Thursday, November 17, 2011

Manaiakalani Film Festival 2011

I was extremely nervous. As nervous as an aero-phobic person on a plane! I had practised my script so many times and now it was time for the ‘moment.’ I anxiously walked up the stairs, butterflies fluttering like crazy in my stomach. I took a deep breath and...”My name is Sela”. I started my script off. I finished it off and walked off the stage, feeling so relieved that I had gotten it over and done with.

The Maniakalani Film Festival was an annual film festival that was held every year at the Hoyts Cinema-Sylvia Park. We had entered a movie into the film festival and I had the privilege of presenting it to everybody. As flattering as this was, I didn’t really want to do it because as you might know, I am not a very confident person. But it was good that I did it because it helped my confidence to grow.

The way the film festival went worked was like this: There were 5 sessions. The 1st session was for the little kids, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th one were for the older kids. The last session though was for the parents and everyone else. You would’ve been in for a special treat if you went on the last session because you would see most of the movies instead of just some of them.

There were many movies screening on the big screen. Many of which were comedies. Our movie was like a documentary but with a few funny bits included. I was so embarrassed of one of the scenes in our movie! It had each of us girls whipping our hair and when it came to me whipping my hair, I’d look away. In fact, I looked away for the whole movie!

As soon as the movie ended, I looked back up with such a relieved feeling! Our movie was pretty cool, even with all the embarrassing moments. There were several movies, but only a few stood out for me. T-News, Tamaki College League Girls and Italy VS New Zealand were those few that stood out.

T-News was such a crack up movie, with Brody-Jack as Billy T James. Tamaki College League Girls movie was awesome! Showing Tamaki College’s girls League team making some massive hits on their opponents and Italy VS New Zealand was a very cute movie! The little kids from Panmure Bridge School challenging each other at things such as eating Weet Bix or spaghetti the fastest.

The Manaiakalani Film Festival was just so amazing! I think it really helped me to boost my confidence. Now, I just can’t wait ‘til next year’s film festival!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Brother's Prizegiving

Its an event most people await. You have to get there in time to get a good seat and it has many awards. Do you know what I’m talking about? No, its not the Emmy’s but its quite close. Give up? Okay, its prize-giving!! It wasn’t my school prize-giving but it was my brothers.

The auditorium that the prize-giving was being held in, was pretty packed. But luckily, we got there in time and found us a good seat at the top. The view from the top was awesome, seeing that we could see everything from there!

Anyway, the prize-giving kicked off with a powhiri and soon after that, a few speeches were made. The Level 1 awards were given out and a musical item was then performed by Jamilla, who has an amazing voice! She sang ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’.

Soon after, the Level 2 awards were handed out. People got awards such as merits in English and things like that. Sometimes when awards are given out, you get more then just the average certificate. Some people got books and trophies.

The Level 3 awards were also handed out and a while after that, the special awards were awarded. The special awards were awards such as Sportsman, Sportswomen and Dux. These awards cause so many nerve-racking moments because no one knows who’s going to get which award! I was extremely proud of my brother because, as well as getting a Level 2 award, he also got Dux!! I was also very happy because of the many lolly-lei’s he got.

I’ve gotta say, it was pretty hilarious watching all the people get up to go and congratulate their family and put lei’s and lei’s of lollies on them. The one person who’s family was extremely proud of them, was the head girl Helen. She got so many lolly-lei’s that her face was almost covered!

I’m sure that all those who got awards, their families were immensely proud of them. I know I was so proud of my brother! Now, I just can’t wait for our school prize-giving!!

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Planets

The universe...many things have not yet been discovered in it. Things such as: other living lifeforms or another planet we human beings are able to live on. I’m sure there are several other things we do not know about but the things we do know about the universe and our solar system are quite interesting.

The topic for this term is called “Outta This World” and has us focusing on planets and our solar system. To help us learn more about these, we performed a little experiment yesterday. It wasn’t really an experiment like the ones you see on TV with the test tubes and bunsen burners, it was more like a fun activity type of experiment.

The experiment we did had us studying the sizes of the planets. Seeing that we couldn’t just fly up into space and see the actual planets and their sizes, we had to use an alternative. I actually found it sort-a odd that the alternative we used were balloons! To find out the sizes of the planets we (obviously) had to blow the balloons up. What I found also kinda weird but funny, was that some of the balloons didn’t really need to be blown up, they just need a little huff & puff and that was it.

Pluto was one of those ‘planets’ that only needed a little huff & puff. As well as learning the sizes of the planets, we couldn’t help but learn some very informative facts too. Here are a few (facts) that I found to be quite fascinating: Earth is known to be unique because we are the only planet in the solar system that is known to have living life forms. It takes 365 days for the Earth to orbit the sun but we have day and night because as the Earth orbits the sun, we are also revolving. Jupiter’s red spot is known to be the most violent storm in the universe and is about 3-5 times bigger then Earth. Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet.


Even though our experiment turned out to be successful, there were a few things that went wrong like: we were supposed to do it outside but then we had to abort back inside because it started raining! My friends and I found that hilarious for some reason, anyway. One low-light for me was that, about halfway during the activity I had to leave. But I felt really relieved that I could stay for half of the lesson.

I really enjoyed doing the experiment yesterday and I think that space is an awesome topic to be studying and hopefully in the not to distant future, many of the unsolved mysteries of space will be solved so that we may perform more fascinating experiments!