a poem....

what's up yo? okay so a lot of people have been writing poems lately so i'm writing one now. poetry is one of my hobbies anyway. here it goes....

do you know what it feels like to be alone?

when the world seems to turn its back on you and you have no where to go

the darkness envelopes you, no where to turn, no one to go to

you can only wait in the dead silence

hoping, pleading for a second chance

but when we get the second chance what do we do with it?

is it a trap or for real?

life doesn't give out many second chances

the past is set in stone, the future holds a mystery

don't be afraid to stand out, stand up for what you believe in

we only have so long, we only have one life

be remembered, leave a footprint

make people notice

are you here for the ride....or are you in the driver's seat?

Little Red

Got red hair? if not, too bad... bummer for you! if you do, you're still not as cool as this little girl right here. WOOT!

P.S. mr.ross' comments are from when i said "if you don't have red hair you're a loser". i don't want to hurt any feelings. think about it though: i don't even have red hair! i'm dissing myself. there are some really cool people in the world who aren't red heads so don't take it to heart.

i love you all!

Take the time...say thank you

and a and a little

This week has been very stressful for me, what with Christmas in a week (shopping...AAHHHH!), projects and tests coming up, and just the rush of this crazy time of year. And I've been so busy that I haven't had time to sit down and take a breather. I want to thank ALL of you for putting up with me and showing me how to slow down a little bit. Special thanks and love to Nikki Hinostro for being so thoughtful, caring, listening and sweet, Elysia and Halsey for always having a smile and a hug for me, Jaleh for her personality: she can always perk me up and always has a nice thing to say, and Mr.Ross for all his love and support. You all rock and I love you with all my heart! You are the reasons I get up in the morning, one of the reasons I can make it through the day. Without you guys (not only the people I mentioned), I would have no where to go, nothing to do, no one to be. God has also been helping me through it all. Always there and listening, answering prayers, making my heart more open and loving, and just helping me relax. This time of year is to be with friends and family, to celebrate the birth of our Lord and King, and to give. No love should be kept to oneself, no hug or kiss ungiven. This is a special and wonderful time of year...don't let the true meaning escape you. Thank you my family, I appreciate you and love you!!! Happy Holidays!

much love forever and always,

Aubrea :P

What do you like to eat?

different countries had different foods (of course) based on location and geography. I am to choose which country I'd choose (Ill tell you what foods of course) and back up my choice. This is what I'd do:

First of all, I want to give you some background on what I do and don't like to eat. I love meat, all things sweet :), most fruit and veggies, potatoes, bread, beans, you get the picture. Having to decide between those things is hard enough, but having to choose only a few to eat all the time is even harder! I think I'd have to say I would live in Mesoamerica for the corn, bean, squash and turkey. In this, I get a couple veggies, a side and meat. That sounds pretty good to me. This may not be the best choice for me because I have a major sweet tooth and I can't live without sugar. I'd get most of the things I need to survive (protein, veggie, starch) but I'd be missing out on the yummy stuff. :(

radio and carbon are dating?

Surpries, surprise, yet another assignment for Guns, Germs and Steel. We read Chapter 5 today and it talked about radiocarbon dating, the effects it had on different societies, and what didn't go so well. Here are some of my thoughts and what I understand:
Radiocarbon dating is a process scientists use to determine dates of food production. This helps to visualize how and why different countries developed at different rates (which is the main question of this book). This method is based upon the slow decay of radioactive carbon into the nonradioactive isotope nitrogen. Everyone knows that plants take up atmospheric carbon which has a pretty constant ratio of carbon 14. That plant's carbon goes on to "form the body" of the herbivore that ate it, and the carnivore that ate that. After an animal or plant dies however it realeases carbon making it difficult to measure. From this the age of the material from a certain archealogical site can be determined.
This process isn't all good though. In the 1980s, this process required a lot of carbon ( a few grams), much more then the amount in a seed or bone. So, scientists had to resort to dating material from near that same site. You can never really tell with this if the material that was found was really left at the same time, by the same people that inhabited that area. Which leads me to the next downer of this method: The different materials can be mixed by ants, or rats or other travelers like that messing up the data. For example, materials can end up close by artifacts that were eaten a thousand years earlier or later. It wasn't a very accurate way to accumulate data on food production, but with time most of the ends have been tied up.

