Varuna
Your eyes slowly crack open like a newborn bird back on your old planet, Earth. As you sit up, you realize that the planet right in front of you is now home. The planet is a swirl of teal, periwinkle, baby pink, pastel yellow, and light orange. It’s beautiful. After a long 497 years, you have finally arrived. Your shuttle is slowly approaching FTRyd-7834, your new planet. You think to yourself that FTRyd-7834 is not a fitting name for such a beautiful planet, but you can worry about that later. The planet’s teal surface is approaching, and you realize that the surface is water!
When you step out, the cool, wet air tingles your throat. You fling off your shoes and slowly wade into the water. As soon as the cool water hits your skin, your legs turn into a tail, and you find gills forming on the sides of your neck. The water on your skin feels amazing after hundreds of years of being stuffed in a ship with immortal air. Immortal air is a chemical developed by two Cambodian scientists, especially for this mission. This air makes you immortal for the time that you are breathing it. The air smells like doctor’s gloves and a dentist’s office, and it’s very refreshing to have the cool water gliding against your skin. When you put your head into the water, a sound that feels like sunshine and warmth fills your mind, telling you to explore. So you do. There are animals that have the qualities of fish but instead have tails that look as if made of metallic strings that are four times as long as their bodies. The color of their bodies is a color you’ve never seen before and can’t describe.
As you swim back to the shore, you feel your legs being returned to you. You walk back to the shuttle, awestruck, and check for messages. Shuttles 7329-7333 have arrived. Your family. You check their location on the monitor, and it turns out they are just a few miles away from you, along with all the other families. You rush back into the cockpit. You plug in the coordinates and fly over to see your family. The door opens, and you are smothered in a loving embrace. Your family’s warm smiles make this amazing day even better. You tread around the temporary campsite they’ve set up until they figure out how the locals live.
You remember the voice in your head telling you to explore, and as if as a reflex, you walk back over to the shore and dive in. The same voice calls in your head, telling you the coordinates of the local city. Just like magic, you close your eyes, and there you are, but instead of huts made of grasses and mud, what you had expected, there are huge intricate sandcastles. You are still underwater!
You swim up to one of the people, who is also a mermaid. As you open your mouth to try to talk, a sound that sounds like a whale song comes out, like the voice in your head earlier, but you can still understand yourself. Curious. You ask what her name is, and she says Althea. She says that she’s been expecting you and is very excited to meet your kind. She asks if you’d like a tour, and you reply enthusiastically, “Of course!” In the “whale” song, of course. Your first question is what is the name of this planet? She tells you it is called Varuna, after the Hindu god of water. As she takes you around, you discover a vast metropolis, their world capital. Cyprinodon. Full of buildings of all shapes and sizes, there is even one shaped like a fishbowl!
She tells you all about the government which is a representative democracy. President Anahera Ahallaband is their leader. She also tells you about the people of Varuna. Their main values are family, education, wellness, honesty, empathy, and productivity. Also, everyone lives with everyone’s best interest in mind. Selfishness, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, and jealousy are not traits anyone can be born with or develop later in life. This is why having humans on the planet could’ve been very dangerous, but over 497 years of floating around in immortal air, you also adopted all of the traits and abilities that locals have.
She tells you about the solar system. There are four planets in the solar system: Lush, Sampurna, Thelia, and Varuna. Lush is a planet filled with green forests and oddly shaped fruits. Sampurna has a wide range of habitats, from pristine beaches to frozen tundras. Thelia has wet and dense rainforests and purple water beaches matched by a purple sky. These planets are all in the Bovas Solar System.
She asks if you’d like to travel to the schools you’ll attend, and you immediately say yes. As you start taking your next step, you feel yourself outstretching your limbs and floating until you explode in little particles, then regroup, all involuntarily. Teleportation.
Once you’re back together, you look around and appear to be in a different place. You’re back on land! Now you are in a rainforest, a large canopy of big upside-down heart-shaped leaves. You and Althea walk over to a thatch-roofed gazebo the size of a football field. Inside, there are wooden desks that are… floating? You’ve seen weirder stuff here. Althea explains how the school system works. The kids get an education on economic systems, health, medication, and animal life, and they get to choose electives for whatever they want. Each student gets a period of time each day to individually study what they want, and this means that the teachers here have to be extremely well-rounded people. School starts around 9, and most people go to bed around 8. This means that everyone is always extremely well rested, which helps with literally everything.
