MYP4 English 9

Why i like Victoria. I like Victoria because it is a lot warmer tan the Yukon. I also prefer Victoria to the Yukon due to the fact that it has a lot more things to do during the summer compared to the Yukon, i do prefer the Yukon in someways over Victoria I do miss all the winter activities that you could do during the winter instead of driving for 2 hours to get to mount Washington to do said winter activities. I miss being able to go outside and go snow machining for hours in all the trails around my old house where there was a trails just down the street that went on for miles and had so much to explore. Victoria is a lot warmer than the Yukon was which is very cold and had a lot of snow whereas in Victoria their is almost no snow during the entire year. I miss skying every weekend and going to my old cabin and swimming in the river during the summer and going snow machining during the winter. Victoria has its merits in more things to do during the summer such as hiking swimming in warm rivers instead of cold ones in the Yukon, in Victoria their are more things to do during the summer yes but their is practically no winter it snows maybe a week a year and the snow goes away almost instantly, while in the Yukon it snows for most of the year and stays there until May altho I do like the Yukon i like the change in scenery and there are a lot more summer activities so this is why  i like Victoria but i do still like the Yukon and enjoy all the different activities that Victoria has to offer during the summer not the winter.

Nowadays, all phones feel the same: mature and boring. Every generation is a minor refresh which is mostly just software features, and there are even changes they make that are downgrades (an example would be Samsung removing Bluetooth from the S-Pen in the S25 Ultra). Back then however, phones were the opposite: unique, soulful, and fun. So what happened? Why are phones so boring now? Well, there are many reasons, but in my opinion, the main reasons are the market maturing, lack of innovation, and less competition mostly because of the absence of 2 major brands. Firstly, the smartphone market was new, and companies were still trying to figure out what people wanted. Some companies thought people wanted a simple and easy to use device; others thought they wanted endless features and customization. Some thought people wanted projectors built into their phones with devices like the Samsung Galaxy Beam! The ideas were endless. However, the market slowly started to mature, and companies began to figure out what people wanted. Secondly, there is innovation. Back then, mostly because of smartphones being a new market, there were cool new features and gimmicks companies used to persuade you into buying their phones. Now, people usually know which phone brand they want, so companies just copy each other to the point where everything seems the same and they make more money since they don’t have to build new technology. Thirdly, there’s the lack of competition. There used to be many brands that were huge like HTC, but they slowly lost their grip and died out. Even though losing HTC was sad, there were still some innovative brands like Huawei and LG that pushed the boundaries. Unfortunately, LG would leave the smartphone market in 2021 due to low sales and Huawei would be put on the entity list in 2020, getting them banned from working with US companies and banned from many countries for allegedly spying though there was no proof they did this. Huawei still makes great phones, but they are mostly Chinese exclusive and can’t use things like Google services, making their phones hard to use if you aren’t in China. I think the downfall of these companies was a huge factor in phones being boring now since their exit lowered competition and innovation as companies have no reason to innovate anymore. 

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a indie (independent developer team) game which takes place in a kingdom of bugs. It is the sequel to Hollow Knight, a game by team cherry. Silksong is a challenging 2d metroidvania where you explore the kingdom of pharloom. The game broke gaming platforms such as steam, Xbox and PlayStation stores (high lag). Silksong is a very difficult game, with many players disliking it due to its difficulty. The game is fair with its difficulty though, with you able to go across the kingdom of pharloom to find upgrades which make some parts much easier. It has a 91 rating on Metacritic, higher then most new triple A games. This shows that you do not need a large team, or massive amounts of money to have a great game, even though they did have quite a lot after hollow knight. Silksong took 7 years to make; the game took so long because they had no rush and kept having new ideas to add. They were allowed to go at their own pace which allowed them to keep making the game better and better. Without stockholders telling them to release by a date, or triple A games forcing anything upon them, they were able to use their creativity to craft a great game.

This past weeks have been so fun since I’ve spent most of my time with friends. Due to the fact that I am an exchange year student I have been experiencing things I hadn’t done before. One of the most memorable things I’ve done since I’ve came here was going to the camp. It was an unforgettable moment. I really enjoyed dipping in the ocean with my friends and singing late night karaoke.

