Boys and Girls Ultimate: State Championships
Teams must qualify.
During the second quarter of senior art class, I brushed up a lot on my drawing skills. I bought myself a brand new sketch book to start fresh and my goal was to only draw things in it that I knew I was going to be really proud of. Before this quarter, I was working a lot with charcoal so I wanted to switch it up a little and just use my pencil for a lot of the work that I did. I really wanted to improve my drawing skills so my drawings look a little more realistic. I think this really showed through with my daffodil drawing. That is the drawing I am most proud of doing this quarter. It took me about three class periods to complete because I was being very meticulous with the shading. I wanted it to look good enough to be a tattoo, that is what I kept envisioning.
I also worked on a project at home. I was doing some research online and I came across a Crayola canvas. It really looked interesting and I wanted to try it out. I went to the craft store Michael's and picked up a new canvas and the biggest pack of Crayola crayons I could buy. I color organized the crayons the way I wanted them to be on the canvas. I then hot glued each crayon onto the canvas in a zig zag pattern. My next step was to take a hair dryer and put it on high and melt the tops of the crayons so the wax melted and dripped down the canvas. I was very happy with the way it turned out. I used my friend’s professional camera to take a picture of it.
After that project, I went back into pencil drawings. I drew a bunch of pictures of my favorite cartoon characters. This included the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Alice, and the Mad Hatter, all from the movie ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Then I drew Jake and Fin from ‘Adventure Time’, my favorite TV show. I also threw in one charcoal drawing I drew down Valley green and two flower pastel drawings. I really enjoyed art this quarter because I did a variety of different things and I got to brush up on my drawing skills and make a Crayola canvas.
The summer of July 4, 2011. My Family and I always had a different tongue. The school went to I had a wonderful english Language arts teacher. She taught us how speaking correctly reflected on our education, and we studied big words and their meanings. The correct way to use terms that have been interpreted wrongly by people that was around us. I would always think that my education was higher in my family. I could never understand why they would talk uneducated in public. In school peers around me talk uneducated and it always frustrated me since we learned the same things at the same time.
July 4, 2011 was a fun day until me and my mom met up with my family. We all met at Red lobster for lunch. Everyone walked into the red lobster and when we were finally seated the waiter came up to us and asked “Drinks?” My aunt said “Do yall got orange?” I could feel the eyes staring at us, it seemed like I was the only one at the table that realized what she said. I was sure the people around us did. When he asked me I said “I would like a sprite please” The waiter left. My cousins and my aunts mocked me repeating to what I said the waiter. The mocking set something off in me. I felt like I had to talk like them to really fit in. The waiter returned and took the orders. I noticed my uncle ask the waiter “Can I get some melted butter with dat” I sat there and wondered why he didn't pronounce the (TH). The frustration built inside me. I look at my whole family as ignorant.
The rest of the dinner was embarrassing they were the loudest people in our little section.
I was too full to care. I haven't spent over three years with my family. I could understand why we spoke so different it was because I wasn't near them a lot. I thought to myself what if I spent a lot of time with them would I talk like them? This helps me to understand, you can't judge a whole family on how one person talks. Everyone has their own way of talking.Another event was at a family reunion Everyone came from all over the country to come to the family reunion. Once everyone got to the reunion I started to realize everyone spoke different depending on where they were in the country. I also realized even if they lived far away most of them still talked the same.
Everyone in my family was born in philadelphia so ideally they were all taught how to speak the same way. When they moved they started talking differently. For example both of my aunts got up to talk but they had different accents yet they were born in the same house. Had the same parents and lived with each other for 21 years the only difference is one of them moved down south. So how is it that they have different accents yet they were born and raised at the same place and time?
I noticed in my family the way you speak reflects on what you wear. Its when you talk educated you dress more properly. When you talk normal you dress casual. When you talk uneducated you dress like you need to stay in the house. I noticed when people have different types of clothes on they reflect what their wearing.
