The light leading to the right path

I can vaguely remember it, the day that I was diagnosed with cancer. I was only ten years old. All I can remember were these bright white lights glaring down on me from the ceiling. The next minute I was placed onto a bed. Suddenly I felt the bed moving and I went into this circular tube machine thing. All I can remember is feeling afraid because couldn’t move. I heard some voices and as I opened my eyes I saw three people standing beside my bed.  Two who looked like my parents and another wearing a white coat, which was presumably the doctor, I guess. It has been two years since I was diagnosed with cancer.

Tomorrow would be the day that I was finally and officially cancer – free. I would get my last surgery today to remove the cancer from my body. I would be able to grow my hair back and look like other normal girls. Right now my only wish is that I will be able to look like other girls and grow back my hair. Of course I also wished that the surgery would be a success.  I would have my surgery around nine o'clock in the morning. My mom promised me that after I got better that we would buy some new things for her and me. I couldn't wait until I got better and to go back to school and meet all my friends again.

So now I was cancer – free and I would be able to live normally but just to make sure that I would be all right I had to go to the doctor every month. Today the doctor told me that I could go home tomorrow since I would still have to recover from my surgery and I still had to get my food through feeding tubes. One whole day passed and I could finally go home and go to school again. I couldn’t wait until I would meet my friends again. I arrived at home and slept for a while since I was going to school at twelve o’ clock. My mom woke me up and I went to school. It seemed like a normal school day but somehow it was different.

As I walked into my class I could feel everyone’s eyes looking at my hat. Since I was bald I felt more comfortable wearing a hat to school. After one minute of silence the teacher started welcoming me back to the school. As soon as the teacher finished talking I took a seat next to my best friend Fatima. This environment just felt so safe that it seemed like I never had left this place. As I tried to look at the window I saw Joshua looking at me and giving me this kind of, what is it called? Uh, oh yeah a death stare. A few minutes later there was a note being passed around the class to me. It said: “Meet me at the field after school.”

After looking at the note I looked at Joshua again and he gave me this death stare again. I don't know why but I guess he just had something against me. It seemed like he hated me. After our first lesson finished we went outside and had lunch. Finally after almost a week or so I could play soccer again and have fun. Apparently according to Joshua girls can’t play soccer and he started to pull Fatima’s hair and pulled her hair down until she fell on the grass. Joshua was very rude and disrespectful towards girls but especially Alexia.  It just seems like Joshua never stopped having fun. I wasn’t just beat by that, I went in and joined the game then I started scoring a lot of points to show him that girls also can play soccer.

The school day ended and I was heading toward the field Joshua told me to go to. Along with me I brought Fatima and Tristan. ‘Why are we here Alexia?’ Tristan asks me. ‘ Joshua told me to come to the field afterschool.’ I reply. ‘Why?’ ,‘ I don’t know.’ ‘Are you sure you’re not going to get in trouble Alexia?’ Fatima asks me. ‘I don’t know actually since I don’t know why we’re here anyways.’ I replied. Suddenly I could see two guys approaching us. One of them looked very tall while the other looked a bit shorter. As they came closer I could see that they were Joshua and Bart.

All of a sudden they were standing in front of me and Joshua made his hand into a fist and punched me right in my face. Then Bart started pushing Fatima that made her fall to the grass. After ten minutes of fighting Tristan’s mother Judeska came and got mad at him because he used her bicycle and because it was broken. All that I got from this fight were a few rashes and a bleeding nose. I ran home as quickly as I could to avoid any more fighting. When I arrived at home I noticed that the necklace I was wearing was gone.

The next day at school Joshua came up to me and gave me a little box. As I opened it I could see my necklace. I think that it fell when we were fighting and that he kept it. ‘Thank you Joshua.’ ‘No problem Alexia.’ That day it was just an ordinary school day. As I wanted to get my bicycle I saw Joshua standing there. What was he doing there? ‘Hi Alexia, I hoped I could talk to you for a bit.’ ‘Um yeah sure.’ ‘Okay so um, how do I say this.’ ‘Say what?’ ‘Nothing never mind.’ Okay that was weird. ‘Bye Alexia.’ ‘Bye.’ What was he going to tell me? Most importantly, why was he acting so weirdly?

