Spanish Inquisition

Well, here I am sat infront of a hotel computer in sunny Menorca, watching my online time tick away in the corner of my screen. I have 8 minutes 45 seconds left apparently. Must press on.

May I just warn you that there may be random spelling and grammatical mistakes as the keyboards are of a Spanish nature and I still haven´t found the question marks. Although, they do have a rather fetching upside down interrobang that is on a key shortcut I cant quite reach... ¡¿ That´ll do.

I´ve been in Spain for just a few days now, and I love it already. Everywhere you go the people are far friendlier than what you get back in Scotland. Maybe because its sunny and they have sunny dispositions to match. (Hence the depressively rainy attitudes of us in Scotland?) ;)

Another thing that struck me is that when we´re out having a meal or a drink in a restaurant, it is still legal over here to smoke. I guess I´ve been so used to it over in Britain that it was quite surprising and novel to see. Being a very anti-smoking child I guess I was just a wee bit peeved.

Is peeved even a word? I´ve repeated it inside my head so many times that it now seems silly. I will check, when I get a decent computer and keyboard.

Also, I´ve become all to aware of my own accent recently. Very self conscious when talking as I find myself saying things like, "Huvnae" "Cannae" "Faffed" "Ocht" "Ken" and I´m sure I say "Aye" every second word. Its probably because I´m used to everyone else around me sounding equally stupid. (Luv yas reli)

Rebecca and I have already made friends with a few of the locals, like El Spanish Dude (we haven't yet learned his name) who -whilst I was snorkeling- flung bread in the water so the fish wold attack me. Good job I can swim. Fast. He´s really cool though, he says "Ola" to all you reading.

Oh gosh, only a few minutes left. *superfasttypingmode*

*Happified squeal* I´ve been catching up on everyones blogs before I came on to quickly type this and, thank you to Mrs O´Neill for mentioning me on her blog. Never been recognised for doing anything ever before. At least not under the right name. How bien! I think.. Spanish isn't that good, watching Dora the Explorer does not count as good language skills...

Well I only have under a minute left so this will have to be cut short. Will resume blogging with pictures when I return, hopefully with a tan too.

Sol.

I'm still fixated with Halloween but I'll leave it out (mostly) for this post as its a rather quick post. Its the second day of the October Holidays and already my mind is numb. So numb in fact, I read my horoscope today. I rarely do unless I'm really bored, but when I do I do find them somewhat interesting. Todays reading for Capricorns everywhere is:

'Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zipadee-ay, my-oh-my what a wonderful day...' Remember the old Disney Song Of The South? The best version of this that you'll ever hear is by Steve Miller on his much underrated album, Born 2B Blue. I'm mentioning this to you today because, well, you decide. Because I want to talk about music? Or because 'plenty of sunshine' actually IS coming your way. Venus is forming a conjunction to your ruler. That's the truth. It's actual. Soon (almost) everything will be satisfactual.

I find this quite funny as I'm off to Menorca -possibly Majorca, I get confused easily- in two days, which explains the sunshine (I hope). I also have been talking about music and Disney a lot recently, see the post below, which ties in too. Happy coincidence? Most probably.

Anyway, seeing as I'm off into the sunshine soon, this will be my last post for the next week at least. However I hope to return with some good pictures and blog topics other than Halloween. Also I'm taking my sketchbook with me which no doubt will feed my fasination with the sky and rural countryside at the minute. Hence the picture above, taken from Innermessan (sp?) the other week by my trusty telephone sidekick and I.

Oh! how silly of me, I forgot to type in "Popular Ned Language" today. Tsk, I shall leave that for a rainy November day. I've been doing my research y'see, as much as it pains me to do so, but I want to do a wee social-type experiment.

How do you think "picture" is apparently spelt?

"Dont you lot use the internet for anything educational?"

This was the interesting question posed to my history class today by Mrs H. The class' reaction was as expected, to her surprise, with comments like, "Unles Bebo and MSN are classed as educational, no." -- "Not unless I have to." and possibly the worst, "Ocht naw, dae ah look yen on thaem brainy folk?"

This sent me into a blog-post-purpose day dream for the rest of the lesson. What do I do on the Internet when I spend hours of my free time glued to the screen? What do other people my age do? Could teachers use the internet as a way of education? Of course, the answers to the first two questions are easy.

