Sweeney Todd

Attend the tail of Sweeney Todd, his skin was pale and his eye was odd....Oh yes Sweeney Todd. I went to go see Sweeney Todd over the weekend and I have to say it was overall pretty good. The beginning started off good enough. I was really interested I didn't know what was going to happen. The music sounded creepy, the costumes were interesting and the makeup was great. The singing and the orchestra all was wonderful they all did a great job at that but once the play got going I was a little bored. I thought that there was a lot of uneeded songs by Mrs. Lovett and the only interesting parts were when Sweeney was killing people. I'm not saying the plotline wasn't good it was really interesting but I thought it could have been condensed to a shorter version to get at the good stuff sooner. I thought it wasn't really that innappropriate of a play except for the killing and the parts with the judge. That was so creepy, the judge was like going after Johanna who was his own daughter but not really but it was still gross haha. The singing was all really good and I thought Mr. Yuska did a great job of incorporating a lot of people into the chorus that otherwise could not have participated. Overall I give it 3 1/2 stars :)

~Mildred

Sweeney Todd

The musical this year is Sweeney Todd. Another gruesome scary P-13 show for Mr. Yuska :) But that is what he is good at. Haha This show has a huge cast!! The biggest in Kennedy history I believe? Don't quote me on that though, anyway I am extrememly excited to go see it tomorrow at seven oclock with my three friends :) I will give my review of it but I am sure it will earn five stars because I have heard nothing but great things from it. Everything about the show is over the top, from the costumes, to the vocals, to the characters, to the makeup, even to the set. The set is the most elaborate set that Kennedy has ever had which goes to show that a production like this has a lot going on not only on stage under the lights but behind the scenes as well which is why I am excited to tell you all about it tomorrow!!!

~Mildred

Catching the Culture: Catholocism

When I was a baby I was baptized in the Catholic church because my dad is Catholic. He was raised as a Catholic and my mom was raised as a Methodist so when they got married my mom didn't want to change religions so she continued going to the Methodist church and my dad continued going to the Catholic church. Anyway as you can tell I get a lot of both religions. I mainly go to the Methodist church with my mom because she was the one willing to take us on Sunday mornings to Sunday School and on Wednesday nights to youth group. My cousins are Catholic though and sometimes when my mom doesn't want to get up in the morning I go to church with my dad so I know a little about Catholicism. Recently (like over the weekend recently) I went to my cousin first communion at St. Judes Catholic church. I had never been to a first communion because although I was baptized catholic I don't consider myself a catholic (although my father would argue otherwise). I didn't really know what to expect. It was the same day as my sisters confirmation so we arrived a little late. When I walked in I saw a bunch of little girls sitting with their parents dressed in pretty little white dresses wearing adorable white veils and little boys wearing cute suits. It was so adorable!!! The Catholics have very many traditions that they keep sacred. They were the original Christianity religion that many other sects branched off into later after Martin Luther. Catholics are kind of known for being more strict. They believe in the holy trinity, father, song and holy spirit. And that is their symbol for when they cross themselves. They go head, father, chest, son, shoulders, holy spirit. Catholics also believe in going to Confession which is when they go and talk to their priests about their sins and ask forgiveness for what they have done. Catholics do not believe in divorce or abortion and they are very conservative. They also believe in holy water and they have it everywhere in their churches. One time while at my great aunts funeral my sister was only about four or five she saw the big bath of holy water and thought "Hey! Looks like a swimming pool cool!" So she went and started splashing around in the holy water which was kind of frowned upon by Catholics....lol And that is Catholicism in a nutshell!!!

