http://susanskora.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/teens-for-tomorrow-t4t-announces-nonprofit-grant-recipients-for-2011/

This is a story of how we(Teens for Tomorrow Board) put the $10,000 in use this year.

la tour eiffel

Injustice

We all have to stand up when something unjust happens. With my personality if I see something that is unjust I always have to meddle in these types of situations. One of the most memorable injustices that I intervened in happened in fifth grade. Back in elementary school there were two kids who always were mean to each other. At first it seemed like a joke, even though bullying is never a joke back then we didn't know that. Then one day at recess the white kid made a racist comment to the black kid which now I am ashamed to say most people just laughed at. Then the comments just kept coming and so with my 11 year old self went and told the white kid to stop doing that and I don't remember all of the details but the white kid did stop teasing and taunting and throwing racial slurs at the black kid. I felt really proud of this because no one else stood up for the kid except for me and back then I could be really mean.
The next day I though the black kid would be really happy that he wasn't made fun of anymore but nope what does he do? Says that I made fun of him in front of everyone and that I was white trash.
It was a really mean thing for him to say and at that time I regretted standing up for him but now looking back I think he was just embarrassed that a little white girl with an accent stood up for him when he couldn't for him self.

Inner Self

How one expresses their inner self varies from person to person. For me though I don't really have a way of expressing my inner self except through what I say. This may not make sense but when I talk I speak what is really on my mind. I consider my inner self to be a little ordinary and sometimes dull just because I don't have the creative outlets that others do but I put pride in that little inner part that is different.

Rives tells a story of mixed emoticons | Video on TED.com

Rives tells a story of mixed emoticons Video on TED.com

To be honest at first I was trying to find a TED talk that wasn't a million minutes long that was still interesting with a funny twist. Rivers is an amazing speaker and all of his talks on TED are hilarious but this one stuck out. In todays time we live in a world full of emoticons and this was just a funny way of looking at them. It made my day because of how creative he is with this.

Q<= (thats the girl...with a pony tail)
Oksana

Celebration of death

I find it very repulsive that as a country we celebrated the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The night the news were spread about his death, my facebook news feed blew up with people rejoicing in the fact that a bad guy died. I understand that he killed thousands of people and was head of al Qaeda but did we really need to take his life?
I am a firm believer that the government should not have a say in when we end some one's life no matter what they did. The person learns nothing about their actions. Its an easy way out. I wish they would have captured him and kept him in jail.

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

This is exactly how I feel and I wish other people in our nation would have the respect to feel that way too. We can't just go out and kill every bad guy out there. That is not the way to world peace.

now one of my creations

Music

Silence is something that I cannot really stand. I always feel like I need something in the background. Usually I turn to music. Everyday I start and end with listening to music. Music is one of the ways I can get away from the world. A song is a powerful thing. It can change my mood. It can bring back a memory. It can wake me up or put me to sleep. The thing I love most about music is finding new artisits that no one has heard of before. I love local bands the most. I think if a band isnt signed to a contract their music is usually better because they are the only ones deciding what the music sounds like.

Paper Cranes

Pretty awesome video about our paper crane making and collecting experience.
http://qctimes.com/vmix_99330e0a-695c-11e0-bc74-001cc4c03286.html

Here is the article that appeared in todays newspaper.
http://qctimes.com/news/local/article_81ee6212-6975-11e0-8212-001cc4c002e0.html

white clouds

The place I feel most relaxed the couch in my living room. It is the place I go to when I'm sick or just had a bad day. It is an oversized, chestnut leather couch. The placement is part of what makes the couch so wonderful. During the day the beautiful rays of sun seep through the window, lighting up the whole room with the warmth. At night, when a car drives by the light frolics onto the withered porch and like the sun lights up the living room but with eerie shadows.
The couch itself is the most comfortable couch in the world. The second any part of you touches the leather you just sink in. The feeling is undescribable when you've had a bad day because you know it will take you in no matter what happened.

The Challenge

In my seventeen years of life I've faced a lot of challenges that I could write pages and pages,maybe even novels about but this time I wanted to write about my current challenge that I am still trying to figure out.

About a week ago I got the shock of my life. There was a facebook message from a name that I did not recognize at first that I ended up ignoring it. Then a few hours later I sat down to watch TV and took out my laptop to waste some time on facebook. I looked at the message again. After about a half an hour of mindless facebooking I realized who the person was. Elina is the name of my biological mom and so is her last name. It all clicked.

I decided not to message her back, not because of what people said but because this is my philosophy:
The day I meet my mom again I want to have an established career to show her that her choice to let me be adopted was the right one. I want to show her how successful I became because of her selflessness.

