Ana Pires 2.0

Eliezer Wiesel, commonly known as Elie Wiesel, was born on the 30th of September, 1928. He’s a writer, a political activist, an orthodox jew, and an Holocaust survivor. He’s also one of my personal heroes, and that’s what this post’s about.

Elie grew up in what is now Romania, and got deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz when he was only 15 years old, along with his mother, father, and younger sister. He immediately got separated from his mother and sister when they arrived to the camp. He managed however, to stick to his father until nearly the end. Just about two weeks before all the jews were liberated, his father succumbed to hunger and sickness, leaving Elie on his own.

Elie Wiesel managed to survive, and impressively, he managed to stay sane. One of his most disturbing and thought-provoking books, Night, depicts his entire experience there. Read some quotes here if you wish.

He has been honoured with many different awards and titles for his more than 40 books, and for, specially, his very successful “Elie Wiesel Foundation”, which focuses it’s total energy in Education.
In 1986, Elie was then awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And even today, the awards keep coming, as he is still very active in teaching and fighting for basic human rights.

The first time I heard about Elie was actually on an Oprah Winfrey show. I’m not sure you know this or not, but the concentration camp of Auschwitz is open for the public. You can actually go inside and walk around the camp. So, Oprah proposed Elie Wiesel to go to that death camp, so he could tell her and her millions of viewers his testimony, to raise Holocaust education. Elie had always refused when other people and hosts invited him, but with Oprah he said yes, because he knew it would be respectful and honourable. It really was, and I really recommend that you go get that episode.

Reading Elie Wiesel’s books and speeches has given me a more serious perception of the world we have today. And I’m not just talking about genocide in a large scale, it can be something as simple as a racist joke. It doesn’t have to be meant and it doesn’t need to have the desire of really hurting someone, but all it takes to make it wrong is for it to be said. I learned not to giggle, and not to find those jokes funny, because they’re not. They show ignorance, and by showing indifference and not saying something or at least disapproving it, I believe I’d be a lot worse.

We’re all human beings, and considering another group of people who is different religiously, ethically, culturally or whatever, won’t make us any better.

That’s the message Elie Wiesel tries to send out.

Today, I made an oral presentation about him in my English class. I’m not sure if I was able to reach my friends or not though. Either way, I really hope I managed to create some curiosity in you about this great man, and I really do hope you go read something by him, because it’s definitely worth it, and I’m sure you’ll learn something new with him, as I did.

It happened!

It was so cool! We were there working the entire day, and by night we were all dead tired, but it went wonderfully!

I had my mother and brother there watching and taking pictures, and they loved it. I don’t really have any with me to post though. But if someone in my class sends me a nice photo, I’ll be sure to post it.

Anyway, by 8PM, some people started arriving. Probably a quarter of the people we invited didn’t show up, but we still had a full house. A couple of idiots were trying to be funny and ruin 9 months of intense work by yelling out the competition’s answers, but we still managed to shut them up and carry on. And there were a couple of accidents with the microphones, but we were quickly able to solve them. No big deal.

Our teacher Luís Parrado end up winning the 1st prize. I’m not saying we wouldn’t be otherwise, but my entire class was quite happy it went to him. He’s been our teacher for 3 years, and although he can be a bit cheap in what concerns grades, we kind of sort of like him.

The bands were amazing. We had Distant Noise and Tânia e David (shameless advertising, I know), and everyone loved them.

And the dancing group. They’re called Daemones (Latin, for Demons), and they consist of pretty much all the girls on my class. All except for me, because I’m laz- I mean shy. And they were astonishing!

And immediately afterwards came the thanks! We surprised the two teachers who helped us the most, Ana Magalhães and Rui Pereira, with flowers. Everyone was emotional, and there were beautiful speeches and it everything was just so cute!

It was simply amazing, and I don’t think it could have been any better. We dealt with the problems that came along pretty nicely, and everyone managed to work together. In the future, I know these are the moments I’ll remember.

Thank you!

This year in Portugal, our Education system made the decision of implementing a new subject for the 12th grade curriculum. It is called Área de Projecto, or simply “AP” as we refer to it, and the students are supposed to create and run a project as a work group during the entire year. Some classes made charity projects, some made their own magazines, others made informative campaigns about certain topics that may interest young people, things like that.

