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The time when I felt as if I was an outsider was when I first left Malaysia and went oversea, which was to go to Oman. It was about 4 and a half years ago, from now.

It felt very strange and new since it was the first time I had been on airplane. The noises; different ones come from different areas of the airplane, but going in the same destination. My ear.
The noises rang in my ear. Babies crying, people shouting, airplane announcements, even phones ringing.
The smell of gas, coffee and unidentified food filled the air all the time. It gave me a headache. I was tired, as we had been walking in the airport for so long, and it is now 3:42 in the morning. It was unbearable to think that I would have to stay here for much longer.
“So this is how it feels to be in an airplane,” My brain registered.

We arrived at the Oman airport. There were so many foreign people, and were speaking many different languages. Many ladies were wearing black dresses and were covered from head to toe, except for their hands and eyes. They looked a bit scary to me, but apparently, in this country, it was normal.

My stomach tied into a tense knot, while my brain thought of questions. “Will I be happy here in this strange country?” I already missed home. But this will be my home now.

As soon as we went outside, I noticed it was very hot. In Malaysia, it was never this hot, and if it ever was, it was probably because it’s about to rain. We were picked up by a small bus, and i heavy-heartedly got on the bus. “Why me?”
We passed through the streets of Muscat. Everything about this place was strange. The name of this city is strange, the way that there were few trees here, and where there were trees, they were very small or titchy, or were about to die at any moment soon. Being only about 9 and all, I thought that Muscat was a desert, therefore, had no civilization or living things whatsoever. I told my parents this, and they just laughed as a response. I didnt understand why. At the time, the matter seemed quite serious to me.

When we arrived at our new home, we settled in quite nicely. I found my new home comfy. It had huge trees in a big garden in front of the house, and another medium backyard with tall grass. I was very surprised.

The following week, I had to go to a new school. Of course, I met new people. As I walked in the classroom, after being shown the way by the extremely cheery principle, I felt beady eyes boring into my back.
I didnt belong here.
I wanted to walk the other way, towards the door, but there was no way. The principle was blocking, and still smiling.
“Class, this is Marissa.” She introduced.
“Hi Marissa.” The class greeted in unision. It felt uncomfortable.
My eyes scanned for an empty seat, and the only free one was beside a tall, brunnette girl. She was one of the few people who didnt force a hi like most of the class. She didnt smile, didnt look at my direction.
Yepp, it was definite. I didnt belong here.
Instead of feeling welcomed, I felt like I was a mutated alien.
I must find my spaceship that will take me home, I prayed.
At lunch we had to get our lunchboxes and had to go outside to play or eat. Toni, a nice girl went up to me and said “Hi, I’m Toni. Nice to meet you.” Her genuine smile actually made me feel less tense. This was a feeling I had not experienced for a long time.
We said a few things about ourselves, and asked me if I wanted to sit with her and her friends at lunch.
Of course, after that, everything went great. She was a very great tutor, she told me where everything was, and helped me in some subjects I found hard.

Now Toni is one of my closest friends, and if it’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that maybe Oman isnt so wierd after all, and moving isnt so dreadful if you have someone to be with.

I know I was still an outsider even after I met Toni and her friends, but just less.

In Englsih, we started to read a new book called ‘The Outsider’. It was written by an author whose name was S.E. Hinton.  She was 16 years old when she wrote this book, which I found was interesting.

The book is about two sort of cliques, the Socs’ and the Greasers; they both have a fixed stereotype about each other.  The Greasers think that the Socs’ are snobby, rich and spoilt people with rich parents. On the other hand, the Socs’ think that the Greasers are greasy (hence the name), un-educated and low-classed people.

There was a lot of slang words in the book, so we were asked to look them up.

