Culture

Today, I read an article called "Chinese New Year- year of the ox" about the chinese new year. The chinese new year is kind of like our new year but it starts on january 26th and has animals representing it. The new year traditions and festivites start on the darkest day of the month and go until the moon is brigher, which is usually around the 15 day of the month. The chinese hold close to them their new year celebration because the new year is one of the most important celebrations in the chinese culture. "At Chinese New Year celebrations people wear red clothes, decorate with poems on red paper, and give children "lucky money" in red envelopes." I think that it is very cool that the chinese all unite on this special day with the color red. It shows that they have unity and really care about their culture. The chinese hold close to them this celebration and look forward to it every year. It very cool to look how closely related different cultures can be and also how vastly different they can be.

Hartman, H. "Chinese new year-the year of the ox." infoplease.

Change

Today, I read an article called "If you want to change your life, change your thoughts" about how to change your life. The article explains little things you can do to make a big change in your life.
""Lemons into Lemonade" maxim. Choose to find the good, find the lessons, and you will shape a more positive life for yourself."
This quote explains how you truely have to look at life. In life there are many difficult things that everyone will be faced with. Not everyone gets faced with the same obstacles but everyone feels pain and grief. Life has its way of giving everyone a fair share of sorrow and joy. Its just how you choose to deal with the sorrow that makes your life more injoyable and fun or full of depression and sadness. This article also explains how anyone can change at anytime in their life. The person just has to be willing to endure the metamorphosis.
Change takes a lot of time and patiences but if someone really wants it and puts the effort into it, its possible.


Stone,K. "If you want to change your life, change your thoughts." Dumb little man.

Hope

Today, I read an article called tiny dancer about a pre-teen girl with IV Hodgkin lymphoma cancer. Sarah Marchbank, had a passion for dancing and she wasn't going to let her cancer get in the way of doing what she loves best.
"'I feel powerful, strong and graceful when I dance."'
This quote explains how much passion and dedication she had towards dance. Sarah had to endure a lot of hardships along the way of treatment like, chemo and radiation therapy but she still had hope that she would dance on. It amazes me that someone so young could go through something so scary and painful and yet still be strong enough to live out dreams. Sarah was even strong and brave enough to dance at one of her recitals without any hair on her head. To me it takes true courage to do something like that. Sarah never once doubted that she would beat cancer and be okay.She always had hope that thing work out the way God wanted and they was it was meant to be. Hope is something that can lift a persons spirit when everything seems to be going wrong. If someone has hope then it can truely carry you through hard times and lead you to where you want to be. Without hope nothing is possible.

Sarah, M. "Tiny Dancer." Promise Winter 2009. (St.jude.com)

Religion

I read an article from the New York Times called "Some Pastors worry about guns in church". There is a bill before the Arkansas senate to allow conceaded weapons in churches. Some people are upset because they believe that the government should stay out of church decisisons and that if a church wanted to ban guns they should be able to do that. Others think that no one is going to frisk church goers anyway so it is not really an important bill. And, others think that people should have guns in case something happens and the church members need to be protected.

I think that the individual churches should decided for themselves whether or not they want to allow guns in their church. If the church is in a bad neighborhood where safety is an issue then the church might want to have some people in church who are carrying a gun for safety. I do think that other churches might not want to have people carrying guns if it makes people uncomfortable.

I guess the real issue here is that the government should not interfer with decisions that churches make for their congregations. The individual churches know what works best for them and they should be allowed to decide for themselves.

Gender Roles in America

I read an article from Arbiteronline.com called 'Breaking free of our sex: it's time to redefine gender roles in America'. Shannon Morgan, the author of this article says ,"In America we are taught that women are the nurturers, the child-bearers, the keepers of the home and objects of sexual gratification. Men are the bread winners, the strong ones, the alpha males, the bringers of the bacon and are taught that their sexual urges are natural whereas women’s are not - we’re sluts." This quote really stuck with me the most as I read the rest of the article. Most people think that men should do the work and make all the money while women are supossed to stay home cooking and cleaning. That is where they are wrong, women can do much more then house work and run arrends. In this article, Shannon talks about how women are more then sex objects and something nice to look at. She also talks about how America needs to start treating men and women as equals and not superior to one another, even though we are taught from the very beginning the roles of the man and the roles of the woman. I think its important for our generation and older generations to teach newer generations that all people are created equally and should be treated that way too.


Morgan, Shannon. "Breaking free of our sex: it's time to redefine gender roles in America"Arbiteronline.com (2007)

Outside reading

I read an article on how French culture used to influence the whole world, but that today barely gets noticed. It is interesting that the French had very influential writers which everyone knows like Flaubert and Proust, but less than 30% of French books even get translated into English today. Years ago, French artists started the movement of Impressionism, but no one really even knows who the famous artists are in France anymore. The new French President wants to promote and expand French culture, but I think he is going to find that a difficult thing to do.

It is like the world moved beyond the French. It seems like the world evolved and the French still stayed insular within themselves which really didn't interest anyone beyond the French. I think if they really had been doing anything which was relevant to other people in other countries that their culture would be shared more with other people throughout the world.

Outside reading

In twilight , one of the main chacters, Edward Cullen who is a vampire, is faced with a huge challenge that he has to overcome. Bella Swan is a new girl in town who has a blood type that Edward can't stand to be near and when he is near her, he wants to suck her blood. At first he can't be in the same room as her for more then five minutes but soon he realizes that he can not kill her because his love for her is stonger then his desire to kill her. Edward tries so hard to hide his thirst for her blood but it is too strong. He decides to make a choice and keep her alive and while doing so he ends up falling in love with her. This struggle was probably the hardest and most attention getting struggle any chacters in the book had to overcome. When edward and bella kissed , it had one wondering if he was going to let his desire get the best of him and kill her or if he was going to put it aside and forget about it. The author did a great job showing a chacter overcome something that one would think is impossible to overcome and always left one guessing what would happen next.

Quarter 3-outside reading

For this blog post on natural disasters I watched a video on hurricane Katrina. Even though Hurricane Katrina happened a while ago, it is a disaster that will never be forgotten. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans back in August 2005. This category five hurricane was one of the deadliest to hit the United States. Thousands of people and their families had to evacuate very quickly- only able to grab a few belongings and most of them unfortunately didn't make it out alive. I can only imagine what it would have been like to have to pack up everything that meant something to you and just flee to a whole new town. It must have been very hard and scary to see everything you once knew and worked hard for get ruined by water. There are people who are still to this day trying to get back to the life they once lived before the hurricane. Many people lost jobs and are living on the streets because they cant afford a home. The devastation and damage was so great that most of the people were not able to return home so they had to learn to move on and start over and just make the best of what they had now-some people were able to do this and be successful and there are some people who still haven't moved on from what happened.Katrina was a life changing event that devastated the lives of many Americans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCjt_5GMUi4&feature=related