Books here are a very special item because everyone only has one. When someone is born on this planet, they get one book. The book they get is always a perfect fit and changes as they grow. The book has infinite stories and magically changes based on what you like and need. So once you finish a story, a new one appears, and the book always knows exactly what you want, or if you need a textbook, the book automatically transforms into that specific textbook. Amazing. She tells you that it’s the same sort of the same in music and food. Music always fits the mood and always appears at just the right time. Food is always what you are craving, but also gives you chances to try new foods, but it only appears when appropriate.
You feel the same particle separating the regrouping thing, but now you’re underwater. But this time, you don’t appear to be in Cyprinodon because right in front of you is a house that looks 3-4 stories tall and made of seaweed. The house looks like it’s blowing around in the wind, only underwater. Althea explains that this is her house. She says that she has a family of 7 other kids! That is the average in a Varunian household. She has four sisters, Aluna, Azrael, Aria, and Avara. She also has three brothers, Aaire, Arran, and Ash. Her mom’s name is Ayelet, and her dad’s name is Alastor.
She tells you about the surface weather and climate. It’s always warm but not overly hot. The water is a bit chillier, but the merpeople can’t really feel it. Obviously, it’s always sort of humid, considering that the entire planet is almost completely covered in water. The sky is always clear even if it is raining, and the night sky is always filled with billions and billions of stars. Each day/night cycle lasts about 30 hours because there are an extra 3 hours of sunset and 3 hours of sunrise, so 6 extra hours make up for it.
You teleport back to land. As you walk around in this paradise, you find a nice sunny beach and lie down, the warm sand hitting your skin and little raindrops falling from the periwinkle sky onto your face. You let the breeze in your hair and the soft melodies of the ocean take you away. This is home.
My Ideal World story
In our 6th grade Language Arts class, we read The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. In The Last Cuentista there is a group of people who have to leave Earth to start a settlement on another planet. We made books which we wrote and made that talk about our Ideal World (the story above is mine). Local artist, Peg Ginoux helped us in creating these beautiful handmade books.
Being eco-friendly is hard, and that is why we are in the situation that we’re in right now. Most people don’t feel like going through the simple actions that will save the planet. Our home is slowly weakening. Every plastic bag, every landfill, every tree cut down, every forest lost, they all make a difference. This sounds corny, but it’s true.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
– Robert Swan
This is a very strong string of words. Every kid thinks to themself, at least once in their childhood, “What can I do? I’m just a kid.” The adults in our lives have proved to us that we are the generation that has to fix this. The responsibility is on us now. We have no one else to lay the troubles on before it’s too late. This is all very serious sounding, but it is the most impactful way to spark change.
Here are some ways to be more sustainable:
- Cut back on single-use plastics
- Turn off the lights when you leave the room
- Turn off the faucet when you aren’t actively using it
- Eat more meatless meals
- Recycle the right way
- Wash and dry dirty containers
- Don’t recycle food
- Say no to plastic bags at the supermarket and bring your own reusable one
- Take shorter showers, working on that one 😉
- Think before you put something in the recycling. One item that isn’t recyclable means that the entire bin is contaminated and won’t be recycled.
- Switch some things that you would usually do on paper to digital
This isn’t just our home. It is home to thousands of other organisms. One tree cut down means one bird’s nest is lost or one squirrel’s food source is gone. When you look at the human species as a whole, we are pretty amazing. We’ve gone to the moon! But if you look deeper, what was used to make the rocket, and what was used to make its fuel?
I hope this didn’t bring anyone’s mood down; we need to stay positive for the future. Mindset is half the battle. I love our Mother Earth and I want her to stay just the way she is (or better) for as long as she can. What can you do to help our home?
