Ben Hur

         The new Ben Hur just came out a few weeks ago, and I went to see it with my family last week. It. was. amazing. I absolutely loved it. They did a really, really good job on it; you could tell that the people working on it were Christians. I've seen the really long, really old movie, and I read the book in 6th grade, so I knew the story a little bit; but they did change the story up a bit.

      The messege of the story and the way that they delivered it was very powerful. The messege was about revenge and forgiveness. In a very powerful and moving way, they showed how destructive revenge can be. They showed how different two people can be when one forgives while the other has a lust for revenge. The one who forgives is content and happy. However, the one who keeps revenge in his heart never rests until he gets revenge, and even then he is not satisfied.

      One thing about this movie was that in some parts it was really hard to watch. This was because they depicted the Roman Empire very realistically. There was so much cruelty and sadness. It was especially sad how the Romans believed that the life of a Jew was not nearly as valuable as a Roman's.

  If you haven't seen this movie yet, then I strongly reccomend you to go and see it. It really is one of the best movie's to come out this year.

Welcome Back!

Well, summer's over, school has started,, and it's time for me to start writing again. I didn't really do much this summer, but I did read quite a bit. I finished several free reading books from last year, and started on some books for this year. I read the Hornblower series, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Scaramouche, Jane Eyre, and I started Wuthering Heights. All of these books were amazing, and I would reccomend all of them. Other than reading, I swam a lot and started exersizing. I started riding my bike a lot with my Dad, and I'm going to the gym a couple days a week now.

Now that I'm in 10th grade, school has gotten a lot harder. However, I love all of the books that we get to read this year. Such as Up from Slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Les Miserables (which I have been waiting for two years to read!)

I will be posting every week now, so come back regularly!

Life

Have you ever felt like the world is moving too fast? Well I felt like that the other day. It wasn't the type of fast where I don't think that I'm cherishing moments; it was more as if the world was going to fast and I can't keep up with it. (If that makes any sense to you.) Sometimes I feel like I just want the whole world to stop for a few hours so that I can just catch my breath. There are so many things that I would love to pursue, that I wish I had more time for and that I could just spend all day doing. Things like drawing, baking, dancing, singing, writing my book, playing my instruments, taking walks in the woods, and going on bike rides with my dad. One thing that seems to get in my way a lot is school. I mean, I spend so much time doing it. I know it's important, but sometimes I wish that it wouldn't take so long.  I get up at 5:45 every morning except for Fridays when I get up at 6:30. I also have something going on almost every day of the week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I give English lessons; and on Wednesdays and Fridays I have music lessons. This week I did get a bit of a breather from my music lessons; and it felt AWESOME! I'v been preparing for a music exam that only occurs once a year, and it's quite an important exam. However the exam was earlier this week, and after practicing for five months, I'm finally finished! So this yesterday when my singing teacher came, we didn't do a lesson, we just sang and played the piano for almost three hours. It was so much fun! Sorry, I'm rambling a little bit. However, the point of this story is that I got to slow down and take a deep breath before being plunged back into the sea of life. If you read the whole of this rambling session, thank you. I think that everyone needs to just ramble on sometimes. This is the corner of my world where I can just pour out my heart.


I know I promised weeks  ago to post the next chapter of my story several weeks ago, but I've just been so busy. It might be awhile before I can get it finished and posted. 

Spring is here!

Well, my dear readers, spring is fianlly here. The flowers are blooming, the grass is growing, and it's getting warmer. Every year when spring comes around, I love to go out and take pictures of different things in nature. I like to use different filters, and I'll also edit them sometimes. I thought that I would post some of my pictures from last year.

Oracles of Fire

I have recently been reading a book series entitled Oracles of Fire by Bryan Davis. It's a continuation of another series called Dragons in our Midst. The first series was about a boy whose father is a former dragon but his mother is a human, and so the boy (Billy) is part dragon and part human. All the books are very exciting and interesting. Bryan Davis is an incredible writer. I'm in awe of people who can create whole worlds; like C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. The first book of the second series starts right before Noah's Flood, and it continues all the way up to modern times. What I especially love about this book is that Bryan Davis takes a well known bible story and puts a twist on it. He adds dragons, evil spirits, and many other things. All throughout the book he slips beautiful Christian truths; different things about God's love, prophets, and despair with hope. I would definetely reccomend these books, they are just incredible, inspiring stories.

