8Alive Masks

I just had my last 8Alive day two weeks ago, and it is sort of sad to think that never again will we be doing this program. I would like to share with you one activity that really stood out for me this week. By doing this activity, I thought beyond the basic idea of painting and decorating a mask, and looked into a deeper meaning where the colours in the mask represent my own personality and thoughts.

To start off with, I would just like to explain where the idea of painting masks came from. If you think about it, people that we know and meet everyday wear masks. Not physical masks like those that you physically put over your face, but masks that hide their true self from people. This mask changes their personality, and hides what they’re really like.

I can remember clearly a true story that I was told before we started painting the masks. This story was a perfect example of how masks can hide what someone’s true self is. The story started off at school, where a mask was hiding someone’s real personality. It was set back in the years when a female teacher went to high school with a guy. This teacher always saw this guy as a really ‘up himself’ person, who was always showing off and thought that he was better than everyone else. The teacher told how she didn’t like people who thought they were so good and superior, so she kept a distance from this guy at her school. However, during the school holidays, this guy turned up in the same camping area with his family, and set up camp next to this teacher, who was also camping with her family. Because this teacher knew this guy from school, she took a big step, and introduced her family to him. After spending a bit of time with him while camping outside school, she found out that he wasn’t so up himself, and was actually a really nice guy. His personality completely changed when he was with his family, and the two of them became very close friends. Now, many years later, this guy who this teacher met back at highschool, became her much-loved husband. During school, this guy wore a mask to hide what he was really like. This mask made him look like a show off, and if this teacher had never got to know him without his mask on, she would never have him as a husband like she does now. 

You may recognise this story, which relates to other stories where people’s personalities are hidden by a mask. I know that I actually wear a mask myself, and this is where my choice of colouring came into the mask I painted during 8Alive. Below I have explained all about my choice of colours, and what they really mean.

First off, I painted half the mask with a pale blue colour. Why did I choose the colour blue, you ask? Well to be honest, I don’t actually know why I chose this colour myself. Maybe it had something to do with my interests, as blue is one of my favourite colours. The colour blue has always been a special colour to me. It reminds me of the beauty of nature, and really is a special colour. Some people may say that they have the “blues”, but this did not come into my choice of this colour. I generally see myself as a happy person, so relating this colour to sadness and “blues” isn’t the path I chose to colour my mask as. Well, back to the reason why I chose this colour. Like I said before, I originally didn’t have a meaning behind the choice of blue, but the colour just stood out to me. The beauty inside this colour is just exquisite, and really reflects on the beauty of nature. I often look up at the strong blue in the sky and admire its colour, often wondering how the sky got such a beautiful colour. Another example is the ocean. The ocean, or beach as I know it, has always been a magical place for me, and it also shares the blue colouring of my mask. Just then I did a quick search on Google for “blue ocean”, and up came a whole lot of pictures of the ocean. These pictures were probably each taken from different locations, but they all share one thing in common… the beauty of the ocean. Just by looking at these pictures I can feel the shimmering, glamorous scenery, as if I was right there at that very place. All the shades of blue come together to form one stunning stretch of water which I look at as being a very special, meaningful place.

Talking about shades, I better start talking about the two different shades that I used in my mask. I divided my mask into two halves, and the first half was painting with a pale blue, that I mentioned just above. This half, with the pale blue colouring, represents my life at school. The other half of the mask is covered with the same colour (blue), but it is a darker shade. Now I will explain to you what each side represents. The first side (pale blue side) represents my life at school, and the other half (darker blue side) is my life at home. In each place my personality changes slightly. At school, I don’t feel as comfortable as I do at home. Because of this, I am much quieter, and my personality changes (which is the light blue side of the mask). Most people in my class have only met this side of me, which is hiding my more natural personality that comes out at home.

At home, I don’t restrain the actions that I often stop myself from doing at school. For example, at home if my brother has the TV on too loud, I would yell across the room at him to “Turn the TV down!” This is what is represented by the darker shade of blue on my mask. However, in class, if a TV was on at a very loud volume, I would ask the teacher quietly if she/he would mind turning the volume down. This side of me is represented by the light blue on my mask, which is what most people in my class know me as. The difference between these two responses would basically be the word “please”. At school I would think about what I was going to say to the teacher for a while before I approach her, but at home I would just yell out what comes to the top of my head. The reason for this is probably because I’ve been with my family my whole life, and I’ve sort of adapted to them.

