Nearly Christmas!!!

Its nearly Christmas again! I am heading to Nelson for the Christmas holidays this year. We head to Nelson every second year, and spend Christmas with my grandparents. Every Christmas in Nelson, we all (all of us being my parents, sister, grandparents, Mark and Kim and my cousins Hailey, Sharni and Chelsea) stay the day in my grandparents house, and give each other funny nicknames and tell random stories.

We have a few traditions in nelson for Christmas. We always have Italian Christmas food, like meatballs as well as turkey. We also wear our Christmas hats all day (the ones we get in the Christmas crackers). And on Christmas eve, me and Katie end up staying up really late talking, reading and playing games. When we wake up in the morning at about 6am, we wake up our parents and grandparents and we run down the stairs. Katherine has her presents on the left side of the room and I have mine on the right.

When we celebrate Christmas in Wellington we do things a little bit differently. We have two courses of food, an English course (Turkey, potatoes and yorkshire puddings) and then an Italian course (MEATBALLS!). Our Nan comes over and the five of us spend the day together. Me and Katherine open up presents early in the morning and we spend the rest of the day doing stuff with our presents. We always open up our presents first before playing with them/eating them.

This Christmas their are a couple presents I really want like...

• Lots of manga!!! (Hetalia, Alice in the country of hearts, bleach, black butler, pokemon, attack on titan, etc...)
• Rune factory 4, for the 3ds
• Homestuck books
• New Converse
• Chocolate!!!

I hope everyone has an awesome christmas :)

Term 4 Highlights

Hi guys! Its nearly the end of the year, we have just a couple more weeks to go! So, like we usually do at the end of every term, its time for the term 4 highlights. This term we need to make a list of our highlights for others, as well as the usual double page spread.

My term 4 highlights are.......

Japanese: I enjoyed our Japanese topic, and learning more of the language (Because I already knew a lot of words)

Dodgeball: I always enjoy playing dodgeball, its a really fun game that everyone should play!

Passion Project: I loved doing my passion project this term. I decided to create an RPG game, because I love video games and want to be a video game designer

Tech: I enjoyed going to tech every Monday. This term we did sewing and we are still doing cooking (This week is masterchef, me and Samanalie are making my favorite food!)

Research Project: Earlier this term we had to do a research project of a subject of our choice. I chose nintendo, and did a essay on the history of Nintendo, a video of comparing gameplay from multiple gaming systems against nintendo systems. And the last project I did was a powerpoint on the different Nintendo systems (Which I had to accompany with a speech from the top of my head, about each slide, which was easy cause I knew a lot of information)

Speeches: I did my speech on How to Survive the Hunger Games and it was fun to make up my speech.

These are my six highlights for the term. I hope I have given everyone else some ideas they can use too.

Nearly 2015

Next year its 2015 and what does that mean? It means I'm going to college. This was my last year at St Bens (where I have been for about eight years). It seems like this year has gone by so quickly, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I will miss everything at st Bens, like the teachers, my friends who aren't going to Wellington Girls and even the school grounds. It will be weird not going to st Bens everyday, even weirder than the first day of school every year (when we are in new classrooms). Its hard to imagine not being here, and even harder to imagine not seeing my classmates everyday.

About half of the girls are going to Wellington girls, so I wont have to miss them too much besides the fact I might not see them as much as I used to. But I will also miss the year sevens that I will no longer see all the time. I'll miss most of the boys too (some more then others lol) because over the years I have become pretty good friends with some of them. Next year at Wellington girls I will have to memorize the layout of the school, and figure out where all my classes are. It might be hard to get used to it.

I am hoping I will have some of my friends in my classes, and I am hoping I can make new friends. I am also hoping I can stay in touch with everyone. I will try and get all my homework done in time next year, as well as trying to manage everything else that I have to do. I'm going to also try and keep updating this blog next year too.

Speeches (Continued)

The week for speeches has come. My speech is written and is about 1 and 3/4 pages long. The speech is how to survive the hunger games, which is actually my third idea for my speech. I thought of it when some one misread the title of my speech as the 'hunger games' when I had wrote horror games (How to survive a horror game).

I did my speech today and was third to last at saying it. The reason being, I was sick yesterday. I felt like I had rushed my speech, because it was only two minutes and forty eightish seconds. I usually speak fast though. Throughout the speech I felt like I was going to muck it up. I was shaking as I started the speech. I tried to keep my voice clear and I tried to vary my voice style as I read my speech. At one point I nearly dropped my cue cards, but I didn't luckily!

I was glad to go near the end, because people would remember my speech in the voting. Lots of people did really good speeches. I really enjoyed Will's ' How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse', Elizabeth's 'Why I Cant Suvive On 30mins Of Computer Time' and JMK's ' Why Books Are Better Than Movies'. I cant wait to see who gets in to the speech competition!

Book Reviews

This weeks task is to do a book review. I have read so many good books it was hard to pick just one. I have decided to do it on Vampire Academy. Vampire Academy is about a girl called Rose and her friend Lissa, who is a Moroi princess.

There are three types of vampires, Moroi the full vampires who drink blood, avoid sunlight and have magical powers. The second type is Dhampir, who are half Vampire and half human. Dhampirs are stronger than the average human and are to protect the moroi from strigoi. Strigoi are evil, undead, vampires. Moroi can become a strigoi by killing another person by drinking all their blood or a strigoi can turn them.

Rose and Lissa get taken back to an academy called St Vladimir's Academy which they had previously escaped from. Rose has to do extra training sessions to get her strength and fighting techniques back up with a guardian called Dimitri who her fellow class mates call "a god". Mean while she has to protect Lissa, using her bond, which allows her to feel Lissa's emotions and sometimes is able to see what Lissa sees. Lissa isn't coping very well with her unique powers and Rose must help her before its too late.

Rose Hathaway is my favorite character in the series because she is strong and can handle herself. She is annoyed by various girls and takes care of them in her own way, which usually involves some yelling and some smart comments. Rose has thick dark brown hair, brown eyes and is 5"7.

In conclusion you should read Vampire Academy cause its a awesome book series.

Speeches

Every year at St Ben's we have a speech competition. Year 7 and 8's have to write a 3 to 4 minute speech. My speech is called How To Survive The Hunger Games.

I have written about half of my speech. I am kind of excited to give my speech, because I think my speech this year will be good. I am looking forward to saying my speech but I am slightly nervous.

One aspect of presentation I want to focus on is slowly my speech down. I usually speak quite fast so I will need to practice saying my speech slower.

I hope my speech goes well and that i finish it soon.

Cats Eye Nebula

Every second year we do Space as our topic. We had to do a research project on a space object and another thing that was on the scale of the universe 2. I chose the cats eye nebula and charm quarks.

The cats eye nebula is also known as the NGC 6543. It is a planetary nebula, which means it is made of gas not stars. The cats eye nebula is part of the constellation draco which means dragon. This nebula is one of the most complex nebula ever discovered. In the middle of the nebula there is a burning hot star that is suspected to be a binary star. The star lost its outer layer about 1000 years ago which created the nebula.

William Herschel discovered the nebula on the 15th of February 1786. It was the first planetary nebula to have its spectrum investigated. It was investigated by William Huggins in 1864. The nebula is estimated to be about 3300 light years away from earth.