I’ve also been going out a lot more then I use to, for the fact that I’m still getting to know Victoria. Last week specially was one of the best weeks I’ve had since I got here. I really enjoyed it because I was with my friends most of the time. We went out and explored the city, we grabbed coffee, and went out for dinner on weekdays and lunch on weekends.

My favorite day was when I had a picnic with friends. It was on Sunday, even if it is considered a resting day me and my friends went out to the Hervey Castle and had a little picnic. We brought our favorites snacks including fruits and sweets and blasted music while laughing with each-other. I really enjoy how I’m finding my family here even if they’re not literally family, and how we go out almost everyday to do new things. I really hope it stays like this for the rest of the year, and have the best exchange year anyone could talk about.

During the summer my family loves to travel. We always go to new places during the summer. My most recent place I went to was england. I just love traveling because it makes me feel so alive. I feel a lot better in different countries. I can meet new people and more. The weather always makes me feel more alive as well. My family also goes to Arizona a lot where it is very hot. The hot weather is always nice because it just makes me feel so alive where the weather here in Victoria is so miserable and cold and wet. I do like the rain but the sunshine is so much better during the summer because you don’t have to wear a rain jacket where as you can just wear a t-shirt and shorts in the summer when the hot sun is beaming down on you. I just love traveling because It gives me a break from Victoria because Victoria can be very boring sometimes as there is not much to do here. But in other places like Arizona or Orlando there is so much to do! I could find something new to do there everyday.

recently I haven’t been feeling as much motivation to train my basketball skills. its been cold outside and It feels super exhausting to go out there and put in work. on the flip side ive been super motivated with doing my workouts of my abs every day and in the gym theese alothgouh requiring more effort are feeling not as hard to do as the basketball. im trying to figure out how I can get back to be motivating but my basketball hoop outside is also messed up so if I had a nice hoop I would feel better to play out there but as this goes on I fear I am losing interest in putting so much work although I know it wont be long before I get a sudden burst of motivation to continue basketball. but for now I will just to more focus on my dribbling skills and athleticism and physique as that is what I am feeling motivated to do. another thing is I decided to go on no sugar for my physique and basketball it has been going good but sometimes I find it is very hard to resist when the people around me also are eating sugary food, so I decided to let myself have sugar one time a week until winter break then I will go back to 0 sugar diet with less carbs less corns and no processed foods.

This is my third personal writing assignment I am kind of out of ideas for what to write about so today i will be talking about GTA 6. if you don’t already know what GTA 6 is, it is the sixth game in the GTA series and was probably the most hyped up game since 2023. The thing about GTA 6 is that since it is such an advanced game the developers at Rockstar( the company that made GTA 5) keep having to delay the games release date the game was actually supposed to be released a couple months ago but Rockstar decided to move it all the way to may 26 2026 this is a problem because this is not the first time they have delayed the game. now i do not know if this is true but in 2024 there was speculation that it was going to be released around Christmas 2024 of course this did not happen but many people believed that it was actually happening so when they did not release it on Christmas people were a tiny bit mad. now they have delayed it again all the to 2026 when it was supposed to be released May of this year. Now people are saying that the game will not even release on May of 2026 and that they might push it to October 2026 almost a year from now. I feel that if Rockstar keeps up with these delays the hype will either get even crazier or it will fizzle down until nobody cares about the release anymore. I personally think that the hype will get even crazier as the months go on. I think that the delays are good and bad while the fact that they are delaying to make the game better the more they delay the more we have to wait.

I love playing story driven videogames. I have 100% spiderman 1+2 and I close to with Ghost of Tsushima. Since they are interactive and if someone is not an avid gamer there are modes where the enemies are super easy. Story games are usually what impact me the most compared to most movies I watched. When Iron man died in endgame, Barely reacted. But when the robot companion died to stray, I Cried.

Let’s say for example God of War 2018. It’s about an Older Kratos who killed of the Greek gods except for Athena then moved to Norse mythology. And it is about him and his son trying to spread the ashes of his dead wife on the highest peak in Midgard. Or Ghost of Tsushima. A fictional story based of the Mongolian invasion of Japan. A forgotten Samurai during the Mongolian invasion of Japan. He loses his clan and Grandfather due to traditionalism and becomes an Urban legend or a ghost as some would say who single handedly stopped the Mongols in the island of Tsushima. And those are a only a couple I have played. There are even more like Baldur’s gate 3 which is set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe and probably my favorite game of all time and has 17,000 unique endings because of NPCS you talked to and quest lines you did or Companions you saved. I say it is worth the 90$.

