English Composition I – Multimedia Project

Where is it Located and Why is it So Amazing?

Navarre Beach is Located in the Florida Panhandle. It is in between Pensacola and Destin. Navarre is a very small town that I have lived in almost all my life. It is known for being one of the most relaxing places in Florida!

Reasons Why Navarre Beach is Florida’s Best Kept Secret!

• It is a small town. Even though many tourist come to Navarre every year. There are still many people that are unaware of this luxury.
• It is isolated on a separate island. Navarre Beach is still obviously part of Navarre, but has a bridge to cross over to the beach, making it more private.
• Nearby Activities. Navarre may be small, but places next to it, such as Destin and Pensacola have all sorts of options to view and have fun with.
• The Emerald Coast Life. On clear days you may be able to see all sorts of wildlife in the Ocean and be able to fish for them on the pier.

More Options For Navarre Beach

I personally visit Navarre Beach almost everyday. I do not want to miss out on any of the new experiences that Navarre Beach has to offer everyday. Most of my friends from Navarre High School and many other schools come to relax and hangout with others every weekend. I personally live on the Navarre sound and it is amazing, but it can not compete with everything Navarre Beach has to offer. Everyday you will see many people swimming, fishing, surfing, and coasting. My favorite place to go on Navarre Beach is “Juana’s.” Juana’s is a water front hangout grill and bar. It is very open and well managed. It is more along the sound side of the beach than the Ocean side. Either way they have multiple volley ball courts, sports rooms, and bars, with great food.

As you can see there are so many options and fun experience that Navarre Beach and Navarre itself has to offer. It is not just for tourists, it is amazing for locals and all who come to seek new experiences! Word Count: 381 by David Vickery

Florida Keys begins at the southeastern tip of Florida, there approximately 1,700 islands that make-up the FL Keys. The keys are most known for its amazing beautiful beaches and the most prettiest sunsets.

Different Keys in Florida:

• Key Largo
• Marathon
• Key West
• Big Pine Key
• Holiday Isle 
• Sand Key

Famous spots in Key West:

• Key West aquarium
• Dry Tortugas national park
• Smathers Beach
• Mallory Square

I vacationed with my family at the keys a couples of times during my breaks during high school years, we stayed at Key West, Marathon, and Key largo. I would like to say though Key West i had the best memories with my family.

We rented a small house on the water, for a week and just adventured and overall was a new experienced for our family.

We also did some fun activities at the house we were renting at, we rented paddle boards, kayak, and paddle boats and explore the ocean. Even had a manatee come up to us near the deck.

Overall Florida Keys really helped me and my family get closer, and shared a really good experience. One thing that I learned from this place is that its okay to take a breather and relax, you only get one life to live so do it they way you want that will make you happy.

March 2019

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I traveled to multiple countries in 7 days. It was amazing, I went from Miami, Florida, to the Bahamas, Honduras, then to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and lastly Costa Maya in Mexico. It was so incredible getting to experience the different cultures. There’s so many options of things to do when you are in a port or just on the cruise ship. For example:

On the Ship:

• Go carts
• Mini golf
• Day-drinking
• Clubs
• Fancy dining
• Waterpark
• Pool
• Game room
• Spa
• Plays and Musicals
• Laser tag

In Ports:

• Different excursions such as, dolphin tours, zip lining, etc
• Shopping
• Snorkeling (my favorite)
• Site seeing
• Talking to natives
• Renting scooters, bikes, and cars for the day
• Food (the best)

This is one of my favorite pictures that my mom took. Not to brag or anything but I was also the first one on the boat to jump in. The water was so crystal clear it was crazy. I saw a huge manta ray, some barracuda and apparently they do not like shiny things ( I had a ring on), there was also a shipwreck and it was cool to explore and touch. Learning about this area made me think about how amazing this world is and how beautiful every little can be. Even the hour long boat ride was a fantastic experience, we saw dolphins and huge sea turtles swimming alongside the catamaran. I have always had a love for the water, and being able to live near it and vacation to even prettier places makes me feel complete and as if I’m back at home.