In time as generations go on and education is distributed more, people are leaning on talking like one another.
In my beliefs there is a reason why people all talk differently. People normally don't think Religion and how it contribute in the different languages and different speech patterns
For our second benchmark mark we are studying languages within ourselves. I choose to write about the code switching I do between my friend, family,and to older people.
Language is how you speak. Everyone has a different way of speaking.When I’m with my friends I may come off as sarcastic or as if I do not care. When I really take a sad story and turn it into something I can cope with. But not every story me and my friends talk about that way is sad. When a person asks a question they already know the answer to we speak sarcastic. For example if you ask how many fingers a normal person has you should already know the answer. I look at my friend they will look at me and then we would start smiling. Next comes our sarcasm. We might respond with something such as “15” or to really laugh we might say “non, we do not know what a finger is.”
I thought that writing about this could help me really understand why I do it. I guess that if people knew what I do then they might stop acting dumb. Well those who read this. What does sracman mean to me? I think of it as a way to insult idiots without them realizing it. Am I a mean person for it? Well I don’t think so. I’m sarcastic 75% of the time, but that doesn’t mean that i’m never serious.
There was this time when abounce of my friends and I was sitting around a table. Of course there when outsiders there but when do they ever matter? We were talking about this youtube video about this girl who was dancing on a locker and she fell off. We watched the video over and over again because it was funny. A Bi-standard walked by and was like omg did she just fall? We laughed again but this time not at the video at the dummy with a stupid question. I replied no she did it because she wanted to. She bumped her head because she thought she could become smarter. Everybody laughed. The dummy with a dumb question felt stupid. My goal is complete.
Is what i’m doing a nice thing? Can people benefit from how I speak to them? Probably not, but the big question is ask me if I care. It’s not my fault that I think sometimes before I talk unlike most of the students that goes to my school. Asking question you know the answer to will get you nowhere. It’s like asking your mother how many siblings you have, when you live with all of them everyday. Or asking how many numbers is in the alphabet when you use a computer to make a living.
There are times where people ask question they know the answer to and you can not reply sarcastic. You must look at them differently and or begin to laugh.
Here’s a time when my sister said something that almost made me want to homeschool her my self. My father was mins away from getting a foot operation. He was telling us about the other operations he has overcome. One of them was when he had gotten his appendix removed. After he said it my younger sister turned around and replies “You have no kidney?”
What can you say to a question as such. Nothing you sit there and crack up laughing. You laugh until your “Kidney” falls out.
Ingredients:
-macaroni
-water
- 2 table-spoons of vegetable oils
- powder cheese
Recipe
Add
two table-spoons of vegetable oil in some water. Wait 5 minutes to add the milk
then add the macaroni in the pot. After 15 minutes, add the cheese from the
packet.
Analysis:
Due
to the fact that the whole Kraft’s macaroni and cheese consists of the
following ingredients,
Thiamine
Mono
nitrate
Folic
acid
Riboflavin
Iron
in the form of ferrous sulfate
Whey
(milk protein),
Milk
protein concentrate,
Milk,
Milk
fat,
Cheese
culture,
Salt,
Sodium
tripolyphosphate,
Sodium
phosphate,
Calcium
phosphate,
Yellow
5 ,
Yellow
6,
Citric
acid,
Lactic
acid,
and enzymes.
then I don’t really
recommend anyone to eat the macaroni and cheese. Most of these ingredients are
only recommended for people whom need to treat certain health conditions.
I
chose to make Macaroni and Cheese to investigate whether or not it was good due
to the fact that I eat it a lot when I want to make something to eat quickly. I
don’t go to fast food restaurants so I thought that cooking at home would be
better. However, a lot of food has preservatives and it is difficult to stay
healthy even certain organic foods aren’t okay to eat.