But, I am not saying the movies are bad. Of course movies are also more easily accessible But in my opinion I would rather spend a week to 1 month playing a story game rather then watching 1 movie a day.

Chloe’s eye’s shot open, the light blaring into her room brighter than other school mornings. She jumped out of bed realizing that her alarm never woke her up, she turned to her clock to see it was 8:13am! School started at 8:30! She quickly threw on two mismatched socks, grabbed her backpack and ran out the door just to see that the bus she needed to catch for school was leaving without her! With Chloe’s parents already being at work and the bus was her only ride to school, she was forced to walk. To make it even worse, it started to pour rain, soaking her clothes and every bit of hope she had for the day.

When she finally got to school she was greeted by a math pop quiz first block. To make it even worse, she had missed the class when they had learned about what was on the quiz! After math she had history, her least favourite class. It felt as if the clock was moving slower than ever, like Chloe had been in that class for at least a couple days! Finally when the bell rang and it was lunch time, she sat down starving as she had forgotten to eat breakfast, she opened her bag to see… nothing. She had forgotten her lunch at home on her kitchen counter.

Chloe pulled herself through the last two blocks of the day and finally she was able to go home. As She got out of the front doors of the school she once again saw the school bus driving away. She couldn’t believe it, she had missed the bus again! When Chloe finally made it home, exhausted from her terrible day, all she did was eat dinner and fall into bed. As she looked up at her celling in her room, tired and broken from the day, all she could hope for was that tomorrow was just little luckier for her.

People dream about many things. It may be about what they want to own, what they want to do, or what they dream of accomplishing. Dreams, and aspirations are shaped by what you desire. I find the interesting thing about dreams is that they belong to yourself, but they can also be shared by someone else. I think dreams can be influenced by those around you. What I mean by this is that my dream may be to give something to another person, if my someone I am close with tells me that they’re dream, a dream of mine could be to help them in any way possiblE. I maintain the belief that a dream is influenced by those you care for, and what they want. In my opinion someone who gives up on their dream is weak-minded, any feasible dreams in the realm of man are possible if you have the mindset that, this will be hard but I will never falter, never quit, and never waste an opportunity bestowed upon me. A quote I came up with is, “failure is a chance to improve wrapped in an exterior of disappointment if you break through that exterior enough times, you will find not only improvement but success as well.” (Will Y Oct 13 2025). This phrase to me is the perfect reminder that, failure is not true failure its a way to grow, and paves the way to succeed in making your dreams a reality.

Before starting, I will mention that I’m splitting this into two parts so as to stay close to the 200-300 word range.

My sister and I started a Minecraft server so that we could stay close after she moved to Ontario for university. This server started in a very interesting valley between a large, snowy mountain and a badlands on the other side. We decided to travel through and above the mountain, which eventually led to another mountain that had two villages somehow combined. One village was on the snowy side of the mountain, and the other was on the less snowy side of the mountain, under the first village. We thought it’d be nice to live in one of the houses there, and I was going to expand a house into the mountain and have tons of farms there. That plan didn’t work because living on a slant is quite inconvenient and annoying to traverse; so my sister decided she didn’t like it and moved to live at the base of the mountain, where she could have a small farm for crops, and a somewhat larger farm for animals of all kinds. I sort of copied her, but instead of living at the base, I went to a huge oak forest and levelled some hills to put my house on. Once we found where to live, we had to decide what materials to use for our houses. My sister was very decisive and chose almost immediately (forms of terracotta, bricks, and oak wood) while I was more indecisive, eventually choosing mangrove wood and dark oak. But, if you’ve ever dabbled in trying to find specific biomes, you’d know mangrove swamps are very rare and also very small. In the next part, I will talk about what happened on the way back, building some farms, mining a little, and starting my house.

As some of you may know, I am half Korean. I’ve lived about half my life in Korea, and the other half here in Victoria. Whenever someone asks me where I preferred living I would always way that I preferred living in Korea. However, it was only until the end of September this year when I actually started thinking about how different my lifestyles were based on the time of the year.

