 Painting by a professional artist- Ann Marie I always dream of the weirdest things: Raining krabby patties, the sky turning black, having a cat fight with my little brother, dreaming of a blue rose tree, being lost in a desert and many more weird ones that I don't remember.
A few times, I dreamed of driving my dad's car and a random motorcycle on the 401, even though I can't drive! I think I crashed into a car once in my dream....Another car-related dream is I got into the car, then it started driving automatically to my elementary school, although I'm in high school now! I remember the car almost hit a crossing guard. Those dreams were freaky.
Here comes the weirdest one: A snowy owl with a height of 170 feet shooting fire arrows from its mouth! Awesomely cool or what? It was trying to burn down a school that is 10 minutes away from my house- St. Benny's. The owl was kind of cute though. o.o It was quite a vivid sight. The owl aimed for Fast Eddies. Next, it aimed for my sister and I! We were just running for our lives down the street, then guess what happened? The alarm woke me up. -.-" I actually wanted to continue that dream.....
Another dream I had was there were at least ten rabbits living in my basement. What's funny is it's the same type of rabbit that I used to raise, but it ran away. It's a black and white rex rabbit. Now, I really miss my rabbit. I named it Lucky. :(
Want to hear another dream? The buttons of a random elevator were animals, not numbers.... I remember pressing the elephant button then suddenly, the person standing beside me, my sister just disappeared! At first, I didn't know where she ended up, but then this random person told me she was in the hospital. I don't know how or what happened in that dream. It was quite scary. It appears that my sister fainted.
Last dream I want to share is related to manga/anime. The anime is Naruto. For whatever reason, I was Guy Sensei and I was fighting with Rock Lee. Then, I summoned nine tails. (which sounds very ironic) Instead of nine tails helping me fight Rock Lee, it turned against me and attacked me. I'm not sure if I ended up dead because my stupid alarm woke me up!! I really wanted to know what would happen next! That's the end of my dream telling. Now, tell me about your wicked awesome dreams!
 A majestic tree,
Standing tall and free,
With its pink flowers,
Attracting eyes with its powers,
Brightens up the view.
Gorgeous as it can be,
For a pleasant scene we see,
Makes us mesmerized by the beautiful sight,
As it is blossoming in delight,
Being blown in the gentle breeze.
The sweet smell fills the air,
The sun adds to the flare,
Its delicate petals peek,
Nothing more than what I seek,
Pink flowers glow softly.
 Recently, I visited a few blogs from KCI talking about standardized tests. What I found debatable about this topic is whether or not do tests support learning and is it the best way to demonstrate a mastery of skills. There is more than one way to measure a student`s abilities but it seems that tests are the most used. These days, if a school's standardized test scores are high, people think the school's staff is effective. If a school's standardized test scores are low, they see the school's staff as ineffective.
We know that the typical multiple-choice and short-answer tests aren't the only way, or necessarily the best way, to demonstrate a student's knowledge and abilities. Skills such as teamwork, collaboration, and moral character -- traits that aren't measured in a typical standardized tests are increasingly important. Effective assessment should measure the full range of student ability: social, emotional, and academic achievement. Doing a pencil-and-paper test for hours doesn't provide good learning. In higher quality of education, students perform science experiments, solve real-world math problems, write research papers, analyzing stories/novels to evaluate different and important kinds of learning. The current way that standardized tests are used does not measure the learning ability of the student. It only measures whether the school system is able to write curriculum that produces good test takers.
These tests aren't fair to certain people who lack in certain areas like English in general. They can carry consequences for students such as low scores can prevent students from progressing to the next grade level and can totally stress them out. Not only are they a waste of time for students, but for the teachers as well who needs to spend time marking all these tests. Standardized tests trouble both students are teachers.
Some schools in the states have boycotted these tests. Does anyone think standardized tests are necessary? Feel free to state your opinions.