My class however, is quite small. There’s only nice of us, and we all get along reasonably well. Since we are in an area called “Languages and Literatures”, and since most of us want to take communication in University, we decided to try something related to that, and something a little bit more ambitious.

So we’re creating a show to be performed live. Lately, this has been the only thing that truly makes me excited about taking the bus and going to school, so you know it’s big.

The show will be split in several parts. The main one consists of a little competition, in which the participants get asked several questions. The ones who make the most mistakes get eliminated, and after 3 rounds, we should find our final winner. There are great prizes, we had to beg some companies to sponsor us, but we eventually got lucky.

It was very difficult to plan, lots of work, lots of frustrations, lots of disappointments, but really, I think it was all worth it.

Writing scripts, letters, trying to convince people to be participants, giving out tickets for the audience… All good experiences, and I even got to talk on the phone to a bunch (well… three) of sponsors. Me! The healing social phobic who doesn’t even like to answer the phone at home.

The show L1′ve will be held in the 11th of this month. That’s like in… Today’s the 6th, but it’s three in the morning so let’s count as the 7th, so 8th, 9th… Four days. Wow!

Look at the pretty logo! Me and my brother made it, and a colleague of mine created the writing. Isn’t it pretty? Isn’t it?

Wish us all good luck!

I’ve given up on asking my doctors for sleeping pills. The most I got of my desperate cries was a breath-mint sized pill, which was supposed to be cut in half. Didn’t work. I remember one of them recommending a glass of warm milk before going to bed too. I got the feeling he was mocking me though, don’t know why…

I want energy pills.

It makes sense. If I have a tiring day, I’ll sleep better by night. And even if I don’t sleep better, my days will be more productive and I won’t be tired of everything and everyone around me.

It’s not that I lead a sedentary life. I exercise 5 days a week, and I go to school, and… That’s really it, but it’s still not sedentary.

I’ve tried these natural pills called Ginseng. I was really hopeful they’d work. The lady at the store told me “never, ever!” to take them after lunch, because then I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. She said she’d taken them herself and that afterwards, she felt like she could do anything. I thought wow, they must really work! Well, not really. I was really disappointed, specially because the lady was so enthusiastic about them. Maybe she gave me a placebo because of my mother (who does not approve me taking energy pills). I don’t know…

All I know is that I keep getting more and more tired, and that I don’t have patience for anything or anyone. School has been dreadful for me, even the classes I’m excited about and generally have more patience for get me irritated. My class mates make me laugh every once in a while, but there are times in which I almost can’t bare to listen to them talk. And my eyes, they look terrible. My skin is naturally very light, and sometimes the dark circles around my eyes make it look like I’ve been punched, twice!

Coffee’s good and I really like it. But it doesn’t work for an entire day, and I can’t have one every hour or so. I need help.

PS: Tell me to go to bed early or to drink warm milk before going to sleep and I will hate you forever.

Last Sunday, me and my brother went out shopping for clothes. After a few stores, it started getting late, and I started feeling ready for dinner.

Out of nowhere, in a burst of outgoingness, I said “Hey, let’s eat out tonight, and then, let’s go to the movies!”. Fun.

So we did. We ate at a little place called “Vitaminas”, which only has healthy food. I can say for sure I’ll be going there again. Eating out on malls has always been a problem, because what there’s mostly is fast food restaurants, and I don’t like any of what they have.

It’s not really that I don’t like it, in some cases I haven’t even tried their foods. I’m sure burgers swimming in sauces and fries filled with oil and salt and pizzas with cheese and ham and so on so on, taste great and all, but they’re not healthy in any way, so why even risk liking them? Sometimes it may be convenient, I know, and every once in a while doesn’t hurt you, I know. But it’s not worth it, and I like my health and my weight as they are.

I’m digressing now.

So, we went to watch “Mr. Bean’s Holiday”. It was quite good really. I was expecting something simple and silly, with some overly exaggerated parts, but no! It was very nice to watch, and I really recommend it if you want to go see something funny with your family.

Waitress: Un café?
Mr. Bean: Oui.
Waitress: Du sucre?
Mr. Bean: Non.
Waitress: You speak very good French.
Mr. Bean: Gracias.