When I live in Korea for the summer, I have almost no limits. I can walk around the city by myself, I can hang out with my friends and walk to places with them at 3 am. I would never be able to do that here and feel like I was safe. I am also Closer to my mom’s side of the family and I only see them when I’m in Korea.

Another reason I prefer living in Korea is because of how convenient everything is. There are small shops, cafés, and restaurants everywhere, and the subway is super easy to use. When I live in Korea, I often go to the convenience store in my apartment complex. There, I can easily buy many things that I need.

Here in Victoria, things feel a lot quieter and more spread out. I have to plan everything ahead, and I can’t just suddenly go somewhere with my friends. I do like how peaceful it is here, but sometimes it feels a bit too calm. In Korea, even simple things like hanging out with friends or walking around at night feel exciting and full of energy.

Still, living in both places has made me appreciate different parts of each culture. Korea feels fast-paced and connected, while Victoria feels relaxed and open. I think having both experiences has helped me see the world in a unique way.

This weekend, I had no soccer games. My team had no soccer games because it was thanksgiving. So, me and my family went to Campbell river. In Campbell river, we went to this new hotel. We went to this hotel because it was right next to a driving range and a golf course. But that not all we did in Campbell river, we also went to see the nature and wildlife. We saw bears and salmons. We saw bears fishing salmons in a river. In that river there was also a lot of people fishing. What surprised me the most was that there were bears that came to fish right in front of the people and the people didn’t even get scared. They said that it was normal for them to see bears come right in front of them. That experience was pretty fun but my favorite part was definitely the golf. The range was very nice because it had trackers to measure how far and fast your ball went. I also enjoyed playing on the course with my dad. The course  was very fun because it wasn’t to hard but not to easy. It had the perfect balance.

I love flamingos because they are incredibly pink and unique! Their big, bright pink feathers, long legs and big curved necks make them stand out and look so elegant. I find it fascinating that their colour doesn’t come naturally, but it originates from the food they consume, such as shrimp and algae. Flamingos are graceful and have many different abilities, such as balancing on one leg for long periods of time. The way that they move is so peaceful and calm. Their presence is relaxed and serene, even when other loud birds and wildlife surround them. Flamingos can range from pink to deep coral depending on the area of the world they reside in and the type of food available to them.

I also love how social flamingos are. They always stay together in big colonies that can range from hundreds to thousands of birds. It shows that they use and rely on teamwork.  Many flamingos develop long-term friendships, which I find very much like us.  Their behaviour reminds me that being part of a group and supporting each other is essential. They look out for one another and work together.  Flamingos are all different and stand out. They aren’t afraid to be big, bright, and bold.

(Own prompt), “If you could trade lives with any animal for a day, which would you choose and what would you do first?”. I think the animal, or rather arachnid, would be a black widow spider. I chose this animal because they are scary and sleek, with their all black skin and pointy legs. Also, choosing a spider would do everybody a huge flavour, because spiders trap and kill mosquitoes, houseflies, ants, silverfish, wasps, and more. Mosquitoes are definitely the most annoying, especially when you hear one buzzing around your room at night, and you can’t find it. So you go to bed and wake up with a new, itchy mosquito bite. The worst part is you can’t even feel them biting you, the only way you find out they are is if you see them. Wasps and houseflies are the runners-up, with the wasps just being a more annoying version of a bee, only with a worse sting and the ability to sting multiple times. Houseflies find their way into your house with ease, but have the hardest time leaving, banging their head on windows, spreading their germs on unprotected food, and just being a nuisance. Spiders also create webs, which is how they capture these unpleasant insects, but it also means a spider bite to any human who falls victim to walking into a spider web. Spiders are sneaky too; they usually reside in the most unsuspecting nooks and crannies of the house, like ceiling corners, under the stairs, under beds, inside vases, etc. Which means they are always watching. The only downsides are being the size of a bottle cap, and being the smallest predator, meaning a spider doesn’t really stand a chance against any other living animal, except for small rodents, frogs,  lizards, and small snakes.