~Mildred

Catching the Culture: Methodism

I have decided to switch my topics up a bit for my blog. I will continue to do school activities and talk about my opinion on issues but I have recently found out that I am interested in differen't peoples cultures and the different cultures of the world. I will write about a couple of different aspects of cultures including religion, food etc. A little bit of everything. I will continue to write about other things but when I am writing about culture I will title it Catching the Culture: (Insert topic here). Today I am going to talk about Methodism. I myself am Methodist so I thought what better way to start off this new topic than something I know a lot about and am emersed in almost all the time. Methodism is a protestant Christian religion that was started by John Wesley. It was founded in 1739. There are four main points to being a Methodist, Proclamation (proclaim the Gospel); Evangelism (invite people to personal decision for and commitment to Jesus Christ for their salvation); Incorporation (call persons to be incorporated into the Body of Christ); and Servanthood (serve as agents of God’s liberation and reconciling grace among the nations). Methodist are strong believers that you not only have to be a good Christian by praying, going to church etc. but also that you have to SHOW through your actions that you are a good Christian by serving the church, and God. For example my church participates in many different mission trips which are trips that people can go on, youth, adults etc. and we go and help out people or communities that need our help. During spring break the youth group goes on a youth mission trip to Missouri where they help out a family on the "Possibility Alliance". The family had their own farm and lived off of the land and didn't use electricity or indoor plumbing or any kind of petroleum. They didn't drive cars instead they rode bikes. This summer we will be going down to an Indian reservation in South Dakota and we will be helping them roof their house and diffren't things. In the past we have also helped rebuild flood houses in downtown Cedar Rapids etc. Our adults in our church went to Guatamala and helped build a school for the Guatamalan children. In our church we have pastors. Sometime the pastors leave and switch churches when needed. Above the pastors are the bishops which help run the entire Methodist church throughout the United States. For communion Methodists believe that anyone who believes in God can take communion no matter what religion you are or what church you belong to. In the Methodist faith once you reach the age of about 14 (around 8th grade) you have the choice of being confirmed. This is a year long program where you go to classes and learn more about the Methodist faith and what it means to be a Methodist. At the end of the program you are "confirmed" as a member of the Methodist church. John Wesley taught four main points that he believed were fundamental to Methodism;

1. Man is free not only to reject salvation but also to accept it (free salvation) by an act of human will.2. All people who are obedient to the Gospel according to the measure of knowledge given them will be saved (universal salvation).3. The Holy Spirit assures man of his salvation directly, through an inner "experience" (sure salvation).4. Christians in this life are capable of Christian perfection and are commanded by God to pursue it (full salvation). And that is what it means to be a Methodist!! :) I got most of my information that I didn't already know about Methodism from this website, if you want to find more out about Methodism just click on that link!

~Mildred

ACT

Last Saturday I took the ACT's for the third time this year. This time they were held at Kennedy and a bunch of people from Kennedy took them. Now I feel that the ACT can either go really great or really bad depending on the proctor. If you have a really good proctor who is good about putting the times up on the board and making sure they are ACCURATE and is good about making sure they hold their noise down to a minimum and they don't distract the test takers I feel like it can actually be a very positive experience. But I was hearing stories about ACT proctors that were messing up the times and typing really loudly on their computers and were just doing a horrible job overall. It may not seem like it but this can affect the examinees immensely. The door in the room was open for a little while because it was getting a little hot in the room and the examinees in the room across the hall were done with their tests and the proctor was giving them instructions on what to do and her voice was really loud and it carried really far away and just her talking and giving instructions was distracting me and I was getting really aggravated and eventually the proctor went and closed the door. It is little things like this that make all the difference. I'm not saying if you have a bad proctor you will get a bad score on your ACT, won't get into college, won't get a job and become a bum loser on the street....well I can't gurantee you won't, but I highly doubt you will :) haha but it really makes a difference in the type of proctor you get.

~Mildred

State and All City Music Contest :)

Today I competed at State music contest at Prairie Highschool. This is a contest for highschool students to compete by preparing solos and ensemble pieces with their instruments and for state there are also vocal solos. A week before this was All City which is for any age. All City is a little easier judging wise than State is. I prepared a solo, and I was in two flute choirs, Mississippi Rag and Salsita. Salsita is an interesting piece because there is one section where we don't use tone at all we simply make a "Sh" noise into our flutes. It is different and has a very interesting sound to it. These two pieces are pretty difficult and at All City Mississippi Rag got a 2 and Salsita got a 1 and my solo got a 1. This week for state my solo got a 2 and I don't know what my two flute choirs got yet. Sometimes we will have larger ensembles like woodwind choirs which include the whole woodwind section. Kennedy usually does really good and I think we did really good this year too. This year All City was held at Jefferson and State was held at Prairie.

~Mildred

Owl City

Okay so this is an extremely random blog post just so you know :) I am working on my blogs right now and I am listening to my ipod and I was scrolling through my songs and I just clicked on Hello Seattle and I thought I would blog about how much I am in LOVE with Owl City. Owl City is a band obviously but they didn't really get popular until their hit song "Fireflies" came out on July 14 2009.

