My 25 Random Facts

1. My mom is my best friend; I literally tell her everything.
2. I love every type of music.
3. I love spending summer days with my riding team at camp.
4. I have Anuptaphobia, and I'm scared of bugs, heights, and the dark.
5. I like to be unique, and do/say/have things that no one else does.
6. I ride horses because I have a bond with them, not because I like to compete.
7. I love any number that has the number "7" in it.
8. Lavender, sage, and pearl will be my wedding colors.
9. My first car will not be a car, it will be a Chevy Silverado 2500 HD truck..
10. My favorite drink is Raspberry or Peach Iced Tea.
11. I've had a boy best friend since the 4th grade, and no "boyfriend" could ever make me drop him as a friend.
12. Dark-colored sodas and Oreos make me deathly sick.
13. In the 6th grade, I bought a fish and named him Nico after my boyfriend. Not long after my boyfriend and I broke up, and every morning I would get mad just looking at my pet fish, knowing that he was named after someone I couldn't stand.
14. Something about "sex talks" makes me pass out...in class, at home, with friends, anywhere.
15. I dedicate every ride to my grandfather, who died about 2 years ago.
16. I have the smallest hands for a 15 year old; no one can even compare.
17. I put sunscreen on and then tanning lotion, even though it completely defeats the purpose.
18. My brother and I look absolutely nothing alike, and people ask if we have the same dad all the time.
19. I've always wanted to live in Australia.
20. I want to work at a zoo or have something to do with animals when I get older.
21. My favorite food is green-bean casserole.
22. I'm more worried about my grades than my parents are, and I strive to get straight A's,
23. I have a coin collection, even though that's totally nerdy.
24. I love Mark Michael's singing voice, I make him sing to me all the time. He will be the next Justin Bieber, but better
25. I love to walk along railroad tracks with my dad.

Sara: Character Profile

• Name of character and family relationship- Sara Fitzgerald; mother of Anna, Kate, and Jesse, wife of Brian
• Approximate age and physical description of character- Middle aged; long dark hair, fine collarbones, about 5'3
• Profession in life- Former lawyer, now a full time mom and practical nurse
• Personality traits- Strong, caring mostly about Kate, uncaring about Anna and Jesse
• Interests and hobbies- taking care of Kate, dresses
• Quirks- practically careless about Anna
• Who character is closest to in story- Kate
• A good direct quotation from the character himself/herself that gives a clear look at the character's thoughts.  Remember page number.
• Anything thing else that you find interesting and unique

Somebody's Keeper

     Recently, I have found myself as someone's "keeper" in my family. She's only 6 months old, and she's just learning how to talk and walk. But, my baby cousin means the world to me. I call her Lizard, even though her name is Elizabeth. I know right now, that my aunt won't be able to provide the best life for Lizard, considering she's a constant relapsing drug addict. Lizard's father isn't quite in the picture either. But, I know that whatever she needed, I'd help her in a heartbeat. From learning how to walk/talk or needing a ride to the mall with her friends, I'll be there for her. I believe that everyone deserves to have one special person in their life that they look up to and count on (whether or not it's your parents) and I want to be that person for her. I absolutely love my baby cousin, and I can promise that I'll always be her keeper, whether she needs one or not.

My Sister's Keeper

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.jodipicoult.com/images/jodi-burro.jpg&imgrefurl=http://dodyharis.blogspot.com/2010/07/get-to-know-jodi-picoult.html&usg=__H_VyYYKrpxJxCRDu5COvFqgi_3c=&h=322&w=440&sz=33&hl=en&start=26&zoom=1&tbnid=gQ2URCPi6mLdyM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=132&ei=pending&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djodi%2Bpicoult%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1209%26bih%3D534%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=398&page=2&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:18,s:26&tx=101&ty=43

     As little girls spent their time coloring, playing with barbies, dressing up, or having play dates, Anna Fitzgerald was saving her sister's life. From the moment Anna was born she went under numerous surgeries to save her sister Kate from cancer. Kate&Anna's parents had Anna for one reason: To donate organs, cells, blood, etc. to Kate when she gets sick. Of course they love Anna like any parent would, but Anna finally gets sick of all the poking and prying. She hires a professional lawyer by the name of Campbell Alexander to sue her parents for the rights to her own body. I think that "My Sister's Keeper" is going to be a heart-felt and life changing novel for me. So far, it seems like an extremely good book and I love it.

