The Holidays have Arrived

Hooray! Finally, after ten long weeks of school the holidays have arrived. As much as I enjoy school it is always nice to just get away from it all and relax instead of rushing around trying to organise everything and completing homework. It is a nice feeling although this Term has being a great one. I would like to start off with a bit of an update on the fundraising we held this week on behalf of the 'Wyndham Leaders of the Future' program. I am proud to announce that, thanks to the generosity of students we raised over $600 which will all be pooled together before next April to purchase medical supplies to send to the Menari Medical Centre in Papua New Guinea. Over $100 of this came from the lolly-jar raffle and it is great to see so many people rally behind such a great cause. Aside from this however, this term has been full of a lot of highlights (and yes, I am looking at the term calendar to remind myself).

Source: http://www.millerapartments.com.au/_blog/News_and_Events/post/winter-school-holidays---6th---21st-july-2013/

The term started off with the Australian Maths Games Day which I participated in and had a lot of fun. It may have been a long tram ride from Flinders Street Station but it was worth it and going with a friend made the time seem to pass a lot quicker. Especially, when that friend had not realised how long the tram ride actually was. Then came LOTE week shortly after which supplied a lot of daily entertainment and international songs between bells. It was a nice and relaxing week and next year should be a whole lot better with even more students. Science Week followed not too long after and the daily recess trivia competitions with the horrible animations (that were funny because of how bad they were) really made my day (well, several of them actually). Finally, Book Week decided to show up and there were movie screenings in the iCentre (what we call our school library), a Macbeth incursion on the Wednesday (with actors from the Bell Shakespeare Company), a dress up day on the Friday and lots of competitions in between. Melbourne Writer's Festival then followed suit the following Monday which was a lot of fun to participate in and, since I was just an iCentre volunteer, I could just relax and enjoy the day rather than have to worry about doing any related work. The Arts and Technology week then came around with our performance-night on the Tuesday and the House Choral competition which was a blast. Seriously, this school is anything but boring. Finally, to cap it all of, there was this week full of fundraising for a good cause. Not a week goes by at this school without something happening, our Term calendar has barely a blank day anywhere with absolutely no empty week in sight.

It has been a busy term so a holiday is needed, see you tomorrow!

Donations in Kind

I said I would keep you guys up-to-date with my Wyndham 'Leaders of the Future' program and so here I am. Yesterday morning we had our first community engagement activity. You may also know that Friday was also my year ten formal so basically I came home and went to sleep late to wake up early the next morning. That was not fun but the rest of the day was. Anyway, so this community engagement activity was with the Werribee Rotary and their project Donations in Kind. Donations in Kind is where they collect old clothes, toys, and furniture etcetera to send overseas to less-well-off countries. The majority of this stuff is new and is from big businesses like Coles and Woolworths where logos have changed around so we were packing Woolworths shirts, Coles uniforms, police ties and much more.

Source: http://rotarnet.com.au/users/9/96452/updates170211.htm

It was a great experience and those of us who came really came together as a group. On the bus trip there we were sort of getting to know each other but were still separated into class groups. However, when we arrived and the organisers saw there were more of us than they were expecting it meant that we all had to work together to effectively get the job done. It was a lot of trial and error but in the end we worked it all out and were working effectively. We had to communicate and get to know each other's names to effectively work as a team which acted as an ice-breaker and on the bus trip home we were all joking and laughing with each other rather than sitting in silence. It was a great experience and it was touching to realise that the things we packed were actually going overseas to people who did not need it and those clothes could mean the difference between life and death in places where the climate is in the extremes. We were shown around the place and told stories of how they had heard back from people who were grateful. They even told us how when we went over to Papua New Guinea we would see a large number of people wearing old Telstra or Coles shirts. We were all humbled by our experience and we will always remember our experiences.

I promise to keep you all updated with fundraising and other activities, see you tomorrow.