I have been working on my own story very little in the past few weeks but I will try to get the next chapter up sometime before the end of this week.

The Christmas Festival

 Merry Christmas!It's December 1st, and time for Christmas. So I thought I would start my Christmas season blogging with my first Christmas activity. This past sunday I went with my mom to the European side to attend Christmas Festival/Bazaar. It is always at a hotel, where there are two floors for the whole festival. On the upper floor there are stands, and people sell different things. On the lower floor there's people selling food from all different countries. So you can eat almost anything, Indian, Chinese, Thai, or Turkish. There's also people selling sweets and delicous Christmas treats. On this floor there is also a a kids play place and trampoline, and several choirs sing at different times. Our friends have a stand at which they sell ceramic jewlrey and ornaments. They sell balls, necklaces, bracelets, earings and crocheted snowflake ornaments. They are all very beautiful and very well done. The last year that we went, we just walked around and shopped. This year though, we both got to be behind the booth and sell the merchandise. It was a new experiance but it was very fun. It was very tiring though. We had to leave our house at 8:00, and we didn’t get home until 7:00 that night, my mom and I were both exhuasted. 



                                                      

Friday

I don't have a schedule for when I do my school during the day. However, on Fridays, I do have somewhat of a schedule. On Fridays I get to wake up a bit later, normally I get up at about  6:30 and start school, but on Fridays I'll wake up about 8:00. Sometimes, I'll get up about 6:40 and go walking with my Mom and my Dad. If I do go walking, then we get back at 8:00, and I'll will usually take a shower. After breakfast, I'll do my chores and then start school at about 9:00. We have really fun and easy school on Fridays. We sing a hymn and a folk-song together and we listen to the story of a music composer. Then my mom reads How to Read a Book, Ourselves by Charlotte Mason and Plutarch's lives to me and my brother. Sometimes I also have a science test, I'm doing Biology this year. That usually takes us all morning, and then I'll usually help my mom get lunch ready. At 1:00 my music teacher comes. She teaches me singing and piano, and she also teaches my brother and sister piano. We have a really fun time on Friday afternoons, first she'll give my sister piano lessons, and the she'll give me my lessons. I do piano first, and then I do singing. Then it's my brother's turn for his piano lessons. After my teacher leaves, I like to go to my room with a snack and a book. Right now I'm reading Lord of the Rings, one of my all time favorites.




                                                   My little sister Lizzie, learning piano.

Spring break

Last week we had our spring break. On Monday me, my Mom, my Aunt, and my two girl cousins went to the European side to the Grand Bazaar. We are going back to the states at the end of June, and so we went to get a bunch of gifts for all of our supporters and friends. I got a bunch of special Istanbul necklaces and and t-shirts for my friends. It took all day, we were gone for 12 hours. First we stopped by an olive oil shop, and my mom and aunt got a bunch of different olive oils for different supporters. Then we parked the car and took a ferry boat over to the European side. Next, we ate lunch at a really good restaurant. The next step was to take the tram up to the Bazaar, in Turkish, the Grand Bazaar is called the Kapalı Çarşı. The Grand Bazaar is very, very, large, you can't walk through the whole place in one day. By the time that we were done, my feet were hurting, and my back and shoulders were hurting from carrying the backpack with all of the presents in it. Later in the week, on Friday, we went to the zoo. We've been to this zoo several times already, and its a really nice zoo. Its not too big, so it's perfect for little kids, which there were four of. We had a really fun time, and we saw lots of different and interesting animals. I didn't take pictures of all of them, but here are a few.

 These are called Coatis. They live in South America, and they are adorable. We were crinkling some paper, and they all came running because they thought that it was food, it was so cute!

 This is a Squirrel Monkey. They are very small and they are hilarious. We saw a couple of them digging in their cage, but we couldn't figure out what they were digging for.

 Marmoset 

 

 Sloth

 The tiger that they had was really big. This is my cousin Rebekah, she loves tigers.

 A closer picture.

 A fox

A panther (I actually edited this picture.)

