Jesus was Middle Eastern!

     Dear World,

Am I the only one who gets upset by walking down the school hallway, looking at the pictures of white baby Jesus? I mean, seriously, are those artists racist, or has the universal picture of Jesus turned white? I gave out Christmas cards today. Why the hell did Jesus have blonde hair and blue eyes? In our classroom nativity scene, Mary is blonde with red highlights! Can we please try to remember that Jesus was not white! It just kind of annoys me. A lot. I should really get a life by now.

   My family celebrates Christmas. Julia celebrates Christmas, and yet my class bought a Menorah because Julia is part Jewish, about .99%. Readers, what do you celebrate?

  Sometimes I think Christmas would be better without the presents. I'm going to do One Laptop Per Child this year because I have enough crap. But doesn't it seem that sometimes things turn into this argument and envy over presents? I mean, just today two of my best friends got into this huge fight because one person got another present or something like that.  I also feel like a shi*ty Secret Santa because the spending limit was $15 (which I used), while my Santa got me a $25 itunes card. To me, celebrating with my family and friends is worth more than an itunes card or a box of candy. Why does the Industry have to make everything so---commercial, and fake? They're making a Spider Man Musical. To quote Debbie, "Is nothing sacred?"

   But still have a wonderful Christmas or whatever you celebrate.

- Anneliese

Find a Happy Place

About a week ago my science teacher made me go down to the nurse. I broke out into stress hives. Stress hives! Out of all things, stress hives! I'm 13 and I have stress hives! This was the year I was going to be all zen about things and now I turn pink and purple when I think about the SHSAT! My science teacher told me to take deep breaths and find a happy place. But when I go into my happy-place mode, my mom always yells at me for not doing my work. So it's a lose-lose situation.

18 days till the SHSAT. I am so incredibly nervous. I know I'm wrong, but I feel like my whole future depends on this one test. However, my piano teacher advises, and this should become a very famous quote, "In America, there is no good school. There is only a good student.". That is a really awesome quote.

Oma is making me eat this egg sandwhich thing. I got these vegetable rolls at Trader Joe's but they were disgusting so I threw them out, and now I'm stuck with a baby chick on bread. When I turn 18 I am going to go vegan.

I just logged onto CNN. All over the site is "Vatican welcomes Anglicans into Catholic Church". Is this a step closer to finally modernizing the Catholic Church? I mean, the Church is rapidly running out of members. They say how the Catholic Church is dying but it's just killing itself. More than half the population is female and they won't let them become priests or have positions of power in the Church. If you join the Church you give up your opportunity to marry. I like the Catholic Church. It helped raise me when I was little, since I was really brought up by Oma since my parents were both at work. I always used to have these funny little prayer books. And I want the Church to survive, but at the same time it's creating all this hate and prejudice and scandal and arguments and disagreements. Times have changed. You can't change the people. You should be able to change the people's Church. (Check it out here. )

Please leave your opinion and comments.

Now everything is getting underlined.

- Anneliese