Alternative Spring Break- Wheeling, West Virginia

Fun fact: I spent a week sleeping on a classroom floor.

Anyways, a few things you should know: I am a Junior at Emmanuel College studying Mathematics and Secondary Education. I am a homebody; I go to school 50 minutes away from home and I have only been outside of New England for 'vacations' to Wisconsin, Disney, & Washington DC. Going away is a huge thing for me and when I do it's rare.

Last year I decided to apply for Alternative Spring Break and maybe travel somewhere new. I was able to spend spring break last year in Wheeling, West Virginia, a poverty stricken area just outside the Appalachian Mountains.  Before the trip I had never heard of this area, but during the trip I learned so much that I could go on forever (Mr. Alex and the homeowners, Breakfast at the Catholic Neighborhood Centers, and an experience with other EC students), but one of the biggest take always for me was the importance in creating relationships with others even though I was sleeping on a hard tile floor.

I've known since preschool that I want to be a teacher, but at the start of my sophomore year I was questioning why I want to be a teacher and if it would be more beneficial if I go into an administration, college level position, or something related to education. I have always wanted to be able to help others succeed and how well would I be able to do that for classes of 30 students?  

I was blessed with the opportunity to help at an afternoon program at Laughlin Memorial Chapel. This program had about 60 K-12 students who received homework help and a nutritious dinner, which sadly was the only meal most of these students would receive for the night. 

Some of the children welcomed and gladly engaged with the Emmanuel College ASB participants but other students were not welcoming to new guests. During dinner I sat at the table with such welcoming students, but one of the little girls I sat next to completely ignored me.  Later that night during reflection one of the staff leaders reminded me that- sometimes the people who push you away are the ones that need you the most.

After school homework help

This little girl who ignored me at dinner, ended up needing help with her math homework. I nervously went over to help her. She refused to do her homework and I struggled for 10 minutes trying to convince her to try. I realized that she did not understand what she needed to do for the homework.

Pencil hair-do by
one of the students

The kinesthetic learner (hands-on/tactile learner) part of me kicked in, so I grabbed a handful of markers and the little girl looked at me like I was crazy.  Then I started to model division with the markers and the little girl started to watch. I did a few problems and I asked her to make the next... she did!  I had her do one more division problem using the markers, and then I showed her a way to write down the division using dots on her paper if she did not have markers available. The little girl made her way through the homework.

I told her since we were done that I was going to color and the little girl joined me.  I was shocked that the little girl warmed up to me, but I realized that things take time and if I was her age, I would not have socialized with anyone older.

The Duquesne Incline (Pittsburgh)
How can I incorporate
this into a math problem?

On the second day we helped the students with homework and I first helped an 11-year-old girl who was sitting alone, she was shy at first because she was ‘bad at school’ and that everyone hates her.  I told her that sometimes school is tough, but trying is the most important thing.  She eventually told me that she loved babysitting. I could relate to this, my interest in education came from babysitting and helping the kids I was watching with homework.  I explained to her as you get older and continue to babysit you have to help with homework and if you never learned it, how can you help?  This caught her attention and I told her just keep trying your best and always ask for help.

The last day working with the students was pretty tough because we knew we had to leave, but incredible anyways.  The little girl that ignored me originally ended up coming over and asking me how to spell Massachusetts!  This was a huge turn-around, at first I was nervous making endless small talk and asking questions, now the students were asking me questions!

I went on ASB to do community service, which I thought was physical labor such as planting gardens, construction projects, and preparing food.  Little did I know that I would return to Boston realizing that community service goes beyond the physical labor, but it also is about making positive connections with others.  At the end of the trip I realized how lucky I was to be able to spend time in Wheeling because they may not have been welcoming at first, but I realized how important it is to make that connection with others. Also, it did not matter that these were not huge interactions, it was the small personal moments that before this trip I would just forget about. 

One of the most important things I realized was that even if I get overwhelmed, stressed out, that I need to take a moment and look at the small things and re-adjust my vision on how blessed I really am.  I have always wanted to be a teacher, but at the beginning of my stressful sophomore year I was having doubts if I should go into an administration role at a school or be a teacher for classes of 30+ students.  Luckily, I had the opportunity to go on ASB to be reminded about how much I love communicating and teaching others.

I learned and realized so much from participating in ASB that I could go on forever about the experience. It really put my life back into perspective. Maybe I will blog about those different experiences over this Winter Break!

NEW STUFF-Goody® QuikStyle

Hey so I have not posted to my blog in AGES!  Well here we go again!