Another example would be when the class starts talking really loud. Some people may find nothing wrong with this, but because I am very sensitive to the volume of noise, this really annoys me. I hate discos because of the booming, loud music, and I hate any kind of loud sound. If you are like this as well, then you would know exactly how I feel. If not, you may find it hard to understand why this bothers me. Well, this has always bothered me. Whether it’s a balloon popping, people screaming, music that’s at the maximum volume level… I get very sensitive to the noise. Well, back to the example. It just happened that yesterday at school, we all had to do a test. Usually, no matter how fast I try to go, I am always the last one to finish a test. Well, it was all quiet and I was working away at this test, and then the sentence that I feared was announced. “I’ve finished!” someone yelled out. “Yes, I’ve finished the test!” Well, I would probably say the same thing if I was doing the test at home with my family, but I know that my family wouldn’t react so much to it. At school, I would quietly hand up the test, and find something else to work on. The thing is, in our class, there are not many people who do the same thing as I do. When more than one person finishes a test, the noise begins. There was talking that followed the announcement, and as soon as someone else finished, they started talking as well. Of course, a pattern began to form. As more and more people finished, more and more people began talking. And when more and more people start talking, everyone raises their volume so they can hear each other, and so on. Meanwhile, there I was sitting there, trying to get through this test. No one had any respect to the people who were still finishing their test, and the more they talked, the more annoyed I got. Anger was building up inside me because not only was I finding the test hard, and because there was a certain time limit for the test, but mainly because I could not concentrate with everyone else talking. They could at least show a bit of respect by staying quiet until the time limit was up. If anyone from my class is reading this right now, you won’t believe it when I say that I really felt like screaming at everyone to “shut up”. And no, I am not joking. I meant what I said, but my light blue mask fought this temptation and won against it. No matter how much I wanted to do this, my mask prevented me from this happening. It would be a completely different story at home though. If this was my brother making all this noise while I was trying to do something such as homework, I would have easily told him to “shut up” in a very angry way. This is what I would naturally do, but because masks are so strong, they can actually block you from showing what your true reaction would be. If you don’t know a person very well, it will be quite easy to hide what you’re really like from them. However, the more you start to get to know a person, the more their real personality will start to unfold.

Now that I have explained the main colours used in my mask, I will explain the colours that I used to outline the features of the mask. To begin with, I outlined the two eyes with half black, half white which represents how I see the world. The white represents all the good things that happen in this world. Friendship, love, compassion, enjoyment and nature all fall into this category. However, with the good there’s also bad, and this is what the black represents. Hatred, wars, pollution, murder and depression all fall into this category. So in this world, there are both bad things, and good things. We like to encourage good things that will make the world a better place.

I have also outlined the nose as well with half black, half white, which is how I smell the world. Once again, the white represents the good smells, and the black represents the bad smells. Good smells include things such as flowers and trees which are mainly natural, but the bad smells include pollution such as car fumes and rubbish that are man-made and help to contaminate the planet.

Finally I outlined the mouth, which is how I word things. In other words, this is what I encourage people to do and not to do. Like the nose and the eyes, I outlined half the mouth with white, and the other half with black. The white side is what I encourage people to do, and a lot of these encouragements I have previously written about on my blog. These include doing things such as recycling, saving water and being compassionate to others that have a good effect on the earth. The black side of the mouth is basically the opposite, which is what I tell people not to do. Not littering, not bullying and not wasting water are some examples, and there are many more examples for both what to do and not to do that I haven’t listed.

Well that pretty much rounds off another long post. Unfortunately this will probably be the last post I write about 8Alive (since the program has now finished), but I will be back to post about other experiences and ideas.

8Alive is back!

This week has been pretty good because my class have been doing the next part of the 8Alive program. Apart from some activities which I haven’t enjoyed, 8Alive has been much better this week! On Tuesday my class traveled to a park that cared a lot about caring for the environment. From this experience I have learnt a lot more about the environment and how important it is to look after it. During the visit, we each made a piece of recycled paper which I really enjoyed making. From reading the signs around the park, we learnt many fascinating facts mostly about rubbish. Many Australians use up so much water as if it is unlimited, and produce so much rubbish without thinking about what it is doing to the environment. Did you know that by the way everyone’s living today, we need many more Earths than we have. There’s only one Earth, so we have to learn to look after it. You can help by doing simple things such as not taking long showers, using both sides of a piece of paper, bringing a reusable bag with you when shopping instead of using plastic bags, and recycling items that can be reused. Many food items indicate on the box/packaging whether it can be recycled, and most of those that can are made of paper. By recycling, we can save trees, and also our home the Earth. When we use up rubbish, do you ever think about where it goes? It has to be dumped somewhere, so this is what rubbish dumps are made for. However, all this rubbish is bad for the environment. Here are some interesting facts about this topic:

* Believe it or not, Australians dump around 230,000 recyclable plastic bags in landfills every hour, which is 7 billion each year!
* Plastic bags take much longer to break down in the natural environment than we think- up to 1,000 years!
* Plastic bags kill hundreds of thousands of birds and sea creatures every year.

