Look at the Label

When you taste McDonald's french fries what do you think? you think yumm. When you taste movie theater popcorn, what do you think? You think yumm.
While everyone's busy saying "yumm", they aren't noticing that the only reason they're saying "yumm", is because those foods are packed full of man- made chemicals and additives.

In a medium sized bag of movie theater popcorn, there is the equivalent of a fast food burger dipped in butter. In a McDonald's 117g fries, there are 370 calories, 170 of them are from fat.
And we wonder why our nation is having issues with obesity.

The thing is, most of us know what we are putting into our bodies. When we pick up a cheeseburger from McDonald's we know very well that we are putting 300 calories into our system's. When we eat 2 bags of chips and a coke we know we are shoving our selves full of sugar and saturated fat. But we don't care.

Some things are the companies fault's. When we walk into Starbucks and order a Venti Caffe Mocha, we have no idea that in that coffee there is 410 calories and 10g of saturated fat, thats like sticking a quarter pounder in a coffee cup.


If people keep ignoring the labels, and if big companies keep stuffing their food with crap, our country, continent, and eventually our world will change incredibly. People will be dying sooner, our healthcare system with become terrible because they’re spending all their time and money curing the obesity, and no one will be happy with themselves when they look in the mirror.

Next time you’re hungry, look at the label. It’s not worth becoming fat for the few minutes that it tastes good.

Eva Olssen

"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned."
-Harry W. Mazal

On Monday October 26th, Dr. Eva Olssen came and spoke to us about her experiences that started when she was just 17 years old. On May 14 1944, Nazi soldiers came into her village of Szatmar, Hungary and took many people, including her family. They led them to boxcars which were so stuffed full of people, most of them died before they reached their destination of Auschwitz, a concentration camp for Jews. She lost all of her family except her sister when they got there.

After the 4 long days it took to get there, they all smelt of dead bodies, barf, and sweat from being shoved in the boxcar with about 100 other innocent people.

They than were paraded to the camp. Once they got there their heads were shaved, and some of them were stamped. They were assigned barracks, and told one time what they were to do during the day. Throughout her time in the Holocaust, Eva learned that the world is full of hate, and hate was what was killing all of these innocent people. She pledged that if she lived through what was happening, she would never remain a bystander to injustice.

12 years ago, when she decided to break her silence and talk to people to create awareness of what happened. She made sure everyone knew the importance of not hating, being a bully, or being a bystander. After talking to over a million other people, she came to us. For one hour she spoke about what she went through, and what she learned. Everyone, including me, was majorly taken back. She made such an impact of everyone. Since than, I've tried to make an effort to never say hate. Because hate killed millions of people.

I felt like these things she told us have been ignored, and everyone needs to pay more attention to them. When she talked about how being a bystander is just as bad as a bully, I instantly thought 'why'. After she explained her story, I felt bad that I thought that, because her family died from the bystanders being just as bad as the bullies.

I really loved that presentation, it made me feel sad, upset, and angry, but I came out of it feeling almost better, because now I'm aware of what went on. I wish I had answers for lots of my questions, one being 'what started it all'. What started all of this hate? What started all of this bullying? What was it that started everything?

"When people ask me how long I intend to do this work, I remind them that bullying and genocide is still happening in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, because these problems- caused by hate and intolerance- will always be with us, I'm going to keep speaking as long as I can. Than, I can honestly say to the millions of victims of who's voices were silenced by the Nazis, "You have not been forgotten.""

- Dr. Eva Olssen

Norval 2009

On October 19, the whole middle school went to Norval for a day of team building. We all worked together to gain each other's trust, and to take risks. The grade eight class all came together to participate in the Inuit Blanket Toss, an activity where one person sat in the middle of a large blanket/ tarp and the rest of the group worked together to toss the person in the air, and than catch them.

Next we split into groups and half of us went to the Wall, and the other half to Mission Impossible. The Wall was a 14 foot wall with nothing to grab onto and just your peers to help you reach the top and get to the other side. We had half and hour to do this, and used 20 minutes to figure out and plan how we would carry it out. In the end, we all reached the other side, within the time frame.

At Mission Impossible, one person was harnessed to 4 different ropes, coming from four different sides. In four different groups, we had to navigate the person around working together so that the harnessed person could retrieve many different balls. It required lots and lots of team work and we couldn't of done it without Will, who told us all what to do (which included a few pranks).

After lunch, to Drum Cafe came. We all got drums, and the leaders got us playing lots of different beats and stuff. It was pretty fun, but it hurt your hands a lot.

Overall it was a good day and I really think it made the middle school more trustworthy of each other, and it made us a better team.

One Small Thing

Someone once told me that we should pay more attention to the small things. Small things like when your puppy doesn't pee in the house, or when your friend says she likes your hat while everyone else makes fun of you.

I've been taking those things in, and trying to not focus so much on the big things. When people tell me not to take things for granted, I normally just say 'yeah' and move on. But the last time someone told me that I actually thought about it.

Every single person who is fortunate enough to go to school, much less a private one, takes it for granted. It's a small detail in our lives, but in others, its so, so big.

By paying attention to small details like that, it makes us realize how great our lives are.

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit, and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.

- Susan B Anthony

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought."

I think that this quote means that whatever you think you should do or should be done, you should perform it and carry it out just as well as you imagined and thought about it.

This quote makes me think about everything we think we should be doing, and how we all talk about it and how we should all be doing it, but never go through with it.

It takes a long time to think about how everything will be done, but once you decide to do what you've been thinking about, you're excited, but second guessing. You know it's the right thing and something you really want to do but you cant seem to get yourself do do it. Suddenly the great plan you had in your mind, doesn't seem so great and your no longer so eager.

I think that if your going to all of the trouble of thinking out this whole deal, you should carry through with it.

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought." Carry out your plans. Not everything you think about has to be done, but everything you think about and do, should be done just as good as you thought about it.

When everyone talks about how everyone should be doing all this stuff to help our society, they should really just be doing it. All the time, people just take all their lives to talk about how we should do this, and we should help them. Really they should carry out all of their thoughts.

Are you someone that just thinks?

Poverty Reflection

What surprised me the most about the stories was that that was not normal. I was surprised because I had no idea this was happening in our society.

Im wondering why not everyone does that at that age. Everyone should be trying to make a difference. I think the role of our society should be to step up and raise money and research so that they can make a difference. One step at a time.

They have made me realize that our world is not a perfect one and that we should try to change it.

When I read the story about the water tap, I could not believe that that was a true story. It was shocking that the only reason they found the tap, was because a boy who was used to nothing less took the first step.

When I read about the little boy coughing up blood, I was taken back. Such a big problem with his health was because of 1 little detail; the community water pit.

We all take water for granted. Everyone is aware that this is happening in other places of the world, but yet when we toss a bucket of water out after watering the plants it never occurs to us that with that bucket of water we could of saved a life.