L. Teixeira

Dead Poets Society is a 1989 movie and it takes in the Welton Academy, Vermont. The movie was directed by Peter Weir and the main actor is Robin Williams. Robin Williams is an English teacher who inspires his English students to become confident with poetry. He is an unconventional educator who makes their students tear chapters from their textbooks and he makes their students to stand on their desks to see a new point of view. In the prep school, there are a group of boys who decides to gather to read poetry and discuss about different poets. These guys are very hopeful and they have big dreams like Neil who wants to be an actor and Todd who would like to be a writer. Knox meets a girl and falls in love with her. However, she was already committed. He still doesn’t give up and try to make her like him when he goes to her school and read poetry to her.

Neil’s father insists that he had to go to law school and that he would never participate on any play. He dictates everything of his son’s life, including school activities, what people think of him and future plans. At the end of the movie, Neil decides to lie to his father and he ends up participating on the school play. His father gets really angry until Neil can’t stand it anymore: He kills himself. The principal of the school and Neil’s father decided to investigate the cause and they linked the Dead Poet Society to Mr. Keating (Robin Williams). They also concluded that the reason that Neil killed himself was because Mr. Keating inspired him to many things and filled his mind of new ideas. Therefore, he is expelled and all the students get really sad about it. When the new teacher starts to teach the class, all the students stand up on the table to say thank you to Mr. Keating and to demonstrate that they were on his side.

What didn’t work for me was the way that characters look like. They looked all similar and it was really hard for me to identify who was who. However, it is a really good movie and I really recommend it. It is a very famous movie and I am sure that lot of people have seen it before, but for those who haven’t should watch it. Also, people who like poetry will love this movie because it talks about different poets and poems. The movie shows different aspects of poetry and how boys in a preparatory school understand the world and how the English teacher changed their perspectives.

Awards:

- Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay (Tom Schulman)

- Nominated for Best Picture, Best director and Best Actor (Robim Williams)

- Best Foreign Film winner for Cesar awards (France)

- Best Picture winner for British Academy Awards

- Best Original Music Score for British Academy Awards (Maurice jarre)

I watched 3 movies this weekend: Horrible Bosses, Footloose and 50/50

Footloose and 50/50 are on the theater, but I watched Horrible Bosses on Rogers On Demand. It is not a very good movie to watch but I was really bored and I had nothing to do. Basically, the movie is about 3 stupid friends who hate their bosses and decide to kill them. They pay a lot of money for someone to kill them but the guy would only say how to kill them, and it wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. At the end, one boss kill the other and the 3 friends almost went to jail. You need to watch it to really understand the movie but this is the overall story.

50/50 was a very dramatic movie but I really liked it. It is about a guy who finds out he had cancer and the movie shows his struggles to beat the disease. It is a really really sad movie and I cried a lot… it shows his path to the surgery and his relationships. At the end he survives and he falls in love with the girl who used to give him therapy. Although the movie is very sad, the end was happy because he survived.

My third movie was the new version of Footloose. It was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen because I really like dances and it is a really fun movie to watch. The movie is about a city guy who moves to really small town where dancing and singing was banned. He couldn’t understand why it had  to be that way, therefore, he did a lot of things to try to change it. At the end, he achieved his goal and ended up with the girl he had always looked for.

These were the movies I watched this weekend, I hope  you liked it!

See you!

Livia

http://www.thestar.com/news/torontocouncil/article/942289–looking-for-the-gravy

This article talks about how Rob Ford is not doing what he had promised. Basically, what it is saying that the gravy train is not flowing like expected. However, Rob Ford has done some things good too like the office budget caps for councillors and the mayor took a $1.46 million whack. Also he won his battle against free food at council and committee meetings.  Also, he drained $110,000 worth of gravy. The author is complaining that there is still a lot to do. Initially Ford suggested that he will contract out city services like garbage collection, so this would save the city millions. However, any saving from the waste department doesn’t go to the operating budget. It just goes to the utility rate budget. Like the article says, the benefit of this would only removes the union’s trump card.

I think that we still need to think about what the expectations for the next years are. We should not lose the faith, but we have to have in mind the real statistics and how Toronto is right now. I think we should wait a few more months so we are able to take conclusions. This article is old though, and i think a lot already happened in the lasts months so we have to consider this too.