1)I usually send my computer into hyper-drive by opening far too many windows at once and carrying out numerous tasks simultaneously. In other words; I chat on bebo, I upload pictures from my phone, I download music onto my MP3, I discuss on one or two forums, I share conversations with many different people over MSN, I potter away with my blog, I listen to music and more often than not my Photo shop is running in the background making some form of pixel-art. There's the odd homework task in the mix too.
-Educational relevance? Not much.

2) Most teenagers at Stranraer Academy (not including the PGs as we are indeed in a league of our own, Shaun will explain if he comments :P) spend their online life worshiping BEBO and MSN, and would willingly admit so. This includes; racing to get the latest skins, newest tricks and tips, newest versions, the first to have an original name or the most "loves." This is normally done by talking in the worst language ever known to man- where vowels don't exist, punctuation is overused and the idea of capital letters is but an urban myth. Do they realise how bad grammatical and spelling mistakes look online? No. IT ISNA3 KWL TA3 TAK RYT!!!1
-Educational relevance? Not much.

The third answer is rather different. Both the above answers wouldn't come under the "education" bracket for most teachers in school, including Mrs H, as stereotypical educational use of the Internet is researching a topic elaborately using as many pie charts as possible. But, in my opinion, I feel this could be changed. The Internet is a vast network in which there is so much to learn from, giving the right tools to access it, and could well be turned into one of the greatest teacher-helping pupil-friendly textbooks ever.

Introduced to me by Mrs O'Neill, Wikispaces and blogs are but two of the ways schools could get a little bit of technology into their classrooms -provided they have the know-how and the willingness to do so. I personally find this to be great, as its far more enjoyable than copying out of textbooks. They would allow more for kids who are absent or if the teacher happens to be absent or even just in fun homework tasks, to adapt to learning in different media and environments.

Our school however, appears to be stuck in the days when PowerPoint presentations were the best and only way of teaching. Maybe one day things'll change and ideas about interactive school communities wont just be resigned to History period day-dreams.

[Of course, being one of those quiet invisible type of people sitting in the back of the class, I didn't refer to any of my ideas about what the Internet could be used for in this certain class, for four reasons; 1) The fear of having to answer that dreaded question, "What's a blog?", 2) Getting quizzed on what I post on my blog, and 3) I have a fear of anyone else finding my blog.]

My WeeMee's got style.

I was going to redo my FIVE THINGS ABOUT ME thing tonight but then I realsied, there really aren't that many things that are interesting about me. I'm a pretty dull person. So instead, I figured I just post one random fact about me. So here it is-

--A few months from the start of the year, I set myself the challenge of learning Sign Language. I'd stopped and started along the way, what with exams and other distractions but I took it back up propperly over the summer and now I'm almost fluent, give or take a few words. Best part of it is that I can have a conversation in class and noone except Lara knows what I'm saying. Its great.

Or maaybe thats just me being weird.

Anyway, as per usual I have a ton of things to do but have managed to find something to distract myself. I've given my WeeMee a room, an umbrella and glasses. How cool. If you're reading and you have a WeeMee leave me a message as I'm message-less. I've also uploaded a few pictures into my Picassa album, viewable by clicking on the swan thing to the right of this. Andd, partly due to Shaun shouting, "HELLO MRS DORNAN!" at my mum every time he sees her, I've created a blog for her. Its a bit.. empty at the moment as she's not posted yet but I'll soon change that. ;)

Music change today. I originally wanted Marc Bolan- Hot Love but its not hosted, so Metal Guru will just have to do. Hard to think he's been dead for 30 years already this month. Also shockingly, its only 19 days to my holidays, 95 days to my birthday, and 98 days to Christmas. Not that I'm counting..

One of those days?

I'm going to do what I do best- grumble and discuss the weather. Every month of the calendar year seems to have its own seasonal personality, to which we abide by during the weeks they contain. Clothing styles change with the weather, the colours change, the clocks change and our anticipation changes depending on what we're looking forward to. Reading my blog, you've probably noticed I'm a very visual person, most things in my life are associated with certain colours- like a human Mood Ring per se. So, I've been thinking, (s'becoming a habit these days, I'm getting worried) of what my year would look like if someone was to compose it visually.

-January and February are the bleak months yet they are filled with hope for the future year too. These are the months everyone is still singing from Christmas and looking forward subconsciously, with little spring lambs frolicking in fields of glistening snow drops. I think its best represented by cool blues and mint greens, like the coolness of toothpaste..