This was my first time going out of the country and I’m so happy I got to do it. Meeting new people, seeing cool things for the first time, eating different types of food and trying weird drinks is really what life is about to me. If you ever get the chance to do something new do it, in the end you’ll look back and be happy you made the decision to do it!

Is this really home?

When you dread waking up in the morning.

When you cannot muster the energy,

to come out of your room.

All because you don’t want to face him.

Is it really a home?

When you try to stay away for as long as you can.

When you join clubs and do activities,

just to stay out later.

Just so you don’t have to deal with him.

Is it really home?

When everyday you can’t go without crying.

When you can’t walk into a room,

without it being filled with yelling after you enter.

Just because he is there.

Is it really a home?

When your ceiling is falling in on you,

and there’s mold in the corner.

When half of your floor is carpet,

while the other is cement.

Just because he can only spend money on himself.

Is it a home?

When you try to go to sleep as early as you can,

and shower when he isn’t around.

When you pick times to come out of your room,

and pretend to be asleep when you hear his footsteps.

Just so you don’t have to see him.

Can you call it a home?

When you have to ask for days to have food,

or just being too scared to ask for some.

When you have to cook and clean,

while he sits and drinks while watching football.

Just like he always does.

I must ask myself everyday,

every morning,

every night.

Is where I am living a home?

Or is it just a place I must be?

Am I trapped in a world,

where I have to be afraid everyday?

Is it really a home?

Is this really a home?

Or is it a prison.

When he is present,

when he is sitting where he always sits.

Just because he is there,

is this really my home.

This.

This place I stay.

This place where I must stay,

day and night.

This.

This is not a home.

what is Dubai Known for ?

• dubai landmark building is the Burj Khalifa , which is 829.8 meters; its the city main part of interest cause its the tallest in the world
• the Dubai Mall provides entry to the Burji Khalifa and the great Dubai Aquarium
  • and shopping malls that come complete with mammoth aquariums and indoor ski slopes. But this city has many cultural highlights and things to do, as well as all the glamorous modern add-ons.  
• You can take a ride along Dubai creek in a traditional dhow
• the Dubai fountain is the world largest tallest performing fountain modeled on the famous mountains of Bellagio in las Vegas  
• Camel racing is a very popular sport in Dubai , similar to what football is to the USA and hockey to Canada. -given the size of the camel only children can participate in racing them.

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Dubai is Bigger then life

Cultural Facts :

• Only Non-Muslims are allowed t consume alcohol
• kissing or holding hands in public in Dubai is strictly illegal and can result in fines.
• the sale of pork is only legal for non muslims
• Women Cant wear anything shorter then knee-length.

• Dubai police force spends more on each of there supercars than it costs to send a child o college in the USA.

You have to love gold ..

There are Atms in Dubai that dispense gold bars and 40% of all physical gold traded in 2013 occurred in Dubai. Altogether , that gold weighed more than 354 elephants!

• As Dubai is A Muslim Religion you will not find any pork dishes in the major .
  • – instead lamb , camel , beef and chicken are poular options .
• National dish:
  • Shawarma . This popular dish has traveled for beyond the UAE – made fro slow-roasted and spices meat usually chicken , lamb – A shawarma is a kind of middle eastern sandwhich.

Palms Jumeirah

The palms Jumeirah island is so large that you can even see it from space, and its the largest man made island in the entire world

The Best Vacation place

Wildwood New Jersey is by far the best vacation spot. Wildwood is a vacation spot me and my whole family go to every summer. My dad calls it the poor mans Disney World. My family and I play a game to see who can spot the ferris wheel (you can see it many miles before you get to wildwood) first gets to pick the first thing to do on the boardwalk. The reason I love going to wildwood is because of the board walk. It is a fun place to experience and have a good time with your family.