SELF- REFLECTION:
Making
this dish helped me understand how I need to change what I eat and how bad
things are for you even if it’s promoted by ad’s and how certain foods actually
have “real cheese” when they’re supposed to have certain ingredients. Also,
most people are worried about how many calories are in each platter or on
whatever you eat, but I now believe that people need to focus more on what they’re
eating, because it is not food.. Or atleast not all the time.
Other
than that, I believe that the reason
Ingredients (for two
servings):
1 Onion
1 Green pepper
1 Tomato
2 African hot peppers
5 Maggi cubes
1 Package Chicken tray
⅕ cup
of vegetable oil
Instructions:
1.) Pour 5 oz. of dehydrated attieke into a large pot.
2.) Heat 5 oz. of water until warm. Pour the water in the pot with the attieke
while stirring gently. Allow the attieke to soak for 5 to 10 minutes.
3.) Place the pot on the stove and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. Stir the attieke
continuously. Use a fork to prevent the grains from sticking together.
4.) Turn off the heat and remove the pot from the stove.
5.) Place the attieke in a large bowl and wait for it to cool down.
6.) For the second part of the dish, place the chicken in a large Ziploc bag.
Then, place the 3 maggi cubes in the Ziploc bag with the chicken. Keep the
chicken in there for 30-60 minutes.
7.) Take the Ziploc bag with the chicken and put it in a refrigerator. You can
refrigerate the chicken for up to four hour. The chicken will absorb the flavors.
8.) Take the chicken out of the fridge. Allow the chicken to come to room
temperature before grilling it.
9.) Grill the chicken in a grill pan till both sides of the chicken turn brown
and crispy.
10.) Place the grilled chicken in a plate and put the attieke next to it.
11.) Cut up the onion, tomato, African hot pepper, and green pepper and put
them in a Ziploc bag. Put one maggi cube and ⅕ of vegetable oil in
the Ziploc bag. Let it sit for 30 minutes.
12.) Put the mixture that is in the Ziploc bag on top of the grilled chicken
and the attieke.
Analysis:
Our meal consists entirely
of processed foods. The total amount of calories in our meal is 851.4. Since
there are so many calories in our dish, if eaten often, the human body would
gain weight and grow to be less healthy. The amount of fat in our dish is 18.1
grams. Since our dish is fairly low in fat, the human body is more likely to
work more proficiently. It is also less prone to get diseases associated with a
fatty diet. These include diabetes, heart disease, and cancer of the lower
digestive system. However, if you ate this meal everyday, since it is low in
fat, it can lead to problems like overeating, depression, and hormonal
imbalances.
All of our ingredients were
harvested in the United States. However, some of them are native to West Africa
(African hot pepper, etc.). On average, our ingredients travelled 600 miles to
get to Philadelphia. According to research, the manufactures of the ingredients
to not harvest it organically.
The chemicals used can have
a negative impact on the planet in many ways. One of these is pollution. As the
chemicals get washed away, they end up in rivers. This ultimately decreases the
quality of the affected river. Given each ingredient, the meal cost five ten
dollars to make. This is about the same cost as a fast food meal.
One ingredient of
particular interest to us was the African hot pepper. To grow it, a seed was
placed in the ground. It was watered once everyday and sprayed with pesticides.
After growing, it was picked, packaged, and sent to the store to be sold. After
being purchased, it ended up in our dish.
Personal Reflections:
Ronald: One of
the main problems with America’s food system is that people are lazy. In this
unit, we have learned that people simply do what is most convenient when it
comes to obtaining food. For instance, I remember one of the graphs that we
looked at showed how far away the average person is from a supermarket. I
realized that this distance often determines whether or not a person has access
to healthy organic foods, as if unhealthy foods are closer, that is probably
what the consumer will choose.
If I could make changes to
my food choices, I would I would eat more vegetables. The reason is because I
sometimes go days without eating them. I feel that if I ate more vegetables, I
would become a healthier person. One impact that eating more vegetables would
have is that I would have more lasting energy. Although eating foods that are
high in sugar gives me energy, it burns out quickly. As a sprinter, this can
lead to me tiring out in the middle of a race.