The first thing I am going to post about is an AMAZING new product.  I received this product complimentary from Influenster in the Holiday VoxBox.  IT is great!!!   I opened to box and found a hair brush, YES.  I always need to brush my hair so this would be an extra brush, but it was very huge.  I looked at it and it has a sponge on the inside and helped dry my hair.  I was shocked. My hair is so thick, it takes at least 30 minutes to dry my hair, so taking 20 minutes is so helpful.  Not only did it help dry my hair as I brushed it, but it helped get it straight!!  Honestly this brush,

Goody® QuikStyle

 is the best brush I have ever had!

Check out http://bit.ly/REp8ue to see all of the best hair brushes.  If you want this amazing hair brush click this link: http://bit.ly/Sis8Oi

1+1=2

I think it's about time for me to start blogging again!
I can't believe it's been almost 2 years since my last post and at this point I am 2 weeks from leaving for college! High school went by and I barely remember anything. I know I went to plenty of concerts and was involved too much in clubs but that's about it. I didn't do anything like drink/smoke not to remember but it's just that I'm too busy looking forward to college to care about remembering high school. I will admit that I am so glad for my club involvements because I ended up getting some scholarships & invited into the P******** Lions club so there are positives. Now that I am getting ready to go to Emmanuel College in Boston I can't wait to see the new things I get involved in!

Zero Gravity, well Here We Go Again

So hopefully I can use this blog as something to keep track of the different concerts I've been to(:

One of the recent-ish concerts was the Demi Lovato and David Archuleta concert. It was on October 30, 2009 (yeah the day before Halloween!) and at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, RI. I was a upset that this concert was cancelled from August 30 to the night before Halloween since at one of the elementry schools they have a Halloween Dance and I usually help out with it. This year I was looking forward to volunteering for it, but no this stupid concert had to be rescheduled to the same night and time. So I went to the concert since I spent the $60 on the ticket and was not going to waste it.

My friend and I got dropped off and went inside. Well my mom forgot to give me money before I got out of the car and drove off and so I called her to say I didn't need it (since I wasn't happy about even being there, I didn't want a t-shirt). My brother picked up the phone since my mom doesn't believe in driving and being on a cell, and he tells me that they already had turned around.

---Little interuption: My dad is home from work and does nothing unusual. Then he starts his dinner and while it cooks he comes into the living room, where my mom and I are sitting watching a movie. He just abruptly says "Oh! I got clawed by a lobster today." OMG just how he said it so randomly no introduction, I can just imagine him having it stuck on his thumb. LMAO.---

Ok back to the 'story', it took my mom about 15 minutes to get back since I guess she got a little lost (since we aren't city people). I got my money and we get back inside and get inline to get in for about 20 minutes, and once we do we looked at about where are seats were on the floor. We then decided to get merch, and I didn't want anything but my friend got a t-shirt. At that point I was still po'ed and looking at the tshirt seeing the date it should have been, I was ready for the concert to be over. My friend buys her t-shirt and then we go down to our seat on the floor, we were in the middle section row m (or 13th from stage) and they were great seats!

We sat for a few minutes and took some pictures, then decided we should get food. We went back up the stairs and I got chicken fingers and she got a pretzel and we went back to our seats. While we were waiting they had the screens for people to text in and they were doing the 'scream for ________', Jonas Brothers and Archuleta and maybe Lovato got the loudest screams. They also had some music playing and I remember that "Breaking Free" from HSM was playing, yeah I did sing along(: .Then the lights went down and we say David Archuleta's outline on the curtain, and being so close we could actually see him through the curtain!

Then he started his preformance and he was amazing! I got videos and pictures of him on my phone/camera. I have the pictures uploaded to facebook and the link at the bottom and will put the videos up at somepoint to my youtube.com/amandalx3 . David was having a lot of fun with his preformance and Zero Gravity, such a great new song for him, and his back up band was awesome as well. I loved that David wasn't dancing like he was in a boyband, but just dancing having fun. :D I will admit that I might have taken more pictures of David then Demi even though it was her concert, but then again I was only going to see David. David did his songs and then left and there was about a 20 minute intermission. During it my friend and I just sat down and sang with the songs, I know that we sang to Miley's "Party in the USA". --Ok definately the most catchy song, my brother knows all the words and knew them after the second time he heard it.--

