Photography, Lock-In, SYATP, etc.

Soo here's what I'm doing in photography. We have a free assignment, and I made this picture look funky. The people in the picture are three of my friends from my MFuge crew. Basically, Adobe Photoshop is my new best friend. My friend and I played with it all bell Friday, haha. It's pretty cool, you can make pictures look like drawings (i.e. watercolor, different kinds of sketches, etc), make them black and white, change the contrast of colors(which is what I did to the above picture), and pretty much do ANYTHING you want to.



Anywhoo, I just realized its been four weeks since I last posted. Drew has been nagging me about my lack to update, but frankly I don't have that much to update about. School and cheerleading basically control my life (what else is new?). VI-wise, things are going great. Student Leadership is going great. Last Wednesday, we all presented our ministries. My personal favorite (besides Newsletter, naturally) was definitely Nikko and Angie's dance for their ministry, SOC (Serving Our Community). The whole dance thing is kind of a joke from SL Retreat, because it became Nikko's signature that weekend. He and Audrey performed it one night (complete with Audrey's AMAZING 'fro), and I basically died, it makes me laugh so hard every time. But anyway, Nikko taught it to Angie and they performed it on Wednesday, it was so awesome :) I also liked the Boy Band video, it was extremely hilarious. See Drew's blog for the actual video. But of course, my favorite was DEFINITELY Newsletter. Katie and I came up with this concept for our presentation that day in Band. It's the Newsletter's slogan/name thingy, and it's called Gossip for God. Get it? Like, gossip spreads really quickly and people are really eager to share and tell it. Soo that's what we were hoping we'd do with Newsletter, you know, spread God like people tend to spread gossip. Not to mention that "Gossip for God" has a nice ring to it. It really rolls off the tongue, don't you think? Haha :) We made pretty shirts (Katie and I had T-shirts, and we bought Dustin a tiny wife-beater, hahah), and had a great skit. If you missed our presentation, I'm very sorry. You basically missed the best five minutes that you will ever experience in your entire life. Not to mention, Katie totally fell flat on her face on her way up to the stage. Classic.



Last night was the infamous Lock-In. I got their late along with all of the Mariemont Band after our football game vs. Indian Hill (we pounded to a pulp...62-0. It was just sad, really). The whole night was very fun, I was introduced to Family Guy, to which I had been previously prejudiced. But now I find it absolutely hilarious, hahha. I guess I kinda fell asleep, because one minute twenty people were watching it, and then the next thingI know basically all of them are gone and I'm completely dead asleep, along with Drew (who, by the way, snores. But apparently I do too, but supposedly it's kind of like a whimpering snore. I've officially been dubbed "Ga'snore'ay" along with the multiple other nicknames), and Aimee, Peggy, and Hannah are watching this sappy movie called The Ultimate Gift. I watched the first twenty minutes, then fell asleep again and woke up for the last twenty. I was very confused, but overall, I really liked the movie. It's all about this guy named Jason who gets this inheritance from his dead grandfather whom he hated, but in order to get it, he has to do all of these tasks and thus recieve several different "gifts", such as the gift of work, problems, family, love, etc. Despite the fact that it was a bit cheesy, I thought it portrayed a really good message, despite the fact that it had a horribly sad (but satisfying) ending. For anyone in my English class, it reminds me freakishly of that one story we're reading, One Thousand Dollars by O. Henry



Anyway, after the movie, Maddie insisted that I come to the basement to see this dance-off. So I'm like...uhh okay? But once I got down there, I was so glad I came. Seriously, I have probably never laughed so hard in my entire life. There were several groups: "The Super Models" (my sister, Olivia, and Robby); "The Asians and Caucasians",(Nikko and his posse) "The Four Gays" (Zach, Emmett, Alec, and Oliver) and this one other group consisting of Alexis, Karyn, and Grace. Pretty much, the groups would pick a song to do, and they'd choreograph that, but then they'd also have to do an "improv" song picked out by Maddie and Audrey. It was absolutely hilarious. Let me just be the first to say that junior high boys can shake it way more than I ever thought possible, or ever wanted to see. And Karyn has the most amazing neck-bobbing thing EVER :) And Nick's group was actually hardcore, they were really good. No comment on Julia's group...let's just say that as her older sister, I did NOT want to see her move like that. But they were still good, haha.




