Dead Poets Society Book Review

The dead poets Society is a inspiring book about the lives of the students In Welton Academy.

Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Richard Cameron, Steven Meeks and Gerard Pitts (main characters) are all students in Welton Academy, an elite prep school. A new English teacher starts working at Welton and shocks everyone with his teaching methods. He lives by the idea of  "Carpe diem" (seize the day) and teaches his students to think different and never fear.

But, if the students build up the courage to do what they want. What will be the consequences? That is something you will have to find out by reading the book, as I am not spoiling the ending.

I adored this book, simply because of how inspiring it was. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone.

5 Things to Do in Tartu

1. The Ahhaa science centre.

Located in the heart of the city, Ahhaa is one of the most amazing things in Tartu. Equipped with a hundreds of exhibitions and scientific workshops. Here is a video which will introduce ahhaa to you further.

Photo and video taken form the Ahhaa official web page.

2. The Ruins of the Tartu Toomkirik.

The legend says that while building, the church kept sinking in the ground, or the walls would fall every evening. So the builders went to the town and and brought the towns most ignorant girl to the construction site, and they walled her in the church. So one day every year the girl comes back to life and has a chance to escape, by capturing someone walking by and changing places with them. Now, I just can't remember the day in which she was supposed to come back to life, so if you'r afraid of being walled in, I would actually not suggest going there :).

I got the picture from here.

3. Karsumm

This is part of the Spring Student days. This is a competition held over Emajõgi (It's a river that flows through Tartu). The participants have to build motorless flying machines, and attempt to cross the river. This is the 9th year this competition is held, no one has crossed the river yet. On a brighter note, no one has drowned yet either.

Photos taken by Ahto Sooaru

4. Light a candle to in memory of the victims of operation Priboi.

In the memory of the victims the town centre is filled with candles. It is the most gorgeous and sad scene I have ever seen.

Photo taken by Peeter Langovits

5. Experience free Wi-Fi almost everywhere.

It really is a shock for an Estonian to go abroad and realize you can't exactly expect free wifi in every cafe or public park. In Estonia even some public forests have free Internet access. I am not kidding, you can literally check your email in the middle of nowhere.

6. Sing (or hum or something) along at the Punk song festival

Estonians are crazy about their song festivals. There even is a movie made called "The Singing Revolution". It is shown to about every single foreigner in Estonia. I have seen it about 5-6 times. Now, Estonians can't make movies. They just turn out seriously boring. Therefore, I have not only seen the movie 6 times, I have also fallen asleep mid movie every single one of those times. I do have a foggy memory that it has something to do with the strength of Estonians and how they stuck to their traditions even throughout the soviet union.

Getting back to the topic. The punk song festival is just the perfect way of flipping off to the formalness and the officialness of the traditional song festival. However, this doesn't take place in Tartu (which is also why the title says 5 things). But, you won't find anything quite like this anywhere. 

Pictures taken form the official web page.

The "What's in the Jar" Project

In the English lessons of  the last few months, we have been organizing a event to raise money for a charity.

The first thing we had to to was to individually find a charity we wanted to support, then, in groups, we had to choose upon the best and make a PowerPoint presentation on it. The charity I chose was Refugee Action. Once we were put in groups we chose the YMCA Black Country group (proposed by Alicia) as our favorite. We did a short but informative PowerPoint and presented it in class.

We also had to think of activities to do in order to raise money. We agreed on doing a orienteering race. At the night before the presentation I thought of the idea of filling a jar of candy and having people pay for guessing the amount in order to win all of the candy. I added my idea to the PowerPoint at the last minute and with discussing it with my group. Luckily they were OK with it, especially since it was voted as the best activity.

In the actual execution of the idea, I had little part. I carried a table, and basically that was it. However there were many things we had to do before the day of the lottery. We had to do things such as: Designing, printing and putting up posters, buying the candy and counting it(well, I participated in the counting), writing a formal letter to the principal and setting up the area of the lottery.

As YMCA Country Group is English we would have had to put the money on someones bank account and send it to them Since that would have been way too annoying, we decided to give the money to a local Caritas.
The event went well and we had many guessers. We made more than 100 euros. I really liked this project, and I would be glad to do something similar again.

My Ability

I chose painting as my best ability.

I started painting in August 2012. I have always been able to draw but painting has seemed impossible, but now I have completely changed my mind.

I practice painting whenever I have the time. Which I am guessing to be a hour of painting per a hour of waiting for paint to dry.

