Was Shakespeare a psychic? Romeo and Juliet, the play that Shakespeare wrote hundreds of years ago exampled how the young teens fall in love and disobey their parents. Sound familiar? Well that's because that is how teenagers act present day.

    It's definitely not a rare occurrence to witness two young premature teens fall madly in love.  And in most cases this happens over and over again. Romeo is simply just another typical teenage boy who sees a pretty girl and is automatically in love. Then when an even prettier girl comes alone, he just switches his mind no problem. That's just the hormones taking over. It's how the brain of an average boy works and that hasn't changed for centuries. But it's not just Romeo who has similarities to the present day teen; Juliet acts like an everyday girl. First she played the hard to get card, then she lost it and indulged herself and went head over heals for the dreamy boy. Romeo and Juliet took it a little far with the whole suicide mishap, nowadays teens boringly sent a text if something is wrong, but where's the fun in that? No matter where you travel in the world or research back a few centuries, the basic teenagers acted the same.

    Following the instructions and listening to rules of parents aren't usually bearable for teens. It's a difficult task to manage relationships and drama, but then trying to incorporate orders from the parents, well that's an accident waiting to happen. Surprisingly, it's truly how teenagers act in the modern day and it's exactly how Romeo and Juliet maneuvered as well. Even though both lovers were from rival families, they continued their relationship and even took the whole deal to the next level and got married. Also after Romeo murdered Juliet's cousin and got banished, they still didn't want to obey their parents because they were in love. In most cases, the parents are actually right. They have way more experience in life, except teens still only seem them as obstacles.

    No, maybe Shakespeare wasn't a true psychic but just very observant. Teenagers have always and will always have hormonal love rages and random outburst. It's how we were created and simply adds an excited stage in life.

{Just pretend that the awkward figure wearing the white hood isn't there!}

JULIET O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET     'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

So who doesn't love Icelandic folk music? Well I know that I'm in love! I've used songs by Of Monsters and Men throughout my school year. Their music tells different stories and have various meanings. However, this song here, Dirty Paws (which is linked in the photo) I feel like it has the strongest story within' the lyrics. I would recommend giving the song a listen before continuing!
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The video that I linked includes an in depth animation summary of the song, except I have a strong feeling that simply by only paying attention to the pictures and video the lyrics won't make complete sense. Whereas I've listen to this tune multiple times and believe that I have a well understanding of the song. Here's what I estimate is the story behind the song. The 'creature' with the four dirty paws I imagine as a metaphor for Mother Nature and then the evil Queen bee and her friends I believe are humans. ---
"The bees had declared a war, The sky wasn't big enough for them all."  Slowly, mankind has been destroying the environment, by ripping apart fields and forests to develop superstores and highways which terrify and kill the animals.  "The forest that once was green, Was colored black by those killing machines." Our mega industrial technology and equipment pollutes the air and poisons the lakes and rivers.
The entire theme and story of the song reminds me of the movie Avatar. The human's arrive on a huge planet with their giant drills and machine and just begin to tear away at the planet. In the end of the film, all of the natives and the animals team up against the humans and finally gain their home planet back.

Maybe karma will come back and kick our butts for all the irreversible damage and harm that we have caused. I'm just waiting for the beast with the four dirty paws to arrive!

--If you liked the song by Of Monsters and Men I would highly recommend checking out other songs by them! >>Their official website is linked in the button below <<

Les Stroud –
He is an amazing Canadian who ventures out into the wilderness and captures his experience of small cameras that he brings along with him. 7 days completely off the grid is definitely not an easy task. That’s why Les enjoys teaching different lessons and skills to his many viewers around the world. He recently came to Waterloo to perform some music and answer questions from the audience. I was lucky enough to go with my whole family and it was a lot of fun. He answered a lot of good questions and was amazing at the harmonica. Afterwards he had a meet and greet and I got him to sign my camping flashlight! When I got home a tweeted him and by the next day he retweeted,  favourited and replied back!
   
John Krasinski –
He is a really funny actor. I only know him from The Office as Jim and also the voice from the Essurance commercials. Other than that he isn’t that popular of an actor which I kind of like. I don’t like the celebrities that you see front page of magazines talking about their weight or new relationships.
     
Superman –
He can literally do anything he wants to, so how can he not be a good role model? I know that he is fictional but for many kids that doesn’t matter. If I could have one of his powers it would probably be the ability to fly because that would be amazing and would save a lot of time!
  
Ellen –
Who doesn’t love her? She is a hilarious TV host that always makes me laugh with her creative new segments. I’m subscribed to her YouTube account where she posts funny clips from her show each day. I really want to go to one of her shows except they always sell out right away. It would be a dream to get tickets for her Christmas specials because she gives out televisions and iPads to each
member of the audience.
    
My uncle Carl –
He is extremely yet quite at the same time. He patiently sits in a chair during big family dining but always seems to photo bomb most pictures right at the perfect times. Most of the time you don’t notice that he is in the background until after the picture has already been made into a calendar page. I know that I’m not blood related to him but I would be completely fine if I turned out like him. 

Every high school student wants to get their first part time job. Not for the loss of freedom, but more for the feeling of maturity and most importantly... money! I've created a list out of tips and suggestions that I have heard over the past few years, hopefully they help out a little.