Spaniards vs. Indians

Now we're on to chapter 3 of Guns, Germs and Steel. It is all about the miscommunication between the two societies, the capturing/killing of the Indian Chief Atahuallpa, and why the Spaniards conquered the Native Americans, not vice versa. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the only side to this story is that of the Spaniards. Everyone knows that it takes two to fight, therefore two stories are needed. I am going to 'fill that gap' as Mr.Ross says. This is not a real story about the Natives' perspective, just my understanding. Here it goes:

"There were 10,000 or so of us Indian soldiers, lined up against the horizan, ready to fight to the death. We had never invaded anybodys' land; we kept to ourselves, stayed in our 'area'. All of a sudden, the Spaniards were on our land wanting our Chief in Cajamarca. The Spaniards were on our land for many, many, many moons. They came with giant beasts that were fast and strong, they had diseases that spread throughout our colony and killed off 95% of the Indian population, and they had awful machines that sounded like firecrackers and could kill you before you blinked. This is the story of the Indian...the real story.
"This all began in the center of Cajamarca, where Pizarro wanted to see our Chief. He said he had no intentions of hurting or insulting him, he only had a desire to meet him. We knew no history of these powerful people, so we could only follow along. We have rules here though that I'm sure the Spaniards didn't understand seeing that we spoke two different languages, had two total different beliefs and traditions. Anyway, unless you are of high relation to Atahuallpa you don't touch him, don't look him in the eye, and most of the time you don't even speak to him and when you give him something, you DON'T take it back. That's exactly what Pizarro did. He gave our Chief a book but we had no idea why or what it was. We all held our breath when the Spaniard leader starting reaching for the book, looking to get it back. As he would any of us, Atahuallpa slapped Pizarro and through the book; he had no desire to accept a gift of the enemy. That's how the whole battle started: miscommunication.
"Pizarro sent out a terrible cry of anger and before we knew it, what seemed like thousands of them were spilling out of the buildings and bushes and running straight at us. I was a soldier: fight to the death to save my people, and I was high enough in ranking that if it was necessary, I would protect our Chief, his family and the other political figures of the Indians. As I was saying, all the Spaniards took us so by surprise that some couldn't even get their weapons up, they were so shocked and terrified. Others had only a club and slingshot which didn't stand a chance against the steel swords and guns the Spaniards carried. There was death and blood and tumult all around me that I couldn't focus. Then I heard it: the horn for help. This was a ram's horn that was blown whenever reinforcements were needed. I knew this was for me. I dodged the enemies coming at me and ran as fast as I could. By the time I got there, my people were already piling on top of each other, protecting as many people as they could. This was one of our strategies: pile onto of our political figures to save them. We were to protect our people at any cost. And, it distracted the Spaniards..it worked every time. They thought we were stupid, that we panicked so we killed ourselves, but we protected oursleves in the long run. I was very injured, a soldier from the other side sliced deep into my leg and gashed my head. I had passed out, leading them to believe I was dead. I woke up about a week later, not able to walk and with a bad headache. I looked around. All the Spaniards were gone, almost all of us Indians dead. Only few survived, and only a sliver of those people lived. I was one of them. I wanted people to know what really happened, how horrid the Spaniards were. Now you know the truth, the tale of the Native Americans."

A few words of advice

Live Laugh Love
-live your life to the fullest; take chances and don't hold back
-laugh at everything that doesn't mean anything
-love with all you have and MORE!

Dance to the music!

+ = FUN!

Last night was the Winter Formal for High Tech High North County...the first one this new school has ever done. Yeah I made history! WOOT! anywho, it was really really really fun! I danced like crazy, hung with my peeps, went half deaf and had the time of my life! Everyone was so pretty and all dressed up. It was bomb yo! For those of you who were 'too good to go', YOU MISSED OUT BIG TIME! Thank you to ASB for making the night possible, it was awesome! It went by so fast and I didn't want to leave when it was over. I can't WAIT til the next one! :) my love goes out to you all!
love, aubrea
P.S. elysia, you're going to the next HTHNC dance if I have to drag by your ankles. :)

geography, oh geography

this is another post that has to do with Guns, Germs and Steel. the chapter we just read talked about the two civilizations Maori and the Moriori and how they were both Polynesian islands but they developed so differently. The question is : "What role did 'geography' play in the developments of the Maori and the Moriori?"

