Most relaxing place in the world

Mary drives up the road with her music blasting inside the little Volkswagen Beatle. She nods her head on the rhythm of the music and switches her indicator on, signaling to the left. She then turns onto the side of the road and switches off her ignition and then her head lights. She scratches in her bag looking for her cigarettes and listens to the music playing on the radio.

The view overlooks the city and lights are shinning brightly as far as you can see. She finds a cigarette and lights it, closes her eyes, inhales deep and slowly blows out the smoke. A sort of calming feeling comes over her and she gazes out over the view. The cars are driving on the highway and you can only hear them and see their headlights flying by. If you look deep into the distance you can see the lights of the runway and ever so often you can see a plane either take off or land.

Perfect view

Sitting there at, Lover’s lane, overlooking the city, always made Mary feel relaxed. She didn’t mind the cars in front or behind her with couples inside. To her it was sweet that the kids still came up there. This was the one place, Mary, could go to and be alone. There was no husband constantly bothering her for something. There were no kids wanting something every five minutes and always making a noise. There were no dishes to do or no laundry, there were nothing to be picked up off the floor and no beds to be made.

This was the one place Mary could have break, a break from life for a hour at most. This was the place where she could relax and think about the good old days. She loved being a wife, a mother and having a career on top of that but every woman needs a little place to go once in a while. That place will keep you from loosing your sanity and your love for your family. The view was just breathtaking and it never failed to make Mary calm down or relax.

That side of the mountain has seen many things through the years. Started out with Mary showing up there with her friends after a party and they would finish the last bit of alcohol there overlooking the city. A few months later her boyfriend brought her there and they made out in the front seat of his car for hours. Later in life she brought her fiancé there to show him the perfect view and she lost her virginity on the back seat of a Ford Mustang 1975 and eventually she married him.

Now the party days were over and she got in the car and drove around to get her baby to sleep and most of the time she ended up there.  Later in her marriage she drove up there when she found out her husband cheated on her, cried her eyes out and drank out a few bottles of wine with her girlfriends.

After patching up things she knew she needed to relax in someway in order not to kill her family like a raging lunatic. She immediately thought about the side of the road on the middle of that mountain. That place has been part of her life from her teens till now. She knew that there was now other place as relaxing like this one, anywhere in the world.

Movie Review: THE HELP

South Africa just lost a knock out game in the 2011 World Cup and my emotions were rocky to start off with. I went to the cinema and saw that the new film, “The Help,” has started. I remembered that I saw the trailer to it and it looked like a fairly good movie. I decided that if there is a chance of shedding a tear then this would be a good movie to watch. My heart was broken to see our men leave the world cup and therefore I wanted to let out my emotions at the back of a cinema.  I bought the ticket, grabbed popcorn and coke and went inside and waited for the movie to start.

“The Help,” is a screen adaption from the novel written by Kathryn Stockett in 2009. It is set in the 1960’s in Mississippi where African American maids work in white households.

Scene from the Movie

The casting was done brilliantly for this adaption. Emma Stone portrays the young journalist whom is more focused on her career than finding her a rich man to care for her. All her friends are snobbish wives that lives off their husband’s income and whom is too lazy to clean or raise their own children. She cares for these maids and do not think of them as just people who work for you.

Viola Davis plays a maid who has been working as a maid her entire life and most probably one of the best maids in the county. She raises the white peoples children as if they were her own. Her performance was breath taking and she brought each emotion alive on screen. You felt for her and all you wanted to do was to give her a hug.

Octavia Spencer plays a brilliant cook and everyone in town would love to have her as their maid. She brings the most comic relieve to this film. She use to work for the Mother but now the white child that she basically raised is now her boss and is perhaps the most evil, scheming, cold bitch in town. She tries to rule the entire town and when things don’t go her way, she won’t think twice to ruin your life not matter if you are black or white. She accuses her of stealing and disgraces her name around the town to make sure that she won’t get another job ever again. The character is brought to life by Bryce Dalla Howard and is done with so much passion and anger.

