The Sequence

This is the warning
This is the warning of something
This is the warning of something big
This is the warning
You have been warned

This is the beginning
This is the beginning of something
This is the beginning of something big
This is the beginning
Prepare yourself

This is the middle
This is the middle of something
This is the middle of something big
This is the middle
Prepare yourself

This is the preparation
This is the preparation of something
This is the preparation of something big
This is the preparation
You are prepared

This is the end
This is the end of something
This is the end of something big
This is the end
You have survived

 
Glitter Text @ Glitterfy.com

Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera is my new favorite play/movie. In English recently, we’ve been studying the lyrics to Phantom of the Opera, and I like it a lot. It has some slow songs, some fast songs; it has some soft songs and some loud songs. This play has EVERYTHING! Since we’re done with it, I want to give a run-down of what I think of some of the songs. So sit back, relax, and get ready to read.

“Think of Me”

In this song, Christine, the main girl, is trying out for the part of an opera that someone else was originally the lead in, but quit at the last minute. Christine’s voice is beautiful, and everyone’s wondering who her ‘mysterious tutor’ is. The song begins in the audition, and moves to the night of the performance where she has the role. I love this song because it starts off with just a soft piano, but when it goes to the night of the performance, there’s a full orchestra that’s loud and beautiful. During the performance, Raoul, Christine’s childhood friend, sees her and is totally amazed. The song ends with a fantastic ‘of’ (kind of hard to explain what I mean. Let’s just say it’ll be the longest ‘of’ you’ve ever heard). 

“Angel of Music/Little Lotte (not one we studied)/The Mirror”

In these songs, it is after the performance and Christine is in her dressing room when her friend, Meg, comes to talk to her. In “Angel of Music,” Meg asks Christine who her tutor is. Christine tells her about an angel her now-dead father told her about, the Angel of Music, and how it’s visiting her. Christine eventually becomes in a trance, and Meg leaves her after the song slightly frightened. In “Little Lotte” (a song we didn’t study), Raoul comes in and invites Christine out to dinner. Christine refuses saying the Angel of Music won’t allow it. Raoul calls her out as silly and tells her to get ready as the song ends. We then move on into “The Mirror,” where the Phantom is talking to Christine about how annoying Raoul is to be asking her to dinner and about how Christine shouldn’t have accepted. Christine, thinking it’s the Angel of Music, apologizes and asks the Angel to enter. When he does, the Phantom pulls her into a trance and literally pulls her down to his liar. While this is happening, Raoul is freaking out behind the locked door.

“The Phantom of the Opera”

Ok, first of all,  best song EVER! Oh, I’ve had this song stuck in my head for weeks! Anyway, in this song, the Phantom is taking Christine down to his liar. Christine and the Phantom are both singing, and not only is this song lyrically strong, but the music is FANTASTIC! At the end, Christine hits a fabulous note. Christine is still in a trance during this song. I feel like I’ve said enough, there’s not much I can say… so, ya.

Other Songs In The Order That I Don’t Want To Explain:

“The Music of the Night”

“All I Ask of You”

“Masquerade”

 

“Wishing You Were Here Again”

During this song, Christine is asking for guidance from her father in a graveyard. However, it seems as though she’s speaking to both the Phantom and her dad. This song is really beautiful. She’s singing lovely, the music is awesome, the lyrics are strong, and the set-up in just phenomenal. 

Ok, I don’t want to go through the last three songs because I’m trying to keep this relatively short, so I’ll just summarize. Christine gets kidnapped once again and taken to the liar of the Phantom. The Phantom takes off his mask and tells Christine how abused he was a child. Raoul comes to save her and the Phantom makes Christine chose: Does she want to spend forever with the Phantom down below the Opera House and have Raoul’s life spared, or does she want to return to the world above, but have Raoul killed. Eventually she decides…

…what did you think I was going to tell you the ending? No! Go watch it for yourself. There are more songs than just the ones I mentioned, we only studied nine. Enjoy the  play or movie and I hope you enjoyed this blog post.