McCandless Goes Heroically Into the Wild

By: Kelly “kMac” McCloskey

To most people, canoeing down the Colorado River into Mexico with nothing but a backpack or camping inside of an abandoned bus for 112 days in the Alaskan bush seems to be impossible and crazy; but to Chris McCandless, it was everyday life. In the novel Into the Wild, John Krakauer describes Chris McCandless’s life before he died in the Alaskan bush in 1992.  Between photographs, journal entries, friends, and family, Krakauer was able to share McCandless’s astonishing story with the world. Many people became annoyed with McCandless’s story, and they thought of him as another guy who, “didn’t know the first thing about surviving in the backcountry,” (Krakauer 178), but I don’t think that that is true at all.  I believe Chris McCandless was a hero in disguise that fulfilled his dreams of living in the wild. 

            Chirs McCandless, between his life and death, is a complete inspiration to me. After Chris had died, people thought he was stupid and lacked common sense all because he didn’t start a forest fire to save his life. Chris’s sister, Carine, stated to Krakauer, “Chris would never, ever, intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life” (Krakauer 198). This shows that Chris wasn’t stupid or lacked common sense. To me, if Chris would have started a forest fire, people would have hated him more! Chris didn’t want to harm the environment to save his own life, and I think that people should appreciate that. But, of course the people of Alaska turned it around and tried to make Chris look like an idiot for not starting a forest fire, which clearly didn’t make any sense.

            Also, many people tried to make McCandless look like he was mentally insane for living off the land in Alaska for 2 years straight without anyone else by his side. Carine also explained that, “He was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial- he always had friends, and everybody liked him- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely”(Krakauer 107). If Chris was mentally insane, then he clearly wouldn’t have had friends and people would have said something from the beginning. But, all because Chris wanted to live off of the land, by himself, but everyone claimed that he was crazy and insane. No one took the time to think, What if he was just extremely independent? What if he was fulfilling his dreams? What if he was trying to prove something to himself and the world? Instead of thinking about the positive things Chris might have been trying to do, everyone wanted to jump to the most common negative perspective: Chris McCandless must have been insane. But, he definitely wasn’t.

            In Chris’s final journal entry, he wrote: “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED” (Krakauer 189). This completely proves that Chris McCandless understood that he needed other people in his life, and that he couldn’t live on his own forever. He wanted to be around people and he wanted to share his accomplishments with people he loved and cared about. I think that his last journal entry proved a lot about Chris and how even though he loved nature and traveling, he also loved people and society. He might not have fit in as well as most people, but he definitely fit in somewhere. He had family and friends he knew he could go back to at any time, and he also knew that his travels meant a lot to him. In the end, Chris obviously missed people and felt the need to be a part of society.

            Even though I believe Chris McCandless was hero, most other people don’t agree. Since Chris died in the wild, people believe that he didn’t do anything outstanding and he couldn’t take the Alaskan bush. Also, many people think that just because Chris didn’t save anyone’s life or help anyone, that he wasn’t a hero. When Krakauer wrote his book about Chris, people responded the letter saying that he was stupid, dumb, and he had no idea what he was doing. Some people might think this of McCandless, but I don’t believe such a thing.

            As you can see, McCandless was a heroic in a unique, but obvious way. People should honor Chris, because he taught people that their dreams are possible and that they should go for them. He may not be the usual hero people think of, but he is definitely a hero in his own way. Chris McCandless deserves the honor and respect like any leader.

Chris McCandless's Personality & Good Looks.