My family and I recently went to India, and it definitely was an experience to remember. If you’ve ever been to another country, you’ll know that visiting somewhere that is unlike home can be quite a shock. Personally, I love traveling because getting to see and experience new things can be so exhilarating. It was no different here. First, we went to Delhi, the capital of India. A bustling city with so much life can be overwhelming but also so beautiful. We spent about a day in Delhi and went to a shopping market called Connaught Place. If you are ever planning on traveling to Delhi, put this on your list. There are so many stores ranging from places you might see here in the U.S.A. to shops selling things like spices or Lakshmi coins, named after the goddess of wealth in Hindu culture. The coins are used in ceremonies or rituals called pujas. For the next five days, we visited family in different towns called Etawah and Farrukhabad. In Farrukhabad, we spread my grandmother’s ashes in the Ganga (Ganges) River, which is a traditional Hindu ritual as an act of letting go of their spirit.
Next, we went to Agra to visit one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum that King Shah Jahan built for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It is made completely of white marble and semi-precious stones.
After Agra, we went to Jaipur, known to some as the Pink City for its pink sandstone buildings. One of those pink sandstone buildings was the Hawa Mahal, a stunning structure originally built so that women of the court could watch the streets and celebrations without being hassled.
When we were staying in Jaipur, we got to stay in a hotel that was actually a converted battle fort. Another fort that we visited was the gorgeous Amber Fort with its castle-like architecture and was really cool seeing the comparison between a converted battle fort and a non-converted battle fort. Yet another sight to see in Jaipur is the Jal Mahal, which is a gorgeous palace that used to be King Sawai Pratap Singh’s hunting lodge. In a huge flood, four out of the five floors were drowned. On the bank of the Man Sagar Lake, the lake that it is drowned in, there is a large market full of shoes, jewelry, toys, and smells. Our final destination was back to Delhi where we stayed in the Akshardham Temple for two days. We got to go inside the temple and learn all about its history, which was an awesome experience. Have you ever tried to learn about other cultures and places?
Here are a few photos
Okay, imagine this: you’re snuggled up in bed, cozy in your jammies, and about to pick out a story to read. Maybe it brings up some memories right? Or not, whatever floats your boat. Anyways, if you haven’t gotten the gist this is about stories or wisdom tales specifically. Wisdom tales are actually a lot like parables because they are generally short stories that have some sort of moral or religious lesson. My language arts class made comics about a specific wisdom tale of our choosing. I picked a story called Empty Cup Mind which is a tale from Japan.
The story goes like this: Once upon a time there was an arrogant young student who had traveled far and wide to study. He came to a wise master to see if he could add to his knowledge. The master said okay and invited him in for tea. As the master was pouring the tea he let the cup overflow and the student was furious! “What kind of wise master spills tea!? Can’t you see that the cup is full?!” The master told the student that his mind was so full, just like that cup, and that he should come back with an empty cup mind if he wanted to learn. The moral of this story is to always keep an open mind. I chose this story because this year I decided that I wanted to be more open minded and I thought that this story really connected to that. Also, this is just a really fun story to tell.
Drawing comics certainly isn’t exactly my cup of tea, pun intended, by luckily for me Mrs. Donnelly had backup. Brittain Peck, a professional artist, came to our school and taught us the basics of drawing. He talked about how to use simple shapes to depict characters and how to use colors to convey emotions. In his example, he depicted Little Red Riding hood as a little red triangle and the big bad wolf was made up of a few different gray shapes. I really took to the basic meaning of simple shapes and so all of the bodies and faces are all just circles and ovals.
The apps that I used to make my comic were called Sketchbook and Comic Life 3. Here are a few tips for using Sketchbook: use layers to your advantage, use the fill tool when you can, and explore the different brush types and textures. Here is a tip for using Comic Life 3: always make sure to make it your own because the pre-made templates can get you very sucked in and so that causes you to not add your own personal flair. What is something that you have done to be creative recently?
Thanks to Mrs. Donnelly for this photo!
Habits are so important for our daily life and we usually follow them without even thinking. That is why adding habits can be really difficult because our brains don’t have the same training and immediate recognition. That is why when my C period language arts class started doing a planking challenge. It was quite the test for some people to remember to plank every day. When we first started plank we talked about a book called Atomic Habits. The author, James Clear says,“Habits are due to the compound interest of self-improvement.” So we decided to use that compound effect so that we could build our planking skills.
