the gratitude project assignment :: lily... noah...

Our ongoing series of essays from Grade 8 students from Broadview Public School here in Ottawa.  I had the pleasure of meeting with Ms. Viner and Ms. Krochmalnek's classes just before our Canadian Thanksgiving, to talk to them about *the gratitude project: dare to be grateful*. (Read more about that here.) Students were then given an assignment to interview a friend or family member about what they were grateful for, and to submit a short essay based on that interview.   I will be publishing a selection of these essays here on the blog over the next couple of weeks.  You will want to read these.  Seriously. These kids rock.

(Read Julia's essay here, Minseong and Judy's essays here, O'Dane and Evan's essays here,Dylan's essay here and Selina's essay here.)

Allow me to now introduce these two great essays by Lily and Noah...

The Gratitude Project   By: Lily

 
Hello there! I’m Lily and this is an interview of my mom. We recently sat down by the Ottawa river and discussed what we were grateful for, she talked about her favourite creative outlet:

Her topic has a lot to do about our cultural background, making Ukrainian Easter eggs (a.k.a. Pysanky)! Every year, around a month before Ukrainian Easter (usually 1 to 5 weeks after the Easter most of us know). When the time rolls around, we get out all our tools, a lot of them from when my grandma was still around (I love you Babcha!). We try to coax and drag our family to our dinning room table to at least make one egg, and when we are settled, we start to talk…
 
The great thing about making these eggs is that it is very meticulous work, so we kinda’ lose ourselves in our stream of consciousness. We talk about stuff that usually wouldn’t be spoken in a normal, straight as a board conversation. It’s a great way to get to know each other better, to bring us closer. 

Making Easter eggs is also quite extraordinary because it brings us back 100s (if not 1000s) of years of tradition. It liberates us from fast paced society nowadays. With all the technology and problems of today, it’s not hard to get whisked away. Getting together every year like this helps ground us, keep us together.
 
I really agree with my mom. With all that’s going on today, it’s hard to sit down and really think about our pasts (whether it’s 100 years ago or maybe what you did that day). Holding a wooden stick with a fine metal tip and drawing on an egg with it, the smell of beeswax and candle smoke heavy in the air, is sort of a relief. And the final product is also something to be grateful for as well!    ~Lily

 

The Gratitude Project   By: Noah

For the gratitude project I decided to interview my mom Tessa. I asked her “what person are you most grateful for” and after maybe a minute of thinking she chose to talk about her grandmother. 

She had been so grateful for her grandmother many reasons but she decided to pick these 3 examples. One reason that she was so thankful was because she taught her how to cook delicious hungarian dinners from scratch such as goulash and snitzel. That would be great because my mom told me she had always been at the cottage and her grandmother showed her many, many ways to stay fed with a delicious meal. 

This had taken up a lot of her choices so I had pry out what other reasons for being grateful for her grandmother. Finally I had gotten "business" as one of her most grateful parts from her grandmother and I'm sure her grandmother would have been very helpful in that specific area because her job was finding and selling antiques. She taught her business in a way that showed her how to make the most of the resources she had.

The final reason she had chosen her grandmother was to show her cottaging with skills she had not known such as pie making and enjoying the cottage I know this does not sound like a very important subject but when I listened to her talk about it I noticed enjoying the cottage is a very important part in life, for example if she never new cottaging she would never be good in flipping houses for more money and profit witch has helped her very much in life.

After sitting down with her for so long I can now believe why she had choisen her grandmother. If she had not ever met her grandmother she would have never learned how to flip houses make delicious meals and enjoy life as it is!