Marie Atkins Christmas Treat

Happy Holidays everybody!
Man, today was just brilliant... As usual, we went down to the Marie Atkins Center for the last saturday for the month, but normally its just 4-5 of us helping. Today there were at least 15 people! And we had pastries, and drinks, and food surplus! There were at least 100 people there to be served, and we gave each and every one of them a Christmas treat, a bag with some toiletries, and with their breakfast, we would give sweets, like donuts, or cupcakes.
It was pretty cool getting to see the smiles on the faces, and having the founder of the place coming to thanks us all for a year of helping, and a few of the residents coming to help too. I feel good helping them.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year
Peter
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Boston Bay Cultural Center

Hey everyone,
Today, my class and I followed through with our class project, and went down to the Boston Bay Cultural Center down in Portland.
We had raised over 30,000$ to help us with this project, and we used it to purchase supplies for the center, and transportation. We were supposed to hang out and play with the children who go to the center, but not all of them could make it, so we played with the ones that could.
We started off by learning how to play a Brazilian martial arts, called Cabuira (not sure of the spelling) which is a way the slaves would practice for fighting without the slave traders knowing. Then, we all split up, and some of us went to play football with the kids, some asked the guy teaching us some questions on the martial art, some went down to the beach to go swimming, and others just wandered around.
This was a pretty cool experience, considering I had never learned that form of martial art before, and I got to see how people of a lower class lived, and give back to the country I had lived most of my life. I'll upload the pictures when, and if I get them.

Peter
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Marie Atkins Center

Whats up guys?
 Over the past few months, on the last saturday, I've been going to the Marie Atkins Center to help feed the citizens living there. At first, the whole thing was really awkward, considering I was around a group of people three times my own age, and with permanent injury, be it mental, emotional, or physical. Like this one woman there, while working in Florida, had her house burn down with her husband and kids in it, and fell into extreme depression. Or like another guy, who got set on fire by some children, and has his left side permanently burnt. But, after going there a few times, it got less and less awkward, and I started feeling comfortable talking with the people living there, and handing out the food, drinks, and whatever treats that we had. Also, its pretty difficult, because people will try to get extra food, or drinks, by moving from where they sit, to somewhere else. All in all, its a pretty rewarding experience, and I feel as if I am more grateful to the things that I have, and more willing to help those in need.

  
Peter

Heart Fund Run

Hey everyone...
Writing this in pain from the waist down, from running this morning... I just went to the Heart Foundation of Jamaica's annual Heart Fund Run, where we would run laps to earn money to help buy equipment, pay for treatments, and help people with heart conditions, while maintaining our own health by running. I ran about 10 laps, and walked the other 8, and I would have gone for 20 laps, but my dad was rushing me to go home, to take a shower before going somewhere else... Not sure how I'm gonna survive walking around, considering the pain in my legs right now...

Peter
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After school Activities

'Ello peoples,
I have to write about all of my after school activities, so, here I go...

Basketball

This term, basketball wasn't exactly productive, because of all the rain that we've been getting. Also, for about 3-4 of the practices, I was having massive headaches, and was incapable of going to practice. Regardless, I still showed up whenever I could, and I'm slowly, but surely, improving my hit:miss ratio, and we, the team, are coming closer together, learning each other's weaknesses and strengths, and using those to our advantage. All in all, its been a pretty fun experience, and I don't regret doing it.

Model United Nations Club

MUN Club has been a pretty fun, and enlightening experience, because, as a debater for the past 5 years, it was an unusual transition going from arguing a moot, to stating how the moot is affecting your country, and what's being done to correct it. On top of that, in order to help us win the MUN competition to allow us to go to Tampa, or New York, we've been going to a training session at the UN headquarters, where we would practice our speaking, and learn from each others mistakes, as well as learn how to work collaboratively to create a fair competition, and a perfect speech to help the best speaker to win.

Investment Club

This term, I had become interested in investing, and joined Investment club to learn the art of making money with minimal effort, or so I thought. Investing isn't an easy process, you have to analyze the market, the curves, predict the market, and buy/sell before the other investors do, to make maximal profits. We, however, aren't making anything on the demo money that we started with, because of several mishaps, and the market not going anywhere. Also, as the secretary for the club, I've had to take note of what we've done every meeting, who comes to every meeting, and create stuff, like facebook groups, blackberry messenger groups, and an online chat room, so that we can perpetually be working on our portfolio. Its not all work, we still joke around, making investment jokes, watching movies like Broiler Room, or Too Big to Fail. I can honestly say that I've learned quite a bit from participating in this club, and I'm going to stick with the group, because of how much more there is for me to learn, and I hope that I learn more from it in my last two years of school.

Peter
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Stella Maris Food Packaging

Hey everyone,

Today, I helped out at my church with a food packaging program. This program is to help with another program, where the church feeds the homeless, or the shut in, by equally distributing canned goods, dehydrated products, flour, corn meal, sugar, and rice in bags. I got there at around 6:30pm, and, after about 2 hours, we had divided about 10 bags of goods, into a couple hundred smaller bags, which would get packaged, and sent with the Feeding the Homeless program.

This showed me how much I have, and how much I should be grateful for. It also taught me how difficult it really is to do simple tasks over a period of time, as I have to divide the bags in to smaller bags, tie the bags, put the smaller bags into bigger bags, and then carry the bags to a wall, where a security guard will put in a storage room in the back so many times, that it takes about 2 hours, with a group of about 10 people.

Sophie's Place

Hey humanoids,
Today, I went down to a home for children with disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, or Scoliosis, called Sophie's Place. There were about ten to fifteen people living there, with three nurses.
At the home, a group of us, me and some other children from church, played ball with some of the kids, and read to them. It was actually a pretty fun time playing with them, and the smiles on their faces really made it worth it. Towards the end, one of the kids played the guitar, while we sang and danced with the children.
This whole experience really made me to treasure what I have, where I would take basic things, like health, for granted. This helped me to understand just how much of an impact poverty and disabilities can affect a person's future, and really made me work together with people that I don't really know.

Peter
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Halloween Dress Up Day

Hey guys,
Today, Grade 11, at my school, put together a Halloween Dress Up Day to raise money for The Bustamante Children's Hospital. As a twelfth grade student, I was not a part of the planning of the activity, but I did support by buying a band, which would allow me to dress up for the day. Over the past few days, I threw ideas back and forth for my costume. I contemplated being a character from Doctor Who, but I lacked any materials to turn those concepts into real things. Then, I thought of going as binder paper, where I would put three black circles on the left side of my body to replicate the design of three punch paper. Finally, I decided to go as an executive business zombie. The night before, I had to paint my shirt, and tie, and tear up my shirt to imitate a zombie's clothing. Then, the morning of the dress up day, I had to paint my face using make up to replicate the pale skin and the sunken eyes of a zombie. That was the most painful part, because the eye shadow kept irritating my eyes, and my nose was itching, but I couldn't scratch either of them without rubbing off the make up. Also, the paint had not finished drying, so I had to keep from touching anything with my shirt. Then, in the day, drinking anything was hard because the make up on my lips tastes horrible, and I didn't want to have to taste it, or smudge my face. This was actually a really fun event, and I applaud the 11th graders for conceptualizing, and following up with the idea of a dress up day.

Peter
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