Razan Alaqeel's

     Let me try to put this together.  I just said goodbye to my park, my second house.   I just said goodbye to my second family, to the people who have affected my life.  I  just said goodbye to the nine hundred volunteers who came from all over the city to do one thing, to help.      Today was…kind of sad, but funny in the same time.  It was mixed with anger, but it had its happy moments in the same time.  We planned for something huge and spectacular, but nothing amazing really happened.      I just want to say to the volunteers that we don't need a party to celebrate our success.  Because we are champions.  Because we were taking care of more than five thousand people everyday.  Because we smiled.  Because we had fun.  Because we were spreading out some positive vibes around the park.  Because we were ready to face any challenge.      Things can go out of control, but, who cares?!  Even though we didn't have the ''final party'' that we were waiting for

     They say that I was born fifteen years ago at this particular time.  My father says that the family's life was completely changed, and my mother says that that year brought growth and happiness to the world.      November 9 th , 1997 was the day.  It was the day when I first breathed the air of Alahssa, it was the day when I first saw the sun, it was the day when everyone welcomed me to the world.  When I look back now and remember some memories of my life, I see a kid who wanted to play with her Barbies, I see her holding the pencil writing her first words.  I also see a girl who give her first speech, and I see her trying to write her first essay.  I see a teenager who determines that she wants to be a writer, I see her writing her first organized essay with her bad handwriting, I see her giving more speeches, and I see her grow up with more confidence and dreams.      Fifteen years are so great, each birthday had its own memories.  Each year cared with it something ne

      The first official interview is the most scary part of the grownups world.  Today I went through one of the most interesting experiences in my life, today I did my first official interview.  I  didn't  know what to say, or how to act, but, I also felt relaxed in the same time.  I wanted to have some confidence, I wanted to make a good first impression, I wanted to stop shaking, and I just wanted to show them my real personality at the same time.       I realized that being scared can help a lot, because when you're scared you would want to tell them everything about you.  You want them to feel amazed, you want to draw a smile on their faces, and you want to be accepted.  Extra confidence can harm a little bit, but in interviews everything counts.  The way you sit, the way you move your hands, the way you talk, and maybe the way you breathe.     Smiling is a great weapon to win your interview battle.  When you smile you hide the scared expressions.  When you smile y

     Syria, oh where do I start?  Should I start from the people that we've lost?  Should I start from the historical Empire that fell down on two dirty hands.  Should I start from the history of Syria?  Or maybe, I'll just write about what should be written.      I wasn't that interested about the Arabic Spring.  But when I realized that what's happening will lead the Middle East to a brighter end, I started to read some things.  I'll leave the political things on a side and I'll write about those poor, brave people.      We've tried to help them as much as we could, but Allah is helping all the time.  I once read something that says ''Fear is what keeps you alive.'' –Paulo Coelho, Brida.  I realized that those brave people are still fighting because the fear of not taking their country back is scaring them.  They want to raise their Syrian flag the way the Egyptians, Libyans, and the Tunisians did.      Birds fly in peace, they lov

    We once had three teachers, the teachers of all teachers.  They taught us what a lot of teachers couldn’t grasp.  They taught us a lot in a little amount of time.  They taught us that… that…people like them are very few.      One of them was a Math teacher who taught us how to respect her and love her by the minute she walked to our class.  She taught us the basics as if we were in 1st grade.  She was the funniest teacher in the world.  She loved what she did, that’s why she was so good at doing her job.  We used to have the worst marks, but she didn’t say that we’re stupid, she just started teaching.  We ended up having the best marks in the school.  She didn’t accept any bad marks, she asked for full, clean marks.  I believe that she taught us that we can do anything.  She started from the zero and reached the 10 with us.  She was special, that’s what made everything full of fun.      The second one was an Arabic Language teacher.  She basically started from the zero too.  Ev

     This was the longest day of my life. I spent the 24 hours having fun, sleeping in an airplane, sleeping in a lobby, enjoying life, breathing the fresh air, eating fish , walking for a long distance, and more and more!     Istanbul is a nice city, it has the... I don't know how I should describe this city. I've discovered a lot of things in Istanbul today. I went to a lot of places, and I had a little time to read some of Paulo Coelho's Aleph. I want to find myself in this trip, I want to breath like I've never breathed before. I want to live like I've never lived before. Oh Allah help me, I've got a lot to write, but that's okay, because I want you to picture everything the way I pictured it.      To make things easier for you and me, I'll start from the beginning of the day. I woke up at Thursday, June 14th 2012, 12:12 pm. I had a mixture of different emotions. I couldn't feel the happiness, but I was sure that a miracle is going to