The green party was founded in 1983 but in 2011 they made history. The Leader Elizabeth May won her riding in Saanich-Gulf Island, BC. For the first time since it was founded, she is the first member of the Green Party to win one seat in the Member of Parliament.  She received more than 574,922 votes throughout the country which is 3.9 per cent of the national vote share. In 2008, the party got 6.8 per cent of the vote share. Many observers said that the stakes for the party were high. Also, they say that the party has limited influence with just one seat. However, May said that her focus was winning the party its first elected seat, not leading the national Green Party campaign. The leader of the party already said the first thing she is going to do.  She said her first order will be to improve the political discourse in the House of Commons.

On the election night, Elizabeth May made her first speech. People were really happy because of her first achievement as the party ‘s leader. May was full of happiness and thanked everybody. She said that this election proved that Canadians want to change politics. Although this was a really important event for the Green Party, we have to remember that there are other 307 MPs and parties need 12 elected members in order to achieve official party status in the House of Commons. However, as I said before, she said her focus was to win only 1 seat. I think that it is really good that she is happy about this. May wants to work together with all the others MPs and to work across party line to achieve goals for the environment, health care and more. It is also important to remember that Elizabeth May is the only female federal leader on Parliament Hill.

This election was very important for the Green Party. The only thing we can do is to wait and see what more we can expect from her. I think it is really good that she is happy with this one seat and I am sure those who voted for the green party are as well.

Nine students and I went to one of the beautiful parks in Canada: Killarney Provincial Park. It was really nice to live that experience, because I have never done something like this before. On Monday (May 2^nd) was our first day there. It was my birthday as well and I spent most of the time in the car driving to Killarney. It was a 5 hours trip. We were supposed to camp but the weather was too cold for it. The main thing we did was paint. We painted all the nights we stayed there. On Tuesday we went hiking and we ended up in a very interesting place called “The Crack”. It was hard though, because there were a lot of rocks and they were very slippery. When we got the top, we saw a very pretty landscape which we had to draw it on our sketch book. Later, at night, we painted it. It was very hard at the beginning to paint rocks and the lake, however, Davis, who understands about art, helped us with the colors and shapes. On the next day, we went canoeing which was a very new experience to me. When we got next to the lake, it was really scary because the water was very cold. Dave helped us and we always stayed as a group. This day was very tough because later we had to go to a really high place called Silver Peak. It was a very long hiking and I thought that I would never reach it. When I got to the top, I found out that all this hiking was worth it. The view was beautiful and we could see all the way to Sudbury. We sketched the landscape and appreciated the view for 30 minutes. When we came back, we painted what we saw and rested for a bit. Thursday was a very nice day because we didn’t have to hike.  We went to a place where we sat down and painted outside. There were a lot of mountains and a very pretty lake. It wasn’t cold so we could easily paint. I really like my paintings and I was very surprised because I didn’t know how interesting painting landscape was. On Friday we woke up really early because it was our last day there and we wanted to be at school by 4pm.

We had to do a documentary about Killarney so we needed good footages. Therefore we interviewed some guys who we met in the “The crack” and Dave. Also we were interviewed and we talked about how the trip was.

In conclusion, I think that this trip was better than I thought would be. It was a very different and new experience to me. Also, everybody was really nice and we were together as a group all the time. If I had another opportunity, I would do it again.

I just watched the debate of Canada Election 2011. Basically, I thought it was a really tough debate. The reason is that I think  they only wanted to bring Stephen Harper down by remembering old facts and talking about his record in the past. What about the future? The candidates didn’t talk a lot about their own platforms and what they would do to solve some issues that are occurring in Canada. Also, what about the rest of the population? The debate was not spontaneous; it seemed they did not talk about the things that Canadians were expecting. About Stephen Harper, I think he kept calm for the entire debate, while the rest of the candidates were trying to make him nervous. Also, he defended himself all the time.

My teacher proposed that each one of my classmates should choose a party to research about, so we would learn  better about their decisions, their ideas etc. I particularly chose the Green Party that has Elizabeth May as the leader. Since she was not in the debate, I read her comments about it last night and she didn’t seem very happy. She said that First Nations issues, Canada’s position in Libya, food policy, homelessness, energy policy, arts funding and the environment were left out of the debate which I think she  is right. They did not talk about any of these things, and Stephen Harper seemed worried only about his image. Also, she says her party is going to modernize the economy and advance the democracy. They will invest in jobs, combat youth unemployment, expand pensions and protect health care!

Let’s see what is going to happen in the French debate tomorrow! We all hope that it is going to be better than this one.

As we all know, Japan has been going through a lot of problems caused by the tsunami and the earthquake. Also, radioactive water leaks and nuclear problems have been a big issue. People from all over the world have been motivated to help the Japanese people that are losing their homes, their city and dying.  People are trying to donate money, clothes, food or anything that can help the ones who have been losing everything.

