Personal Narrative

A Summer With The Abdulhadi's

Life is a series of choices, true. Still, something’s in life are just given to us without us having a say on whether or not to accept them. Family is one of those things. No man’s family is perfect, none the less, I’m certain that min is perfectly imperfect.

Last summer was the exact opposite of what we planned for. We all had our bags packed for the ultimate summer in Canada when my father got a surprise call from his brother. After he hung up, my dad rushed to get his laptop, cancelled our airline tickets, and booked new ones to Jordan. He later explained that my cousin’s wedding got proponed. In about a week, our bags were repacked and barely shut from the overflowing dresses squeezed in them, and we were on our plane to Amman, Jordan.

On our flight, my sister and I had a small conversation about how this might be one of the worst vacations we’ve ever been through. We dreaded the idea of staying in the family house, a big building where my uncle and his family, my aunt and her family, and my grandparents lived at. Then we started recounting all the times we played with our cousins when we were young, and pitied the people they must’ve become now that they’ve grown up.

                The moment our plane landed, my father got a call from his big brother saying that he, along with his wife, mother, father, sister and her daughter, and my other uncle were all waiting for us outside. When we came out of the airport, my eyes glistened in the sun as their silhouettes emerged from three cars. We were greeted by warm hugs and welcomes. When we reached the house, we went upstairs to pack only to see a yet bigger crowd of Abdulhadis waiting. We had a big fulfilling Iftar meal and stayed up until Fajr. Before we went to sleep, my sister and I shared a look; the summer seemed promising.

                The week before the wedding was eventful; we were the bride’s first cousins, so you can only imagine all the things we had to finalize. My cousins and I spent hours every day watching hair and makeup tutorials until we mastered our styles. One day before the wedding, Abdullah, Abdurrahman, and Ahmed, the bride’s brothers, decided they wanted to go out and vent – after all, their sister was going to get married the next morning. My sister and I decided we wanted to tag along, and together we went to the cinema. On our ride there, we talked about everything we could possibly talk about. When we arrived, we took the movie tickets and bought all the snacks we could lay our hands on.

                The wedding arrived. I woke up to a house of floating, restless human beings. The whole place seemed like it was spinning, unfortunately. I had caught a horrid case of food poisoning from the other night and my stomach wasn’t able to sustain even water. I was so sick I had to go to the wedding in my pajamas and sneakers, and I was huddled in my sweater the whole time. A whole week had passed, although I was sick and pinned to the bed, it was surprisingly the best week of my vacation. My  grandmother took care of me, feeding me herbs, my uncles took me to the hospital on regular basis, and my cousins got me all I can possibly want.

                The rest of the trip was a blur of memories that are too precious to share. Everyone was in tears when we had to leave. We had a big family breakfast where we argued and laughed more than we did during the whole vacation. I felt happy, with every true and genuine meaning the word can hold. When I look back at the trip, I don’t remember the arguments my dad had with his brothers, or the tension that was present sometimes between my mom and her mother-in-law. When I look back at the trip, I remember the magnificent power that held the family together despite these things. A family is truly where life begins, and love never ends.

Aya Adel

2014 Booklist

Ugghhhh if only I can get myself to read those:

The ones with the yellow tiles i've read.

My Sister’s Keeper

David Copperfield

The Help

A thousand Splendid Suns

And the Mountains Echoed

Wuthering Heights

Les Miserables

Pride and Prejudice

Romeo and Juliet

Struck By Lightning

The Great Gatsby

Does My Head Look Big in This

To Kill a Mockingjay

My Name is Asher Lev

Veronika Decides to Die

The Book Thief

The Kite Runner

Tom Sawyer

Oliver Twist

Grimm Brothers Fairy Tale Collections

The Hunchback of Notre De Dame

Malcom X Autobiography

Mandela Autobiography

Miss Peregrines home for peculiar children

Divergent

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Rings

Game of Thrones

The Mortal Instruments

The Catcher in the Rye

Looking for Alaska

The Fault in our Stars

Let It Snow

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Paper Towns

Angels and Demons

The Abundance of Kathriens

Safe House

Gone Girl

The Life of Pi

The Firm

The Land of Stories

The Hunger Games

Harry Potter Marathon

Self Reliance

A self-reliant person praises individualism and supports nonconformity. Although such qualities are rather dissed in real life, they are often lauded in social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The term "viral video", for example, is used to describe a clip that people found peculiar and unique enough that its views have topped a million! Status updates, tweets, and daily vlogs (video blogs) have permitted an infinite stage to display opinions that move and change as fast as time itself. While a self-reliant person would commend such qualities, their are other aspects that he might condemn. Because popular pages, YouTube channels, and blogs offer fresh and original material, their crowds start expecting too much of them. Hence, applying too much pressure on those people, and they start to want mainstream acceptance. 

Social Media

Social Media 

     Social media has grown to connect people's thoughts and ideas through different and modern means of communication. Just like anything else, though, it has its pros and cons.     Despite apparent perception, social media IS controlled and monitored by governments and agencies. This might seem beneficial, but it's more harmful; people believe that they are exposed to "the real deal" when they are actually just being hypnotized by a different, slightly more creative political weapon.     Another swindle in the modern media is the way people abuse the power of expression. Because people are able to hide under anonymous labels, they presume that they have the right to say whatever they want; little people realize that this is just an act of cowardice. The rates of suicide and depression have increased because cyber bullying.     It would simply be plain foolish if i condemn social media ON a social media site, and I am not. Social media is very powerful; it's our duty to learn how to safely use it.