We started at a leisurely 30 seconds and did that every day for a week then we added 15 seconds. We built up to 2 minutes and 15 seconds, using that compound effect, before the big challenge. This big challenge was to show us how far we had come in our planking journey. This big challenge that I have been rambling about is when the entire class had to plank for as long as they could and not just a fixed amount of time. Now that I actually wrote that out sounds sort of anticlimactic but it was a really big deal for us because we’re kids so obviously (but not to make assumptions) we love a good competition!
After this challenge we all came up with a new habit to work with. Mine is to do a stretch every day on both sides for 30 seconds. I chose this habit because when I was in 4th grade I was super flexible and I felt really good. I always felt really energized. I had stopped for a while for a really weird reason which was that we got a new couch. I know that this sounds really confusing but part of what had made me so flexible was that I was always doing handstands up against or near our couch and our new couch just didn’t have the same vibe. I’m really excited about this new habit. Are there any habits that you’d like to add to your routine?
TOUCHDOWN!
Offense raced onto the tap. I think I shoved, stumbled onto Coach. Referee, “Time out.” Pretended I came. Pulled away from other stands. “Take Hillside, destroy them.” Left on the field trotting I went home.
(Thank you Unsplash for this photo)
J.K. Rowling, Rick Riordan, Lewis Carroll, Madeleine L’Engle. These are just a few authors who have made whole worlds in just a book. Visiting those worlds can be an amazing experience. I love visiting these other worlds and getting to feed my curious mind. Recently I read A Wrinkle in Time and while I was reading it my thoughts kept wandering back to the book, turning it over in my mind, trying to piece together the storyline to figure out where Meg’s dad could be. After reading a good book I always want to keep flipping the pages for more. I am never satisfied even if the book filled up my entire reading stomach. Sometimes finishing a book feels like having a friend that moved away.
Finding new books is really hard for me. Usually I’ll ask my younger sister for recommendations because she reads every single day for hours and hours on end. Lately though, I’ve started to catch up to her so she’s running out of suggestions. Sometimes I just have to go to a bookshelf and drag my finger along it with my eyes closed. I’ll stop randomly and pull out the book, checking out the cover. If I think the cover looks interesting I’ll read the blurb. One of the reasons that I like long books, because the longer I can read the same book, the longer I can procrastinate finding a new one.
Electronic and audiobooks are sometimes really hard for me to pay attention to. Electronic books always make me frustrated because the device that I am reading on can die and I can’t read offline unless I download it. Paper books cannot die, paper books don’t need charging or wifi! With audiobooks I just get distracted because when I am listening my eyes have to be focused on something else and that something else always consumes my thoughts.
I like to read in quiet spaces so that I can really immerse myself in the book and really think about how the author is telling the story. When it’s quiet I can almost dive into the book and be one of the characters. As I’m reading the characters are so clearly imprinted in my mind but then when I try to really see them I just can’t. Who was your favorite character to meet?
I just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time. This is a science fantasy novel written by Madeleine L’Engle. This book is about a girl who has to travel through time to find her father who has been missing for many years. I found it to be a window book but there were a few mirrors.
A window book is a book that really lets you take a glance at someone else’s life. I find window books really fun to read because they let you understand another person’s perspective. Seeing someone else’s perspective lets you broaden how you think about things. So now why did I say that this book was a window for me? Well as you’ve probably guessed I don’t know how to travel through time. My father is also probably taking a call right now and not trapped on a different planet and I don’t have a brother but those are just a few reasons why I see a window when I read A Wrinkle in Time.
A mirror book is a book in which you can see reflections of yourself and your life. Seeing a mirror book can be really comforting. Because when you read it you can see that you are not the only one who feels some way. One way that this was a mirror for me is that Meg, the girl who traveled through space to find her father really cares for her family and friends. That is one of the reasons I see a small mirror in Meg.
I prefer window books to mirror books because when I read a window book I get to experience something crazy and new to me. While I find mirror books something really nice to relate with, sometimes they can get a bit boring because you are kind of reading snippets of your life which you are already living. Next time you read a new book try to think of whether it’s a mirror or window! Thanks for reading!