    Ahmed Al-Shugairi , this man has learned me a lot!  A ton of people had judges him for saying the truth, but don’t you get it?  This man is trying to make a point, a goodpoint in this world.  He is trying to change us, why would any one of us blame him? He is showing us the Islam in an amazing way.        Us, the new generation, there's a lot of distractions that are taking us away from Fasting and Praying etc.  But, he's encouraging us to do a lot of wonderful things, things that can help us and help our community.  We have a great ideas, but no one is listening to us.  Mr. Al-Shugairi is showing us how to be ourselves, but without changing our thoughts.  He has a program that is called ''Khawater'',but in English it's Called ''Thoughts''.      Let's say that he's writing his ''Thoughts'' on a newspaper, no one will respond to him.  This generation is very hard.  If you want to make a huge difference, you'l

Have you ever missed a TV series?   Or have you ever read something that says ''That awkward moment when your favorite TV series finishes, and you don't know what to do with your life from that point''?   I know why, that series have taught us something valuable.   Maybe be the idea of the series is stupid to people, but you might find something interesting in it.   You might find the world that you want.     One thing that I have learned from an amazing series is: how to love, and how to fight for your identity.  I'm sure that everyone is watching the series Between Past and Love (Bain Almady wa Alhob).  I just watched the final episode of it in the internet, and I just wanted to cry.  Because Laila taught us how to love, how to discover new things, how to be loyal to people, how to be respectful, and maybe how to be Sherlock Holmes.     Waleed taught us that you can find your lover anywhere in this world.  He taught us that you have to be fight for your

     Good news people!  I toke the 3rd place in my school’s Spelling Bee Competition!  That’s exciting, that’s amazing, that’s believing that we can.  Two months ago I was refusing the idea of the competition, and now I lived the competition.  We have a lot of fears, one of my biggest fears was spelling a long word correctly.  And now, I… finding words of what I feel right now might be hard, so I’ll just leave it to you to decide.      We had to wait for six hours for our turn.  Because we’re the older ones so we have to wait.  I was really shocked to see the 1st graders spelling words.  They’re really good, those girls are only six or seven years old, and they were spelling words that they didn’t know about before!  I think that they believed a lot in themselves, and they got what they deserved.      My first word was martyr (m-a-r-t-y-r).  I was really thankful for having that word as my first.  We finished really fast!  The girls from the other school weren’t that good, but we h

    ‘’Something has changed within me, something is not the same’’ -Defying Gravity.  Allah, my mother, my teacher, and the World had helped me a lot, and  now its my turn to pay it back to them.       There will be a Spelling Bee Competition at our school in five days.  They’ve told us about it two months ago.  I was really angry about the idea, ‘’Really?  A spelling bee?!’’ I thought in my mind.  Words weren’t really important for me, spelling was nothing for me too.  But… When I saw the movie Akeelah and the Spelling Bee, one month ago, I knew that I can be great at spelling.  I knew that I can love words.  But I was sure that I can win.  If spelling is my biggest fear, then why not make it something that I love?  I can face that fear and win…      Yesterday, something strange happened.  Or let me say it was ‘’ Maktoob ’’ to happen.  I started to have some nightmares toward the competition.  There’re some brilliant girls, there’re girls who live to spell and learn, there’re girl

To my mom. To the woman who worked to raise me for the past 14 years. To the woman who had to dress me up every morning for KG. To the woman who wants me to be the most successful writer in this world. To my lovely mom, I write these words. I don't think that there will be any good words to describe you. Each daughter loves her mom in her own way. But to be honest with you, I've never discovered the way that I have to love you. You have this thing that makes me love you, but sorry... I don't know what's that thing. You try to make me feel special. You believe in me. You don't care if I get bad marks as long as I'm learning. You know that no matter what heppens with me...I'll always be your unique daughter. You tell people that I'm your daughter with some teary eyes. When I was in 7th grade you told me that you wanted to watch me walking on the stage, with an amazing report card on my hands. Those words had a re

She was right. A couple of weeks ago, someone told me that''Me and my friends are still kids''. I couldn't agree with her, I thought that I'm an adult, and I can make decisions. Well, I have this adult part who is living inside of me. And, I have this kid part who is me. Lately, I thought that the age of 14 is a big number. But, yesterday I was helping my dad with some papers. I toke a look at my passport, and I saw my age, picture, and date of birth. So I thought in my mind ''Why am I bothering myself about being an adult?'' I'm just 14 years old. I can make some small decisions, but, I'm still me. I have a big life waiting for me, am I right? See, I always have a big smile on my face. Even if I'm sad I smile, I keep the anger inside of me by smiling. People die and I smile. A lot of people have told me ''Stop smiling, it's not the time!'' A lot of people have told me &