The words were:-

• Paul Newman
• Corvair
• Madras

1) Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He played in many successful movies, as he was was one of the few actors who successfully made the transition from 1950s cinema to that of the 1960s and 1970s. His rebellious and ‘tough’ persona made him perfect for the roles he played in. Some of the movies he played in were:

• Exodus
• The Hustler
• Hud
• Harper
• Cool Hand Luke
• Slap Shot
• The verdict
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2) Corvair

The Chevrolet Corvair is a compact, six passenger automobile produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors for the 1960 through 1969 model years.

3) Madras

A cotton cloth of fine texture, usually with a plaid, striped, or checked pattern.

In class we worked on our magazine articles again and tried to use our own ‘voice’ in our writing. I thought that this was hard because most of us probably havent tried this before, and Mr. Raisdana explained the types of voices, and how to use your own.  He also gave us tips to improve our voices to be stronger and better in our writing.

He explained that there were different types of voices and ours had to be unique to attract readers. There were happy/ excited/ angry/ moody/ sad/ excited styles of voices. 

Then we made our own definition of Voice, and did a few exercises that used our voice. One of them were when we were given a picture, and then given a sense to use to describe the picture. I got a picture of a person sailing, and the sense ‘touch’.

Although we could choose what type of voice we could have, we had to have these important traits: full of energy, enthusiastic, striking, and confident.

We learned that word choice is important in our writing because without it, we wouldnt have an interesting voice. So our homework was to edit our magazine articles and replace common, boring words to more powerful words by using a thesaurus.

Word choice was the next six traits we learned.

I think that it’s difficult to write a  good magazine article without a sufficient amount of vocabulary. I also think that having an online dictionary makes it so much easier, and will use it much more often now that I realise how much it would affect my writing.

In history, we learnt about 21st century warfare, and we could choose a topic about what type of wars  we could study or research that  were in that century. I chose the topic Navel Combat, and chose this video to represent it.

I chose this video because it was quite hard to get better videos of wars on sea, or interviews with survivors. But in my opinon, this video gives a good idea of what it was like to be in the situation where the people on the boats were attacked by the planes above.

Our next writing trait to learn is organization.

We practised this trait by doing a few things in class:

- We wrote our 3 main ideas that we earlier split from a broad idea on a chart.

- We wrote about what we already know about our topic; our opinions; I added in how I feel about art; and what it means to me; as it’s my hobby;  and also what we researched.

- We also added questions that we might want to do research on later; for example; one of my questions was “How long has art been around?”

-We researched different transistions to use and added them in our topic scentences on our google docs. I found it quite easy in some bits of my paragraphs because I already used a few of them; but learned a lot new ones.

-Some of us made surveys; I did as well; but it wasnt very helpful so I couldnt include it in my topic.

In class, we are learning to write a magazine article, and got the freedom to write about absolutely anything we wanted.

I decided that my topic was going to be on Art. But since that is such a wide topic to cover, we brainstromed this topic into smaller parts.

My ideas were:-

-Colours, paint, design, creativity

-feelings, moods, self expression, pleasure, hobby

-imagination, open-mindedness, thoughts

Then we narrowed them into even smaller parts:

- Design

-Felings & moods

-Thoughts inside

After that we had to choose one of these parts to write about in our magazine article. Once we decided our topic scentences, our teacher said  that we could say something like ,” I am going to tell you about…..”, but instead, we can make it more interesting and attention-grabbing for readers.

At the  moment, my topic scentence is:

She sat all alone, her feelings bottled up inside her; hidden, just searching for a way to get out. She slowly picked up the paintbrush, dabs on her favourite colour, Sky blue, and a few other bright colours that make her day. The world around her just seems brighter as soon as she feels comfortable expressing her feelings through her artwork. She forgets what’s bothering her, and everything that makes her unhappy; and enters a whole new world that is her imagination.

I will keep changing and improving this every once in a while.

I glared at my calendar. I realised that tonight was the Fourth of July. For the other pople who don’t have neighbors like ours, the Fourth of July could be fun, it makes people cheery, and it  gives another reason why families and friends get together. It gives people a chane to bond, celebrate, put on fireworks, and invite everyone to their house.