 Ostrich

 Zebras

 I don't remember what kind of fish this was, but it was HUGE.

 These fish had giant humps on their heads

 A wolf

Flamingos 

Paintings and drawings

I'm not an especially good painter or drawer. I'm can't draw people very well, but I still like drawing. My favorite thing to draw are landscapes.They can be quite beautiful sometimes. I first started doing canvas paintings about a year or so ago. The first one that I did was a picture  of several mountains with a house and garden at the bottom of them. At the top I wrote, " I will lift my eyes up to the hills, from whence does my help come from." I really like the way it turned out. I decided that I wanted to do four different paintings of the four seasons.  I wanted to do one every term. This next one that I did was a spring painting. I drew a meadow with small flower all over it, and a little stream running through it. Then we had summer break, so I didn't really want to draw  one then. However, after the summer, I drew a fall one. I drew a path, lined with fall trees. On one side of the path were fields, and on the other side was a meadow. After that, I decided not to draw a winter one quite yet. Instead I did a love, hope, and faith drawing. Next to each word was a flower. Next to love was a rose, next to faith was a lily, and next to hope were bluebells. I got the inspiration from a poem that I overheard my mom reading to my sister (Lizzie). In the poem it said that love was like a rose, hope like a bluebell, and faith like a lily. I liked that, and so I decided to draw it. So far that's all that I've drawn. I plan to draw a Christmas one. I thought of doing one that says "Peace on earth, good will to men," or just "Peace on earth. Then I would put holly berries or some kind of Christmasy flower or berry. Also, next year, I plan to draw a winter and a summer landscape picture. Here are some pictures of my paintings.

                                                                  My mountain painting
                                                                             

                                                                       My Fall painting

                                                                My Spring painting

                                                       My Love, Hope and Faith painting

                                                  (We still haven't found a place to hang it)

Christmas Activities

Merry Christmas! Well, its been a while since I wrote, for which I apologize. I have been very busy these past few months with school and music.  I have just finished exams this week and am so ready for a break. I can't believe that it's already Christmas! I wonder if everyone is as excited about Christmas as I am. We have a lot of activities planned for this happy Christmas season. (I just love the Christmas season, don't you?) Yesterday me, my mom, Lizzie, (my sister) my girl cousins and a neighbor family (with adorable kids) all went to the Nutcracker Ballet. It was really nice, I just love ballet. I recognized most of the music, and even some of the dances. Another thing that's happening this month is that my grandparents are coming on Thursday, and I'm really excited to see them. I'll tell about each activity that we're going to do in detail as they happen. Now for some fun pictures.

            I'm the one in the blue sweater. The one next to me is my cousin Rebekah.  

                  The one in the pink sweater is my other cousin Heather, and the other one in pink is my little sister Lizzie. The one in grey is one of my Turkish friends, her name is Selen.      

                                               Here's the adorable kids that I told you about.
                                                        (They are adorable, aren't they?)
                                       The little one in the red dress is my especial little charge,
                                             I always look after her when they come to our house.
                                                 She's four, and she's just the cutest little thing.

                                      Looking at the Nutcracker that we brought with us.
              (She was especially excited with opening his mouth using the lever on his back.)
                                                                             

                                                      Waiting for the doors to open.

Summer!

Well, I had a really fun summer break. We didn't go very many places, but we did do a lot of swimming. From the end of June to the end of July was the month of Ramadan, which is the Turks month of fasting. On July 3rd, David, my older brother, went to America with his cousin to work in a camp. The camp was in Colorado on top of a mountain. Last year there was a fire up there and so David helped chop down dead trees and clear trails. Then he went to my uncle's house (he lives in Colorado springs) for three days. After that he flew down to Texas to be with our grandparents for a week and a half. Then he flew down to Florida with our cousin to be with our other grandparents. He'll be back on Saturday, the 30th. So David had a pretty busy summer. About two weeks ago, we went to the zoo. It was just the moms, the cousins and Nathan and Lizzie and me. We had a really fun time, and we saw a lot of really cool (and cute) animals. After the zoo, we went to the seashore and had a picnic. Well, not much else has really happened this summer. Next I'm going to be writing a post about my paintings.