After a few months I got extremely sick. Doctor Thomas told me that they had discovered a part of the cancer that they didn’t remove last time. He told me that it was already in my lungs, my heart and other body parts. He told me that there was a really small chance that I can survive. He told me that there was one way I would be able to survive. Which was that someone had to be a donor. Not so long after everyone at school heard about it. That week everyone from my class came to the hospital to see me. There was something odd, not everyone came to see me in the hospital. There was one person missing which was Joshua. When everyone else left Fatima grabbed a chair and sat down next to me. She told me everything what happened at school. Then she told me what happened to Joshua and why he didn’t come to visit today. She told me that he was in the car with his dad and his dad just came from a bar meaning he was drunk. Then they got in a car accident Joshua and his father were killed instantly. I could feel a teardrop roll down my cheek. Fatima noticed it and she started telling me everything was going to be okay, trying to make me feel better.

A new week started and there is still no one who wants to be a donor and I still am becoming sicker. The more time passed the less chance I had to survive. Suddenly I could feel this stinging pain in my lung and I could barely breathe. Not long after the nurse came in and helped me to some oxygen. She called the doctor and he came in. So when I first met him I told him this: ‘ If I don’t have a chance of surviving you have to shave your moustache.’ Well today he came into my room without a moustache. He came over to me and told me it was better if he injected me with something so I would die without pain. I could feel the needle being put into my skin. This is it, the end. After I felt the needle go out of my skin I slowly fell asleep. Sleep that I would never awake from. This is all the right way. This is what god wants. I could see white, only white, everywhere around me. Thank you god for letting me live this long. Please take care of everyone else. Thank you for leading me to the right path.

Ramadhan ( A descriptive reflection )

One family celebration that I'll never forget would be Ramadhan back in 2011. I’ll never forget this family celebration because it was the last Ramadhan with my grandfather from my mother’s side and when he was younger he used to be an important person in the army. He passed away in late 2011 because of diabetes. I really enjoyed this specific Ramadhan because it felt different than the Ramadhan celebrations we had had before and since. We did a lot of things we usually didn’t do during the other Ramadhan celebrations.

I really enjoyed this particular celebration because of the things we did during the celebration. One of these things was, when my aunt and uncle threw money in the air and whatever we caught, it was ours. Funny thing was that while they were throwing the money, some of my grandma’s neighbors came inside too. They also started grabbing the money. After all those people left the house my uncle and aunt started handing out the money instead of throwing it in the air. In the end I gathered around 1.950.000 Rupiah!

Another thing we do on this special day is go to my great grandfather and great grandmother’s graves. I don’t know why exactly but visiting the graves this time felt so different. As usual we bought flowers and some rose water at cemetery. We went to their graves and made a big heart shape of flower petals around a small plant that was between the two graves. The heart represents their love for each other. After making the heart we walked around and put some flower petals on other people’s graves.

We came home and we forgave each other.  It’s a tradition in our family to ask for forgiveness from each other. So firstly the oldest of the family sits down. Then the second oldest person asks for forgiveness from the oldest and sits besides them. After that the third oldest asks for forgiveness from the oldest and the second oldest. It goes on like that until the youngest has asked for forgiveness from the others or the ones older than him or her. After we have asked for forgiveness we usually change our clothes and go to the mall to do something.

That Ramadhan was a family celebration I’ll never forget. It was the last one with my grandfather and we did a lot of things that I enjoyed. Such as throwing money but, we also did some things where teardrops gently fell onto the floor. Usually when we forgive there are some tears rolling over our cheeks. Despite the tears we also pray for my great grandfather and grandmother that we would meet them in heaven. The Ramadhan celebration in 2011 was very special for me and I’ll never forget about it. I’ll never forget about it and I don’t want to forget about it because it is a special and precious memory to me.