Attractions to do on the boardwalk

• Waterpark
• Amusement park
• Riding bikes in the morning
• Mini golf
• Riding on the tram car
• Eating gelato
• Getting Laura’s Fudge
• Souvenir shops
• Arcades

The Boardwalk is a happy and exciting place for me and my family to visit every summer. It brings my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles together since, we all live so far away from each other. The week down at the shore we share a condo right off the boardwalk. The weather is always nice during the summer and is between 80 to 90 degrees. Which, is why my favorite part is riding bikes in the morning on the boardwalk, and go to Snow Whites for breakfast with my whole family. I also love going to the amusement park at night it is so beautiful with everything lit up.

Wildwood NJ is the best place to go on vacation with your family. It’s a family-friendly place and there is so much fun things to do for cheap. Wildwood New Jersey is my familiar place and I can’t wait to go back next summer!

As a freshman band student, my first experience with West Florida High School was the band room. At first glance, it’s not pretty. It’s cluttered, smells strange, and it has a really sketchy bathroom. It’s repulsive at first glance.  

It remains repulsive to this day. 

It really isn’t much. It has a closet, the band director’s office, and two open storage areas around the air conditioning unit. Along the walls it has cabinets that smell like Bandos (our marching shoes), which is by no means a pleasant smell. It also has a water fountain and a horrible bathroom, but nobody uses those. The bathroom is only to be used by the truly desperate, and the fountain if you want Typhoid Fever. The floor is covered in a scratchy blue carpet, discolored by age. It was a horrible decision for a band room; the brass’s spit remains in the carpet until it is deep cleaned. 

And yet, I love it.  

It’s an unsaid thing that the students in West Florida’s band flock there when available. Before school, during breaks, and after school. As a freshman in band, your first experience with high school begins in the band room. Rookies meet section leaders and learn all there is for the future marching season, and you spend hours practicing and circling back to the band room for one reason or another. It develops an outwardly feeling, one that’s beyond school and beyond home, yet somewhere in the middle too. 

You won’t find that feeling anywhere else. 

You can have as many classes as you want, but band class will always feel different. Not only do you immediately have a common interest with the people around you, but you spend so much time with them that you know them like no one outside of band ever would. Involuntarily or not, they become your family. The band students have a subculture that’s one of the strangest things to witness and be a part of, and it all begins the moment you step foot in the band room for the first time. Nothing ever remains hidden in band either. Not your break ups, not your high school drama, nothing. Somehow, we all know what’s going on with the other even if you’ve barely talked, and it’s probably because band absorbs your social life like a sponge. It should be unsettling and creepy, but that’s just how band is. 

The band room is where it all the shenanigans occur.

In the West Florida band room, we have all sorts of stories. Some funny, some sad, but all memorable. One time, our saxophone section leader managed to get himself locked in the storage areas after school, and nobody spared him any mercy. It was posted on many social media accounts, and he was teased endlessly for it. We seem to have a lot of trouble with doors, because at one point all our cymbal players were locked in the band room closet. We had to remove the glass and they had to climb through the window, and everybody snickers when they think about it. The drumline is made of strange kids, and in our band, they have a weird obsession with hide and seek. Our battery captain was found in a cabinet 5 feet in the air, with maybe a 2 x 2 space to sit in. We made fun of him for that until he graduated, and though no one mentions it now we all think about it. 

Sometimes, the band room feels more like home than your actual home. In a chaotic way, of course. 

On the days where we have a football game, students usually don’t go anywhere. They lurk around the band room like creeps and go around doing stupid things if they aren’t in a corner on their phone. There’s the braiding area, typically in the front of the band room, which usually involves a lot of crying out because of tight braids, and there’s the area where people play extremely aggressive games of Uno. When it gets to be 5:15, a mad scramble occurs to gather everything people need for the football game. It’s a flurry of red and black, not to mention yelling. I’ve seen some people walk in, take in the scene, and leave as quickly as possible. On the way back from the stadium, students are tired and worn, and seeing the band room gives you a sense of relief because now you can finally take off that hot and uncomfortable uniform. Sometimes people leave as soon as possible, but others stick around, hanging in the weirdness that is a room in a school building hours after school has ended. 

The band room is the last thing you see when you leave high school. 

