes away from our chalet in Cwrt, where we were staying for the week. When we parked our car at the base of the mountain it was very difficult to gra...

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, 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,  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,  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...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As some of you may or may not know, I'm starting an Easter street dance class to help me fundraise for my World Challenge trip to Tanzania next year. This is a class that will be following on from my half-term street dance class that I did back in February. Unfortunately, this street dance class has not been as successful as the last one. I've had one person sign up so far and it's one of the girls who took part in the half term session and really enjoyed it. I asked her mother if she could share my advert with her group of friends on Facebook and she quite kindly did, which I really appreciated. However, one person is still money in the bank and anything I can do right now, is going to contribute to my fundraising so I've got to try and look for the positives. I'm coming up with a routine that I think would be fun to teach. I'm doing it to the song Happier by Marshmello and Bastille. It's quite a simpl...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I'm going to be giving you guys a little bit of a life update because I feel like a lot has happened and I thought that it would be nice to talk about it all with you on here. Grab a cup of tea, coffee, a plate of biscuits, or your breakfast and I hope you enjoy this short life update! Pixabay One of the things that has been occupying quite a lot of my time recently is revision! Yes, we're having flashbacks to the stressful GCSE exam period where we were all panicking about nothing because the exams never happened!😂💜 No, in all seriousness, I have been trying to go over a few things in science with my dad. The problem that I have sometimes is that I don't always know what I struggle with the most so it's kind of a guessing game trying to figure out what I need to work on most. However, I feel like I'm slowly getting somewhere because I now have a little bit more of an understanding of what I didn't...

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...