After realizing that I need
to eat more vegetables, I am prepared to make a change. Now, I make sure that I
eat vegetables at least once a day. I plan to increase my intake even further.
Mabintu: I have learned a lot about foods this unit; food that is good for you and food that is bad for you. We also learned about why some foods are the way they are and what the government has to do with the kind of food we eat. When we looked at the health/food maps we came to an understanding that most of the overweight/Obese people are in the poor areas of Philadelphia. We talked about how food companies be lying about in the food and the labels. We talked about organic food and how it is more expensive and you have less of a variety to choose from. That is why people spend most of their money on presses food because they cause less. I do not need to change anything about my diet because I usually eat homemade food. When I eat outside I do not eat health because it’s they only time I can eat something that I think is good. I do not eat unhealthy most of the time I eat unhealthy like twice a week or so. I guess I need to make a little change to my diet, as to what times I eat. Right now I eat any time I hungry and sometimes I eat even when I’m not hungry. That will have to change.
Serving size: 7-8
12.00 dollars
Ingredient
1/2 cup of magrine
1/2 cup of Sugar
4 eggs
1 bag of wheat bread crumbs1 cup of skim milk.
2 tablespoons of salt.1. Preheat oven 350 degrees
2. Mix the bowls with the ingredients.
3. Bake the 350 degree oven for an hour before serving.
Serving size 2 people.
Some of the food is process and some is whole. The pineapples and eggs are not process and they are whole foods. But the extra ingredients like sugar margarine is process. Its pretty healthy as it only has 166 calories. I say it’s like 55% process and 45% not process. It is very high in natural sugar and process sugar. It also has eggs for protein and bread for bread use. This food dish lacks vitamin A, B and D. Also it does not have a lot of cholesterol. Some of the food that is processed all of the food will go straight to your systems that will be processed and then go to your stomach. Margarine comes from vegetable oil and skim milk. That is healthier then butter.
Margarine comes from vegetable oil and skim milk. So they came from a farmers. So does the eggs that were made. My specific margarine and eggs comes from Kentucky. I am not aware wear my eggs came from but its company was Foodhold USA which is in Maryland. The rolls came from Florida and my Pineapples also came from Florida. That is a total of 1324 miles traveled just to get in my home. The Margarine, bread, pineapples, and sugar were all processed. Only the eggs were not processed. But the chicken who laid it was.
This meal cost around 12 dollars. This meal is suppose to serve 8 people. This is a lot more expensive then a 4 dollar menu burgers from McDonalds. This is an outrage that a dish served for 8 cost so much more. The stuff that cost the most is pineapples which were 2.00 dollars. Obviously the Martians, Doles and other foods won the deal by stealing my money.
My bread cubes cubes some soybeans and Monocalcuim in it. I have no idea how they managed to add those items in bread but the did. I’m pretty sure if I made the bread those items would not be included in my bread. My eggs have no significant source of Dietary fiber or sugar. But I have no idea how to make eggs the right way. Plus I have no chickens.
I learned different effects that food can have on someone. I knew that eating unhealthy can cause an unhealthy life in the future. I knew that liver problems and other serious diseases are caused by eating habits. What I learned the most was from the videos, even though we didn’t finish the movie I learned a lot about the food culture. I learned that the food producers are a bunch of a-holes. Sorry for the rude language but it’s beyond me that a food company can just about contaminate almost all of the natural foods to make them more fattening just for money. It’s terrible to kill the cows, chickens and pigs the way they do. Not only make them fat but you basically make them kill them in the most gruesome way. And once someone talks about it, they get sued by the food companies. The workers can’t stop because they need the money to survive. So no one wins. This is a messed up society we have. Another reason why this world is messed up is because people in low income can not afford healthy foods because 1 low income and 2 there are no grocery store. This a terrible world we live in.
