Hello fellow bloggers! If you want to find out more about my favorite songs, then you are in the right place! My favorite music genres are Pop and Rap. I think that music gives us a way to relax or improve our mood. Here are my top 5 favorite songs and what they mean to me.

https://open.spotify.com/track/3HVr6jTVwBHBa2flM0eURR

Song: Glorious 

Artist: Macklemore

Plain and simple this song is just catchy. In middle school, I loved to listen to Macklemore and this is one of my favorite songs. I never really listened to the lyrics but when I was deciding which songs to choose, the lyrics in this song stood out to me as pretty motivational. 

https://open.spotify.com/track/1X1DWw2pcNZ8zSub3uhlNz

Song: Hall Of Fame

Artist: The Script

This is my motivational song. This is the go-to gameday song because it makes me feel hype and reminds me to stay determined and work hard. This song is different from the rest of the “Gameday” songs because it is more motivational than it is loud and uproaring.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2CEgGE6aESpnmtfiZwYlbV 

Song: Dynamite

Artist: Taio Cruz

This song just screams our childhood. It was released in 2010 so everyone was around seven or eight and it went so viral. Everyone knew the lyrics and there are so many parodies of it.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4nVBt6MZDDP6tRVdQTgxJg 

Song: Story Of My Life

Artist: One Direction

This song is very important to me because it was the song that we sang during our chorus concert in 5th grade. We had our own mini boyband at Highlands Elementary with each boy singing a paragraph of the song. I vividly remember getting up in front of the who school trying to remember each word to my part, but the nerves got to me and I forgot the last line so I just hummed into the microphone. I was so embarrassed and I went home that night and sang my part for a good hour so that I would be prepared for the parent’s viewing later that night. I remembered every line but after that performance, I realized that singing really wasn’t my expertise and I should stick to just singing in the shower.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5YbeJyTQkdSAWe1Ie4sLAl 

Song: Life is a Highway- From “Cars”

Artist: Rascal Flatts

As a kid, I was the biggest fan of the movie Cars. I went to see the first movie with my Uncle as soon as it came out and I have watched every one since. This is my favorite song from the movie and was one of the first songs I had on my MP3 player. Such a classic!

There are tons of short people in the world,

Many below six feet.

Who always want to be taller but don’t understand the struggle.

Pants from England,

Size 14 shoes,

Sleeves that are too short.

Some of the questions I am asked are:

How tall are you?

You should play basketball.

Can you dunk?

These are all the troublesome things that come along with being six foot six.

My grandpa is a big part of my life and I learn a new thing from him every day. He tells me all kinds of stories from when he lived in Lithuania as a kid to his life in the Korean war, this man has seen it all. He is definitely the most entertaining and joke-telling man alive and that is why I feel honored to have him live with us.

My grandpa moved in with us about one year ago. We had built an addition onto the back of our house for him to stay in and he loves it! He is such a positive guy and I never really understood why. He has gone through so much at such a young age but he still looks for the best in everything and everyone. 

Now in order for you to understand how he came to be who he is, you need to learn about his background. To begin, his name is Romualdas Povilatis and he was born and raised in Kaunus Lithuania until he was about ten years old. While he was ten, the soviet union had taken control of Lithuania and his father was assassinated because he was the head of the department of security. He, his mom and sister could not stay in Lithuania so they fled to the United States. 

This is Kaunas while the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania

My grandpa always tells me this story about when he was on the boat to America. He vividly remembers being on this smaller boat, no longer than 70 feet. While on the boat there was a dining area and after lunch one day, he saw an orange fall on the floor and he really wanted to get the orange because he has never had one. He tried to chase after the orange but the boat would rock back and forth and the bright orange would roll back and forth just out of his reach.

Once they had got to the United States, my grandpa did not speak much, if any English. He had come in through Ellis Island and was kind of on his own. After that, I don’t really remember what he did but I know that when he was 17 he was drafted for the Korean war. He was assigned to be a jeep driver for Generals. He was stationed in Germany because he had learned how to speak German in grammar school and he was also fluent in Russian and Lithuanian which made him a very good translator. 

After the war, he had come back to America and had been a carpenter for a few years. He built a lot of houses and one of them was his very own house in Lemont. After being a carpenter, he decided that he would do what one of his friends from the war had told him to do, become a dentist. That’s exactly what he did! He went to the University of Loyola in Chicago to study dentistry and then opened up his very own dentist’s office on Archer avenue.

One time during dinner my grandpa had told me about his life in Germany and how one time he had been run over by a jeep. But after he told me the jeep story he told me this: “If I were to die tomorrow, I would die feeling like my life on earth has been fulfilled.” This put me into a sort of shock. I could not imagine not having my grandpa anymore especially with him just moving in. But then I thought about it some more and all of the things that he had done. He has had so many experiences and has got to be the happiest guy on earth. 