Chapter and page #	Description/quote from novel	What impression you get about Chris with this character trait or description?
Chapter 1, page 4	“Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be 24 years old and said he was from South Dakota.  He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and ‘live off the land fowr a few month.’”	Chris is not physically fit for walking into such a dangerous environment.  He seems a little crazy.
Chapter 2	“When they flew away, they took McCandless’s remains, a camera with five rolls of exposed film, the SOS note, and a diary- written across the last two pages of a field guide to edible plants- that recorded the young man’s final week in 113 terse, enigmatic entries.” (pg.13) “At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighed sixty-seven pounds.” (pg.14)	Chris had very few items with him while he was in Alaska, he only kept what he thought was necessary. But, the few things he did have left with him completely summed up his last few years. McCandless was extremely unhealthy at the time of his death.
Chapter 3	“McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. There was something arresting about the youngster’s eyes. Dark and emotive, they suggested a trace of exotic blood in his heritage- Greek, maybe, or Chippewa- and conveyed a vulnerability that made Westerberg want to take the kind under his wing.” – Wayne Westerberg (pg.16) “He had the kind of sensitive good looks that women made a big fuss over, Westerberg imagined. His face had a strange elasticity: It would be slack and expressionless one minute, only to twist suddenly into a gaping, oversize grin that distorted his features and exposed a mouthful of horsy teeth. He was nearsighted and worse steel-rimmed glasses. He looked hungry.” –Wayne Westerberg (pg.16-17)	The way Wayne Westerberg described McCandless gave me a clear look of what he looked like and why so many people were willing to take him in This also gave me another clear picture of McCandless, but this gave me a better physical description of him. He wasn’t a very ugly or scary looking guy, when he was clean shaven he looked like a normal guy.
Chapter 4	“McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with the law, savoring the intermittent company of the other vagabonds he met along the way.” (pg. 29) “Can this be the same Alex that set out in July, 1990? Malnutrition and the road have taken their toll on his body. Over 25 pounds lost. But his spirit is soaring.” – McCandless (pg.37)	McCandless was pleased by the minor things in life. Such as the beauty of the earth, and not by family and friends. Chris knew that he wasn’t in a very healthy state. He knew that he wasn’t the same person as when he first started, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was keep traveling.
Chapter 5	“But in truth he was real good with the dogs. They’d follow him around, cry after him, want to sleep with him. Alex just had a way with animals.” – Jan Burres (pg. 45) “After an extended argument Burres also got McCandless to accept some long underwear and other warm clothing she though he’d need in Alaska. ‘He eventually took it to shut me up,’ she laughs, ‘ but the day after he left, I found most of it in the van. He’d pulled it out of his pack when we weren’t looking and hid it up under the seat.’”	This showed that Chris truly did have a way with nature and animals. Also, it showed that he seemed more content playing and socializing with animals then human beings. McCandless didn’t want any other help from people. He wanted what he thought he NEEDED and didn’t expect anything from anyone else to help him out unless he asked.
Chapter 6	“He was polite, friendly, well-groomed.” (pg. 50) “Wearing jeans and a wool sweater; McCandless looks tan, stron, and healthy.” (pg. 55)	Chris knew how to be nice, social, and clean when he wanted to be. This shows that Chris wasn’t always scrawny, unhealthy, and malnourished. Before his trip he was completely and 100% healthy and good looking.
Chapter 7	“When McCandless hugged Borah good-bye, she says, ‘I noticed he was crying…’” – Gail Borah (pg. 68) “‘My mom doesn’t like a lot of my hired help,’ Westerberg says, ‘and she wasn’t real enthusiastic about meeting Alex, either. But I kept bugging her, telling her ‘You gotta meet this kid,’ and so she finally had him over for supper. They hit it off immediately. The two of ‘em talked nonstop for five hours.’” – Wayne Westerberg (pg. 67)	Chris knew that even though he didn’t plan on being that long, there was a massive chance that he would never come back, and he was actually upset about it McCandless always seemed to make a big impression on people that are extremely difficult to talk to or get along with. He had a special way of opening up to those kinds of people and getting along with them.
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10	“Chris almost always had short hair and was clean shaven. And the face in the picture was extremely gaunt. But I knew right away. There was no doubt. It was Chris.” – Sam McCandless (pg. 101-102) “Across the top of the first one, dating from McCandless’s initial visit to Carthage, in 1990, he had scrawled ‘EXEMPT EXEMPT EXEMPT EXEMPT’ and given his name as Iris Fucyu. Address: ‘None of your damn business.’ Social Security number: ‘I forget.’ But on the second form, dated March 30, 1992, two weeks before he left for Alaska, he’d signed his given name: ‘Chris J. McCandless.’ And in the blank for Social Security number he’d put down. ‘228-31-6704.’” (pg. 101)	Chris’s entire had changed so much that it was hard to recognize him, but his family knew right away At first, McCandless wanted to be completely unknown by the world, carrying no information or leaving no information of who he used to be. But, over two years, he decided that he was going to leave all his true information with Westerberg and let his true identity be known.
Chapter 11	“He was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial- he always had friends, and everybody liked him- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.” – Carine McCandless (pg. 107) “‘He was always raising wildlife,’ says Billie. ‘He’d find some animal in a trap, take it home, amputate the injured limb, heal it, and then let it go again. Once my dad hit a mother deer with his truck, making an orphan of its fawn. He was crushed. But he brought the baby deer home and raised it inside the house, behind the woodstove, just like it was one of his kids.’” – Billie McCandless (pg. 108)	Chris was never an outcast; people truly did like him. Sometimes, he just didn’t want to be around people. He was completely independent. Billie is talking about how her dad had a special way with animals. This relates to Chris because, he too, also had a special way with animals and loved being around them.
Chapter 12	“When he walked into the Annandale house, he had a scruffy beard, his hair was long and tangled, and he’d shed thirty pounds from his already lean frame.” (pg. 118) “Chris’s smoldering anger, it turns out, was fueled by a discovery he’d made two summers earlier, during his cross-country wanderings. When he arrived in California, he’d visited the El Segundo neighborhood where he’d spent the first six years of his life. He called on a number of old family friends who still lived there, and from their answers to his queries, Chris pieced together the facts of his father’s previous marriage and subsequent divorce- facts to which he hadn’t been privy.” (pg. 121)	Even before Chris’s big adventure, he took many other trips and was already used to letting himself go. Chris had been holding a lot of anger in and finally he started to take it out on everyone around him. Come to find out he had found out about his father’s marriage and began to completely hate and despise his parents.
Chapter 13	“‘What’s amazing,” says Carine as she studies these images of her brother, ‘is that even though the pictures were taken ten years apart, his expression is identical.’” – Carine McCandless (pg. 127-128) “’I just don’t understand why he had to take those kind of chances,’ Billie protests through her tears. ‘I just don’t understand it at all.’” – Billie McCandless (pg.132)	Carine noticed that Chris was always the way he was. He didn’t change over a period of time. He was born the way he always was. Even though Chris traveled and took risks all the time because he enjoyed it, his parents never truly understood why he would want to do such a thing. They never understood what Chris was about.
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16	“MCandless was candid with Stuckey about his intent to spend the summer alone in the bush, living off the land. ‘He said it was something he’d wanted to do since he was little,’ says Stuckey. ‘Said he didn’t want to see a single person, no airplanes, no sign of civilization. He wanted to prove to himself that he could make it own his own, without anybody else’s help.’” – Gaylord Stuckey (pg. 159) “McCandless was a weak swimmer and had confessed to several people that he was in fact afraid of the water.” (pg. 170)	McCandless shared his true intentions of going out into the wild with one person, and this truly reflects on McCandless and his ideas of life so far. Chris wasn’t completely fearless, and the one thing that probably would have been most useful on his trips was to overcome his fear of water. Even though he took a canoe trip hundreds of miles in the West, he admits to being afraid of water.
Chapter 17	“Andy Horowitz, one of McCandless’s friends on the Woodson High cross-country team, had mused that Chris ‘was born into the wrong century. He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today’s society gives people.’” – Andy Horowitz (pg. 174) “The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent.” –Roman (pg. 186)	It wasn’t like Chris was hard to figure out. People understood what he liked and what he wanted to do, it just wasn’t normal and still isn’t normal to do this day in age. Adults don’t understand why young people do the things that they do. So, the people that tried to understand McCandless without meeting him, talking to him, or spending time with him can’t even try to understand why he did what he did.
Chapter 18	“HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” (pg. 189) “Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.” (pg. 199)	McCandless knew that even though he was happy with the way he was living his life and how he was on his own, his accomplishments weren’t as amazing without someone to share them with. He was lonely. Even towards the end, McCandless was still happy with everything he had accomplished and done. He was truly happy, even though he knew he was going to die.

