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New year, new friends ...

Hi everyone! School reopened on the first of April after 2 weeks of fun-filled holidays. Now it’s back to school. My classmates and I are now officially in 9 th grade! Both the ninth grade girl’s sections have been combined to form one section, 9B. So in the morning, when I reached class, I found everyone sitting separately; former 9D (my classmates) in a row, the other girls in another row. So our now-class teacher, Namrata Ma’am said that she will have to shuffle us in order to make us ‘mingle’. Namrata ma’am is pretty and fun, and she taught us social studies last year, so we already know her well. We did not receive our books on the first day. The day of receiving books is always torture.   It involves carrying a set of heavy books in your bag, and another 2 books in your hands(for the fear that the school bag will tear open), and walking down 2 floors of stairs to the ground floor, and trying to find your bus in the sizzling heat. After that, at home Moms are

Swimming at Al Manahil

Are you itching to turn on the AC? Do you need a break from the sun? Are you getting a tan INSIDE the house? Not to worry! Al Manahil Fitness centre is the place for YOU! Here we are provided with all facilities for those who wish to become thinner, lighter, muscular and healthier! And also, to break away from the heat and sweat, go for a jump, a dive and a swim in the pool. This is the place I went to yesterday since I was dying for a swim. The blue of the water blinded me and the place itself made me stand in awe. It’s a really lively place, only for women though. I usually go during the vacation. I learned swimming in the second grade and take every opportunity to swim. I had trouble swimming the first few laps, but after that, it was a breeze. In the shallow part of the pool, there was a swimming class going on for the little kids. Dad waited outside till we were done. I was starving, so we went to get a few bits to eat.  

Weekend party at Rabia's home

Last night was a night of fun. Rabia held a party at her home and about 8 of us were able to attend.  Technically, Rabia’s mom is our biology teacher, Ayesha ma’am. And since whenever we go to parties we always say ‘aunty’, it was kind of confusing. Rakshanda suggested ‘Manty’ (Ma’am+Aunty) but that wasn’t going to fly. We had soup as a starter, pizza as dinner and Baskin-Robbins as dessert. When it comes to ice-cream, BR rules. We joked around for a while, listening to music and texting the others who hadn’t been able to come by trying to make them feel guilty for not coming. It wasn’t hard. Time seemed to fly by. Chandana and I had to leave at 9:30 and we couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw the clock. We requested our parents to come at 10:00 instead. Dad sounded grumpy but was fine with it. Overall, we had a lot of fun, and it was nice to spend some time together. Especially, since we still had more than a week of holidays left and a lot more fun to look

Goodbye, Grade VIII

Since the term-ending exams are over, its goodbye grade 8, and he-llo grade 9! We had a class party and we got all our marks today. Now, it’s 2 weeks of undisturbed holidays. The class party was awesome and we feasted on cupcakes, pizza, donuts, pakodas, garlic bread, noodles, chicken sandwiches, kheer and cinnamon rolls. Rakshanda shook the Pepsi bottle, and when she removed the cap, she got sprayed. This morning, when I was on the stairs, I met our library teacher, Yamuna ma’am. She asked me to meet her in the library after a few minutes. When I did she handed me something in gift wrapping. On opening it in class, we found that it was a really pretty purse. I had donated 100+ books to the library this year. We all felt that 8 th grade had gone way too quickly, but it was also one of our best school years. It was hard to believe one full year had gone by. Now again, new teachers, new books, new friends. Especially when we heard the fact that there would not be a 9-D,

The Disneyland Experience

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The exciting Paris tour ends with a final stop at Disneyland! Fasten your  seat-belts , ’cause you are going on the ride of a lifetime! Let’s go to the Walt Disney Studios Park, where there are only few rides but many theatres. In one theatre they even show you the birth of a character (Hi Mushu!). Go have a look at Cinemagique, where the characters come to life. Don’t miss the tram tour where you can see some artifacts from movies, experience an earthquake and see movie sets (Please keep your arms and legs inside the tram at all times). Scream as much as you can in Monster’s University. There are more stuff you can go to but the line’s too long so keep moving and reach the Disneyland Park. Disneyland Park has plenty of rides for you. The famous Sleeping Beauty castle slowly comes in view as you walk in awe. First let’s introduce you to a ride where you can learn about Pinocchio’s life (No flash photography allowed). Meet Pinocchio, the star of the