If you could google any question in the world and get the answer what would you ask and why

I actually had to sit down and think about this a while before I finally narrowed it down to three answers, two more that asked but I really couldn't choose one. The three answers I would want to know:
The cure for cancer-There are so many strands of cancer and if we can find a cure we will save a lot of hurt that cancer causes to its victims and their family and friends. My aunt just recently finished radiation for breast cancer, even though she is now cancer free, it was very hard to see her go through it. She is very strong but it still got the best of her. If we could spare death and suffering it would be amazing.
Universal equation-I know Einstein was working on one before his death, he's a smart man and if he thought that there is such a thing then there must be. It would make life so much easier having one equation that can solve every mathematical problem we have.
A way for the world to live in peace-Wars kill too many people for no reason at all. We also spend way too much money that we don't have on wars. More than half of the time people don't support wars. If this happened we could spend all of that extra time and maybe even money researching with math and science. We could solve almost all of the world's problems.
I had a really hard time even narrowing it down to these three. If google could really give us answers like that, I think be on google even more than I am now.

what's the responsibility...

If you see a dog lying on the ground and it looks hurt no matter how many people passed by it you shouldn't. Maybe it's because I'm an animal lover but you shouldn't pass a dog. If a person does then yes, i do feel like they should have some guilt. They can't feel guilty their whole life but they did pass that dog, and that dog did end up dying the next day. Every person that walked by that dog should feel guilt.
It only takes a second to check on a dog. Who knows you can save a dogs life with just taking a few seconds out of your day.

Overall if the person feels guilt after they find out the dog died, which i feel like they should, then they should try to make it better. Go help at an animal shelter to mend what you did.

 Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

oh em knee!

While I am stuck on the couch I thought I might as well write about what has been happening so far with my knee.  For the last year I've struggled with knee pain, it took over my life. I had to quit volleyball and soccer, the two things that basically made me who I was as a person. Working out was what I lived for and when I was the happiest. Of course I always tried to push through the pain but it was unbearable. I couldn't walk without being in pain. Here comes the happy part though, after four doctors I have finally found my cure.
About a month ago I met with Dr. Castle (known as the knee guru among coaches) who sat down with me and listened to everything I said. After about a half an hour of talking and looking at my knee he came back saying that he thought I have Medial Plica Syndrome. He gave me a shot of cortisone, which was a test to make sure I did really have the Plica. The shot helped and the doctor said the next step is surgery. I found out thursday night and had the surgery tuesday morning so there was no backing out, no time to even get too nervous. The surgery went perfect and I now no longer have the plica. When i first woke up from the anesthesia my first questions was "can i play volleyball yet?"
My recovery has been very hard but I know that the worst is over and I will no longer have knee pain. I am very thankful for everyone that helped out tuesday and especially thankful for having a doctor like Dr. Castle.
&& very very very very thankful for the fact that my mom has health insurance.

This is medial plica, i had a shelf of this.

one semester

If I could spend one semester studying anything I'd like I would really like to study the wings of planes and space ships. They have to be very precise in order for planes to stay in the air. I would love to look at all the different wings throughout our history and see why the very first air crafts failed and where the inventor went wrong. To anyone else this might be a very boring subject but considering this will be part of my future job I think it would be very interesting because it will help me with my designs.

overlay

this was a project for photography and this is my favorite one i did

wordle.net

dreams

We all have those crazy dreams, the ones that we can't even figure out any part of it. Well for this post we are supposed to interpret one of our dreams. Since I hardly remember any of my dreams here it goes...

The only dream I can really remember and the dream that i have about once a week is one where I'm free falling through the sky. I'm not panicking or anything, just peacefully falling and that's the extent of my dream.

I think it just means that I'm very calm and happy with the way things are but according to dream interpreters it means i'm afraid of failing.

life moves on

The best advice I've ever received and given is "life moves on." Something little at one point may seem like the end of the world but you later realize that you're still living your life.
Three years ago when my best friend Rachel moved to Massachusetts I thought I was going to die without her. We did everything together. We used to spend every single day together. Her parents and brothers were my second family, I fought with them just like she did. My mom used to even ground her. So the day her parents told me they were moving I was heart broken but we realized that we had three weeks left together. The first week i spent sulking and not talking to her then my mom told me life moves one, and I realized this isn't the end.
We now both have our separate lives, new friends, new schools but every time we talk it's like we have been in the same town for the last three years. two years ago when she came for a visit I saw how both of our lives moved on on but yet stayed the same. 

“At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve

Mean Stinks

So the deodorant company Secret  has a facebook page called Mean Stinks (http://www.facebook.com/meanstinks) . The point of it is to stop girls being mean to other girls.

What kind of Mean? Girl-to-Girl Mean. Face-to-face, text-to-text, pen-to-bathroom-stall, whatever. Whether you’ve been mean or been meaned, this page is for undoing it. For being nice behind someone’s back. Cool to someone’s face. Or Facebook.

