Blog # 10, 11, 12

I decided to do my blog of a holiday on Halloween because it is my favorite holiday. Halloween falls on the 31st of October every year. Like any other holiday, Halloween was passed down through tradition and from generation to generation. Halloween, or the Hallow E'en as they call it in Ireland, means All Hallows Eve, or the night before the 'All Hallows'. In the United States, children wear costumes on Halloween and go trick-or-treating. Many people carve jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins. Halloween developed from ancient new years festivals and festivals of the dead. In the A.D. 800's, the Christian church made All Saints' Day on Nov. 1 so people could continue celebrating. Other halloween traditions include bobbing for apples, which began in England, and fortune telling. People once believed that ghosts roamed the earth on Halloween. They also thought that all witches met on October 31 to worship the devil. Most people do not believe in ghosts or witches, but these supernatural things remain a symbol of halloween today.


As many of you already know, Darfur is a region in Africa that is dealing with the problem of genocide. Recently, I read about an outbreak of meningitis that is causing thousands of people in Darfur to die. "With no health care providers to give vaccinations, and with no one to manage the meningitis cases when they come, it's really concerning," said Gemma Davies. In this statement Gemma is telling us that there is a big problem in Darfur and they need some honest help. Darfur doesn't have the advantage like us United States citizens do, so they are suffering on a daily basis. Even though they don't have any vaccinations to help, the Humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders group is trying to organize a vaccination campaign. We are very fortunate to have trained doctors and physicians to aid to the ill and find cures for all kinds of diseases. Meningitis is a bacterial infection that can cause a headache or fever, then possibly lead to death. This is very much affecting the population of Darfur, along with the genocide that is already happening in that part of the world.


Christopher Columbus is to thank for finding this great country called the United States. He was a Spanish explorer and people thought he was trying to prove the world was round, but this is not true. Most people already knew the earth was round. He wanted to find a short way to get to the Indies by ship. He set said on August 3, 1492 and made one stop, then sailed on toward the west. After many days, the sailors were ready to turn around and start back home, but he asked for just three more days. Two days later they saw land, which was an island Columbus named San Salvador. He thought he had found the Indies and called the people he saw there "Indians". He then continued on and eventually landed on Cuba, then the United States. This relates to colonization because Christopher Columbus seized new land and adapted to new customs and to new surroundings.