-June and July feel the warmest and brightest, when schools gearing up for the holidays and the atmosphere is happy. Summer sun, ice creams and adventuristic days at amongst every child's hopes (and expectations). Most likely to be represented by reds and yellows, which reflecting in both the heat and the energy levels presented in these midway months.

-September-October time is the transition into the cooler oranges, muted pinks and browns. I find this time of year to be both glorious in colour yet, personally, really really.. muted. Like, there are barely any big holidays to celebrate, other than Halloween -which in itself gives off a dark tone- and its the time of year when I start to lose all sense of everything and just feel perpetually tired, for no outstanding reason.

-November and December pick up the pace again as the build up to Christmas is on the horizon. Scarves and hats are dug out of cluttered drawers, Christmas decorations begin to take over the house and the only thing on TV is The Great Escape. (Maybe one year they'll surprise us by not escaping..) The nights become darker and wintry, where the only good thing to do is snuggle up with a good book and hot chocolate- great! I love winter. Everything happens in December for me; my birthday, then Christmas then New Year and not to mention the reflective days where all you do is talk about whats gone on over the past year. It can surprise you what can change, what you don't notice as you're too busy looking ahead.

I had one of these days today. A December day in September, (maybe Global Warming is creeping up on us) where the weather became instantly cold with a biting wind and all I wanted to do was think back to the summer and warmer times. I suppose its a sort of comfort thing, talking about what has been rather than face the future, I do it far to often- mainly in maths when I'm invisible.

The thought of Global Warming rather alarms me. I'm not a huge fan of change, even though I believe change is a good thing, and slowly but surely even I can see the effects we're having on this planet. Pretty soon, the weather system and our yearly calendar will undoubtedly change, and I cant say for the better. So far, we've had extreme flooding in the Midlands and Tornadoes in London;- it wouldn't surprise me if next Belfast was turned into a swamp and Scotland was ravished by spontaneous hail stones the size of coconuts. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but the weather's become so unpredictable not even my blog can control it.

Is there much we can do? Does obsessive recycling hold the answer, or even do enough? I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe when I'm having a barbecue and beach party on my birthday will everything make sense.

Judging Books By Their Covers.

In English today we started reading through the first Short Story I've studied in a very long while; "The Darkness Out There" by Penelope Lively. I like it so far, I'm an analysis-aholic as it is anyway so I'm intrigued at the prospect of studying it thoroughly. This, surprisingly, got me thinking: What is it that makes us read what we read?

Personally, I throw caution to the wind and often chose books by their covers. They intrigue me, I fall hook line and sinker for the advertising companies who design the covers in the first place. Maybe its just my mindset, or.. something but if I notice an interesting cover, I’m most likely to read the book. There are other reasons, obviously, like the author or raving reviews that I like to make my own decisions about but added with a great cover usually is a recipe for success.

Strangely though, the Daphne Du Maurier books don’t have very interesting and detailed Terry-Pratchett-like covers, yet I’m an avid reader. I like their simplicity. The plots and characters make up for this once you get reading however. (The narrator in Rebecca has my full sympathy, for obvious reasons.)

I'm a sucker for cover art, Terry Pratchett's being the worst. Or the velvety covers of children's books by Debi Gliori. Or those uber cool Pop-Up books about pirates and dragons... Anyway. Here are a two books that have caught my eye whilst blogging here:

<Hopeless Romantic by Harriet Evans. I think the simplicity of the colour and shapes in this cover is what I like. Pink umbrella FTW. Haven't read the book yet, so I cant comment on whether I can judge a book by its cover successfully.

Going Home by Harriet Evans. Wintry and Christmas-y, portrays the book superbly. >

They're both rather intriguing covers, I'm tempted to read A Hopeless Romantic already. The books that feature in my picture in the top of this post are just a selection that I love- especially The Interpretation Of Murder. Good books in my books anyway..

Sending Out An SOS.

Just a quick update today as I'm rather taken by a creative writing idea I've just decided to pursue- shall post more details once I get parts written. The outcome should hopefully be really really weird and funny and hopefully a good read (provided its legal of course.) Its set in Stranraer Academy aswell. (Says it all really dunnit)

I'm in the middle of trying to persuade my mum to write a blog post on here as she's just recently switched jobs and become a Learning Support teacher at the Academy, she has been for the past three years but now she's full time. I think it'd be pretty interesting to read. And make a change from mum reading all my posts. :P

Change of song today: The Police & Sting- Message In A Bottle. Incredibly catchy and I like itt.

Must get back to my plan before I forget everything thats in my head. More on the story later.