I currently love painting, but I have no other use other than entertainment for it. I don't think I will be painting professionally, since there are almost no jobs available for artists.

Usually people are very impressed by my work,  especially since I paint on a very small surface. My mom is very proud of my skill (unlike me) and keep telling everybody about it.

I love painting as a hobby which I want to continue and improve in the future.

Here are some photos of my creations:

 Okayokayokay, none of these are paintings. While browsing the pictures of stuff I have painted, I realized thet the nails look the best. See more at brushmeblush.blogspot.com.

My Christmas Holiday

I spent my holidays in Estonia. The weather was freezing (-30 degrees) and the snow was up to my knees. Awesome. I also have loads of pictures from this trip and I plan to show you some. Traditionally the whole family gets together during Christmas. So I would like to introduce them to you.

This is my one year old cousin. Her name is Hanna. Me my aunt and my other cousin took about 400 pictures of her. Here is another one

She is a total TV addict, in this picture the TV had just been turned off. She was in despair and kept exclaiming: GONE in the saddest little voice.

Here is a picture of me and another cousin of mine. His name is Robert, he is usually called Bob. He is five, and adores everything related to cars. He is generally really photogenic but I got some shots that stated otherwise.

Lol. I swear I will remove them if he tells me so.

This is Bob's mother called Maarja. She took most of the pictures I am using in this post.

This is a picture of my grandmother. Sadly the only picture of her is when she is thinking. So she looks kind of sad.

Here is the only picture where you can see my grandfather. I was feeling Cinderella-ie so I was helping in the kitchen (which explains the towel).

Here you can see (from left to right) the mother of Hanna and the girlfriend of my uncle: Anna-Liisa, my uncle:  Urmas , another uncle of mine: Andres and Bob. We were going sledging with the whole family.
Here are some pictures from the sledging trip:

(Hanna's mom and her)

(Me and Bob)

(Hanna's mom Anna-liisa)

(me)

(Find Hanna)

I had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you liked my post about it!

Christmas and New Years in Estonia

This entry is written for an English class. I am going to talk about the way Estonians celebrate Christmas and New Years eve.

In Estonia the Christmas season starts on the first advent when the children put up Christmas stockings. Most kids also have advent calendars which start on the first advent and end on Christmas day. Families bring Christmas trees to their homes and decorate them.

In Estonia Christmas day is on the 24th December. Christmas is usually celebrated with families. In the evening there is a huge feast which includes traditional Christmas foods like: Gingerbread, black pudding, headcheese, mandarin oranges (I have no idea why), sauerkraut, mulled wine and a lot of non traditional foods. After eating people gather around the Christmas tree to open presents. In exchange for the gifts the receiver has to preform something (sing a song, recite a poem etc.).

Estonians celebrate New Years with watching and letting off fireworks at midnight, and drinking champagne. Often people also make new years resolutions. In my family it is a tradition to do a collage of our wishes for the next year.

These traditions are quite similar to the ones in other countries in northern Europe, but the Spanish traditions are very different.

My movie making experience

This year me and a group of my friends made a scary movie for halloween.

The story begins when 6 friends go out drinking in a graveyard. Then one of the friends laughs at a tombstone and becomes possessed.

In the next scene the friends go to see her at her house. They are greeted by her mom. When the friends get to her room Blanca (the possessed girl) is sitting on her bed staring into nothing. The friends go to say hello but Blanca grabs a knife and tries to kill them. One of the girls hides herself  in a closet. She  sees a note in there by Blanca's mother. The note explains that the mom is a demon and Blanca is adopted so she could posses her with her real daughter's soul. Maria (the girl in the closet) escapes the house and invites a priest to exorcise Blanca.
In the next scene Maria is being cornered by the mom and Blanca who are trying to kill her. The priest (me) arrives and throughs Maria a cross to protect herself. Maria stabs the mom with the cross and plans to do the same to Blanca. But the priest takes the cross from her hands and stabs it into Blanca's heart.
Blanca wakes up from her possession. The soul goes from Blanca to the priest. The priest becomes possessed  and jumps out the window to kill the spirit.
In the last scene the girls are in the funeral of their friends. They walk to the grave and see the priest. They freak out, and the priest says that he is immortal (yes, I was in the role of a man).
Click on this link to see the movie.

The movie was really fun to make. The only problem that we had was that we had to meet on three days. On  the first day camera's battery died. On the second day we brought 3 cameras and rechargers and batteries, still ran out of energy and light.