Now it wasn't a success overnight obviously it took some time to play on the radios and for people to listen to it and spread the word but eventually this song was more popular than Barack Obama on Inaugaration Day. Everybody I knew was listening to it. I remember my friend let me listen to her ipod and she was like listen to this song :) and I was like okay I like it. It isn't one of my favorites but I will listen to it again. And you see with me as I hear a song more and more I like it more and more. I can't listen to a song for the first time and be like oh yeah I like that song! I have to hear it a couple times and get the beat in my head before I can fully judge it. Let me tell you it was not hard with this song! I heard it all the time!!! And eventually people even started to get tired of it but not me. It has like a soft techno type of mood to it and it isn't like other songs that I have heard. I listened to more of Owl City songs and they all have the same type of sound to them so basically all of their songs are amazing and you should listen to them :) This just goes to show you how one song or one little thing can make you big in Hollywood. I had no idea who they were before Fireflies but now I love them!!! These are my other two favorite songs by them :)

Hello Seattle :)

Vanilla Twilight


~Mildred

Christian Terrorism

Every Tuesday my church has a free lunch that Kennedy students can eat. I love going there because it is a good break from school walking over to church on nice sunny days talking to my pastor and eating delicious food with my friends. Recently they would have little question cards on the table with questions like; "What was your favorite Christmas?" or "Why do you think God made so many different species of beatles?", this week the question was..."There have been a lot of stories about Christian terrorists in the paper lately, can a Christian be a terrorist? Can an Islam be a terrorist?" I started thinking about that question. My answer was no I don't think you can call yourself a Christian and a terrorist, you are either a Christian or a terrorist. You can be a terrorist while practicing the religion of Christianity but everything that terrorism is goes against everything Christianity and Islam is. In the bible and the Quran (sp?) there is talk about peace and loving one another, not fighting at all costs to get your point across. I don't think Jesus or Muhammed would approve of their religion being associated with such terrible things like shootings, suicide bombings and overall violence. I think that the media should stop associating terrorism with religion because the two are not combined into one. They should just keep the term terrorist as one universal term that is used to describe a person inflicting violence or terror on people or buildings and then when they are reporting about it they can say it was because they wanted to defend their religion which happens to be Christianity or something like that. As a Christian I find it offensvie that they are using this term because it is bringing a bad name to us as people and I personally don't agree with any form of terrorism, I am a Christian but I am nothing at all like or I do not agree with Christian terrorism at all, yet they claim to be the same religion as me. I didn't really give this much thought before when they would talk about Islamic terrorists but now I see how hurtful this term is, I didn't realize it but I would associate terrorism with Islam and that isn't how it should be. They should not be called Islamic terrorists, they should simply be called terrorists, because according to Islam you can't be a terrorist and be Islam.

~Mildred

Epiphany

So the other day I was thinking about life in general and the type of person that I wanted to be. I have all these hopes and dreams but I don't know how to accomplish any of them. I was talking to my friend and we were talking about AP classes and advanced classes and what not and how we are forced to take these classes if we want to excel in our school career yet I am beginning to realize this is not the most important thing in life. Going to college. Getting a job. Getting married. Raising a family. Growing old. And dying. This is how us as americans were raised to go through life but we are hardly ever told that there were other options for us. There is more to life than just school. I know that is a shocking statement but there are lives that we need to change, changes that need to happen and they aren't just going to happen by sitting at desks all day learning about random things that don't really matter. We need to get out in the world and experience things for ourselves. I want to make a difference in the world. So I figured I might as well start with baby steps. So here is what I am going to do, each week I am going to do one random nice thing for someone, it could be as simple as saying hi and smiling to someone in the hallway that I wouldn't normally say hi to or something as big as helping someone raise money for a kidney transplant. Whatever it is I am going to tell you and blog about it :) Soooooo wish me luck!!