One section of the park was built like an Indian village. Here we got to view some beautiful birds called peacocks, paint in an Indian style and enter some small houses that many Indians live in. We also learnt a lot about the Indian culture and found out how different it is to our daily lives. I really think that this park is doing a great job in helping the environment. Keep up the great work guys!

Aboriginals and 8Alive

Today at school my class watched a very good film called ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’. I’ve seen this film many times and every time I watch it I feel very angry when the white people take the Aboriginals and half-casts (half aboriginal, half white person) away from their families. The white people just came in and took over the whole of Australia! I feel very angry, even though I’m not an Aboriginal. This was so selfish of them.

‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ is an amazing story, which is true. It shows exactly how Aboriginies were treated. The white people took over the land and basically kicked the Aboriginies (who were here first) out! This was so cruel! The white people then separated the aboriginal or half-cast children from their families. They took them to a place far away, and forced them to speak English. The white people took total control of Australia, and even tried to wipe out the Aboriginal race! This was such a mean thing to do, and I feel ashamed to be part of a country with such a terrible history.

I would have been very happy to share the land with the Aboriginal people if I was around those days. Actually, the Aboriginals should have had more rights on the land than the white people; they were in Australia first! I recon the white people were being very selfish taking over Australia and pushing the Aboriginies out. They never showed any empathy towards the Aboriginies. They just decided that because the land was very fine, they would simply take it off the Aboriginies and get rid of them altogether!

Lets try putting ourselves in the Aboriginie’s shoes. Just say you’re living happily and peacefully in a lovely house, with lots of space and very nice rooms. Then, a group of strangers help their selves into your house, and then find out that you’re already living there. Instead of leaving, the strangers kick you out of your house and says that they’re going to live in it. You would feel angry wouldn’t you? But it gets worse… the strangers then decide that they want to delete you! They never want to see anyone from your race, with your colour skin again. so they grab you and put you into their car. Then you get driven far away, and you have been separated from your friends and parents. This is terrible! And you know, this is exactly what happened to those poor Aboriginies.

My class had another 8Alive excursion earlier this week, and we visited a place full of aboriginal paintings. There were dot paintings, colourful painings, dull paintings… and each painting had it’s own story based on Aboriginal missions. They were sad, and just one image showed how the Aboriginal people felt when the white people started over taking them. There was a picture of a little girl in the back seat of a car staring out of the window, taking a last look at her family and her home before she was dumped in a place where she was forced to be like the English (white) people. There was also a dot style painting that told a story of Aboriginal missions. The middle of the painting was dark, and represented the depressed aboriginals stuck in this sad place where they were forced to be and respect the English people. This place was separated from the rest of the painting, which was the rest of Australia and the Aboriginal’s family. The Aboriginal children’s family tried to contact their children using smoke from a fire.

The Aboriginals lived their lives very different to us, as they hunted food and killed it themselves, had no electronics, and had no houses or cars. When the White people came in, they were more advanced in technology, and stealing the land off the Aboriginies was so selfish; they had a land of their own in Europe! And afterwards, the Aboriginals weren’t even given the right to vote!

This could all have been settled if the white people had of just shared the land with the Aboriginals. I can’t really say it’s my fault, or my parent’s fault even though we’re white. We didn’t want to do this to the Aboriginals, and if I could change what has happened to them I would. But sometimes, it’s much, much easier to share things than to try and claim it all to yourself. The Aboriginies had the most rights over the land, but if the white people had just been willing to share Australia instead of stealing it, the Aboriginal people and the white people could have had a better relationship, and Australia could be a more friendlier place. Sharing is always better than fighting.

8Alive city excursion- Homeless people

Isn’t it good being able to go home to a place where you feel comfortable? A place where you feel safe, and you have a roof over your head to protect you things such as rain and wind? Yes, this is your home! Probably most people you know all have homes. Most likely houses, or rooms in some kind of building. Well after a visit to the city earlier this week, I have learnt that not everyone has a home. This is pretty sad to hear, as homes and houses are like normal, everyday things in our lives.