So now for Demi, I actually didn't really care see her so I decided I would update song by song. So on my twitter I have a bunch of tweets with pictures and videos of what was happenig. Demi was definately a strong amazing preformer! Demi sang some songs, I knew most of them and then it was time for "This Is Me" and she needed to find someone to help her. She chose a little boy about 7 years old, named Matthew, from the audiance to be her 'Shane'/Joe. At the point that she chose someone cute and little, I was like ok I don't dislike her anymore. I will give her a lot of credit when it comes to preforming, she was walking amazing in her heels. I know that she was at the top of the stairs and I blinked and she was at the bottom! And during her preformance before she was going to do a cover song, she was saying how she was actually not in a good mood and missed her mom. I was atually impressed with this that she was admitting that she is a real person and misses family. She then dedicated the cover song to all the moms at the concert and I thought that was sweet lol. And Demi actually noticed and read some of the posters people had, but some people infront of me didn't understand that if Demi already saw them [and actually spoke about them] then put them down since she won't say anything again.

Oh and Demi's band was amazing too! David had the singing while Demi had the preforming so it was even so I was fine with it making it over all a good concert. The one thing, I think that her "Here We Go Again" should have been her last last song (last of encore). She preformed it so well and the audiance was so into it. Demi did not do an outfit change so I was kind of disappointed with that.... but when the concert was over we left and well went home(: Overall= Good good night!

And for the rest of the pictures I was able to take: Concert Album

Sleep Reading

Ok so this is really old, but I feel like I should just post it to post it (and to make up for how I never do this blogging thing... daily entries, not going to happen maybe weekly).

I should never sleep, since this is not the first time something weird has happened.
If I get a text then my phone does this obnoxious beep beep. Well I follow people on twitter so I get there updates and usually they wake me up in the morning! Most mornings I don't actually read them just don't care and stay sleeping (since if it's important they could call), and this morning I did exactly that and just rolled over to stay in bed. After a few minutes of laying I decided to go the bathroom and then back to sleep, but walking down the hallway I start thinking... wait why did @thePistol (Alex Noyes from the band Honor Society) tweet about 'Christmas mugs already?' My immediate thought was 'yay I'm not the only one to drink hot chocolate out of a snowman mug during the 90 degree summer'. I then had to put my dog outside and then it hit me... I never went on the computer to read this text and I haven't read any text messages this morning. I got back to my room, grabbing a bag of chips for breakfast, since I was thinking about christmas mugs, I knew I wouldn't possibly get back to sleep. I ended up turning my laptop on and grabbing my cell, I had 3 new text messages. The 1st is sparknotesSAT- boring, 2nd was @thepistol doing a RT, and third was from JB, so I was like whatever -shut phone-. Then I -had a spaz- and knew I needed to investigate about these christmas mugs. I then checked my inbox, about 2 texts before, and see a text where @thePistol tweeted the band's myspace link, I had already looked at this text though when I don't remember reading it..... then I see it!! @thePistol http://twitpic.com/gfa5o -Christmas mugs already!?! Did I miss something?” I could not believe it I did get and read this text message! I could not believe I had their myspace link and christmas mug texts read and they were only the 2 before the 3 I know I did read.

P.S. I can’t get the pictures on my phone so I didn’t get to see it till I got online and looked at it… soo cute.

Trying things, not my thing

So I am a picky person, when I was little I had a plate that separated my foods and I would never try anything new... well I'm starting to change that, which is why I'm going to start a blog(:
I have no real creativity, give me a pattern and I can follow it and make it, but tell me to actually make something and I can't... so titles I thought of: (and I am putting these here because I'll never remember them haah)
All About AmandaL
All AmandaL’s Activities
Ambitious AmandaL
AmandaL’s Actions
AmandaL’s Adventures

But a little about me, I am 16 and from MA. I love going to concerts, reading for fun-chickflick romances are my favorites-, I guess I can say crafts with instructions haha, and more that I can't really list right now. I hope that I can get thru high school and go to college to become an older grades elementry teacher or a middle school math teacher. :) So yeah I like math and would say it's my favorite since there is only one answer (for most things, ha) and I would mostlikely want to teach easy algebra x-3=6 so x=9 stuff. During the summer my family doesn't go on the usual family vacation, but we do take day trips to different amusement parks like 6 flags. I don't mind having a real vacation since it means that during the summer I have more time to go to concerts<3. I haven't been to that many but the few I have been to were amazing, each in there own way.

So I don't really have a purpose or goal for writing a blog, but well I'm going to and maybe one day I'll figure out why I did. :)
--Edit: Oh and I'm only starting this because I found Michael Bruno's (Honor Society band member) and well had to make an account to follow him sooo yeah.