~Mildred

Date Night

Okay so for every new movie that I see I am going to put a review of it up on my blog :) Tonight I went to see Date Night with the coolest, hottest date in the world!!!! (Sorry I would tell you who it is but I can't disclose names over blogger lame rule :/) anywho I thought this movie was absolutely hilarious. Tina Fey and Mike Carrell should get married in real life because they are a match made in heaven!!! Tina Fey brings to the plate a sense of innocent humor that compliments Steve Carrells quirky attitude imaculately. The humor was that, that was relatable to older audiences and that could actually make us laugh. I would say some of my favorite quotes but I do not believe they are school appropriate. Lol anyway I hope to be seeing Tina Fey in some more movies in the future, (it was nice to see her in a role other than Sarah Palin). All in all the ending was tied together nicely with a good moral of a husband and wife reconnecting and trying to find their "wild side" again when they ended up finding each other. "If I had it to do all over again I would choose you every time."~Steve Carrell So um yeah four stars go see it it was fabulous :) Too bad you won't have as good a date as me though :p

~Mildred

Five Random Things You Wish You Didn't Know About Me

1.) I am obsessed with getting married. Mainly wedding dresses. I just love wedding dresses, I like looking at them picking them out dressing up in them anything having to do with them I am ecstatic :) I even got my mom to buy me a couple of bridal magazines just so I could look at all the pictures of wedding dresses in them. I love the TLC show Say Yes to the Dress. It is about a store in Klinefelters in New York that sells designer wedding dresses and they have people come in and try on wedding dresses and fit them and everything and it is really fun to see what types of dresses people pick out :)

2.) I have Tachycardia Rythmia. This is a heart defect that I was born with. It basically means I have an irregular and faster heartbeat than a normal person of my build. I have to take Atenylol every morning to slow my heart down which also makes my circulation in my blood go slower so I get cold a lot. This doesn't prevent me from doing normal things like playing tennis, or marching band it just means that I need to be aware of my illness and I have to know my limits. Tachycardia Rythmia is not a rare condition a lot of people have it. :)

3.) I absolutely, whole heartedly am in love with John Travolta!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is my favorite actor. I have loved him ever since my friend showed me the movie Grease at her house. He was also in "Look Who's Talking", "Hairspray", "Saturday Night Fever", "Urban Cowboy", and most recently "The Taking of Pelham 123", "Wild Hogs", and also "From Paris with Love". He is a Scientologist like Tom Cruise which means he believes that there are like aliens inside of us...I don't really know haha anyway I am in love with him and my dream is to meet him someday :)

Summer Nights




4.) I have been playing the flute since I was in first grade. I started the summer before my first grade year. Funny story I didn't know what a flute was, see I confused the flute with the recorder...so I thought I was going to go get recorder lessons and I thought the recorder was the flute because we played the recorder in school a little so I guess I kind of got more than I bargained for but I stuck with it and have been playing it ever since!!! And now look at me I am a true bandie :) I love marching band and my life would suck without it lol.

5.) I am addicted to facebook. Like I know every highschool student says that but I have taken it to a new level. I literally can't get on the computer without getting on facebook. It is a sickness of mine. I don't know what exactly it is but it is the biggest distraction ever invented by anyone. Nuf said. I have deleted it before and have tried to stay off it but nothing works I always end up going back to it like a sad little puppy.

Prom

I am a junior. Here at Kennedy only the Seniors are allowed to go to prom (unless you are invited). Recently I was asked to prom. I had mixed feelings about this I mean obviously prom sounds like a lot of fun and you get to get all dressed up and buy a pretty dress but I am not one for school dances, especially when I am going to be surrounded by a bunch of seniors that I don't even know. The guy that asked me is really nice and I know him and we are just going as friends but I still don't think that will outweigh the awkwardness. This also got me thinking, should I save my prom experience until I am a senior? The thought that I would even get the opportunity to go to prom early never crossed my mind until now and now I am wondering if I want to ruin this experience or save it until next year. My parents said that they went to prom as juniors because their schools had junior senior proms so it isnt really like I'm breaking tradition but I am just weary about this whole situation, I mean I will have to go to grand march and everything and that will be awkward too, mehhhh I don't know what I am going to do!!! Any suggestions? Lol

~Mildred
Btw I am going to add random pictures of prom dresses because I am obsessed with dresses :) Mmmmkay :D

Random

Hey just fyi, it was :) haha

Easter

Today while driving back from Easter brunch my family and I noticed that a lot of stores were closed. This surprised my mother because it was a religious holiday and she didn't think that any stores would be closed. But it got me thinking that almost everything is closed on Christmas why should Easter be any different? Then I got to thinking should stores be closed on religious holidays? My thinking is yes they should be if they are closed on Muslim religious holidays, or Buddhist religiuos holidays or anything else, I don't see what is wrong with that!

~Mildred

(ps I know this was a really random blog post but I needed 100 more words lol I hope this is enough!)