I remember when I first moved to Philly, I was five years old and beginning my kindergarten year at Norwood Fontbonne Academy, a Catholic School in Chestnut Hill. I walked down the stairs in my favorite polo dress and my hair in one ponytail and hopped in the car after what seemed like thousands of pictures from my overly emotional mother. I never understood the tears, I mean, I did go to preschool for three years before that. We rolled into the construction filled school in our Ford Explorer with the Massachusetts license plate. Nervousness ran through my whole body. I sat down on the “magic carpet” when we went around the circle to say our names and where we are from. When it was my turn I sat up straight, head held high, and said “My name is Gabrielle Aahrnold and I am from Amhuuuuurst Massachusetts.” Naturally my teachers were concerned that I wasn’t developing my phonics correctly. Fast forward 10 years later with a little “Hooked on Phonics” and “speech therapy”, I speak with little to no accent.
My accent was one of the things that defined me. Amherst is in my blood. My accent made me different from everyone else. I stood out from the crowd. I wasn’t just a Philly girl, I was an Amherst girl, and damn proud of it. I still am an Amherst girl... but a Philly girl as well. My accent was a conversation starter, something distinct, something beautiful. That’s the beauty of language, regardless of how your voice sounds, where you are and who you’re with. There will always be someone who will listen to your voice and instantly connect with you. Their voice rubs off on you.
I began attending Germantown Friends School September of 2003. My vocabulary from the time I was very young has always been vaster than what was the expectation. Over time I began to talk more and more like my peers, we began our own language. “Obvi” began to slowly creep into my “all the time vocabulary, annoying my parents and pushing my cousins to call me “white girl”. My aunt began to taunt my cousins and I when she saw us talking, “And I’m like, and he’s like, and I’m like and he’s like”. She says this to this day. I’ve changed schools so the taunting hasn’t been as severe since I picked up a majority of my other cousin’s vocabulary when I began attending Science Leadership Academy in the fall of 2011.
When I began attending Science Leadership Academy, I learned a new type of English, Philly slang. Most of my friends at GFS were from the outskirts of Philly, we had our own slang. “That’s dead” slowly began to creep into my vocabulary so much so that my mother has begun saying it.
I love that my language reflects all the places I have been in life. Amherst, Philly, Norwood, SLA. My language is like one of my style, something that is visible always and represents who I am to the fullest. "Over the past three years of living
in Philadelphia my language has changed dramatically compared to when I lived
in Delaware. Not only did I move to a totally different state with a different
way of living, talking, dressing, etc., but I got older as well. Living in
Philly I definitely have picked up the slang that’s used on a daily basis. When
I am with my friends we use different slang words then someone maybe from south
Philly. My weekends are full of fun random sayings that we make up.
My friends that live in West Philly,
together we call each other The Mob. In the Mob my closest friend is Shania. She
Is the one closest to my age (17). “Shine bright like a diamond” a song by
Rihanna (my sister Shania’s ringtone) begins to play as my day is interrupted
by her daily text messages or phone calls. Most the time she is calling or
messaging me to ask if im going to come down there that day to chill or go to a
party. “Yo shawty. Whats up? Instead of just “Hey” or “Hi” those are usually
the things she’ll say. My response mainly sounds something like “Hey love. How
r u?” I use love as a way to show I care about you on some level. If I call you
my love its basically like calling you my friend or my homie. Majority of the Mob’s conversations involve
finding out the swerve (the move; activity) of the day/night. They can also
involve a lot of plotting and planning sessions.
Our conversations go on they begin
to get sillier and sillier. Someone will say something that someone else should
have already known the answer to. Or (usually) Shania will ask a dumb question
like five times in four different ways. We are the youngest of our crew of about
20 people (we are 16). The oldest direct member of our family will be 21 this
year. Shania and I being the young ones, they basically took us in as there lil
sisters/ young bulls. For someone who doesn’t hang out with us on a daily basis
they would think we are they WEIRDEST people alive. One thing that we do to
basically laugh at each other is what is called Follow ups. “That’s one…follow
ups”; this is usually stated when someone does something wrong or says
something totally Stupid off. What happens is that you get hit on the shoulder
back arm area by everyone around you. You can say “No Follow ups” Saying this
is basically acknowledging that you screwed up in some way. It also yells “dont
hit me!”