 They don't look alike at all o.o Today I decided to research about red pandas because I found out Shifu is a red panda. Whoever watches Kung Fu Panda knows what I'm talking about. As you may know, Po is a panda, Tigress is tiger, Monkey is a monkey and the others are pretty obvious. But, neither my siblings or I knew what Shifu is! So, I looked up what species he is and found out he's a red panda. I didn't even know that red pandas were a type of species, but I now I do. For those of you who didn't know, shifu means master in Mandarin, Chinese. Basically, Po is calling Shifu Master Master............. Anyways, they are extremely cute and adorable. I find them a little more cuter than giant pandas. Here are a few facts I found out about them:
| - Their average lifespan in the wild is 8 years
- Over the winter, they lose up to 15% of their body weight
- Their other names include: Bear-cat, Bright Panda, Cat-bear, Fire Fox, Lesser Panda, Petit Panda and Poonya | - Their tail is about 12-20 inches
- They weigh 5% of the giant panda's weight
- The red panda is about the size of a raccoon and weighs 7 to 14 pounds
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| I personally don't like reading- no offense to book lovers. I'm just not the person to willingly pick up a book from a library and start reading. I will only read if I have to for novel studies in school. As a matter of fact, I can take months reading just one book. For example, everyone probably read The Hunger Games in less than a week. As for me, to be honest, I took three whole months. No joke. That's probably why my English vocabulary is terrible and sometimes I don't understand 25% the vocab my teacher uses......I think I should start reading more on my own, not just in school. There are many wonderful benefits of reading that will be very helpful now and in the future. Anyone have good books to recommend? I usually prefer action and adventure. One more thing, please stay away from history-related books.
| | I found a list of top 10 reasons why reading is important:
1. Builds Vocabulary
2. Enhances writing skills
3. Enhances creativity
4. Improved concentration
5. Reduced stress levels
6. Improves critical thinking
7. Increases brain flexibility
8. Improves memory
9. Confidence building
10. Better reasoning
Some of these reasons were pretty obvious, but some of them were new to me such as #5.
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I' m just a fifteen year-old in high school, creating this website for a class project. But here, I will be posting personal things about what I like to do in my spare time and school-related stuff.
All About Me  My name is Carolin Tu and people tease me about my last name because it sounds like the number two, though I don't understand what's so funny about it..... You can probably guess I'm Asian just because of my last name. I was born in Canada and have been living here in Cambridge since my birth. I went to Vietnam for a year, realizing that Canada is a great country with all four seasons! The winter in Vietnam is the equivalent to summer in Canada and sometimes I wonder how can people survive summer in Vietnam. I would say that winter is my second favourite season for the reason that I love snow! I think Canada is a great country. Don't get it wrong, I'm not Vietnamese. Both my parents were born in Vietnam and they have the ability to speak both Chinese and Vietnamese, because my grandparents were Chinese. At home, I only speak Cantonese Chinese to my parents. I wonder why they won't teach me Vietnamese; that makes me kind of furious. I know that they will talk in Viet whenever they are talking about my siblings and I. That makes me even more furious! -________-
Music- A Part, or rather, a big part of My Life
 I've been playing the piano for almost two years now, without taking any lessons. My parents bought me a keyboard when I was six years old, but I didn't start officially playing until the summer of 2011. Now, I have a digital piano! I will spend at least an hour playing my piano every night (if I have no homework), searching for random songs to learn and finding tutorials on youtube. If I'm depressed or something, I will go up to my room and start playing until I'm happy. Sometimes I will leave in the middle of homework to play. What I hate though is the fact that I can't read sheet music and my siblings will do their best to irritate me in many ways until I stop playing. Great siblings I have there. Anyways, most of the songs I learn to play are either classic piano, k-pop (Korean pop) or j-pop (Japanese pop). Some of the songs I already learned on piano are Gangnam Style, Canon, Turkish March and Payphone!
Learning New Languages
During my life time, I hope to know 7 languages in total! This includes: English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. If anyone doesn't know, Cantonese and Mandarin are both Chinese. The difference is it's spoken differently and some of the words are written differently. Cantonese Chinese is my main language. Currently, I can read Japanese and Korean, but the sad thing is I don't know what they mean!! What motivates me to learn all these languages? No idea. I just want to learn them for learning's sake. :P
| Listening To Music
Although I am Chinese, I listen to other country's music as well. I cannot stress how much I love K-pop (Korean Pop)! The music is just simply amazing and many of the artists are extremely talented. Most of their songs are so catchy that you just want to sing and and dance along. Some of my favourite groups are Girl's Generation, T-ARA, Super Junior, Rainbow and U-KISS.Talking about J-pop (Japanese Pop), my all-time favourite singer is Amuro Namie, (安室 奈美恵) the Queen of j-pop! The song below led me to listening to k-pop even though it's Japanese. It's very catchy, listen to it! |
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