Once you commit yourself as a band kid, your social life disappears. Being in band is a commitment, and that involves spending many long hours in the band room or practice field rehearsing. It’s not uncommon to hear band students wandering in the school halls saying, “I’m sorry, I have band” instead of hanging out with non-band students. The version with band kids typically goes, “Dude, we have a football game, but want to go grab Whataburger after?” and that’s that. It goes on for four years, if everything works out. There’s always a big speech at the end of the marching season for the seniors, and though they act all tough and above the underclassman about it, you can tell they’re going to miss it. When your senior 7^th period band exam is over, you walk out of the band room for the last time.  

The seniors always look back. 

This band room will not be around for next year because West Florida High School has relocated. In four days, I will walk out of the band room for the last time. I’m not ready for it, and I firmly hold that we are all leaving that band room too early. The new band room isn’t like the old. It won’t replace the old memories, it won’t be a cluttered smelly mess, and there will certainly be no bathroom that contains angry cockroaches. It’s supposed to be a lot better than the old one. 

I’ll miss the old band room anyway. 

Carnegie Hall’s History

• Carnegie Hall is one of the oldest and most famous music venues in the United States.
• Idea constructed from Andrew Carnegie and built May 13th, 1890.
• Less than 75 groups from around the world (including individual performers) are selected to perform at Carnegie Hall each year.
• Must be selected upon the “New York Board of Musical Membership”.
• Average ticket cost for Parquet Seatings are $920-$1,120 per person ages 16+.

My Trip to Carnegie Hall 2018

During my Freshmen year at Escambia High School in 2016, Escambia was selected to perform at Carnegie Hall’s Venue after our band directors sent 1 hour of pre-selected music to the “New York Board of Musical Membership”. Our performance date was not until June 11th, 2018. NYBMM give performers a 2 year notice to finalize any musical adjustments and to be financially prepared throughout every performer. The cost of this trip per person was exactly $975 for a 6 day trip, 5 star hotel and 5 star full course dinner served by the Carnegie Hall Committee and chain restaurant “Nusr-Et Steakhouse” (Salt Bae). Our concert venue time was at 3:45 p.m and sold out 4 days being posted on the Carnegie Hall website. The average ticket cost at our showing for parquet seats were around $780-$800. All men and women performing were required to have a specific clothing attire paid out of pocket to be eligible to perform. You can’t put a price on how amazing this experience was. The formality, positivity and luxury of Carnegie Hall is like no other experience.

There’s a place I travel to from time to time, a place that exists both in, and outside of lines. A place that, when things of value are placed inside, become timeless and removed from the measures in kind. This place that I describe to you, 14 carats worth its value to, images opaque in seven styles of Blue, is my mind. And within it lies a deep, spiritual bond for music and the creation of it. Now the lines that I speak of tend to look something like this:

Notice the clear distinction in where the lines start and stop with both the Treble and Bass Clef. The areas one is supposed to musically color within. But also notice the notes that are much farther outside of where the lines end. The notes that do not conform to the norm and choose to live and play by their own rules. Which, in the world of music, one of the first things you’re told and taught is to learn all the rules in regards to chord structure, progressions, notes, keys, scales, over and undertones and anything else associated with “proper” music creation. Once you’ve mastered all the rules and guidelines, break them. In music, realistically, there are no rules. The only thing that truly rules over music is your ears. If it sounds good, then it is good. It’s “proper” music creation.

While sitting in my home studio, either at my drum machine triggering a multitude of drum sounds from a kick to a snare, to a conga or a tambourine, or at one of my many keyboards trying to find the perfect chord progression for an R&B song, I begin to see things differently. The world begins to shift from a place filled with shapes and sizes to one filled with head-nods and flowing vibrance. I begin to see notes dancing in my mind as clearly as a room full of people watching the Super Bowl on a 4K Television. I begin to hear colors. The blaring brightness of a yellow, or the deathly darkness of purple. Loud and clear as a passing train horn.