1.) What are your limits? Before you begin your search for available jobs set yourself some boundaries. Make sure that you don't put yourself into an environment where you feel uncomfortable. For example, if you have a fear of heights and aren't very social then don't apply for a Door-to-Door house painter.

2.) Don't set your standards to high. If the only jobs available are in a fast-food parlor filling burgers, well I would take it. As long as you're fine with that type of job I'd take it. A lot of the time, you must start low and then work your way up gaining experience. Don't expect major opportunities to come knocking at your door.

3.) Have a back-up plan. Submit your resume in more than one location, it will definitely increase your odds of receiving the position. Even if you don't hear back for an interview don't give up. Keep a positive set of mind and continue on!

4.) Be confident and friendly.  When you're handing in your resume/application it will be nerve-racking. First impressions always count so be as social as possible even if you're shy and be positive. Here's a suggestion that you could say, "Hi, I would like to drop off a resume. Is there a manager in that I could give this to?". I highly recommend not walking saying here you go and walking out.

Now this is where I have to end the list of tips for the moment. The reality is that I still haven't got my first job yet. I got a little worried and disappointed at first when none of the first jobs called nor email, nor any response. However I've been talking to other people, getting more suggestions and applied for a few other jobs.

This morning, as I let my dog inside, I watched as the first thing she did was run to her food bowl to see if we had put any food in it. I realized that she does this a lot. Every time Abbi walks past the kitchen she always runs and checks her bowl which is usually empty. When we do drop a treat into her bowl it always makes a little 'ting' noise, and from anywhere in the house Abbi can hear that faint noise. After watching her constantly do her routine with her dog bowl and instantly made me think of Facebook. I'm not a huge user of Facebook anymore, except when I was I would always randomly check my news-feed. I knew that most likely nothing interesting was on Facebook, but what if that one time I didn't check someone posts a hilarious video or status or something to amuse me. So I would constantly check my Facebook every time I walked past my computer. When I got the Facebook app on my iPod I was happy because then I could check Facebook on the go. Also the best part was every time I got a notification, my iPod would alert me with a 'ding'. I didn't get many notifications, but when I did I would rush to receive it. (I know this sounds like I'm one of those types of people who sit around waiting for something on Facebook, kind of was a couple of years ago, nowadays I don't use social media as much). With me always checking my Facebook and Abbi frequently checking her bowl, me waiting for the 'ding' of a notification and Abbi listening for the 'ding' of a treat, there are obvious similarities between dog bowls and Facebook.

I was looking back at the previous things that I've wrote in my class and I noticed a few times that I was typing FPP instead of FFP. For some reason in my brain I thought that the word 'forum' was spelled with a "PH". I can see how I went wrong because they both make the same sound, but then all of a sudden it hit me, why does a P and a H put together make the same sound as F! It got me thinking of all the other strange spelling and grammar techniques that we use in the English language. Such as; what is with silent letters? If we don't pronounce the letter, then why do we write it? The word tsunami seems pointless to add a T, other words just put a K in front of it and then it magically becomes a new word. It must be really tough for people to switch languages to English. For me, I grew up learning English so it's implanted in my head all of the weird techniques. Also there are a few words that are spelled like they should rhyme
(just pointing out; why is there and H is rhyme?), but we pronounce them differently. Such as, Worm and Norm. Why aren't they rhyming? Another group of words that I always find odd are Thought, Through and Though. All you are doing is add or taking away one letter and now they words mean something completely opposite for one another. So my sympathy goes out to all of those poor kindergarteners and foreigners attempting to tackle the English language for the very first time!

A virus breaks out, humans are converting into decaying zombies seeking human flesh and brains; would you be prepared to defend the human race and survive?
Students from the GCI grade 10 Drama class preformed their short, comedy play about ways to survive if a zombie apocalypse erupts. This topic is of course a scenario that many people have pondered upon and numerous amount of movie franchises have produced. The Drama performance made a funny twist about how to survive and basically all of their tips I wouldn't recommend. Trying to have a Kung Fu battle, romance the zombies or attempting to pull tricks of the flesh eating beings would most likely conclude with you joining their undead army. Except of course all of these suggestions are foolish, which made it funny.
My grade 10 Drama class performed our play last semester, but we took a whole different genre of play. Yes, we did add in a few plays that were indented to have humour, however our main production was sad drama themed.  Even though that we didn't include mythical creatures nor advertise the performance as much, we still had a good amount in the audience and had them interacting throughout. During 10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, the GCI students that came out to the show seemed to enjoy everything and were laughing out loud a ton.

Now let's pretend here; say for some extreme reason a zombie apocalypse emerges, what would you actually do? Well many websites have created different preparation advice and various opinions. Here's my favourite from wikiHow {this website has everything!}.
-- http://www.wikihow.com/Prepare-for-a-Catastrophe

The topic have surviving from zombies has been something that my family but mostly my friends have disgusted for years. It's a silly conversation starter and a subject that personal I could talk about for awhile. For the longest time, I had a set plan of living my life in an apocalyptic world inside a Costco. Except now that I think about it, I have a strong feeling that giant Super Stores will be raided first and then eventually filled with brainless zombies. As it stands right now, my zombie survival plan includes me escaping to Northern Ontario and living in the deep woods. I'd try to find a big lake and get a boat then just float around and only return to shore for food. So that's my current plan for now unless a new movie or book completely changes my opinion.