Every emotion that is felt by each character is brought out but such believe and you feel with it with them. I cried twice in this movie and at the end I cried and my heart was hurting just as much as that little girl’s. This movie touches some of the matters that America and the rest of the world want to hide. It focuses on racism and the deeds of racism, it shows discrimination, the humiliation those poor maids had to deal with, the violence towards some and the lies spread about them. One thing I noticed was how naive the white people had been about the African American people.

Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis

The movie is not only dramatic from the start to the end; there is some humor in to lighten the mood at times. You feel as if you laugh with these women and not at them and their laughs are so infectious.

It has everything to make a good movie, great actors, a gripping story, drama, humor and a good score.

This movie opens the hearts of every person who will watch it. Once you share the journey with these women, you have a mix of emotions when you walk out that cinema. It almost feels like your soul has been washed. It was most defiantly one of the best movies I have watched in ages.

The first thing I thought when the credits started rolling was, “Now that is an Oscar movie.”

Macaroni and Cheese

It was just a few hours after Kate came back from the hospital when John decided to make some Mac and cheese. He knew that it was her favorite food and it always cheered her up. She was sleeping when she heard the movement down in the kitchen. She dragged herself out of bed to go investigate. To her surprise John was busy cooking, they have been married for six years and he never cooked before.

Mac and Cheese

“John, do you know what you are doing?” she asks in a soft voice, while rubbing her left eye. He turns around from the stove and smiles.

“I may not be a great cook but your mother is a great help over the phone,” he says with a grin on his face. He walks around the kitchen counter and embraces his wife and holds her tightly against his chest.

“I’m really not hungry at the moment, John,” she mutters out.

“The food is almost done and when ever you feel like it, you can eat. At least you know there is something for you,” he says and kisses her on her forehead. Both of them walk over to the sofa and take a seat. Kate leans on her husband’s shoulder and they turn on the television and not long after, she dozes off. John smells the aroma of melted cheese and remembers that he still needs to get that out of the oven. He gently lays his wife down on the sofa and rests her head on one of the scatter cushions. John walks to the kitchen and was surprised to see that his first attempt of Mac and cheese came out much better than he thought it would. Diane sure is a good teacher he thought to himself. He took out the dish and put it on the kitchen counter to cool down and set the table for two.

He went back to the lounge and sat on a different sofa, not to disturb his wife, and channel hopped on the television. He thought about what he was in for and that he was perhaps not ready for it.

“How do you prepare yourself to see the person you love, deteriorate day by day?” he thought. Although he wasn’t ready for it, he needed to be there for her. He knew that, especially when he thought back on all the times he had the flu and she looked after him, or the time he broke his leg and she had to care for him. She was always there for him in everyway he could think of.

In the mean time he dozed off too and awoke of the sound of someone being sick. He looked at the sofa where Kate was sleeping and it was empty. He got up as fast as he could and rushed to the downstairs bathroom where he then found her hugging the toilet with her head buried in the bowl.

He wasn’t sure what to do, so he took a face washcloth and ran it underneath the cold water. He dried out the water and put the damp cloth around her neck and he started to rub her back. That is what he always saw in the movies and hoped that he was doing it right.

“Water,” he hears his wife mutter and rushes to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water out the fridge. As he closes the fridge he sees a plate of Mac and Cheese on the counter with only a few bites missing. John rushes back to her side and helps her to rinse out her mouth. She threw up for another forty minutes and then he carried her to their bedroom. He undressed her out of her sweaty clothes and dressed her in new clean ones. He went downstairs to get a bucket for her bedside and took a damp cloth from their on suite.

From that day onwards, Kate was never able to stomach Mac and cheese ever again.