Another language that is used a lot
in my life is the language of arts. Whether its rap poetry or singing its always
happening (especially if im with my friends) We use it to not only express
ourselves but to make things more fun. We could be walking down the street and
someone will randomly start singing or rapping about what we are doing. Seven out
of the 15 people in The Mob rap and go to the studio. When PurpVarsity (the rap
group) with Cazz, Drew and two people not from The Mob throws parties they
preform and give other people the opportunity to perform as well. The arts have become of big part of how I
communicate to strangers and very close people. Its not pressuring, its
comfortable and fun.
Over the short amount of years I have been in this world, I have learned a lifetimes worth of things just from language alone. I have learned ,thanks entirely to the judgment of others, that my way of speaking is 'white'. Which on paper sounds kind of ridiculous as you wouldn't think of language as actually having a color. But I assure you people in this day and age have color coded the english language. While slang and grammatically incorrect english is usually referred to as 'black' more articulated, polished english is thought of as 'white'. There exist a grey zone where broken english falls into but that's a story for another day. In the hierarchy of colored language someone speaking in a 'white' manner is always thought to be smarter than someone who speaks in a 'black' or even 'grey' dialect and that shouldn't be so. Take my first day of 6th grade for example.
“Welcome to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love!” I still remembered the giant billboard ushering us into Philadelphia after what seemed like endless drive along a highway that seemed like it stretched on forever. Now I stood at a classroom door, scared nervous, out of my element. I put doubt behind me as I remembered I was in the city of brotherly love of course they would accept me they had too. Right? I slowly crept through the door accidently closing it a bit harder than I intended to. Instantly 30 pairs of eyes swallowed me whole from my hair to my skin color to the shoes I wore. Everything was put on the forefront. I remember my teacher, Ms.Graves, booming voice. “Okay class this is Charles” Char-els she somehow managed to shove two syllables in my name “Char-els tell us about yourself!” It was more of a command then a suggestion. I looked out at my classmates they were hungry for information their eyes said so. “Well, my name is Charles,” I said emphasizing the way my name is supposed to be spoken the way my mom says it. In one breath, short sweet, but it carried power. I remember getting weird looks just from this statement, not form what I said, but form my annunciation and pronunciation, nervously I continued. “I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. I just moved here not to long ago and I—“ “Why is you talkin’ so white?” This outburst came from a girl right in front of me, it wasn’t a tease, it was not an insult. It was a sincere question. Why did I talk so white? The whole class went up in laughter; they had all been wondering the same thing apparently. I never did answer that girl, I didn’t know how too.
That was the first time I had not only realized i talked differently from other black kids, but I was assumed to be smartly purely from just me muttering a few words. My time in 6th grade was spent trying to adjust to the Philadelphia dialect. At first I had mental cringes every time a kid would say "I be" or "They is" and I'll admit at time I thought of them as stupid or uneducated. But then came the days we had classroom discussions and it were those days that I realized my peers 'black' language did not reflect how bright there minds were. My fancy words didn't make my point anymore valid than the next man-- or kid in my classroom and I realized from that day on that people assuming intellectual levels based on speech is ignorance at it's finest. In their defense, it's only logical to think an idea is only as good as it is portrayed verbally. However what we overlook is what's being spoken and what's being spoken are two very different things.
In closing, a persons mastery over their respective language, or even others, should not reflect how educated or smart you think they are. doing that is not only ignorant but it's one of the very prudent forms of modern racism. Thinking this way can only hurt you in expanding your mind to the different cultures of the world.