The main reason why this was so impactful to me was that it made me think about my own life. If there were something that was to happen to me and I was to die, would I feel my life was complete? The answer is no. 

There are a lot of things that I have done in my life but I feel like I could do more of the simple things. I don’t have to be as cool and life-changing as my grandpa, I just need to do the simple things such as staying positive while things are difficult and be nice and say hi to everyone. I know these are very simple and very common things that people do but I feel like there is always room to improve upon the simple things. 

My Grandpa and I after my Confirmation

My grandpa has taught me well because he has gone through so much and he is still so happy. All of the things that we don’t like he somehow finds a way to make enjoyable and he is someone that I aspire to be. 

My grandpa saying this also made me think of something else. Death is not the end, it is just the beginning. As Tim O’Brien said, we can not forget about the dead and we need to continue to tell their stories. He told the stories of Linda and when my grandpa passes away, I will do the same. 

The Notes section in Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried helps to develop a deeper meaning. It makes the chapter “Speaking of Courage” much more meaningful and it is no longer just another chapter in the book. 

Tim O’Brien starts the chapter off with “‘Speaking of Courage’ was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa.” (O’Brien 149) This is a very abrupt way to start the analysis portion of a chapter. In the last chapter we saw that Norman was slowly starting to become acclimated to civilization and his hometown and now we find out that he is dead. It almost puts the reader in a sense of shock.

This really makes me think about the rest of the book as a whole. This is just one section where he elaborates and tells the true story and meaning behind what he wrote. The rest of the book must be similar to this and must be all based off of what had happened to him and what some of the impacts were that Vietnam left on him. 

I was also really shocked when I heard some of the jobs that Norman had worked after coming home from Vietnam. It said that he lived with his parents and “ He had worked briefly as an automotive parts salesman, a janitor, a car wash attendant, and a short-order cook at the local A&W fast-food franchise. None of these jobs, he said, had lasted more than ten weeks.” (O’Brien 149) This is really an issue for a lot of veterans because when they leave to fight they are often very young and when they come back they are sort of left behind. They do not get a great education and it is difficult for them to support themselves. I am glad that Tim included this because it shows how this war can really affect you a lot even though you get back home and are safe.

Another part that I also found that was very interesting was when Norman wrote, “‘The thing is,’ he wrote, ‘there’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam . . . Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down in’” (O’Brien 150) This is yet another example from Norman himself that he really did struggle when he came back. He kept on thinking about the past and all of the different things that he could have done to save Kiowa. He has a lot of regrets and that is an issue that Tim really wanted to highlight.

Ultimately, Tim O’Brien added this chapter to point out to main issues that returning veterans have to face. These two main issues are thinking about the past and the things that they could have done differently in the war and also finding a stable job and education. He was able to use Norman’s story to exemplify these struggles.

Mary Anne is transformed into a predatory killer because she has never seen anything so adventurous or intense as what she saw in Vietnam. I think that she got a little taste of what it is like to be at war and in the wild for the first time. She got hooked on the adventure and the atmosphere she was. The way she changed is actually very comparable to the book Lord of the Flies because when the boys in the book first got stranded they were having a blast and had a lot of freedom. By the end, they were in a survival mode and their actions were very savage.

I think that it is also important to know that she is a woman. Especially because during this war women were not really involved in the war. As a matter of fact of the roughly 2.1 million American soldiers, only 11,000 were women and only one of those 11,000 ladies died. She also brings a sense of comfort to the men because that was the whole reason she was there in the first place. She came there because Fossie missed her and wanted to see her. She was comforting to the other men because they had not really seen any woman since they left the United States for war. 

I think that one thing that transforms people today is pressure. Whether it be pressure from your parents to do well in school, or from your friends to do something dumb, or from society as a whole making you feel like you have to dress a certain way to keep up with trends. All of these pressures are not good because they change who we are as individuals and often times if we feel pressured we feel like we are doing something wrong and someone else is more correct and they have the right to “control” us.

I definitely think that the reason that this pressure exists is that we want to be the best and most successful that we possibly can be. Everyone is naturally competitive and then there are people who are extra competitive and compare themselves to everyone else because they are more pressured. An example of this is: You don’t like playing basketball but you are on the team anyway and your parents keep pressuring you to be just as good or better than your older br=other who had been on the team a few years ago. This is a very simple example but this shows how simple it is to feel pressured into things you don’t always enjoy.

I think when people feel pressured, they are looking for approval and almost a reward. When something good happens they want to benefit the reward for their success. They want to be the ones to fit in and please their parents even if they don’t enjoy the activity they are doing.

In conclusion, the thing that made Mary Anne change was the adventure and suspense of Vietnam but nowadays the main thing that changes people is outside pressures.

