The books we bought.

These are the covers of the books we bought with the money collected from the Non Uniform Day. They are basically novels for teenagers and collections of essays written by young students. All of them are available at school for students to read. You can even pick them up right now and do some reading during the holidays!

Non Uniform Day

This event was planned with two basic goals: give students the opportunity to express their individuality and collect money to buy some new books for our High School library. The project included a letter that was sent to the school's Parent's Commission and new lyrics for a song.

Brochure

Students worked in groups to make brochures describing our city and its attractions. Here are some examples of their work.

Flea


A guy who has influenced me since I started playing the bass is Flea. I don’t know his real name but he is in my opinion one of the best bass players in the world. Flea is very well known around the world and he is famous because the way he plays the bass and the way he acts are unique.
When Flea was first known, he was in a band called “Flea and Chad Smith”. Chad is an excellent drummer that together with Flea studied in the same music school. That band was only drums and bass, none of them sang but it was great because both are awesome musicians that play their instruments very well. The band made a lot of songs that people still listen and many of them are played by bands that admire them.
The bass isn’t the only instrument Flea plays; he also plays the trumpet, drums and guitar. He once played the trumpet in a concert with “Nirvana”, but I think he should only play the bass.
After some years, two guys joined Flea and Chad Smith to form “Red Hot Chilli Peppers”. The band created many songs and added lyrics to some songs from Flea and Chad Smith, such as “Naked in the rain”. Red Hot Chilli Peppers is a band that is very old and is still playing. Since the band was formed, they have made many albums, performed in different places and gained a great number of fans that follow them everywhere.
The concert that I liked most was when Red Hot Chilli Peppers played in Ireland, next to the Slane Castle. It doesn’t matter how many times I watch that concert, I never get tired of it and I always get astonished because Flea improvises a lot and makes each song unique when playing live.
Another thing that Flea does is make people laugh. In concerts, he always dresses with distinctive clothes, such as a skeleton suit and other colourful suits. On the stage, Flea seems to be crazy because of his strange but unique way of moving while playing, and that shows that he really enjoys what he does. In video clips, it is even funnier because he is always doing stupid things.
As a bass player, I admire Flea and try to use the equipment he uses. Flea used Gallien-Krueger amplifiers all his life, so I bought exactly the same one. During his years as a musician, Flea has used many different basses, from a Fender Jazz Bass to a Musicman. This last brand has launched a model called “Flea signature”, that is Flea’s recent bass with its distinctive stickers all over the body.
I hope one day I can buy that bass, not to be like Flea, but to be able to be as original as he is, and to show everybody that I am a big fan of Flea.

Dennis Skorupsky

Personal profile: Nacho Guani, Photographer.

Nacho Guani is a normal guy like any of us but he does something different from everyone, he travels all around Uruguay in an old van, taking pictures high above the surface, on a paraglider!

Nacho was born in Montevideo, and went to a normal school. At a young age he was already attracted to photography, and at the age of 14 he earned his first sum of money. As the girls of his age were starting to make parties, he offered to go with his camera and take pictures. Afterwards, he would charge them as small but useful amount of money. Nacho kept on doing this till the age of 19, when he finished school. He decided to go to New York to study photography seriously, so he could do this job for a living. A few years later, he was back in Uruguay taking pictures of landscapes as he still does today.

Some days ago, we had the privilege of receiving Nacho in our School, where he told us everything about his life. He is 35 years old, although anyone could believe that he's in his late twenties. During his visit, he showed us all his camera equipment, the huge paraglider and his rusty van, which is his vehicle and home everyday, everywhere.

That van is his home as he refuses to sleep somewhere else when he visits places he’s picturing. Amazingly, Nacho bought the van at an auction, for a very low price. It had been used to film a few movies before, and it wasn’t expected to last any longer. Nowadays, Nacho has everything he needs in there. He's got a small bed, the paraglider, all his clothes, a barbecue and more stuff to survive. It's hard to believe that Nacho enjoys this kind of life, travelling alone, and being in a different place everyday sleeping in a rather uncomfortable bed.

Nacho's job and way of life is totally unique in Uruguay. Not many people would accept living away from their family and friends, which also prevents him from finding a couple and form his own family someday. On the other hand, the way of life has a lot of interesting aspects. Not many people can go wherever they feel like going, such as visiting and seeing such incredible places. He can go to sleep at the time he wants to and wake up whenever he wants to, since nobody will make him wake up. It's also really easy to finish the albums he makes as he only has to upload them to his website and the people he works with print it for him.

If I was given the chance I wouldn’t follow this kind of life, but I’m definitely going to paraglide some day.

Guillermo Symonds

Write an argumentative essay. This writing was proposed after reading Isaac Asimov's The Eureka Phenomenon.

High school graduates should have a gap year before starting University.

When people finish school being 18 years old, they are fed up of studying and want to have some time to do whatever they like doing, However, they usually have to go to university immediately, and have to study even harder, which is even more stressing. Because of this I think every student should have a compulsory gap year.

Some people think that this is not good for some reasons. Firstly, having a gap year means you will use a year's class, which means you will finish your career later. Secondly, after being studying your whole life, you will probably forget some things you have learned or how to study.

In spite of these disadvantages, gap years have advantages. To begin with, studying every year is stressing, so if you have some time to do what you like, you might study with a better attitude next year. Secondly, in your gap year you will get some job or travel which will make you gain some experience and even make some useful money. This amount of time will also help you decide your career, as when you finish school, you have to choose immediately.

To sum up, we all need a rest and enough time to decide what your life will be like; that's why I think we should all have a gap year.

Guillermo Symonds

Write about a car accident. Include at least one example of reported speech and another one of quoted or direct speech.

Terrible holiday crash

 

It was a sunny Sunday morning, on the 20th of January. Many people were leaving their cities to go to the beach and other holiday destinations.

Some people were going to Almiron’s hot springs. They were driving by route 25 in a red Fiat 600, which is a car that can’t go too fast. But this Fiat 600 had been modified to increase its speed and go faster. Another car was coming out of a farm and tried to take the road in the opposite direction. But when the car was in the middle of its turn the red car crashed into it at about 140 km/h. The sound of the crash was really loud, people in the area compared the noise with the sound of a gas explosion. A woman who lived there was very scared. “Oh my god!”, she cried. “What was that?!”, shouted the woman. Then people realised that there had been a horrible crash out there and immediately they called for an ambulance. After a few minutes, ambulances, police cars and many more arrived to the place and noticed that two people had already died.

After taking the injured people out of the vehicles they took them to Young and arrived to the hospital very fast. One year later, justice decided who was guilty for the accident and took him to prison. It was one of the most terrible accidents that had happened there so people would never forget it.

Dennis Skorupsky

Stop

“Stop!!!” I shouted to my father when I saw those two lights coming towards us. We –my father and I- were coming back from Montevideo, it was 23:48 at night. I remember the exact time, I don’t know why but I know we were really nervous.

My father pushed the breaks immediately and he realized that if he didn’t turn towards the gutter we would get killed. I was shouting, I couldn’t stop shouting until everything finished. The car went down to the kerb and everything happened in a few seconds, I hit my head with the car’s window and broke it, I had blood all over my head. When the car stopped I stopped shouting and I looked at my father. He was unconscious, I didn’t know what to do, I was alone, there, in the dark, until a lorry driver came. He called an ambulance. The ambulance came quickly and we were taken to the hospital. Everything was fine so an hour later we were at home.

It was the worst moment of my life. In a few seconds so many things crossed my mind… I thought I would never forget that day.

 

Mercedes Lusiardo