The most difficult part of being a music creator, or creator of any sort, whether an architect, clothing designer, sculptor or interior decorator, is getting what’s in your head, out. So the rest of the world can hear and see what you envisioned, just as clearly as you envisioned it. And in that process I find some of the purest beauty I’ve ever experienced. While in that moment or mode of creation, time doesn’t exist. Any and all emotions I may be feeling at the time, be it conscious or sub-conscious, are channeled directly through my fingers, into my instruments, and ultimately out through the music. And in that moment, the energy or feeling is forever and sonically captured, never to be forgotten or lost, but merely transferred when experienced by another. The power that music holds to heal, console, motivate, empower, captivate and educate is truly mind boggling. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe there are two universal languages that any and all man upon this earth can understand, relate to and come together with; Those two things are Love, and Music. Regardless if you were born and raised on a Tibetan mountain top and ended up in the Favelas of Brazil, or born in Moscow now living in the bush of Madagascar, one thing that can completely erase any and all lines of divide is music. Put the right tune on, and the entire left side of the room will be seamlessly dancing with the entire right. All the while neither side can speak a single verbal word to each other as they do not share a spoken language, but one language they do all understand is what brought them together in the first place, music.

So I implore you to take a trip inside your own mind from time to time. In it you just may discover an untapped cache of wealth only accessible to your inner self. What might you find once you open the door to that unknown place? A love for fashion, an innate knack for art, a strong desire to help people, or maybe a quiet place to just, be. Dare to take that journey to the unknown and find what lies within. I’d invite you to walk with me, down my path of discovery, but I can’t promise you safe passage back. Some have come and gone, some have come and never left. Though who said never returning was a bad thing? My internal peace is music… What say you about yours?

…”and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” – Friedrich Nietzche

Silent Moon By Christina Montis

The moon is my place. I can see it every night, I can see it anywhere, my familiar place.

It’s calming looking up at the moon and the cool breeze rubbing my face. The moon has many phases and sometimes plays hide and go seek. I can always find it as its soft silvery light brings brightness to dark skies. The moon brings peace and comfort to our long days, with that little glow at night. This was a place my father and I shared as a little girl, I called it our silent moon talks.

As a child, my dad stood under the moonlight to end his day. I would tip-toe outside and softly put my tiny hand into his big bear claw. He would give a little squeeze but would continue to gaze at the moon. No words to me, just that little squeeze of knowledge. I often wondered what he was thinking, I never asked while standing there. Hearing the bugs talk to each other as cars speed by our house was distracting when talking with the moon, and still no words. I liked the nights when the moon seemed to smile, it felt like he was looking at my dad and me. This phase on the moon was my favorite. Sometimes it felt like hours passed standing on the driveway gazing at the moon. Occasionally, I would see my dad glance down at me from the corner of his eyes. I would act like I didn’t see him, but a smile would creep out. During our silent moon talk, he would pull his zippo lighter out and flip it open, the smell of lighter fluid would fill my nose; I didn’t like it much. He would then light his Marlboro Red cigarette as he blew the smoke out. It looked like clouds passing over the moon. Our talk was soon over when my dad took a deep breath and then looked down at me, smiling. “Ready to go, Nene?”  Smiling with excitement mostly because my legs hurt standing there. We would start walking inside guided by the moonlight. I would turn around and watch the moon disappear into a sea of trees.

As an adult the moon is still my place. I can see it every night, I can see it anywhere, my familiar place.

It is a place full of memories and peace spending those nights with my dad. The moon may hang high but always close to my heart. After my long days I walk outside and look up at him to have a talk silent but comforting. I tip-toe to the end of the driveway thinking in silence collecting my thoughts. I no longer wonder what my dad’s thought were, I now understand. I smoke a cigarette and watch the smoke pass by like clouds, just like when I was a little girl. I take a deep breath; my mind is clear. Walking inside, I watch the moon disappear as it guides me into my home.

Our silent moon talks. I can see it every night, I can see it anywhere, my familiar place.

My dad no longer stands next to me in my familiar place. Still, I can feel him here for our silent moon talk. I’m not able to stand next to him and smile with the moon and talk with my dad. But when I do need a silent moon talk, I can do it any night and everywhere. The moon is my place.