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Belt Blog

     Just like Chris McCandless, I'd make a belt that explained important things in my life. I'd pick a belt because I'd be able to wear it around, and it would be seen and shown off more rather than having a painting or a collage in my house. Some of the things I'd put on my belt would be:

1. A barn: I would choose a barn because I've practically lived in a barn since I was 5. I'm always at horse farms, working in barns and hanging out in barns, taking care of horses, and just spending every second I had at a horse farm.
2. My first horse's race #: My first horse meant the world to me. He was a retired race horse, and he impacted my life more than anything. He is one horse I'll never forget in my life, and his race number truly means a lot to me.
3. A surf board: Ever since I was 3 my family has owned a beach house in Sea Colony, Bethany Beach. In the summer, I spend as much time as I can at the beach. I love to surf, therefore, I would put a surf board on my belt.
4. A shamrock: Since I'm extremely Irish, I would put a shamrock on my belt. But, I would also put a shamrock on my belt because both of my grandfathers (one that recently died, and another that died before I was born) were very proud of their Irish heritage and made sure people knew it by putting shamrocks wherever they could.
5. The name "Fortunata"- I would put the name "Fortunata" on my belt because it is my great-grandmother's first name. She impacted my life when I was little, always giving me advice about fashion and sharing family stories, but now she suffers from Alzheimer's in the nursing home.
6. The initials "R.H.C.F."- I would put the initials "R.H.C.F" on my belt because they are my pony's initials. My pony is my absolute best friend and I don't know what I'd do without out here. She's one of the most important things I have in my life, which means she deserves to be on my belt.
7. The #'s "6770"- I would put the numbers "6770" on my belt because 1967 is the year my dad was born, and 1970 was the year my mom was born. They are the two people that have impacted my life the most, and without them I'd be nothing.
8. Finally, the street sign "Madeline Avenue"- Madeline Avenue is where I've lived my entire life. Between the other kids that I grew up with on Madeline Avenue and the memories I have, Madeline Avenue has been the best thing that has ever happened to me; I couldn't have asked for a better place to grow up.

As you can see, all the thing I've chosen to put on my belt mean an extraordinary amount to me. Without any of those things I wouldn't be who I am today. That's is why I would chose those 8 symbols to put on my belt.