 

Expository

This is strictly an opinion.
Promt: Explain Why Expository Writing is Difficult

“Ugh! I can’t think of a good lead!” “What?! Two reasons?!” “How do I make THIS topic compare with real-life?” Expository writing is very hard!

One reason is finding the reasons. My first expository writing that I wrote was following the topic ‘Explain why Hope is Important.’ My friend, Libby, and I wrote this together, and even with two minds we could barley think of two reasons that made sense! It was insane! We were a little behind because we couldn’t get two good reasons. I think our expository turned out well, but the process was hard. Oh I really despise finding reasons for expository writing!

Furthermore, um…hold on I can’t think of another reason-it’s so hard to find them! Oh, ok. I got one. Furthermore, connecting your topic to real life can be exhaustingly frustrating. I mean, for instance, for a lot of people’s expository writing pieces that I read, they had their topic something along the lines of “Explain Why Chocolate is Enjoyable.” Come on, how do you connect the enjoyable-ness of chocolate to life, then go into turning it into a lesson you can take away? I can’t, so I’m glad I didn’t do that. Relating to real like is one of the, if not the, hardest part of expository writing.

All in all, Expository Writing is very hard. Of course, I know it’s good to learn (hence why I’ve now done 3) because of STAAR tests coming up. I might not like them, but they help. And who knows? Maybe one day I’ll have a job and my boss will say, “Hey Kendall, can you write and explanation as to why blah, blah, blah” (you get the point,) and I’ll be thanking Ms. Schoch and the state of Texas for making me learn how to do that. So, if you excuse me, I have to go make sure none of my “dream-jobs” require me to write Expository Writing pieces.

Valentines

As I was driving to school today, thinking maybe today wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought it would…and then I saw the glowing pink sun. I knew there was plenty of ‘blah-blah-blah’ science that was behind it-yawn-but really, today of all days, the sun was pink. See, today was the day that I hate most of all…

Valentine’s Day.

  

Ya, ok, Valentines Day wouldn’t be that bad, unless you’re me and your name is Princess Crystal Temple. Everyone likes to tease me because my name is “Princess.” My mom has a really sick sense of humor. My sister’s name is Apple Pennie Temple. Anyway, today was destined to be bad. Very bad.
Valentine’s Day has never been good for me. When I was six, my best friend, Jimmy, ditched me for the boys and I was friendless for 2 years due to shyness. When I was 8, I forgot to bring my Valentines from home for the class and the teacher wrote a note home saying that it was “rude and disrespectful for Princess to not participate in this class tradition.” Because of that, I was grounded for a month! Since then, as I’ve gotten older, my curse has always gotten worse.

To be continued…
Double The Love
Photo Credit: D. Sharon Pruitt via Compfight

Expository

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! That is the sound of someone’s alarm clock going off on a Monday morning. I’m going to tell you why Mondays are annoying.

My first reason as to why Mondays are annoying is because, on Mondays, you have to start school for the week. I don’t know about you, but every Monday morning my alarm clock will go off, and I’ll lazily hit the snooze button as I drift back to sleep. After many more snooze-sessions, I drag myself out of bed and sluggishly move into my day. This is my first reason why Mondays are annoying.

My second reason is that, on Mondays, once you slowly get to school and start going through your boring classes (said only for the sake of this paper), you start to slowly realize that your homework-pile, so to speak, is getting pretty big. On Mondays, teachers like to give you lots of homework due to the fact that you had no school on the weekend. Fair? No. This is my second reason as to why Mondays are annoying . My first reason was that you have to start school for the week on Mondays.

So those are my two reasons as to why Mondays are annoying.

So, what did you think? What? Did I hear you say it was awful? The worst expository you’ve ever read?
Well…
Thanks! That’s exactly what I was going for! Oh, and sorry to any English teachers (especially Ms. Schoch) that read that thinking it would be good. Let me explain. Just for fun, I have decided to try an exercise on Expository Writing and see how it goes. I wrote two expository writing essays with the same topic:

Explain Why Mondays Are Annoying

They have the same reasons. Everything about them is similar except for the fact that one is everything Ms. Schoch has told us NOT to do, and the other one follows the guidelines. My goal: see if this improves my understanding of Expository Writing. The one you just read was the bad one. This is the good one:

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! “Ugh, 5 more minutes!” This is my reaction when I wake up on Monday morning to my bothersome alarm clock. Forget the alarm clock, Mondays themselves are bothersome!