2 Pizza Parties

The First Pizza Party (FPP)- Status - Feeling frenzy, feeding frenzy Host/Hostess - My good friend, Linda Message for Linda - My dear friend……..I just wanted to tell you that, *feeling emotional* you threw a party that mainly consisted of my favorite food, pizza, *sob* and I am so sorry. I was the culprit. I ate 3 slices of the pepperoni pizza that there was barely any left. I am so sorry! Linda threw a pizza party at Pizza Hut. She was working hard to get everyone what they wanted and for that I just love her. It was an open table, so 12 of us were chatting so loudly and so much that the manager had to shush us once. Twice. Thrice. Then through gritted teeth, he kicked us out of the dining area after we were done and told us to ‘sit quietly’ in the waiting area. But luckily that was AFTER we took tons of pictures on our phones, went to the bathroom to take selfies, ate too much, sat in the next empty booth and took a new round of selfies, and drove the other custo

Walking-Talking Wikipedia Mom

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Mom was extremely excited about going to France and she had spent lot of days finding information and must-sees. We prepared a long list before going, so that every day went according to schedule. A day at Disneyland. A day of bus-tour. A day at the Palace of Versailles. More and more. The day we went to the museum we took a cab. Dad said ‘Louvre musee’ in 50 different ways ( Loove museum? Lure museum? Loovi museum???!! No?!)  till the driver got hold of the idea. He dropped us off right in front of it. Inside, there were hundreds of paintings, even on the ceiling and many sculptures. We stared in awe and went in the direction of the most famous exhibit- the Mona Lisa. The ‘Mona Lisa’ was tiny compared to other paintings but half of the tourists in the museum were pushing and fighting their way through to see it. Most of them ignored the others. When we got outside, it was really cold and we thought about taking the bus tour. We had to go on a BigBus so as we wo

'Atomics' by Rock Star Nara

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Rock Star Nara returns!  This time he’s not alone, but also with 4 of his trusty friends! Together they form the super cool, advanced band ‘Atomics’! RockStar Nara is increasingly becoming popular at school, and now he is also famous for his band. He has plenty of fans swooning for him day and night! For you fans out there, here’s your favorite band preparing for their next show.

Crêperies and Sausages

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During our stay at Paris, we stayed at Novotel Tour Eiffel Hotel, which was less than a kilometer from the Eiffel tower. Every day started with a glimpse of Eiffel tower. On our first day, when we were on our way to see the tower, and Mom was ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at everything, Dad’s sensitive nose sniffed a dog. A hot dog, in fact. The street food of Paris is great, and Dad got attracted to them like a fly to a light bulb. We tried a crepe, which was nutella spread on a pancake, only that the pancake was pretty thin and on our choice, they would chop bananas or strawberries and keep them inside too. On our first try, we only bought one, so Dad and I got a molecule and Mom devoured the rest. No wonder experience is a difficult teacher. When we went to the Louvre museum, it was drizzling and strong cold winds kept slapping us in the face. Dad and I ran for shelter while Mom stood there in the open and wrestled with our umbrella. I called ‘Mom! Stop trying to op

Journal de Paris

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Hello! Did you miss me? I went on a trip to …..(drum roll please)……Paris! The three of us had been wanting to go there for a long time. Especially Mom. So this winter vacation, we stayed there for 9 fun days. Let me just say that if my French pronunciation is rusty, it’s Mom’s fault. She said Les Invalides the way we say invalid with ‘s’ at the end and pronounces Les as ‘less’. She said a lot of words that way and got annoyed when I corrected her.  I had bought a small French book with a lot of the basic words in it, so I practiced my Bonjour, Merci and s'il vous plait. Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to use them, but Dad did after learning from me. The highlight of our trip was when we went to Disneyland on our last day. When we went on the Pirates of Caribbean ride, our boat went downhill fast and the camera flashed in front of us. We were right in the front seat with about 10 people behind us in the other seats. In the photo, Dad’s eyes were wide and h