My poetry blog

Hey everyone,
I made another blog where I only post poems
I love writing poems.
Here's the link The poetry blog
I will try to post daily on that blog.
Well goodbye for now,
(Sorry it's a very short post)

English Debate Reflection

Yesterday my group and I had to argue why the world should not have one world currency. We were opposition and my members were; Mario, Radi and Jason. On the affirmative side we had; Alisya, Laras, Aca and Albern. In my point of view our team had planned out how the debate would go but since we all got a bit nervous it didn’t go like we had planned. But overall my team and I were pretty organized. I was the second speaker and my point was that you would have to divide many tasks and that could lead to more problems.

My team had four members and one of them did the rebuttal. So we had to convince the audience with three arguments. Our arguments were structured from the strongest to the weakest. Which would make the audience listen to the first one to the last one. The evidence and facts to support my assertion were taken from different websites. And I think I could’ve put more facts since I only put like two. This would not be enough to actually convince the audience to choose our team. It also depends on what the human mind believes as a fact.

I believe that my team argued the case well but we could’ve done better. Since some of us forgot words or even paragraphs. There should be done more practicing with the team. I think we pointed out our argument very well and detailed. I think we could practice more so we would not skip anything we were supposed to say. And we would not fall over our words. And for the preparation of the debate, I think we used more time for researching than actually practicing the debate itself and our arguments.

I think we made use of Ethos/Pathos and Logos but not in a very strong way. I don’t think that we made use of Pathos, since we didn’t do anything relative to that. Whenever doing a debate Ethos is the strongest persuasive technique since you have to persuade the audience. In my opinion the group that argued about the death penalty for drug traffickers were very good. Both of them were good but in my opinion the affirmative side used Ethos in a better way.

For an overall final grade out of the three criteria I was being assessed on I think that I would’ve gotten a 16 out of the 21 points I could get.

The case of Arthur Volupides

As we arrived at the house of Arthur and Queenie Volupides at about 2:00 AM on January 1st, 2012. We found Arthur Volupides lying on the floor with his head at the bottom of the stairs. His wife Queenie claims that he came down for another drink and she also claims that he fell down the stairs. The evidence that we collected goes to the obvious answers. The evidence that we collected support our answers.

Looking in the background you could see a pan with food on it cooking. Going back to what Queenie said: she invited her friends from the Country Club for another drink, not snack or something related to that. As a rule people don’t normally cook at 1:00 AM in the morning. Secondly by looking at what Queenie said and Arthurs body position it doesn’t seem like Queenie is telling the truth. One of the evidences is that by looking at his body position we could tell that he was walking up the stairs. If you look closely we could see that his right foot was on the 3rd step and his left foot on the 2nd step. This also indicates that he was walking up the stairs. As a rule when you’re lying on your back you would probably be walking up the stairs. Thirdly if you look closely at Arthur's hand he is still holding his glass. As a rule whenever people fall they let go of any items in their hands. As Queenie said Arthur was coming down not going up.

We could see that nothing on the wall beside the stairs or on the stairs was disturbed/misplaced.Which makes it unlikely that he fell from the stairs. Also Arthur is still holding a glass in his hands. Which Queenie told us that he was coming down for another drink. As a rule when people fall they drop whatever they’re holding and try to grab other things to prevent them from hurting themselves and falling. If he protected himself he would’ve injured other body parts that helped him from preventing to fall. Which is strange because the autopsy stated that he only had a wound on the back of his head.

Using the evidences that we found on the scene including the use of general rules about what is wrong about these evidences, we can conclude that Queenie wasn’t telling the truth. We have supporting evidences from the scene, like Arthur’s body position and and also the objects around him. It doesn’t match what would happen normally. To finish this conclusion, we would like to say that Queenie killed Arthur, in a smart way. She used the frying pan that she used for cooking to hit Arthur in the back, that is why he has only has a bruise on the back of his head. Then he used the pan for cooking as a cover so it doesn’t look as if she hit Arthur. Also that she put a glass on his hand to look as if he is going for a refill. That is what we think happened based on the evidences that we found on the crime scene.