Gullible

So hooray guys, today I was organised! I wrote two posts at once which was yesterday's and today's. I wrote them both last night because I knew that I would not be able to write another one tonight. Why is that you may ask. Well, tonight is my Year 10 Formal which is going to be so great, I can not wait (although when this post comes out it will probably be about to start or something). So in between making posters for my fundraiser, scrolling through my Facebook news feed and watching YouTube videos I decided to write those two posts. I am pretty proud of myself as this means I do not have to worry about hurriedly typing one on the way home on the iPad because they all turn out pretty bad as it takes a lot longer to type. So we all know someone who does not think twice about what they are being told and takes everything as fact (seriously, did you see that change in subject?). This is their story (*cue "dun dun" Law & Order sound*).

Source: http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/3171988/Gullible/

Sometimes this can be great as they do not question you even when you are obviously wrong or missing something important. It is also great as it leads to a lot of funny (and sometimes mean) gags at their expense. I mean, how many times have you fallen for "Gullible is written on the ceiling"? For some this occurs too often and it has become a problem. It can also be a problem as you have to be extra careful with what you say around them because they are not going to know if you are joking or not. Sometimes even sarcasm is lost on these people. It happens to the best of us and we are just left there looking like idiots. However, sometimes you need to draw a fine line between gullible and argumentative. There just comes a point when you are so not gullible that you question and argue with everything someone says to you. This is often the most annoying trait someone can have as you can not possibly have a normal conversation with them.

Being gullible is often not a very fun thing (ignore my horrible sentence structure please), see you tomorrow!

Fundraising

So the trouble with going to a school with so many fundraisers (besides the constant loss of money) is that when it comes time to have one you have no idea what to do because most of them have already being done. As those of you who have been reading this blog for some time may know that I am part of a leadership program run by Wyndham Police called 'Leaders of the Future'. Part of this program (the culmination in fact) is walking 96 kilometres of the Kokoda Track. Some of what we are doing involves raising money for a local Health Centre in the village of Menari which is along the track. So now that it comes time to think of brainstorming ideas with the other person from my school who is also doing the program we are at a bit of a loss. Damn you charitable school.

Source: http://desktopmag.com.au/project-wall/fundraising-downunder-logo/

Do not ask me why I chose that picture. I used Google to image search "Fundraising" and that was the only one that caught my eye. Do not judge me. Anyway, so I spoke to one of the assistant principals at my school and managed to secure the casual clothes day at the end of term for our cause. The thing with our school is most end-of-terms (except the end of year since we all finish different days) are casual clothes days to raise money for whatever organisation in the school puts their hand up for it (or organises) it first. If no one organises it then there is no casual clothes day. That was the easy part. The hard part is thinking of other things we can do on the day to raise even more money. We can not do a talent show as so many other groups have already done that this year. A guess-the-lollies in the jar competition is also out of the question as they only just did that a few weeks ago for the 40 Hour Famine. I was thinking of maybe doing a raffle with jars of lollies as prizes or something. That way there could be more than one prize and we could get away with charging more than 50 cents a ticket. Anyway, I better leave it at this as it is getting late.

Why does our school have to be so damn charitable? See you tomorrow!

Community

Community (No, I do not mean the popular TV show) is something most people classify as history, no longer a part of today's multicultural environment. I beg to differ and I believe that Community is still alive today and I have seen examples of this everywhere. By Community I am not referring to buildings or any physical. I am talking about the social links between people in an area.

Just recently I had the pleasure of seeing this, just yesterday in fact. As you may have read yesterday I went to Relay for Life and there were so many people united to raise money for the Cancer Council. There were just so many people and there was such a good vibe around that it wasn't hard to see the sense of community.

There were so many different teams there, and they were all happy to be there even though they could have been spending their weekend doing something else. There were Fire Brigades, School Groups, Paramedics, work groups and other community groups who all had busy tents and full teams. Then there was also all the teams who also sold raffle tickets, food, lollies (yeah, I know lollies are food) and those beads and necklaces and everybody was smiling and were talking to other teams like they had known each other for years. So there was a really vibrant sense of community at this event and like all other Relay for Life events that I had attended. I really enjoyed my time and that was partly due to the sense of community I felt at every part of the track, it really gives you hope for the world. NOTE: These photos are from Relay for Life 2012 and are from the Wyndham Relay for Life Facebook Page.

May the odds be ever in your favour, see you tomorrow!