But overall, the Lock-In was extremely fun, despite the fact that I had to get up this morning and cheer at another football game against Indian Hill (at which we got clobbered...again). I think I was running on this false energy source, because on normal circumstances there would have been no way I could function, much less jump around, on less than two hours of sleep. But, by some miracle of God, I made it through my game, and then came home to sleep for five hours :)



Well I think that's about it for me. Like I said, nothing really noteworthy to post about.


OH WAIT.


I almost forgot about See You At The Pole! It took place on this previous Wednesday. Last year I kind of slept through it (oops), so I made it my goal this year to actually get up and go. I was expecting ten, maybe 15 people. And I was also expecting all VI people. I am very happy to say that I was proved extremely erroneous in my presumptions. Get this, Mariemont had 41 PEOPLE show up! And there were people from all different groups at school. People from different youth groups (especially SonRise; I got to see some of their youth staff that I hadn't seen since July, it was exciting), and people that I had absolutely no idea even beleived in God! Our SYATP wasn't fancy, it wasn't anything out-of-the-ordinary, but it was seriously extremely impacting. Just to know that all of the people that showed up are not afraid to show their dedication to Christ at Mariemont High School. It made me feel so much better, like I wasn't in this all on my own, you know? So pretty much, Mariemont's SYATP was absolutely amazing, with the biggest number I've ever seen. And do you know what's weird? I found that that simple action, just praying around a flag pole before school, made my day ten million times better! Thanks to everyone who came :)


Okay, now I swear I'm done. I hope everyone is doing okay in school, and in life in general. See you crazy kids tomorrow.


Love you tonssss,
<3 Gaburray

School!

So again...it's been awhile.

I hope everyone started school off well! And if you haven't started yet...well you just stink.

Let me be the first to say that my sophomore year absolutely ROCKS so far. I really like all of my classes (and I don't dread going to any of them...it's actually quite surprising). My favorites so far are Photography and English. My English class is massively huge, we fill up all of the desks, and my teacher is especially "vocal", and our whole class gotten into some really off-topic (but very interesting) conversations so far, I love it. I have Photography first bell, and it's so much fun. We've already taken pictures and are in the process of developing. Okay, funny story time: In order to develop, you have to take the film out of the camera in a completely pitch black room so the film won't be exposed, it's not like a dark room where you can actually see somewhat. So you have to open the camera, take out the film canister, take the film out of the canister, unroll it, then load it into a NEW big canister (thats the very tricky part), then put it in a light-tight jar. All in complete darkness. So this girl named Amanda and I decided to attempt doing this daunting task. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. In an attempt to load the unrolled film into the big canister I sort of...broke it, then had to put it back together in the dark. I'm going to refrain from typing the multiple "exclamations" that were said by both of us, because this is a blog on a church website, after all :) I also have yet to fall asleep in any class...again, quite an accomplishment. I always seem to be really sleepy right after lunch, I don't know why. It was kind of a problem last year, when I had my most boring class of the day then, hahaaa. But this year I have Chemistry after lunch, and we light things on fire, it's sweet. We lit these 3 different powders, and the flames all turned different colors (one turned MAGENTA, it was awesome!).

Other than that, cheerleading has been taking up my life. I adore my squad this year, we have like 5 new people, we all get along really well and have tons of fun together, haha =)

I'm also doing Color Guard (we call it CoGo, so thats what we're talking about if you hear that name mentioned). It's a ton of fun. We basically stink like no other, but we still have the best time together, and our coach is pretty much the coolest person ever, I adore her!

I feel like I haven't had time to breathe since school started. I've been so busy, it's insane. But I'm having a good time so far, and I hope you all are too!

VI wise, we have so much going on. Student Leadership has officially started, and all the new ministries are up and running. Get ready for an AMAZINGLY AWESOME year at VI!

We have Event-In-The-Tent/Student Auction coming up on the 9th. Please come, it's so much fun! SGM and Breakfast Club start soon, I'm not sure of the dates for those. SYATP (See You At the Pole) is on the 26th (more details to follow), and the greatly-anticipated Lock-In is on the 28-29th! I'm so excited for this month, it's going to be great.

So I think that's all I have for now. I hope everyone is doing awesome, and good luck at school! I'll see everybody tomorrow =)

Lots of hugs,
<3 Hold-That-Line