Above is the statement off the description of the page. I think this is amazing that so many people are trying to stop bulling but honestly nothing will change unless we all try to stop our ways.
I'm not perfect I admit that I have intentionally put someone down at one point in my life, I have talked about someone behind their back and I knew what I was doing was wrong. The satisfaction of bringing someone down only lasted a few seconds but the guilt i felt afterward lasted a really long time, even now when I think about those days I get a little pang in my heart. In no way am I a mean person. I'm just like most teenagers. To some people they don't even know when they are talking about people, it's second nature.
Also I have noticed putting people down is a social event. When ever a group of girls get together at one point they talk about people behind their back. It spreads, one girl says something another pipes in and before you know it they just spent and hour dissing people. There are even those groups of friends where one girl leaves the room and shes the target. Or those friends who make fun of their friends in front of them. Bullying is bullying there is no way around it and in today's culture there is way too much of it.

From now on I'll always think before I say anything about anyone.

The point of this post?
We should all try our best to stop talking about people.
And this bully free push wont go far without our participation.

"my baby that's dying"...

I took this of my dog Shiloh, it was amazing that he actually cooperated.

A to Zen of Life by Dalai Lama

the two principles that are important to you.

D- don't give up and don't give in
This is very important to anyone who has a dream. In order to achieve it you have to keep trying and never give up and don't give in when someone tells you you can't do it. Freshmen year when I took an engineering class my teacher didn't believe in me and I gave up and gave into his thoughts and dropped the class. I really wish I hadn't. I wish i stayed there and showed him no matter how many projects he lost I was still a good student and candidate for engineering. I have learned from that mistake due to my job. My first day was horrible and I wanted to cry because I messed up with almost every one of my customers but then someone told me to breath and don't give up. I never did, even when a lady threatened to call the TJMaxx head quarters. Now I am one of the top employees there and all of my managers respect me because of the way I deal with though customers. In anything I do I now know never to give up, even if it's hard, even if other people tell me no.


O- open your arms to change but don't let go of your values
Change is one of the things I know best. Since I was born things around me have always been changing. I honestly think that change is what makes me who i am today. If we don't all except change we wouldn't get far in life. The important thing is though you never want to lose who you are. It might be silly to say but my values have been the same since I the day i entered the children's home in Russia. I saw that even though it may seem like there is no one around you, there is always someone to love you. You are never alone. For every hardship that change has brought to me I always remember that there are people for me no matter what.

the food on our plates

While making an amazing dinner for myself I realized there were no vegetables on my plate, just like most Americans that sit down and eat dinner tonight. This got me thinking as to why we, as Americans don't base our food around vegetables like we should.
According to the national nutrition council only about a fourth of our meal should be protein, a fourth should be carbohydrates. The other half of our plates should be filled with wonderful veggies. Most Americans don't follow this, they make 3/4ths of their plates meat and then add some bread of fries. If you really think about that, it's gross.
Then you hear of people who have never eaten a vegetable in their life because to them they taste gross. How can a whole food group that has so many variates be gross? There are parents who are okay with their children not eating a single healthy thing.
To me the people who refuse the great nutrition we have offered to us are selfish. Why? because there are people in third world countries that are dying without the proper nutrition that we just push aside, just like I did tonight...

another photo by Bela Borsodi

This is part of his alphabet series, which is my favorite series he has done.

Michelle Obama

If i could talk with any prominent figure in art, politics, religion, or science i would choose to talk to Michelle Obama. She is an amazing figure in politics, just like her husband. She is beautiful, smart, and talented and seems like a really nice person all around who puts others before herself.
I would love to speak to her about the food bill she got passed because even though kids right now may dislike it in the end she would help our future generations health.  I try to maintain a healthy life style but it gets really hard on the nights when i don't come home until 11. I would want to know how Michelle stays so fit and healthy with the amount of work she has to do everyday, she has to take care of her children and husband, work on her future plans, and promote healthy living.

Bela Borsodi, my favorite photographer




This is taken by Bela Borsodi, a still life fashion photographer and it is my all time favorite picture.
 I can't wait until i get to take one like this for photography class.
 He is amazing with colors and really knows how to showcase clothing.

 

The reasoning behind the blog,

For my TAG class we we're encouraged, well more assigned to make a blog as part of an assignment, but i don't see it as we we're forced to do so but more of we get the opportunity of making our voice be heard on the Internet. Yes we do have set things we have to blog about but it will still be us speaking about what we think. Sometimes it's better or easier to have a prompt, that way you have the main idea already there. I'm not sure if we can have other posts beside TAG ones but for right now just in case i will tag (label) the ones that I got assigned as TAG.
Anyway if you have randomly stumbled upon my page, welcome to my blog. For everyone else that actually knows me, TAG is awesome isn't it?
That's all for now, I should probably get on my three spread that are due soon in yearbook.

XOXO

Hi blogging world. How are you today?

XOXO