The air was crisp and cool that winter night, days before Christmas. Two girls pulled up in a black minivan with their skates in bags and helmets on their heads. They seem no older than 13 years of age and seemed almost stunned by the lights when they jumped out of the van with excitement. One girl had long brown curls wearing a white jacket, she carried her skates in one of those bags that stores give out, this one particular was a dark Everest green, as dark as the forest.  She was standing next to a slightly shorter girl with long, dark brown, wavy hair. The lights around were soft yet bright. You could see them from thousands of miles away. The warm coloured lights were bouncing off everything. They were everywhere and not at the same time. I look away to hear a voice.

 

“Yards,” what I assumed was one of the girl’s fathers yelling out of the van, “call me when you want to go home!”

 

The curly-haired girl turned around with her puffy hair flying into her face. 

“Yeah, sure. I do have my phone, right Halel?” she looked at her friend with fright crawling into her eyes while she was patting down her pockets as fast as her heartbeat. She stopped patting when she found her phone. Yards delicately pulled out a silver phone case out of her pocket, trying not to drop it. 

 

“Good, I didn’t lose it this time!” she gasped with relief and a grin you could see through her light purple mask.

 

“Yeah, this time.” Halel joked which made them both burst into a small laugh.

 

A few short seconds later they found themself waving bye to Yards’ dad and rushing over to the cold rink just like waterfalls crashing when they smell the sweat mixed with the aroma of coffee and winter. They find a spot to sit on a brown bench and pull their skates out of their bags. Yards pulls out her dirty white figure skates and starts to take off the purple skate guards, while Halel pulled her clean, new, navy recreational skates out of her giant blue Ikea bag. They tied their laces up slowly to make sure their feet won’t come out and stand up cautiously trying not to tip over. They are slowly stepping onto the slippery ice and try to keep their balance as they start to skate. Yards has been skating since she was two will, on the other hand, Halel has only gone skating twice! They skated around for a while. They try going backwards and on one foot. Yards skate backwards a lot with only a few stumbles here and there trying to teach Halel how to skate backwards.  They skate a while until they see me. I think I recognize them from somewhere but I couldn’t quite put a pin on it. I could hear them whispering about something. 

 

The shorter girl with small gold glasses asked, “Do you speak Hebrew?”

“Yeah, I do,” as I answer with a bit of confusion the other girl starts to collapse into laughter, “Why?”

“Nevermind.” Yards looked over at her friend with laughter creeping up her throat. 

I slowly turn my head looking over to my brother a bit puzzled. 

“So um, are you guys here alone?” I asked curiously.

They glance at each other before Yards answers, ”Yeah, we are.”

Halel stares at her before she jokes and starts hitting her lightly. They laugh loudly and skate on the mirror-like rink until the black minivan pulls up again with a roar.

There are so many values in life, and in Jewish Studies, we were asked to choose 5 Jewish values out of a sheet that I think has every single Jewish value in the world. Even though there were so many, we could only choose five. I took my time and chose the five that are the most important for me, even though I think they are all important. I chose Love of Israel, Freedom, Do not embarrass, Diversity and Creativity. We were asked to say -in a slideshow- what we think each one means, were in Jewish text it talks about each value,  how we can use and incorporate into our lives and why we chose it. I learnt and practiced writing a minimal amount on my slides. I also practiced eye contact, and so I didn’t have to memorize everything I was going to say I made a script and cue cards.

If you would like to read or look at my slide show here it is ⇩

The five senses are one of the most important parts when you are writing. Using the five senses, sight, touch, taste, sound and smell helps make a story much more imaginable for the reader. In class, our teacher gave us an assignment. The assignment was to write about the scene in our school. Even though they are all different they all are practising the five senses in writing. we all learned how to use the five senses more in-depth and practiced writing. this assignment was one of the first things we worked on after summer break. I’m sorry if it’s not edited well, I could probably do better. However I still tried. This is what I wrote, I tried to recreate the scene of school at the end of the day.

It’s last period and I’m counting down every second as we’re playing a lazy yet energetic game of basketball. We’re playing half-court and it’s my turn to check. I look around the tall orange gym with different blue athletes painted on the wall. I hold the well-aged orange basketball in my hands and feel the stiff leather peeling away. I did a bounce pass to one of my friends on the blue pinny team. I swear that we’ve had the same pinnies since the 1990s.  The odour lingers on the pinnies, even if it is a “breathable fabric” they always feel like a sweater when you’re running around. I used to think all the pinnies would never be washed when I was in second grade but since then I realize they do, even if they don’t seem like it. They do a bounce pass back. I dribble the ball on the wooden floor, and every time I hear the echo of the loud bounce. I look for my teammates but they are all guarded. So I run up and do the right power layup. “ Right foot, left foot, up,” I mumble to myself. I look around and see the old clock. We only have five minutes left which means we practically won, right now we’re leading 26 to 10. Time goes by as the other team goes for many layups and jump shots, but they keep missing. While our team keeps making our shots. The loud orange whistle blows. We shake each other’s sweaty hands and go to the wall with the hockey player murals on them. I stare at the wall trying to find my knapsack when it hits me. I forgot my bag all the way upstairs in my locker. 

I take my giant pink metal water bottle with me as I go upstairs to look for my bag. As I exit the gym and enter a long beige hallway, with little kids flushing out like they all are waiting to win the billion-dollar lottery. On the walls, there are boards with bright and colourful pictures that I assume the younger kids made the art based on the bubble letter signs that read “Grade 2 Art”. As I push open the heavy metal doors I start to walk up the tall flight of stairs. The wall is painted a  bright apple red. On the other side of the stairwell, there are pictures of some of the kids mounted onto the wall. As I open the second set of doors I walk into a very similar hallway. It’s just like the previous hall but this time there isn’t any art on the walls. As I look to my left I see the bright turquoise door to the bathroom. I continue walking, but I still get a glimpse of a few classrooms. The first one has the door covered with a pretty grey pattern. The second classroom has a red door but inside there are a bunch of blush pink accessories. then finally I get to my classroom. This room is far more basic than the other one but with the big leather couch, it could not be more fun. I find my grey bag laying against my desk. I pick it up and run out to the parking lot. I sprint so hard I wonder how hard I’m painting. I take my phone out and look at the time, few it’s only 3:48. Most of the cars are still in the parking lot and I can tell some kids left the beige brick building with their parents. I see my brother and sign him out. I take him to our dad’s black minivan. He keeps blabbering about his day but all I can think about is “how could I possibly forget my bag”.

In the past month, we have been working on a book project. I chose the Mean Girls book. When we were done reading we had to make an artifact. For my artifact, I chose to do the photo essay. I chose this artifact so I could add pictures from the memorable movie. All though I did not choose to put some of the most memorable scenes, I put elements that for me describe this story. If I were to do this again I probably would start earlier. Otherwise, I am pretty happy with her it turned out.

My Mean Girls Photo Essay