If I were to have a superpower, I would like to be super-fast, just like Flash. It would solve all my problems. I could run great distances in a blink of an eye, so if I wanted to travel (which is my favorite thing to do), I could, and I wouldn’t even need an airplane.

The thing I lack of is time. I wish I could go to school, in the morning, go to high school in the afternoon and at night I would want to have Italian, Spanish and French classes, go to the gym, swim, take guitar and singing lessons, but of course, it is impossible to do this much stuff, but if I was very fast I could.

It would be nice to not lose time doing things that I don’t like, such as doing homework and studying. It would take me minutes to study everything I need, and I would have the rest of the weekend to sleep or watch TV.

I would use it for helping others too. I wish I could be a superhero, and if I was very fast, I may be able to save people´s life.

It would be nice to read people´s mind to. Obviously not for them, but it would make my life way easier. Also, I am a very curious person, so I would love to know what they are thinking of and what they think of me. I would know a lot of secrets to.

If a became invisible, I would be very scared. If people couldn’t see me or hear me, it would be terrible. Because I wouldn’t even be able to ask for help and they wouldn’t know about my situation. If a could choose the times I would become invisible, that would be nice. And to go to places without people knowing. But if I was invisible forever it would be terrible.

On September 30th, Canada celebrates the Orange Shirt day. Where people all over the country wear orange shirts as a way to honor the Indigenous children that were sent to residential schools.

This was funded by the Canadian government between the 1870´s and the 1990´s. The First Nation´s children were taken from their homes and brought to these schools, where they suffered physical, psychological and sometimes sexual abuse. They were obliged to learn white Canadian culture, religion, languages and forced to forget their own culture. Therefore, the existence of the schools is considered cultural genocide. The kids that managed to make back home, since a lot of the died in the schools, didn’t think they belonged with their families and were embarrassed by their origins since they learned in the schools it was a reason to be embarrassed.

I was choked by the existence of the Residential schools, specially since it was very recent. The lest school closed in the late 90´s. this is such a tragic story and I thought that we were far passed these intolerance cases.

Wearing the shirts is very important because just like me there are millions of people around the world that don’t know about those atrocities so the awareness of this is very important, so we can see how much we still have to improve and to prevent this to ever happen again. Prejudice against Indians and their culture is not a problem exclusive from Canada, for example, here in Brazil we go thorough the same think. So, this campaign of using the shirts can help populations not exclusive from Canada, but all over the world.   

We are born with natural instincts since we are all animals, it is one of our defense mechanisms.  They help us a lot and prevent us from doing stupid things that could definitely kill us. That is why it is so hard for us to do some extreme activities. Rationally we know that there is protection and that a lot of people have done it before but jumping off a cliff or from a plane is hard because we have to overcome our natural instinct that makes us think twice before doing it. This is the origin of fears.

Our fears can also be influenced by our personal experiences, they mold us. So, maybe if you have an irrational fear of something the origin of it is a trauma you had when you were a child.

One of my biggest fears is of drowning, which is funny since I have been a swimming athlete my whole life, but I will explain. I know how to swim very well so I would never drown if I didn’t have “help”. What scares me is the idea of being trapped somewhere and the place starts to fill up with water. That is why I hate to watch Titanic, I feel like I am being suffocated.

Another fear I used to have was of rollercoasters and simulators. When I was five, I went to Italy with my parents. We went to an amusement park and it had an attraction which had two entrances. One was to visit a tree house and the other one was for a simulator. I was young so naturally I wanted to do just the visit, but my parents got confused by the Italian and entered in the wrong place. We sat on a chair and had to put seatbelts. I asked my mom why since we weren’t going on a rollercoaster and I started to be scared. She guaranteed me it wasn’t anything radical but the thing started to spin and turn (I don’t really know how to explain it since I was very little but it was terrible) I started crying and closed my eyes through all of it. It took me five years to overcome that experience.   

“Stop being afraid, it isn’t that dangerous to go bungee jumping,” she said, and that is how I broke my neck.

I met my aunt that I hadn’t seen for a while and my first question was “How far along are you?”

She answered “Yeeeeeeah, I am not pregnant”.

Love others, He said, but some “others” make this task very hard.

“hey John, why don’t you come to my house this afternoon?”

“Can´t, I have to give my fish a shower”.

“Hey Martha, how is the boyfriend?”

“They are all feeling fine!”

My living room was filled with roses and he was in the middle of the room holding a little box. I opened my eyes and realized that I missed my stop.

“Did you like my gift?”

“Yeaaaah, loved the pair of socks and underwear!”

I felt feverish so I asked my English teacher if I was hot. After that my face turned red with embarrassment.

“Go make your bed!” my mom ordered.

“Be quiet!” she commanded.

“Did you finish your homework?” she asked.

“Yes, I finished at school” she answered.

“Are you going to the homecoming this weekend?” he inquired.

“Probably, if my mom allows me to go” she replied.

“Can you please buy me a juice?” she shouted.

“No, I don’t have any money” he yelled back.

“I think here is a terrible place to hide” he mumbled.

“Well, I didn’t have any better idea!” she whispered back.

“I can´t go to the party because I have to study” she stated.

“And you can´t go to next week´s too because your grades are bad” my mom added.

“I am sure that this is the right way!” he stuttered, not convincing anyone.

“I am so scared he is going to catch us” he trembled.

“I won the competition!” she cheered.

“We found the way out of the cave!” she said marveled.

“stop being such a baby!” she demanded.

“Stop talking during the presentation! Santino snapped.

“You need to pay attention in class” she explained.