 

True To Yourself

I read the question and then I think to myself; “Well this can’t be too hard to answer.” Then while trying to answer it, I ask myself more questions. Do you stay true to yourself by doing what you have been told what to do in life? Is it perhaps being to true to the morals that the church has set for you? Is it by doing things that you think is cool in life? The question is what things in life in considered to be cool? Is it thing that your friends like doing? Are the things that your friends do, the right things to do? What are the right things to do? To answer the initial question, you should be able to first answer the rest of the question that arises.

I think in order to be true to yourself, you need to find yourself first. You need to reinvent yourself until you find that person who you know is the real you. How many times should you reinvent yourself? When will you know this is the right me? The answer is, you will know the real person when you find it. It might feel like the skies are opening and the rays of sunlight find their way upon your face, bringing a warm feeling of relieve.

Sunlight

I think that your morals that your parents has set for you should be your guideline, the guideline to live your life but not the rule book. In order for your parents to have set those morals for you, they had to live a life, a life worth living and in doing so there must have been some mistakes down the road. No person is perfect and no person can with a hundred percent surety say that they have not made any mistakes in life and have no regrets what so ever.

I think that you should live your own life and make your own mistakes so that one day you can teach your children what morals are and hope that they find meaning by it. By living your life you should then lead by example and when your children come to you with problems and perhaps mistakes made, you should be able to help them forward. Try and guide them to the best of your ability and you should think back on your path walked and know that finding yourself doesn’t happen over night and that you should be able to let them be but knowing that you have given them as much information to help them along that path.

Being an outcast simply means that you are not in the right place at the right time. You shouldn’t feel the need to change who you are, to fit in. When you change yourself for friends and you feel deep inside that this isn’t you, then you should know to walk down a different path. Every person you meet in life will play some role for you. They can teach you what you want to aspire to be, they can teach you values of friendship, they can teach you what type of person you never want to be.

Find your journey and living it might be the only way to be true to yourself.

What I remember of School

When I look back onto my High School career there are many good memories. The good memories outshine the bad ones by far.

I remember the times we would sit outside on the field in the summer during break times to work on our tan or the times we would dodge the teachers so that we didn’t have to line up outside, after break. I remember that we ruled the school in our senior year. We had fun making the posters for the pep rallies and the time we put in practicing were always fun and sure showed everyone that our school had natural school spirit.

School Spirit MTBS

The sports and extra curricular activities kept everyone involved at a high pace. Whether it wat playing chess for you school, running the 100 meter sprint or even just being part of the school choir, it meant that everyone had a part to play. No matter how small or how big, everyone fit in someplace.

The student council would always throw a great senior ball for the entire grade ten to twelve group. Each year it had a different theme and I can still clearly remember my last one. The theme was Hollywood, a red carpet ran down the entrance and all the younger kids stood along the carpet screaming, shouting and taking pictures. They added that little extra Hollywood feel and made the experience so much more.

I remember we use to live for group orals in the English class. We reinvented the book, “The lord of the Flies”, to the story called, “Queen of the Butterflies” and reinterpreted the rescue scene to our own creative minds. We once took a simple interview assignment and turned it into a Beauty Queen pageant for the diluted, it was a crazy ex-beauty-queen who then escaped from a mental institution to be able to take part of this show. The other contestant was a blond bimbo whose skirt was just long enough to cover what it needed to. Last but not lease we had the poor ugly duckling, which has all the right morals in the world but not a single glance of a fashion sense. She was played by me with fake glasses, teeth and very weird clothing.

I lived a few minutes down the road of the school. It took me fifteen minutes to walk to school every morning and then about thirty to forty five minutes home in the afternoons. We were a group who walked together everyday and as we walked, we talked about the day and all other things as everyone wasn’t in the same classes.

One thing every girl looked forward to in her five year high school career was her Prom! The prom was an event no one missed and everyone spent loads of money on dresses, shoes, make-up and it took ages to find the perfect date. It was one night that was any girl’s fairytale dream, wanting to stand out above the others and to have that once special kiss!

Perfect Prom Couple

I did well in academics and was a good pupil in school but when I look back, I remember the extra curricular activities, the good friends I made and the laughs we shared.