One example of solidarity takes place in Norfolk. Students aged 12-13 from a school called Open Academy will host a charity sleepover during a 24-hour event. They are trying to raise money for the children who were affected by the disaster. This 24-hour event will contain quizzes, movies, sporting competitions and dinner. They also want to try to make the students be aware of the problems in Japan and what they had to face.  The kids are willing to help them.

I think that it is an excellent example of solidarity and love. I believe that growing up leaning about this sort of problem, and appreciating the people who lost their homes, will help them learn more about the world and they will be prepared to deal with things like this in the future.

Other thing that I found interesting about the disaster in Japan is that people are beginning to think about what these problems can cause to us that don’t live in Japan. People are wondering what the problems are about the shutdown of nuclear power plants and subsequent radiation leaks. Approximately 25% of electricity in Japan is generated by nuclear power. Also, it is the world’s third largest nuclear power.

Burning fossil fuels can be very damage to our planet because can occur a climate change. Our health and the ecosystem can also be in danger because of nuclear disasters and nuclear waste.

I think we all need to look at the consequences of this disaster, because it can affect not only us, but everybody in the world. It can damage plants, animals, the habitat, pollution from coal plants and climate change.

For now, we all should do our part to help those who are going through a very hard time, donating what can be possible for us. If we all do our part, I believe that part of the problem can be solved.

Sources: http://rabble.ca/news/2011/03/what-japans-nuclear-crisis-means-all-us

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-12882231

On Wednesday, Feb 9^th, my class went winter camping and we came back on Friday. On Wednesday we slept in the cabins in a camp called Ooch and I really liked that day. We went snow shoeing and I think that was fun but I got very tired. I really enjoyed it because I was very prepared for the cold so I was fine about the weather. On Thursday we divided our groups to sleep in the tents. So we packed up and went to the tents. When we got there, we needed to work a lot. We needed to help cutting trees to light the fire. I think that part of it was ok but I thought that the night we slept in the tents was very cold and snowy. I thought the tent was small for the number of people sleeping there so I was uncomfortable.  However, it was a good experience.  On Friday we packed up everything, including the tent. Then we went back to the cabins and took the bus at 12pm. We were back at school at 4pm.

As a Brazilian immigrant, I think that winter camping was a very different experience to me because I had never seen that much snow and I had never heard about winter camping before. It was also interesting to understand more about life in the north region of Canada and to learn about how things were in the past. I think that it was a unique experience in my life because I probably won’t have the opportunity to do it again. Also I want to thank all the teachers that helped us and made winter camping more enjoyable. Therefore, winter camping was something very special to me and I will always remember of it.

Some people probably would go to a war to fight for their country. I think I would not go to a war, because it can cause a lot of bad consequences. For example, I would not leave my family and I also would not have courage to do that. I believe that war is not the answer for anything and there are a lot of different ways to solve the problems with other countries. That is what diplomacy was created for. However, people have been taking bad decisions, as it was what happened in the World War 1 and 2 when a lot of people died. Even those people who were not involved got injured. Families and innocent people who did not have any fault in the war were killed.

I do not understand why war still seduces so many presidents around the world. Why they have to kill so many people because of religion, for limits of countries etc. I think I would only go to a war if I had to fight for my family and friends and only if it was a big case, otherwise I would not fight. After all I learn about the World War I, I think that the guys who were in the army were very brave. I also got impressed with the women working as nurses helping the people who were in the war. In conclusion, I think the world needs to improve in terms of life. Those countries that are having problems with other countries could find other ways to solve their issues.

I think that a lot of different things happened in 2010. it’s now 2011 and I hope you are ready for the oncoming facts. 2010 was a year with a lot of fun things, as the world cup, the Winter Olympics etc, and also sad ones, as the earthquake in Haiti. I got really impressed with it and to me it was the most surprising and saddest thing in 2010. It occurred in January 12^th and it was estimated that three million people were affected by the quake. Many people died, got injured and got homeless. Also, a lot of so many buildings and houses collapsed and were completely damaged.

It was such a moving situation that people from different countries started to donate money, clothes, food and other things for those who needed help. Also, they helped donating medicines and sending doctors when Haitians started to have cholera. This really touched me, the earthquake and everything else that happened in Haiti in 2010. I believe that it made people think about how unexpected things can occur to one’s life. Therefore, I thought that was very important for the year of 2010. This moment was so intense that it will stay in the memory of a lot of people.