FLL is an extracurricular activity that lots of kids do around the world. FLL stands for First Lego League. In FLL we have to build a robot made out of Lego pieces and code it to do missions on a game board sort of thing. But the robot game is actually only 25% of the scoring, the other 75% is made up of core values, the innovation project, and robot design. Core values are how well you work with your team and support each other. For the innovation project your team has to decide a topic that they will research and create a presentation about. Each year there is a different theme and when you are deciding what you want to do your innovation project on you have to pick something that relates to the theme and technology because well it’s a robot competition. The robot design is a small presentation on your design process with your robot because all of the teams are given the same robot base but you can add different attachments to your robot. FLL is a commitment that takes dedication and that probably sounds sort of silly considering that this is just a toy that I’m talking about but SOMEHOW (sarcastic) kids can get so competitive over this kind of thing. I chose to do FLL so that I could earn coding skills and get closer with my teammates.
Last week on August 30th the Durham Academy 6th grade embarked on a two and a half hour drive to Camp Kirkwood. The bus ride was filled with laughter, plenty of snacks, bored kids with no entertainment whatsoever, perfectly content kids just reading their book, and kids belting out Taylor Swift songs at the top of their lungs. Ahhhhh, good times…
Hurricane Idalia was heading our way and we were already getting a little taste of what she felt like so once we got there raincoats were put on, heavy bags lugged around, and puddles splashed in.Then we got settled into our cabins. After we got cleaned up a meal of grilled cheeses and ham sandwiches was passed around and well no comment on that… Then we got ready for activities, I had orienteering and v-swing . Orienteering was okay but it was so hot that I couldn’t even pay attention very well. But v-swing was awesome. What happened was you got harnessed onto a rope and your classmates pulled you up. There was another rope so you could pull a trigger and it would let go of one of the ropes and you’d be swinging by that one rope that was still on there and it was super fun. After that it was dinner time, yummy pasta and delicious garlic bread that definitely made up for lunch. After dinner we got the option to watch the Lorax or you could go play dodgeball in the pavilion. It was kind of a 50/50 split. From being in the rain and mud everyone was desperate to take a shower, brush teeth and just generally get cleaned up. Then we went to bed.
9 hours later…
Bright lights flashed in our faces as a wake up call. Time to get up, the worst time in the morning. We brushed our teeth, got changed, and braided each others hair. Then for breakfast we had eggs and croissants. My group just got to stay in the dining hall because we had forest ecology where we learned about trees and the most common ways that we utilize them. Next we went to the POOL!!!!! But before we could get in we had to take swimming tests (dun-dun-duuun). All we had to do was jump in and swim freestyle to the other side, not too hard. We had so much fun splashing and jumping in the pool. Lunch was somewhere in the middle of all that. I don’t really remember what we had but it was pretty good. After lunch we made our way to the pavilion where one of the counselors led us to somewhere near the lake to do team building. Team building was actually pretty fun, we played a game with a hula hoop where you could only have one finger on the hula hoop but it had to be flat and once we rose it up in the air we had to bring it back down and it actually took a lot more work than you’d expect. We also had the Kanga jump which was a huge trampoline blob thing made out of plastic.
Once we finished activities, those of us who were wet changed into dry clothes and headed to the dining hall for dinner. After dinner we all met at the flagpole and took a walk to this little tiny amphitheater and we had a campfire with s’mores and songs. Once we finished we walked back, got into our PJs, and headed to bed.
Another 9 hours later…
Bright lights flashed in our faces as a wakeup call yet again. Time to get up, the worst time in the morning. We brushed our teeth, got changed, and braided each others hair… again. Then we trudged through the wet grass over to the dining hall. We had slightly soggy waffles that were okay. Then we all met together with our groups and found out where we were going. My group went to the zipline first, gaga-ball and pig (an actual pig) second, and canoe third. The zipline was pretty awesome. We got all harnessed in and climbed up to a high platform. Then we jumped! It was kinda short but it was pretty cool to be able to fly over the lake and see all the canoes floating past. Gaga-ball and pig were also pretty cool. Bubbles(the pig) was so cute even though her skin felt really hard which was a weird sensation. Wow, who knew I would ever be saying “I met a pig named Bubbles and she had really hard skin”. Canoeing was okay but after all the excitement of camp the tranquility of it was a little too much calm. After all of the activities we had lunch which was some really delicious pizza. Once we all loaded onto the buses we set off for a 2 ½ hour drive back to Durham. This ride had even more Taylor Swift, books, screaming and snacks. Ahhhhh, good times…