Snow? Snow!

For the holiday I went to Holland. We really wanted to see snow, we heard it hasn't snowed there for the past 2 years. So my mom and dad wanted to drive to Germany but the car we rented didn't have winter tires on it. Then one day when we were around 1 week there the temperature was going down, from 5 to -3. It was just 3:00 AM and I could see the snow whirl down onto the ground. At around 8:00 AM there was probably about 5cm of snow on the roads. As we had breakfast me, my cousin and my niece went outside. We threw snowballs to each other, made a snowman and tried to make a snow fort. 

As it was getting dark the temperature was still going downwards. We had a delightful dinner, the desert was delicious. As we could leave the table we went outside again. As we saw it was still snowing from this morning. It was crazy! We put snow in each others jackets and did some other stuff too. We played some games such as Minecraft.

As I woke up the next day I could still see some snow outside. As I got out of bed it felt ice - cold. By the time everyone was awake and had breakfast we went outside again. We tried to pick up the snow but most of it turned into ice. You could still pick it up but not mould it anymore. It was really cold outside and especially when the wind blew. In some parts there was still snow. (Those people who live there are really lucky.) I loved the snow and as the days went on the snow thawed. 

While being so happy that it snowed I almost slipped over some really slippery ice. 

This was my Holiday Experience

Image 1: This is the ice skating rink that got closed because of the snow.

Image 2: This is a picture of a street of a place I went to.

The mannequin

Claire was preparing herself for going to the new mall that just opened. She would go to there with her friend Sophia. She heard the car arrive in front of her house and went downstairs. She could see her friend’s blonde hair it was all put up in a messy bow bun. They went into the car and went on their way to the new mall. Since the mall was new they had to search for it. When they found the mall they dropped of the car and went into the mall. They heard there would be some celebrities coming there. As they were walking they walked past a shop with nice designer clothes. Sophia just walked past the shop and went into a restaurant. Claire had to run to catch up to her in the restaurant. They had some lunch and they split up to go and discover the mall. Claire wanted to go to the salon to do her really long brown hair. But she didn’t, she headed directly to that one shop she saw…

Claire headed the direction where she thought she came from where she had seen the shop. She kept on walking and after a while she found the shop but it was located at a totally different place than she thought it would be. She went in and looked at a few prices and she saw that they were not that expensive. They were so fine of quality and the looked perfect. She walked around and saw some nice clothing. Claire picked up some and tried them on, she chose some she wanted and put them into a special bag. She looked around and saw this mannequin standing there, there was something odd about it. Claire looked carefully and saw that the mannequin was wearing the same clothes as her. She started to walk faster  and faster it felt like the mannequin was following her…

Claire walked to the place where there were jackets since she needed some for going to Europe. She saw the mannequin standing near the jackets wearing the exact same thing as. Only one difference the mannequin was wearing the jacket Claire had tied around her waist a second ago. She ran out of the store and stood outside to catch a breath. She looked back into the store and saw the mannequin standing near the entrance. She was really scared and ran away while calling Sophia. When they met each other they went to the restaurant to talk about everything they did. Claire told her about the mannequin and Sophia laughed about it. She said it was just a hallucination, that everything she saw she just imagined it. As Sophia stared into the distance she saw a mannequin wearing the exact same clothing as her. She started to scream….