But for me, I think it would be one of the most dangerous days of my life.

“ I absolutely cannot believe it’s the Fourth of July again!” I muttered with frustration. I had hoped this day would somehow never come since last time it happened. I looked out of my bedroom window, and saw Mrs. Smith  unloading an enourmous wooden boxful of what looked like…fireworks!

” This can’t possibly be good!” I complained. The flashback of last year’s Fourth of July made me shudder. The old,clumsy, and possibly growing shorter every day Mr. Smith was the main reason. Him, and his huge cluster of fireworks.

I watched the Smiths as they unloaded another wooden box of fireworks out of their small turqoise car. How all of the fireworks fit in their car, is a mystery. There were bunches of fireworks! The Smiths have gone beserk!!! It’s twice as much fireworks than they had last year; and I thought they could not have gotten more fireworks last year; but there you go. Some people, (like the Smiths) just live to prove you wrong.

The Smiths shoved the boxes to one side of their lawn, hammered one of them open, and started firing them one by one, just like that. I saw Mr. Smith saying something o his wife, and laughed as one of the fireworks rose up and pop. They were bright, and colorful, and it just sort of makes you just want to stay there watching in awe. There were small ones, big ones, blue ones, yellow ones, and every colour invented! I looked up, still mesmerized at first, but then  something inside my stomach started churning and tied in a knot. I don’t know what this means, but what I do know is, it’s not going to be good and I have a feeling it has something tod with the Smiths. I can feel that something terrible is going to happen, but I’m sure not going to stay here and find out. I went downstairs and switched on the TV.

      For a while the Smiths just shot fireworks, but then I heard a BOOM!  Then some gasps, then followed by screams and shrieks. I opened our front door, and glimpsed outside to see what the hype was all about.   The Smiths were wailing, hands in the air, running in circles in their yard in a very anxious manner. I could’nt understand why, until the smell of burnt steak caught up to me. I looked up our house to see the roof burning!!! I yelled and called my family and dragged them out of the house, them with blank faces. Dad had to call the firemen as soon as he realised what was going on.

When the firemen put the fire out, one of them asked how our roof caught on fire. Mum and Dad immediately looked at me! I indignantly shrugged and told them that it had absolutely nothing to do with me. For a while, they did’nt believe me. But then finally, when Mr.Smith decided to come clean, he came up to us rather sheepishly and told us that it was his fault, and that he accidentally fired one of the fireworks the wrong way and said he would pay for the roof damage.

I felt overjoyed that day, because somehow, I knew Mr. Smith would’nt touch a firework for a very long time.

In class, we practised writing first paragraphs that have an interesting description of what we’re going to talk about. Here is my practice opening paragraph:

The dark clouds outside started forming. She sighed and looked out the window as drops of rain poured down from everywhere like broken sprinklers. Then the radio starts playing her favorite song, and she dances around the room, which suddenly burst with colour.  The dark clouds graduallydissapear, the sky lightening up just as her mood does.

Analyze how writers’ use of linguistic and literary features shapes and influences meaning :

I think for me, the most useful skill to use is visualization. It helped me understand the book better by making pictures or videos in my head when reading complicated sentences or paragraphs. I think pictures send the main message that the artist is trying to send to viewers.

We did 2 class work activities related to this skill. One of them was when we had to read passages and sentences that described the two different sides of the island. The peaceful, beautiful, relaxing side, and the vicious, dark, scary and terrifying side. Then we painted them using those descriptions. After we were finished painting, we edited it on picnik and inserted the descriptions we picked.

The other time we used this skill was when we had to pretend we were stranded on an island too, without and adult, just like the boys in the Lord of the Flies book. At first we didn’t know what to do, but then there was a piece of paper explaining what to do, since our teacher was ‘dead’ and floating around videoing us.