Why do we like listening to music?

I haven't gotten my ipod out of my desk for about six months. I have watched it collect dust. I don't know where the headphones are I haven't even thought about it until recently. Why? Well one I tried to put it into a different computer an switch my itunes library and it messed up and would'nt work and I was too lazy to figure it out. A second reason is I had lame songs on my ipod and whenever I went to a computer to buy new songs I would have a brain fart and couldn't think of what to buy until I was like out shopping or something. (This disorder is quite annoying) andyway the other day I decided to change that. I got my sisters ipod hooked it up and downloaded all of her songs onto my ipod and now my ipod is fully charged and has cool songs onto it. I now bring my ipod everywhere listening to songs that I like and dancing to myself and it got me thinking. For me whenever I hear a song I like I just get this feeling, that goes throughout my whole body like I'm not in my world I am living in some other magical place that is happy and I am just alone and there is no school, no drama, no worrying about college and it just makes me happy. Why is this? I figured it out, songs let you be in a different place then where you are. They express feelings that you are scared to speak of out loud, they get down to the deepest parts of you that you didn't even know you had. I like finding songs that describe the mood I am in or that make me feel better about something. Taylor Swift is really good at finding songs like this. For instance, (don't think I am an annoying 16 year old girl when I say this) but when my boyfriend broke up with me (this is so cliche I know lol) I listened to the song Need You Now by Lady Antebellum (sp?) and I would sit there listening to this song thinking, this is exactly how I feel!!! This is my life...and I would sit there and mope and feel sorry for myself.



As life went on and I realized some important things...haha I won't go into detail I began listening to other songs that expressed my other feelings like


I Look So Good Without You by Jessie James

I think this one speaks for itself haha. But you see that these songs helped me through tough times, they expressed how I felt and helped me cope with my feelings. Also I like songs that get me in a peppy upbeat mood for when I am hanging out with my friends. My friends and my favorite songs to party out to are In My Head by Jason Drewlow I Gotta Feeling Black Eyed Peas and I'm On a Boat. Some songs are funny and just make you laugh like I'm Awesome. I heard this song and I knew it was one of my favorites.

I'm Awesome Spose


My friends and I have many songs that we like listening to together or we used to and when they come on the radio we will look at each other and smile or I will think about them and the good times we had listening to that song. You see music can be used in many ways, it isn't just trashy noise that annoys my mother in the car haha. They help people connect, they helps you cope with feelings, they explain your life and bottom line it is just fun listening to them and getting away from your crazy life once in a while :)

~Mildred

The Outsiders

Today we had the spring pep assembly. I love pep assemblys, hey an hour away from boring classes and a shortened day, what's not to like??? I love watching the dance team perform, the team captains do humiliating things as we stand by and laugh, and my favorite part is the spirit stick competitions. I have to brag a bit this years junior class was the only one in a long time to get the spirit stick as freshman and we got it last term and probably other terms too but yeah we pretty much rock. These pep assemblies are a lot of fun for classes to bond and cheer together but the thing I hate about it is the pep band. No no I love the music they play, Iam IN the pep band but I don't like the fact that we have to sit there like losers when everyone else is up there on the podiums or with their class cheering. There are freshman through seniors in the band but we have to sit in the band section so when we cheer for our class our cheers dont really count because we are so far away from everyone. The only time it actually matters is if you are a senior and sometimes you can sneak into your side because the seniors are right next to us but what about everyone else? During the winter assembly we have a group caroling contest so me and my friends aimlessly sing "Frosty the Snowman" in the band section while the juniors are blaring away over in their section. Another thing is everyone stands at pep assemblys EXCEPT the band and whenever band members try to stand up and actually get into they get yelled at by students behind them because band kids are a bunch of grumpy people lacking school spirit I guess... :p Anyway the thing is I don't think we need a pep band for pep assemblies it isn't really fair to us I mean I have NEVER gotten to sit with my own section for any of these assemblies, we only play the fight song anyway and let's be honest everyone could care less whether we were playing or not. They play new age pop songs too like "Don't Stop Believing" and "Boom Boom Pow" why can't we just listen to those songs? Let's make a recording of the fight song and just play that so us band kids can get the same experience that everyone else has had. It sounds like a silly little thing but I haven't gotten the true pep assembly experience my whole highschool career and I don't think that is fair.

~Mildred