I think geography had everything to do with the developments of these two civilizations. First of all, living in a smaller place compared to a bigger place is a huge difference. When your community is small and there aren't very many people (the Moriori on Chatham Island), having wars is a bad idea because eventually everyone will be terminated; the best solution to living in a small area is peace. Also, because the Chathams were so small, the island was forgotten, and isolated from all the other islands in Polynesia. They did thier own thing, the others did theirs, no one ever bothering the other. The Moriori liked their lives: food was plentiful and easy to get and their was peace, everybody knew everybody and everybody got along. In New Zealand where the Maori lived it was much bigger with ten times more people, thus wars were going on everywhere so sharper weapons were needed to survive. I never knew things could be so different based on the size and the amount of people on a piece of land.
On Chathams the tropical food that would normally grow in New Zealand (keep in mind the Moriori were originally Moari people) couldn't because of the cold climate of Chathams so the Moriori had to revert to hunter-gatherers. They didn't need heavy-duty weapons to catch the game because most were slow and some had no defense. Fishing was also an easy way to find food because the fish basically stayed still for you. In New Zealand, things were much different. It was a larger land mass with bigger game and more space for the animals to live in and hide in. The animals of New Zealand were bigger, smarter and faster thus harder to catch. The Moari had to have good weapons and hunting stradegies to get their food. So, when the two met up, one side new how to "really" hunt and fight, and the other, well, they didn't. Obviously, this caused a pretty big problem with thier "collision".
The geography of a place doesn't have some effect on the people and how they develop, it has EVERYTHING to do with that. If Chathams were bigger, well there's a whole nother story, but imagine what would happen: The Moari would have more competition, it would have been noticed more so there would have ultimatley been more violence and less food and both civilizations probably would have exterminated each other. History is an amazing thing if you really think about it, and we can learn from it...

What Really Happened??

okay, so my humanities class right now is reading the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond (it's a novel not a short story but there's not an underline button). it talks about why and how different continents developed at different rates. We were given this question from the book to use the information we knew and to answer the question: What happened to the Neanderthals after the Cro-Magnan appeared? well, this is my story...

Once upon a time there lived a peaceful almost-humann form: the Neanderthals. They lived in Europe and thrived there for hundreds of thousands of years. Nothing was their predator thus they lived in harmony with themselves and nature. Of course they did hunt, but only the animals that were not harmful and were easy to catch, not needing heavy-duty weapons. All was well until one day a new life form was sighted: the Cro-Magnan. The Neanderthals didn't know what to make of this new kind. They looked like them, but they were still very different. The Neanderthals didn't think they had anything to worry about though, since nothing had been their predator the whole time they lived in Europe.

One day, a Cro-Magnan approached the Neanderthal camp. Keep in mind, the Neandrothals had large brains and liked life and things the way they were, they liked peace and harmony, not violence. Well, the Neanderthals were curious and stared and studied not expecting a thing in the world. The two worlds stared at each other, then "shwooot!" a spear had pierced the head of the "chief" Neanderthal. This caused chaos and fear. Never before had the Neanderthals feared anything. They paniced, yet everyday more and more of them disappeared. Was it because of the Cro-Magnan's more advanced tools? Was it because the Neanderthals were so peaceful and totally unexpecting the feud between the two tribes? I'll let you decide.

The years passed on of the domination of the Cro-Magnan's and the steady decline of the Neanderthals. Well, there large brains did turn out to be of good use. It finally came to the Neandethals that if they kept on like this, they wouldn't survive and they didn't want to give up their high-ranking position. These "people" were dangerous and wouldn't stop until they were all killed, so they had a plan: they had to befriend their enemies; keep your friends close and your enemies closer...something to that effect. One day, a little Neanderthal girl walked away from camp, wanting to explore and find adventure. Eventually though, she lost her way. She looked around until she saw smoke rising through the air; that had to be her camp, there were no other colonizations in the area...or so she thougsht. It so happened that this camp was of the Cro-Magnans. As she entered the camp, she knew it wasn't right. She turned back, but felt a tap on her soldier. She turned around to find another young girl about her size standing right there in front of her. They stood staring, and before they knew it they were playing and laughing and having a good time.

It was a couple hours until the Neanderthals knew they were missing someone. When they figured it out they were very angry and they went to the camp. The Cro-Magnans didn't know what was going on until practically all of the Neanderthals stood at the front of thier camp. They stared, wondering who was going to start the blood shed. A Cro-Magnan raised a spear, when a sudden burst of laughter filled the air. The two new friends came running out from behing a teepee holding hands and giggling. The two colonies were stunned. Absolute shock filled them. They lowered their spears and weapons, knowing thye couldn't hurt the other with the two children being friends.

After a while, the Neaderthals and the Cro-Magnan became friends not foes, all because of the two children. They then began to mate with each other, and befoer they knew it the two colonies were combined. So, the Neanderthals didn't disappear after all, they just adapted and did what they had to do to stay alive and still thrive. The new colony lived happily ever after.

The End

9/11 I Miss You Daddy

Oh my goodness, this movie is so full of pain, loss and sadness. It shows the true and genuine feelings of those who have lossed loved ones from 9/11. Yet, this movie is so beautiful and full of meaning that's it's hard not to watch again. I started sobbing my eyes out when I watched it and I hope you do the same thing. Just remember that Jesus loves us and things only happen for a reason. GOD BLESS THE USA!