Claire and Sophia both started running away from that one single mannequin. For Claire it appeared that the mannequin was wearing the same clothes as her but Sophia saw it differently. She saw the mannequin wearing the same clothes as her. As they started running they did not look back, they were really scared. Claire looked back and saw the mannequin carrying a knife in his hand. Claire saw a red liquid dripping from the knife. The knife was pointed to Claire and the mannequin threw the knife towards her. It almost hit her head, luckily she dodged the knife. Out of nowhere the mannequin got a new knife in his hand. It seemed all like a game to them. Just like a videogame…

While Sophia was still running Claire walked towards the mannequin and the mannequin put the knife through her heart.  She kneeled down and fell down onto the floor. She was dead… Sophia stopped and walked slowly towards Claire. Blood was spread all over the floor and Sophia laid besides her. She was wearing all white clothes but she didn’t care about all the blood. It was her friend, she saw her die right in front of her.  She began to cry and slept right besides her she laid there for a day or so. Until she got carried away with the ambulance to the hospital…

Sophia woke up in the hospital and saw the mannequin standing beside her using hospital clothes. The mannequin was covered all in blood and started a conversation with Sophia. Sophia finally understood what was wrong with him. All he wanted was just someone to accompany him through his lonely life. Sophia and the mannequin started to become best friends and everyday they would pray together. They would pray to the god that they believe in. Whatever it may be it would remind us that being human is something special.  They would pray that Claire could be healed every day she would improve only if it was a little bit it was a part of becoming better.

Claire’s health was improving every day and she would look better. Police officers came to the hospital to ask us some questions. Mr. Mannequin didn’t like visitors so he always had a knife ready. Mr. Mannequin has kept his manners to behaving himself and he was becoming a real gentlemen. They would go to the mall where all of this happened and review everything. Now they laughed about it but when it happened it was not funny at all. Mr. Mannequin had apologized to Claire and Sophia and asked them for forgiveness over a hundred times.

The whole world started to become brighter and everything was getting sorted out. After a few months Claire was totally healed and she was learning how to start walking again. She healed really fast compared to other patients. She still had to stay in the hospital for 1 month or so until she could go home. We could not wait for her to see her happy back at home again. As soon as she was allowed to go they would bring her to a few places around the world. All around the world…

After that one month Claire went home and sat down. There was no one at home, or was there. She could still see the mannequin in her head and imagine  what could’ve happened to her if she walked away. What if.. She was asking many questions to herself why she didn’t do anything else.  She thought herself that she was stupid all the choices she made, all the wrong choice. As she kept herself all about it she flashed back to what happened. All the voices in her head. All the images, all the wrong choices. She didn’t know what she was thinking at that time when she walked to the mannequin. Why would he even do that. How did the mannequin come to life? She was so confused and tired she fell asleep on the rocking chair…

Out of nowhere there many people jumped up and said: ‘Welcome home!’

Claire could just cry tears of happiness at that moment. She saw all her friends all her friends who were supporting her through this hard time. She even saw the mannequin holding balloons instead of knives. She stood up and ran to the mannequin and said: ‘God has answered your prayers, to what God you may pray.” The mannequin had feelings too he was crying inside but he couldn’t show his emotions since he didn’t have a face. He was happy to be able to do something for a human being he felt like he had friends, real supportive friends. Friends who help you go through thick and thin. He felt so happy, he never felt this way before…

A year after Claire healed and went home Mr. Mannequin was living with Claire and Sophia. Claire was lucky to get twins and named them James and Charles.  Sophia had triplets and named them Elena, Chris and Noah. They all looked happy and Mr. Mannequin found his true love at the same store where he used to ‘live’. Her name was Ms. Mannequin, they had their own room and they were allowed to barrow clothes from everyone in the house…

One of the good memories was once they went picnicking and everyone went swimming and we all had a good time. They also went onto a rollercoaster and Mr. Mannequin lost his head during a loop. He had to buy a new one at a craft store. Claire and Sophia were happy and living their life. They wanted to do something fun like the old days they used to have. Only the three of them and they wanted to do something that they will always remember…

They went to Jogja and went up the volcano they made sure that they wanted to do this and jumped on three. 1………..2………..3…………….JUMP. They all jumped into the flaming hot lava and did something they will never forget. This will show everyone on the world how strong some friendships could be. So strong that you would do something you can never regret. Jump into lava and die together. They were so bound that they did not want anyone to die before the other dies. This was unforgettable.