The awesome party at Chandana's home

Last night was an awesome, awesome night. Chandana held a party at her home again, and this time out of the 16 girls of 8-D, 12 people showed up, including me. Chandana lives in a huge compound that has a clubhouse, restaurant, shop and playgrounds filled with swings and slides at every corner. It’s practically a gateway to heaven. After everyone came, we had some starters, which were chocolate chip cookies, tuna sandwiches, laddoos, chicken puffs, fish pakodas and soup, all home-made by Chandu’s mom and totally delicious. When we reached the first playground during our tour of the compound, everyone took off like miniatures of Usain Bolt for the swings. People who snagged them first swung for some time. Then someone would jump on quickly after them. I swung a couple of times, and then got off when some younger children were looking at us. I felt pretty ridiculous. But hey, who can resist swings? The tour of the compound took a little more than an hour with quic

Kindle & Pebble

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What do you get when you do the following equation? Kindle + Smart watch + Janaki = ? I think the answer is pretty obvious, though. Kindle + Smart watch + Janaki =  :-)  :-) I had been waiting a long time since we ordered these 2 from the Amazon  (well, not that long, but time feels slow sometimes). Dad explained the full process of how it gets shipped to me and it seems like a lot of work.  My new Pebble Smart watch is pretty sleek and cool. It allows me to download apps and watchfaces on it through Mom’s phone. My Kindle Paperwhite , on the other hand is very useful for reading books. It gives you the actual feeling of reading a book and has a lot more advantages.  For example, it is eco-friendly, thin and small so that we can easily slip it into a handbag or backpack and also helps to look up the definition of difficult words. I borrowed the second book of the “Hunger Games” trilogy from the library. It’s called “ Catching Fire ”, the first few parts

Black Friday

Sunday my FA-3 is starting. I’m just praying it gets over soon. After that we have our winter vacation for which I will be spending my time doing “Aaaaaaagh………” and relaxing. Now that I have finished ‘Blood of Olympus’ too, I think it’s a bit sad that Leo’s friends never really found out he was alive. Apparently today is “ Black Friday ”. If you stand outside a shop in the US, you will probably get trampled. Last evening at badminton class, our teacher made me and Raksha as team captains. One thing you should take care of- always try to win. Otherwise all the blame goes to you. But we were able to win 2 games out of 3. Once, Anne was a captain at school in our group for a project, There were an overall of 4 team captains in the class. Anne had me and Chandana too in her team. We weren’t really worried because we had all this right in the bag, but Anne was a bit nervous when it was time for submission. We didn’t make her feel better when we asked our teacher if Anne

Hello again, AlHokair Land!

Chandana and Nanditha screamed as their ride turned them upside down and continued to whirl. I watched them on it along with some of our other classmates, feeling amused. Chandana had asked me to come on it. I had said ‘no way’ after watching it turn the riders upside down, sideways and still continue whirling. I knew I would puke if I went on it. Chandana looked just terrified, and she was holding her restraint really tightly, and Nanditha was no more different. After they got out, they looked like they had been in a mini- tornado that had thrown them off later. Chandana’s hair was looking like she had an electric shock. Nanditha was hugging her stomach.  Terrin nearly fell on me. Nanditha told me later while we were at the end of the long queue for the boat ride “You can’t be scared of every ride. You could have come with us.” I remembered their frightened expressions and laughed “Yeah, you guys had a lot of fun on that last ride, right?”   We then went on Hollywood

The long haul and lollipop

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I am just so happy today!!!! We went to Jarir bookstore and bought two of some of my top favorite books. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid- The Long Haul - The Blood of Olympus I finished "The Long Haul" and it was really funny. I just want to say that Greg and his family should avoid road trips. I have never heard of such a complicated trip. When Nida was reading "House of Hades", she did not want anyone to ruin the story for her. She probably should not have said that, 'cause that just made everyone tells her the plot while she plugged her fingers inside her ears. The conversation went something like this: Manasy:      See, at the end, Percy and Annabeth are… Nida:          Stop it! Me:             They get… Nida:           I hate you! It was the same for Manasy while reading "Allegiant". Me:              Something really big happens at the end. Manasy:       I don't want to hear about it! Rakshanda:  Tris dies.

Aaahhh! Memories ....