Hello children of Brookes Westshore, i shall explain to you why dragonite/ pokemon #149 is the absolute WORST, ok so first, its a dragon-flying type which means its 4x weak to ice, not only that but there are just way better dragon-flying types like big rayray (rayquaza) and mega salamence. Not only that but dratini and dragonair looked so cool but suddenly it goes from majestic worm to yellow barney, and they even gave it a mega which looks like it belongs in a cocomelon video. they even made it in ash’s team in the gen 8 anime but we dont talk about that because that season sucked and didnt exist and was only made to feed slop to the 3 yr olds who wanna see dragonite, but THEN it was added in some other main character team in gen 9, WITH ITS MEGA EVEN THOUGH THE GAME THE MEGA IS IN ISNT EVEN OUT YET, like mate WHY does this pokemon get so much love it should NOT have, meanwhile we got hydreigon over here having gotten NOTHING for 15 years besides the fairy type being added and basically giving it a new quad weakness, this pokemon is just SO ANNOYING and i hate it.

I’ve never trusted alarm clocks. They’re basically tiny robots designed to destroy your morning. Mine has one job, wake me up for school, but it can never seem to do it right. Last Tuesday, it went off at 3 a.m. The beeping was so loud I swear everyone in the neighbourhood could’ve heard it.

I stumbled out of bed, eyes half-closed, trying to find the snooze button. Instead, I knocked over a glass of water, accidentally rolled off my bed, turned on my desk light, and didn’t manage to turn my alarm off until I was fully awake by the screeching sound in my ear.

Once I finally turned it off, I looked at the time and realized I had almost three more hours of sleep. I tried to fall back asleep, but now my brain was fully awake and I just started asking random questions to myself to stay busy and hopefully fall asleep.

That night, I unplugged it, buried it under a pile of laundry, and set my phone alarm instead. The next morning, my phone didn’t go off at all. So yeah — maybe I just wasn’t meant to go to school on time.

Since I already did Cinderella, this time I’m going to do Snow-white. Did you know that In some versions of the story, the evil queen asks the hunter to bring back not only Snow-white’s heart, but also her liver and lungs? The reason is really disturbing. The evil queen was planing to eat Snow-white’s organs, commit actual cannibalism, to regain her youth. She believed that she would be younger if she ate Snow-white. In a different version, Snow-white doesn’t wake up because of a kiss, but because her very pretty glass coffin was being moved by the prince. When the coffin was moving, for some reason the peace of poisoned apple poped out of her throat. The version that confuses me the most is the one first published in 1812 by the brothers Grimm. The evil stepmother was actually the evil and jealous mother that wanted to murder her own daughter because she was prettier than her. At the end of that version of the story, the evil queen [hag] doesn’t fall of a cliff and die. Instead, she has the audacity to come to Snow-white’s wedding and try to poison her again using the poisoned apple. This time, she was forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes to death.

The end

Cinemas over the world

One of my favorites hobbies is going to the cinemas, especially with my dad.

I have gone to a lot of places and countries in my life, and I always try to make sure I check how the cinemas are there, and finally I know that my favorite cinema will be always Cinemex Market, its a cinema in Mexico. When I was in Mexico I always went with my dad to that cinema on weekends to see horror or action movies, I love that habit and I always miss it. Me and my dad have the best range on Cinemex that is the platinum card. You achieve that range when you go to Cinemex 24 times in a year. But we have that range and mostly go to Cinemex because of me, so before coming to Canada I made sure that me and my dad already had the 24 visits to Cinemex this year. I know that as soon as I go back to Mexico I will start again going to Cinemex.

I went to Europe over summer break. I went to 3 places in Europe. I went to Ireland, Scotland, and my favourite place I went to was London. I had lots of fun on this trip. The first place we went to was Dublin, Ireland. I spent 7 days there it was lots of fun! We went shopping, walked around, and mainly just enjoyed our time there. Then we went to Scotland. We only spent 4 days there. For the first day we went on this bus tour and we went all around Scotland and visited lots of small little cities there. in Scotland we also went and did an escape room which was very fun because I really enjoy escape rooms. Then we took a flight to the U.K. We went to London! It was my favourite place i’ve ever been too. In London I met lots of new people and saw lots of new places and things i’ve never seen. I also saw a bunch of cool cars. I saw 5 Bugatti’s which are super rare cars that cost around $5 million each! My family also enjoyed London a ton! The only bad thing about all of this traveling was the plane flights. I usually enjoy plane flights but the flights were much longer than I have been on. The longest i’ve been on a plane before this was like 8 hours. The flight with layovers took around a full day of traveling. I really hope to go back to Europe because It was one of my most favourite trips i’ve been on.