There are people, even here in Australia, who are homeless. They haven’t got a place to stay and keep warm, and some are even left to roam the street in search of food and shelter! Some homeless people take drugs, have no money and wear the same old, ragged clothes everyday. They find it very hard to get hold of some food to satisfy their hunger and they often sleep by the street on people’s doorstep. When they beg for some money, they often get rejected.

When my class and I visited the city for part of the 8Alive program, we listened to a man talk about homeless people. Some people he had heard of became homeless through incidents such as loss of job. Others can become homeless through other incidents. He told us about a 14 year old girl who was being abused by her mother’s boy friend where she lived. She had left the house because it was un-safe, and she stayed with her friend for a while. She then decided that she needed to find a more permanent place to stay, so she left her friend’s house, and started living in an old ware house. She had walked across the floor above ground level, when it collapsed and she died. This is a true story, which is very sad.

Homeless people don’t seem to make friends, and can become very depressed. This can then lead them to taking drugs which can cause other problems. I fell really sorry for the people without homes, and I never really thought much about this topic until I found out much more about it recently.

All this is very sad, and I wondered what we can do to help these people. Then the man started to tell us about a cafe that was held near a church in the city. This cafe welcomed everyone, including the homeless. I felt very pleased to hear that people were helping them. The homeless can get free meals at this cafe and they get to meet other people. The man told us how it was interesting watching a buisness person talk to a homeless person.

A lot of people image homeless people as old men wearing mits and sleeping on a newspaper. However, only around 10% of the homeless are like this.

The cafe in the city serves free food to everyone, and I think it’s a great idea to help the homeless people. This shows that there is a way to help, even with the most difficult situations. 

The 8Alive Program

Honestly, 8Alive wasn’t as fun as I expected. One of the first activities I did with my class was about healthy eating. The task was to create a brochure to proove that you knew how to stay healthy. We found the information on the internet. This activity used up two lessons, and the teachers made an excuse that we had to make it because we were going to be using it in a Health and P.E class. While making the brochure, I kept looking at my watch. Time seemed like it was going so slow. “Hurry up, I want the bell to go!” I thought. However, doing this activity taught me a lot about what foods are healthy and the types of food to eat most.

Another thing we did in 8Alive was work on our journals. We decorated the covers, and then wrote about the things we did inside. This was quite fun. It took up a lot of the week though. Then we got a square piece of cloth and we got the chance to show off out creative art skills by decorating it. When everyone had finished this, each cloth was going to get sewen together to make a big shield to represent our class.

One of the other activities was called ‘power girl’. Power girl was an imaginary  girl with lots of good personality qualities. The lesson that I did was all about girls. The teacher spread out a whole heap of girl stuff  such as fake phones and make up on the floor. Each member of the class picked an object and then explained what it has to do with girls. Then we acted out these barbie dolls in a situation where one of them was being excluded. I didn’t really enjoy the ‘Power Girl’ lesson much.

Now for the best activity of the week. Victorian Market! This was an excursian. We got into groups of four, and were told an item to find and buy in the market. Also, we had to fill out a sheet with questions on it. My group had to buy some felt-tip pens. Strangely, they were very hard to find. We spent the day looking around the huge market for stuff that we liked. I bought a cute, stuffed penguin toy for my bother, as he loves penguins and a silver key ring with a Z on it for me! Then, we went over to the bag section, as I needed a new bag to go shopping with. I spotted a silver bag that I wanted to buy which cost $20.00. It had lots of different compartments, and the others said that it looked good on me. I spent ages looking at the other bags and then came back and decided to buy the silver one. I took out my wallet to buy it, and then found out that I was $5.00 short! This really disappointed me, as it was a great bag. It was light and soft and a really nice colour. I asked the owner if I could have it for $15.00, but he said no. I decided that I’d have to come down to the market on the holidays and buy it. Well, it was lunch time and I bought some hot chips and juice. The others ate Mc Donalds, but I didn’t want that kind of food. One of the members got separated from the rest of the group in the food court, however, we found them soon afterwards. We went through the cheese and meat section looking for the answers to the questions on our sheet. It stunk, so we tried not to stay long in it. We got the answers and managed to find some felt-tip pens just before we had to leave. This had been a great day, and I would like to go back to the Victorian Market as they had so many great stuff I wanted to buy.

The 8Alive program runs all year at different times, so hopefully some of the in-school activities will get better. Anyway, the good thing about 8Alive in school is that we don’t get any homework out of it!!!