      What happens after everyone watches Arab Idol?   Twitter is where they talk, and where they can express what they feel.   People write about 1000 tweet in less than an hour.   They talk, they say bad things, and then they say that Yusuf, and Carmen were great…          Let's talk about how they talk about Ahlam.    There's a HUGE war between Ahlam, and the Youth of the Middle East every Friday, and Saturday night!   They talk about her dress, her makeup, her jewelry, her voice, her husband, her kids, her airplane, her companies, and it got to the point when they talked about her maid!   Ahlam can say some wired things every now and then, but she's still a human…   They started to post some ''bad'' pictures about her.   So I think that they're being very aggressive.   But what can we say?   She has to control herself a little bit, but people won't change!         Some of the tweeters stay up all night just to tweet about the sho

The rainbow      Experience a new day is actually a new adventure.  Everyday is a challenge, if you did it the right way, you will pass through it.  It's like a test, you should study very hard, you should put everything you've got in it, if you did that you will pass it.  You will be happy in the end of the test, if you saw your marks you will know that you did an excellent job.  Life is like this, if you are good to people, to yourself, to the earth, to everything around you, if you did your duets to God, then, make sure that this is the life that you want.      Learn from everything you see, from everyone you meet.  Then, that will be your key to a wonderful life. Don't be sad, don't be so emotional!  You've got a wonderful life, the problem is that you don't know how blessed you are.  Being sad all the time might kill you, and might destroy you.      The rainbow, find the rainbow inside of you, find the joy.  All of you got rainbows inside of

What's love? It's a feeling? It's a promise? It's a word that has a lot of meanings? Well… I don't know. Love is a sacrifice. Love is dying for your lover. Love is a beautiful thing that can changeyour whole life. Yes, I would say that loveis a promise. Love is getting crazyabout your lover. Love….. love is anendless feeling. I've never experiencedlove, but I do believe that it's an amazing feeling. Just to feel that one person in this wholewide world would do anything thing just for you is….. amazing? I don't think that ''amazing'' will cover thefull meaning. People might call loveas a ridiculous feeling. But they'rewrong. We can't blame them. They've never experienced this feeling. Or maybe, they got hurt from this feeling. I have no idea why I'mwriting about love. But it looked beautifulin Nizar Qabbain's stanza's. It showedits respect to the world in

     Success is your past and your future.  You are what you do.  You are what you reflect.  You are what you make.  Nobody's perfect, not even the President, the King, or the Prince.  No one can choose his destiny.  You can be 9 out of 10, but there's times when you just can't reach the 10.  However, with some hard work and Faith, I think that you can be 9.50 or maybe an 11, who knows?      I've always thought that we have to live for our future,  and that's good.  But I forgot about my present.  Having a life that you can look up to in the moment is so wonderful.  So please, don't you ever forget about your present.  Don't stick with your past or future, because you'll miss a lot of incredible things that are happening now.      ''When you never try, you'll never know,'' –Cold Play, Fix you.  Some song lyrics are so touching.  Please admit that you listen to music based on your mood.  If you're happy, you'll listen to

     Life is so funny. Expect what's unexpected. You don't know what's gonna happen for you in the next hour. Don't say "Yes I know, I have a lot of plans.". Listen, that's never works! There's always something that can stop you of reaching to what you have in mind. It's your destiny.       I just read something that says "Friendships are like books. It takes seconds to burn them, but it takes years to write them.". I wish I knew who's the writer, I would've stood up on my feet and just...........thanked him. You never know who's your true friend. It's the same thing with your enemies, but there's a little difference between them. Fake Friends will come to you and say "Oh I love so much, I can't live without you, an...". Hold on! We're just friends don't go too far pall. But true friends won't bother themselves by saying all of those stuff. If they're true enough, they'll sit and sh

     What can I say? Three weeks ago it was just me with my pen, lost in the world of ideas. I wanted just a simple inspiration, that could help me write something. Now, I'm me, with my pen, I have grown up mentally and have a ton of ideas. Traveling can be healing for everything. It can be the huge bubble you're searching for.  You just can blow that bubble and you'll find the ideas raining all around you.      You might be wondering, how I have "grown up mentally"? Well, it was just me with my same ideas, the ideas about hope and these similar things. But now, I've found a big treasure. That treasure is how to think, and how you treat people the way you want them to treat you. I saw about 1,000 people walking down the streets this week.  But what I noticed was their pride. Everyone was proud of who he is, and people acted the same towards each other.      During the first day of our trip, I wrote something called "Amsterdam After I Read About It&qu