  “I can’t believe I failed!” whined Maria Fernanda.

I am a very energetic person. I cannot stand still, and I get so annoyed when I am around someone that is very slow. This is the reason why one of my pet peeves is when there are people in front of me in the hallway that walk like a turtle, they are always in group of three or four and they feel they need to occupy all the space in the hall so I cant pass them. I really want to walk faster but I can’t without running them over.

Another pet peeve of mine is when I am talking to someone and they are not giving me their full attention, when they are either on their phones or reading something. I feel like I am scorned, even if they say they are listening, I need them to look at my face, so I know that they are paying attention.

Crooked things also pisses me off, especially when it´s something that is up on the wall. In my friend’s house there is a painting on her wall that is completely crooked. All the times I go there I try to fix it, but it always goes back to its wrong place. I can’t pay attention to anything else if I see something crooked.

I hate when people go through my stuff, that is another pet peeve I have. Sometimes my friends borrow something that is mine, (without even asking) and they don’t take care of it and I hate when that happens, I feel as if they were disrespecting me.

If you ever watched Grey`s Anatomy you probably know Maggie (Meredith’s half-sister). She is definitely the most boring/annoying character ever invented by someone in the whole world.

The first time she appears is during the tenth season. Her mom was married to a guy called Thatcher, they had Meredith, and when she was just a little girl her mom had an affair with one of the doctors she used to work with, then Maggie was born. She was given up for adoption right away. Because of that, Meredith never knew she exists until the day she appeared in Seattle looking for her birth parents.

Now I am going to explain why she deserves my anger. First, she has a very vanilla personality. Second, she is incredibly dramatic! She thinks that her problems are so much bigger then everybody else’s, and just to give an example, her sister lost her mother, her sister, her husband, went through a shooting in the hospital, had an abortion during it, almost drowned and went through a plane crash, yet Maggie still thinks that she is the master when it comes to suffering just because a guy broke up with her and she needed a lot of time to get over it.

Also, there was this guy in the hospital called Riggs. Maggie liked him but he didn’t like her back, and she was very upset because of that. He liked her sister (Meredith) and she liked him back, but they spent a whole season apart because Maggie wouldn’t allow them to be together. I mean, come on, everybody, at least once in life went through this, liking someone that didn’t like you back.  Get over it!

If that wasn’t enough when she wasn’t able to separate the main couple, she broke up my favorite couple in the show, April and Jackson. I wish I could just take her out of the series, but since I can`t, I just stopped watching because she really annoys me. 

If I could take anyone I want on a dinner date, I would definitely choose my great-grandmother, Juraci. Since I was a kid, I heard so much about her, but I didn’t have the opportunity to know her since she died of cancer when my mom was only 16. It is funny because even though I never met her I feel like we know each other from all of the stories people tell me about her.

We would have dinner at her house in Ponte Nova where she used to live, and we would make dinner. My mom always tells me how they used to cook together so it would be a great occasion for us to do this. I would ask her to teach me how to do one of the dishes that she is so famous for in the family.  

I would sit there the whole time just listening to her telling me stories about her childhood, the guys she dated, her parents, her husband and her kids. I would want to know all about how life was like when she was a kid, who she hung out with and what she do during her free time.

I would ask her about the rings she left for me and my mom as inheritance and the meaning of the different drawings on them.

High school is almost finished. there is only four months left and honestly, I don’t know what I am going to do without it. The past one and a half years I spent more time with these people than with my own family, and it is crazy to think that before the program I didn’t even know a lot of them. Girls that are my best friends now weren’t even in my life before last year.

I grew so much since I entered thorough the magic doors, for the first time and not only because of the classes. I painted (something I thought I would never do), I talked for more then ten minutes in front of a lot of people (it was one of the worst moments of my life but at least I am not afraid anymore), I planned a trip and English classes for children, things that if nobody forced me I would never do but I can see how this made me better. But it is much more than that, it makes me feel a part of something, since all my classmates and I are in the same situation, where we have to administrate our time, since we don’t have a lot and deal with the fact that maybe we will have to give something up so we can keep up with school.

Next year I will have to stay almost the same amount of time as this year but instead of spending it learning subjects such as Arts, Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Tourism I will have to have classes of Physics, Math, and Portuguese.

High school is a huge part of my life and a cannot believe that I have less then six months of it left.  I am already suffering from anticipation, I don’t want to say goodbye to the cool classes, the teachers, the maple syrup and the classes.          

I was at home doing absolutely nothing when I got a text from my friend, she wanted me to go have lunch with her at some restaurant that I´d never heard of.  I wasn’t really in the mood of getting off the couch and going to change but she insisted so much and it was only a block away from my house, so I decided to go. I went to my wardrobe and put on my favorite purple shirt with some pants that I don’t even remember (since they aren’t important for the story) and left.

I met outside of the establishment, she was there going thorough her phone with her vine colored t-shirt. She was very happy to see that I really went. We were there with a very large group of friends and lunch happened smoothly most of the time.

Out of the blue, the waiter poked her, she was beside me, and gave her a piece of paper:

“From that gentleman over there”

She didn’t give too much thought to it and went back to talking with the other girls at the table. It wouldn´t be landmark event if the following didn’t happen: the guy from the note went there to apologize, he said that the note was actually for me, he told the waiter to give it for the girl in purple but he made a mistake.

I took the note home but wasn´t planning on doing anything with it. And if it wasn’t for my mom, I wouldn’t have called the number on it. It actually was a good thing I did because in two weeks from now it is our 20 year anniversary.