Technology

Last Prompt, Last 6..





Modern day technology provides us with practical, more effective means of communication. With the help of up-to-date technology, business partners can easily follow up, separated families can keep up, and and distanced friends can catch up. Countless stories of flourishing business and dreams coming true thanks to such new methods stand as candid examples for such an argument.

      Faris Al Turkey was a simple Saudi boy of humble origins, yet his dreams and aspirations were too big to tame. Faris was always passionate about cuisine, especially breakfast meals. He took advantage of Twitter, a website where people can share thoughts in the form of short sentences or pictures, and uploaded pictures of his chows. Slowly, his account began to gain popularity. Upon people’s suggestions and support, Faris opened his very own twenty-four by seven breakfast restaurant. Twitter served as a virtual platform for Al Turkey to explore his true talent and make use of it.

Another example is Michelle Phan; an American Vietnamese whose early life could not have been worse. Abandoned by her dad, Michelle, along with her mother and brother, lived a very underprivileged life. Her mother had to take two jobs and very tough shifts, barely seeing her children. Growing up, Michelle learned to express her feelings in sketches of simple makeup, what she considers optimum art. Later, Phan learned about YouTube, a website where users could upload videos that would be accessible to the world. Michelle uploaded a low quality short clip of her applying makeup, and it was all up the hill from there. Her video went viral, meaning it peaked into a million views in a day. Thanks to YouTube, Michelle is now an internationally acclaimed makeup artist with her very own premium quality makeup line; Em Cosmetics. Michelle Phan is also active in a few child 
abuse and hunger relief associations.

      Jenna Marbles, Tyler Oakley, Justin Bieber, and many others’ various talents were discovered on the virtual platforms offered by the modern day communicating technologies. Although the twenty-first century communication, just like everything else, has its defaults, its pros most certainly outweigh its cons. 


Aya Adel

LossVsSuccess

Can Loss Be More Important Than Success? (or something like that)

This essay got a score of 6

Despite common misconception, true success lies in the journey, not the destination. The journey to victory has its ups and down, losses and gains, but that’s is where one truly learns and benefits. Literature is fertile with an endless stream of encounters where characters come across great loss only to learn the best of lessons.

In John Green’s novel The Fault In Our Stars, the protagonist Hazel lives under the fear of death. Through her battle with cancer, she tries to distance herself from the people around her, thinking she was doing them a favor. Hazel thought that the less time she spends with those who love her, the easier it would be for them when cancer eventually wins the battle and kills her. When Hazel meets and mutually falls in love Augustus, a cancer survivor, she uselessly tries to lessen their encounters, avoiding unnecessarily encounters with him. Later, Hazel and Augustus find out that a new type of cancer spread into Gus’s body, and, unfortunately, it only took a few days until he dies. Through the heartbreak and remorse, Hazel learned that a person fearing death while living is a person dying every single day. Losing Augustus taught Hazel the most important lesson and helped her look into the world with clearer, less gloomy perception.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho perhaps represents the best example for this argument. Veronika is beautiful, young, and rich; she has friends and a loving family. Still, Veronika feels hollow deep inside, and decides to commit suicide. She ingests huge amounts of different medicines, writes a death npt, and waits. Veronika, to her surprise, wakes up in a mental rehab and is informed that although her suicide attempt did not work, it has weakened her heart so much that she is expected to only live for a couple more weeks. During her stay in the mental institution, Veronika meets a group of people and gets to hear their stories. She grows fond of them and finds true love within the arms of Eduard, a schizophrenic patient. During her last days, she explores true meanings of friendships and their extends. Even though Veronika dies, her soul finds peace for she leaves this world with answered questions and quenched desires.

Hazel and Veronika weren’t the first, and surly are not the last,who truly understood and were able to use the power of loss to turn up the curtains that blurred their visions of the world. Afterall, grief does not change you, it reveals you!

-Aya Adel

True Hero

Graded Homework

SAT Essay

Assignment:

Should heros be defined as people who say what they think when we ourselves lack the courage to say it?

I Got a 6 on this one too..

Although no one would argue that Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and all those other iconic leaders are heros, the term “hero” changes from a person to another. What a hero truly means is a person that does not only speak his or her mind, but also courageously acts upon it.

During Abraham Lincoln’s time, slavery was a major crisis. African Americans were enslaved and stripped out of every shred of dignity. They were treated in the most inhumane ways. Abraham always had strong views against this action, but he knew talk was cheap. Therefore, Lincoln aspired to be a president who could achieve change. Once president, it wasn’t long before he banished slavery and segregation. Thanks to Abraham Lincoln, racial inequality is considered a taboo.

In Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, Wanderer is a Soul who, just like all other Souls, had to live within a Host and live off what its world has to offer. When Wanderer reached Earth, she noticed that earthlings had a mind of their own, and that, on that planet, hosts were parasites. Wanderer found herself getting fond to a community of rebellious, Soul-free humans. She strove to gain their trust and understand that she wasn’t like the other souls, but the humans wouldn’t believe her talks. She decided that to gain respect, actions had to accompany her words. Wanderer started helping the humans develop their community, and soon she was their hero.

As history and literature make it obvious, to be a true hero you have to not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk. Saying that the only reason Abraham Lincoln or Wanderer were entitled as heros is only that they were courageous enough to say what we can’t is a disintegration of their heroic deeds.

Aya Adel