This collage portrays how evil and intense war actually is but how we see it most of the time in movies or shows. They make it look very patriotic and heroic while most of the time real war is not as perfect and beautiful as it seems and there are a lot of deaths and emotional struggles that come with the patriotism and heroism.

In the chapter “On a Rainy River” from Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, O’Brien defines courage on page two as “…an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.” (Obrien 38)

This makes me believe that every time there is a little act of courage, it builds up and then when there is a moment when you have a big decision that requires a lot of courage and you are ready for it and can be prepared for it. In this case, it was deciding whether or not Tim should join the war that he did not want to fight but because he was drafted and did not want to let down his family, friends, or country.

I think that I would define courage as the ability to do something even if you are afraid to do that task because there is a danger or there could be a negative outcome. There are a lot of other words that are similar to courage but none of them actually mean the same thing. There are words such as bravery, fearlessness or valor but none of those mean the same thing as courage. Courage is often times very personal and a problem or issue that you are afraid to face. Bravery and fearlessness are more after the fact. The dictionary defines bravery as “courageous behavior or character.” You need to be courageous in order to be brave or fearless and it takes courage to be brave or fearless especially when saving yourself or another. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQjnW3_78a8

In the talk that Simon gives, he has a few main points, he says that courage is something that you feel that is external and that you do it to help someone else even if it puts their life before yours. He also said that he had talked to many people who had done courageous acts and why they did it and the response was unanimous; they did it because they knew the people standing next to them would have done the same.

This relates to my definition and the book because Tim O’Brien really didn’t want to fight this war but it wasn’t until he was on the boat on the river when he realized that all of those people along the shore would have done the same for him. He knew that if he ran to Canada he would betray each and every one of them. In my definition, I mentioned that it is also a mental difficulty because you need to be strong and know that you are doing the right thing even if it makes you uncomfortable. 

Now you know what it truly means to be courageous and why people like Tim O’Brien do the courageous acts that they do. They are courageous because they want to save the people next to them because they know that they would do the same.

Hi, Thank you for visiting my blog! Today I will tell you all about my life and the different activities I do! 

To begin, I come from a Family of 5, my Mom and Dad, my older brother Paul (18) and my younger sister Gail (13). I also have two dogs, a white Shih Tzu poodle named Scrappy(8) and a black Schnauzer poodle named Chase(7). Some of the activities that my family and I do is go skiing. Every year we go to Colorado to go skiing over spring break in Breckenridge. We also go to our lake house in Michigan a lot. It is right near Warren Dunes state park so we go for hikes in the park and spend a lot of time at the beach. We have a stand-up paddleboard that we like to use to jump off while on the lake. 

One of my hobbies is volleyball. I am a setter for both our school team and for my club team. I started playing volleyball when I was in 8th grade and enjoy the sport a lot. I hope to play throughout the rest of high school and into college. My club team was Breaker volleyball but on Tuesday I tried out for a different club called 630 which is where I will play for this season.

 When I was younger I also played basketball. I started when I was in the 1st grade playing on a YMCA team but after that, I joined a Lithuanian Travel Team where I played since 3rd grade till 5th. That program was very intense so I switched to a Supreme Courts team called Illinois Attack. After that, I finally realized that I just wasn’t as interested in basketball as I used to be. 

I also had a pretty busy summer. I worked four jobs and went to a couple of summer camps.

One of the four jobs that I worked at over the summer was as a busboy at a Mexican restaurant called Friacos. I would often work on the weekends because that is when they were the busiest. My job was to give people chips and salsa as well as clean the tables once people left. I wou.d also have to occasionally wash the dishes. The second job that I had was mowing my neighbor’s lawns. I not only mowed my family’s lawn, but I mowed 4 other neighbors’ lawns. The third job that I had was helping my uncle in his factory in Chicago. I would work two days a week and would drive all the way down to Chicago to help him assemble picture frames for his company called Alpina Manufacturing. My fourth and final job was as a camp counselor at a Lithuanian camp in Manchester Michigan where I was the counselor for 5th-grade boys. This leads me to my next topic, my summer camps! The first summer camp I had was a volleyball camp that was on Monday and Tuesday nights. It was pretty relaxed and was fun. We would scrimmage a lot and had a tournament at the end. In the middle of the summer, I had my Lithuanian Catholic camp which was also a lot of fun. Then at the end of the summer, I had another volleyball camp but this one was way more intense. It was specifically for setter and was a week-long and was at Benedictine University. Every day we would get there at 9 in the morning and would play, eat lunch, play, eat dinner, play and then go home at 9 at night. I had a very busy summer but I am very glad that I did everything I did because it was very fun. 

Thank you for visiting and reading my blog and I hope you learned a lot more about me and some of the things I have done in the past few years!

I was in the newspaper when I was little

Hello, my name is Peter and I play volleyball and go to Naperville North. The time is currently 2:49