9/11

11th of September, Thursday

Today is the 13th anniversary of the tragic terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. We remembered this event in some classes.
  The day started with French. Every day, in first period, we start by standing up, turning to the flag and saying the Pledge of Allegience. At first I thought we only did this because of the start of the schoolyear, but as it turns out, this happens every day. We don't do anything like this in Hungary, and I've never heard of other countries having a custom of this sort. I don't mind, but I can understand why Americans are even more patriotic than other countries: they were taught to be, day-to-day.
  After the pledge come the official announcments on the radio. Today, the pricipal made a short speech for the victims of the attacks and asked for a moment of silence.
  In French, the teacher gave me separate papers to work on, something we haven't learned yet at home, another future tense. In English, Mrs. Masters talked about 9/11 too. She has friends who lost family members that day. We listened to President Bush's speech 9 days after the events, and talked about it for a while. It surprised me, that the US History teacher didn't even mention 9/11. We just went on with the topic. Creative writing was cool, I made even more friends, with whome I sat with at lunch after that period. The Italian exchange student arrived today, so we met her at Creative writing. Her name is Alma, she got here on Tuesday, but today was her first time at Athena. She's from somewhere near Milan, and she lives with a host family as well. She's here for a year too, but she's not with Rotary. She must have been very overwhelmed, for she seemed shy, but she was interested in everything, and tried to understand us.
  Select choir after lunch was difficult. I didn't hear my voice from the crowd of kids singing all around me, so I had no idea if I was off key or not. Ms. Dyer didn't notice, so it musn't have been too bad. Choir was followed by a boring hour of Advisement, and then off I went to our usual meeting point at Ms. Dyer's office. Me, Dube, James, Mark and Olivia (all from choir) hung out at the practice room. The tiredness overtook me, and I fell asleep on the floor of the practice room. Then I continued my nap at the office itself. At 4 I had to wake up for volleyball. My serves are not good, but my hits are getting better. Sometimes (for some unexplainable reason), I hit with my left hand, like a lefty. I'm a right handed person. I surprise myself as well.
   Tonight's pasta party was at Sarah Bini's place. They have a beautiful huge house in a lovely neighbourhood. The mood was good, we had fun.
  When I finally got home at around 9, I had to tidy my room, because it was due several days ago. Now it's nice and organised. I listened to Eminem all day, and I was blasting it while I was cleaning. I really like some of his songs, because mostly I don't understand what he sings about, and that makes listening to it kinda fun. I want to learn his song called "Rap God". Do you think it's doable? Maybe with a lot of determination.