I think this book was a bit hard to read, but visualizing helped me understand the book a bit more, since there were lots of  descriptions of nature.

One of the skills I hardly use is predicting. I would like to predict a story next time, it would be interesting to see if I was right or not.

Understand and respond to ideas, viewpoint, themes and purposes in texts:

I think the main idea of this story is that no matter how civilized you are, if you get taken away from it, you will slowly change into id.

I understand the point of this book because Golding made it obvious in the middle. Jack was an organized, civilized and a leader of the choir, but not long after, he turned vicious, selfish, and willing to do anything to survive. Jack is the person that changed most on the island.

I noticed that Simon is the person that changed least. He was a peace-loving, quiet, and knows nature more than anyone on the island. He was still like that at the end of the book.

I agree with all of Golding’s points. I think that if you put civilized people on the island, most would be likely to end up like Jack. For example, if someone didnt know how to speak English, but was surrounded by people who do, you will slowly know how to speak their language. But I think not everyone is like that, people might be like Simon, still sticking to what they believe in.

Analyze how writers’ use of linguistic and literary features shapes and influences meaning:

Simile: “Jack bent down double. He was down like a sprinter” Pg 48. Golding is describing Jack about to run and search for food.

Personification: “He lost himself in a maze of thoughts” Pg 76. This description is about Ralph thinking excitedly before his first meeting at night.

Simile: “The fire growled at them” Pg 45. It is describing how the fire is getting bigger and getting out of hand.

I think the metaphors and the personifications in the book made the book more attention-grabbing and interesting. They also make it easier to understand.

Relate texts to the social, historical and cultural contexts in which they were written:

William Golding, an English novelist, was the author of the huge successful book that still remains now; Lord of the Flies. William Golding was born in 1911, Newquay, Cornwall, UK. I think that this was why there were a lot of English terms that I didn’t understand.

Besides writing, Golding’s hobbies were researching and exploring the myth of the Loch Ness monster. Because of this, he also liked sailing. In the book, almost each chapter mentions the waters surrounding the Island, so I think his hobbies also had an impact on his book.

In 1930, Golding went to Brasenose College, Oxford, to read Natural Sciences. But then 2 years later, he changed to English Literature.

Then Golding fought in World War II, and then continued writing after it ended. I think it had a huge affect on his books, because the book had a lot of connections to the war.

 I know I was supposed to put pictures but there have been some problems so I will post them as soon as possible.

A of  few of my thoughts on the chapters I have read so far are that: 
-why did a lot of the boys just suddenly stop working? They were doing great at first, but now they have broken up; Simon’s wandering around the jungle at night, the littleuns are still crying and scared and noisy, Jack is always hunting pigs and already lost some of civilized things, like clothes, and sense.
-I don’t like the way that the author describes objects and scenes too long. In most of the pages, the author makes it hard to understand the story because he puts in a lot of new vocabulary, and writes long descriptions that are hard to concentrate reading. It gets a bit boring the last few weeks because all of the characters do is fight with each othertimes and there isn’t a real plot to the chapters sometimes.
-I like the way the author changes the mood of the island. Like how the island can be so beautiful, and relaxing, but can also be this scary, smelly, tangly island that has monsters on it.
- I think it would be a bit different if girls were stranded on the island together, but also a bit similar. I think girls are a bit more calm about agreements, and are more likely to listen to each other than boys, but I think they could also fight and fall apart too, but in a different way. Boys are more likely to hit each other, but girls are more likely to hurt each other verbally.
-I would realate to Simon,  it would be a bit awkward being stranded on an island with people who always argue, or don’t get on, or people who are very different from you. So I understand why he wanders around alone, but I still would’nt walk alone in the jungle alone at night. I would try to be positive about the situation instead of being a bit grumpy like Simon or Jack.

- I think all the characters are different in many ways, and they should somehow work out their differences and work together to survive. I think that if they continue to ignore each other like they do now, someone is’nt going to make it..