One reason is school starting for the week. On Mondays, you don’t know if the week will be long or short, good or bad, or anything else, because Monday is the deciding day. In the book A Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, for the main character Hamlet, every single Monday of the year is bad one way or another, and she doesn’t look forward to the rest of the week. This often happens to me too. I must say… it totally sticks. School starting on Monday is really annoying.

Furthermore, Mondays give you tons and tons of homework due to the lack of being able to give homework over the weekend. I hate it when, even if my Monday starting off great in Athletics, I go to Texas history, Science, English, and Math and get piles upon piles of homework. To add onto it, with athletics practice after school, I get home at 5:30-6:00 pm, leaving me time to do my homework only if I stay until 10:00. I really hate being super tired to begin with, then having to stay up super-duper late into the night. Mondays really bother me!

Mondays bring lots of challenges like starting school and tons of homework, but it really isn’t all that bad…no, no who am I kidding? Monday is the worst day of the week for me. Even though I don’t like Mondays, they are helpful for life. They teach me how to handle really tough challenges. So next time I hear the annoying Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! of my alarm clock, I’ll try to be happy and enjoyable.

Time is running for everyone!!!
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Happy

When life is going horribly and you need something or someone to make you feel better, what (or who) do you turn to to make you feel better? Maybe your best friend, or your pillow, or maybe your brother or sister. Me? I go to my childhood stuffed-animal, Happy. Right now, Happy is probably sitting on the floor under my bed…she’s feeling the love from a distance. Anyway, I remember when I first got her.

When I was younger, I would always want to go to Build-a-Bear Workshop. I don’t know why, but I did. I thought it was the coolest place ever! I mean, come on, you get to go, build your VERY OWN STUFFED ANIMAL (kind of), and dress it, give it a name, and take it home in a neat little cardboard box. To a five-year-old girl, that place was awesome. I would go there so often, every time getting a dog. I really liked dogs because I had one and he was awesome when he was younger (look at past posts for one about him). One day, when I went, I saw this one dog that looked exactly like my dog Butler. I was so happy! After going though the process, I got to name him/her. So (obviously), I named it Happy because I was five and my vocabulary was as big as the Magic Tree House books allowed it to be. At first, Happy was a boy because my uncle told me that since I got the dog bed that was meant for boys it couldn’t be a girl (my uncle’s only about 7 years older than me, so don’t imagine an adult telling this to a five year old). When I was six, I proceeded to go back to Build-a-Bear and get the girl’s bed, even though I didn’t like it as much (it was pink and VERY VERY FLUFFY! I didn’t like holding it). Since I was six, Happy’s gender has changed about 4 times, but I eventually settled on girl when I was 10 and that’s how it’s stayed. I don’t have Happy’s beds anymore, but I do have her, and I’ll probably keep her forever.

Expository Writing

Prompt: Explain why hope is important
Written By: Libby and Kendall

“Please let me pass!” You are sitting in your desk with your fingers crossed, hoping for a good grade…even though you know you didn’t study. Sometimes life can be tough and difficult, but you must keep hope through it all.

For instance, if you don’t have hope, you won’t believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself and, for example, your team in sports, you will lose confidence and you won’t preform as well. In basketball, we haven’t been doing very well in our games because we don’t believe and have hope in each other. If you don’t have hope, you won’t succeed.

Also, without hope you won’t even try a simple task. Let’s say your big science test is coming up, and you already think you’re going to fail, so you didn’t even try to study. Your grade…well…not the best. If you don’t try and believe in yourself, you won’t succeed at a very easy task.

Sometimes, life gets hard, and it’s tough to think positively. Having hope will give you the opportunity to try harder and believe in yourself so you can do great.

Bubbles
Photo Credit: Jeff Kubina via Compfight