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Do you know that we are going to have a trip to Al- Hokair next week? We had gone there before 2 years back .Chandana and I can describe our experience so well and vividly you would think it happened only 2 years ago. Anne has gone to India this year and joined a school there. We miss her but we still stay in contact through Gmail and Whatsapp. On the previous trip to Al-Hokair, her hands were overflowing with all types of goodies. She had cotton candy, a few roses, some packets of chicken popcorn and a wonky hat and was juggling all of them. She left to buy more but not before she gave me and Chandana two packets of chicken popcorn to hold. She wanted to take everything back home. But me and Chandana really didn’t get the part of “holding”. So we said a ‘thanks’, and were wolfing down chicken popcorn while watching people scream on a scary ride called Can-Can. It whirls around really fast and the rider’s seats also go way back, so for some time you can see their feet. We wav

Mansaf for dinner

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As Dad opened the front door, I danced around him like an excited puppy. He had bought dinner and I was starving, which was probably my own fault. Mansaf We had a traditional Jordanian dish called  Mansaf , and it looked beautiful to me. It was delicious too. But Mom did not fall in love with it as much as I did. In December we are having our annual day, and nobody knows who the chief guest is going to be yet. I want to do a group song, so I am going for song selections. Since Annual days are important, the school timings are usually extended so that the participating kids can practice. This time, the timings have been extended from 12:40 to 1:00. Do you remember that Malaysia trip I told you about? Well, now it has been cancelled because very few people are going. So, we get to have a normal trip this year. Everyone is guessing that it will probably be to Al-Hokair again since most of us wanted to go there again. Besides, you don’t get cotton candy at Star City. N

3 movies and 2 books

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A complete week of Hajj holidays has been over and now it is the second week. As Dad too has holidays for one week, he wakes me up every morning in a different way. One day, he shook me awake and sat next to me and kept talking until I forced myself out of bed. Another time, he placed the alarm clock under my bed. It did not wake me up, but instead it woke Mom.  I watched 3 movies this week- “ The Syrian Bride ”, “ Psycho ”, and “ Baran ”. After watching “Psycho”, I got a bit scared and never moved an inch away from my parents. But that was only for a day. “Psycho” is a classic 1960 horror-thriller movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It  wasn't  the plot, but the sudden-scary music that really got me. Seriously. Like ‘Scree! Scree! Scree!’ ‘‘The Syrian Bride’’ was full of suspense, mostly like “What’s going to happen? Will she be able to go? Huh? Huh?” “Baran” is very touching and sad, but it is funny also sometimes. According to Mom, I am now old enough to wat

Trip to Malaysia: A missed field trip

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Our school, instead of usually taking us to theme parks or the rides at malls, has planned a 5-day trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.   We were all like “WHAT??!! NOOO!! AAWWW!!!”  Our class was in a state of depression, confusion and anger. This was because of three reasons- A) We did not want to go somewhere alone for 5 days, without our parents. B) We already knew what the answer would be when we would go home. “NO”. C) We had just missed a field trip and now we would have to wait till next year. My Grandpa told me, “You are not yet old enough to go to another country alone, but we can always go together as family.” After seeing the movie “The Conjuring”, I avoided doors, closets, taking long showers, staying somewhere alone for more than 30 seconds, thinking about the scariest parts of the movie and a lot more. But that was only for a few days, thankfully. I was already getting tired of my father doing “Boo!” to me and me screaming. I was describing th

Bathroom raid - A humorous incident

We thought we saw her running into the bathroom with tear-filled eyes. That’s where Alaina, Linda and I went. When we entered we pounded on every stall, yelling “TERRIN! TERRIN!” Most of them were empty. In one of them, a girl who seem to be in third grade poked her head out and looked at us curiously. When we reach the last stall on the end, we banged on the door and said “Terrin, we know you’re in there. Come out.” A voice that sounded like Terrin’s replied. “There is no Terrin in here” Linda said “If you don’t come out, we will come in”. “I already told you, there is no Terrin in here.” I thought Linda was going to break down the door, but before she could, a girl, but not Terrin, looked at us and snapped “WHAT!?? We all screamed, Linda shouted a “Sorry!” and we ran out. I don’t think I’ve ever run this fast in my life. It was Maths class. I was the first to open the door and get in. I saw Terrin sitting there calmly and doing her sums. I wan