Love?

Christopher’s definition of love is helping someone when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth. I think my definition of is caring someone without any greediness or special purposes. People experience love by feeling being protected and cared by other people. I believe that Christopher can only understand his parents love as a fact. When his parents said they love him, it was probably hard for Christopher to really experience it. I think the only part in the novel was sharing his secrets with Mrs. Alexander. It felt like they were attached to each other because they were willing to trust each other with their private things. I experienced love when I feel being protected by my parents or when I felt unique being my parents’ child. I can also feel love from my friends, especially when my friends were willing to help me and sacrifice their time or property. When I talk about love, I mean that I’m not only being cared by others, but I’m also treated different or with respect, making me special or significant. I feel a lot of love coming from my parents since they have been trying to make me special and significant to them.

A World With No People

Christopher often fantasizes about being the only person left in the world because he wanted to be that special person. He wanted to be the one who can do whatever he wants everywhere at any time. I have often dreamed about myself who is somewhat similar to what Christopher was thinking when I was young. I always wanted to be that only person driving down the street with my Mustang and loud pop music alone, going into a store and buy whatever I want without paying any money at all. If I were alone in the world, I would go around to some places and do things that I pleased. I can also imagine myself getting bored really fast after just a few hours of “loneliness” in the world. I wouldn’t really know what to do if I were the only person in the world. I wouldn’t really know what to do if I were the only person in the world. I preferred to have maybe just one or two friends that would be with me in the world alone. Christopher probably doesn’t even want friends to be with him. Instead, he just wanted to be alone and do things in his own way.

Each Other's Business

Eboo Patel made a point on about the Norman Rockwell painting that freedom of worship should exist. He used a Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem to support his idea that everyone has different religious background and no one should ever interfere other’s religious practice or culture. When his Jewish friend was in trouble, he found out that he couldn’t interfere with the problems and sufferings his friend was suffering. He knew that all he could do is to prevent the same problem from happening others. After I took a little research on the Norman Rockwell’s painting, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine these pictures in my mind because I don’t really believe in any certain religion. But after I put together the description Eboo Patel made and the picture, I could easily felt and understand how people who believed in religion felt about that painting. I find the quote that Gwendolyn Brooks had is sometimes true, but not all the time. We help our friends, families, and others, but when it really comes down to individual performance, it’s when others can not help you. You have to work hard on your own and no one would really care if you didn’t do a good job on it.

Self Definition

I don’t really think I can define myself in one word. I find it hard to express myself since the people surrounding me are similar to me. They have the same race, and background than I have. I think it’s easier for people to define themselves when they find themselves different from others. I think it is good to define yourself narrowly because it helps you identify your own “self” and uniqueness. I would define myself as a hard working, but not a smart person. Inside the story, the narrator described herself as “Muslim”. It showed her difference in cultural backgrounds form others. If the narrator was living in Islam, she would probably not use “Muslim” to describe herself because she’s not special from others. Defining one person with one word is simply just saying out the person’s own identity that others don’t have. I am living in Taiwan where most of the people are Chinese, so I wouldn’t really use the word “Chinese” to be my identity. On the other hand, if I’m living in another place other than Taiwan or China and I am the only Chinese person, maybe the word “Chinese” would be the word that defines me, just like the narrator in the story.

Author's Attitude

In the article “Islam in America”, the author assumed the readers not to know a lot of about the religious practices of Muslims. The author tries to emphasis the point how religious background can segregate people from others. she gives some descriptions on the appearance and religious background to the readers in order to let the readers have a mental image of how different these people are. The author mostly focused on readers who wanted to understand more about Muslim people living in America. She is making an assumption that people who reader her stories do know that Muslims have different cultural backgrounds than the White people. She is trying to make a comparison between people with absolutely different cultures and make a cultural fusion by telling the readers how the characters can adapt the new environment. The author gave out statistics and told the readers the misconceptions that all people had on Islamic people. She was explaining how people feel towards Muslims. The author assumed all the readers to think negatively about Muslims and she was trying to erase all the bad impressions that were made on the Muslim people and refresh it by saying how similar they were with the White people.

Living Together

I think that cultural differences can enrich a community. Cultural differences can include different religious backgrounds. They tried to come together peacefully even though sometimes conflicts may occur. There are several diverse backgrounds that build up our school. We never have any segregation between people from different backgrounds even though the teacher may sometimes joke around people from different parts of the world. When we work together, we are very careful of being offensive to people’s religious views, which may lead to discriminations. When people from different backgrounds live or social together, it would be easy for them to understand and experience another person’s religious practice. Some teachers and students would take other people’s ethnicity or race as a joke, but they wouldn’t really personally be offensive or harm that person. We would be curious whenever there’s a new student who has a different background from us, even when the student is from the United States. Even though it is an American school, there are still a lot of students in the school who don’t know how it feels likes to live in the United States. We don’t segregate people in our community, but we ask questions and understand more about it instead.

Another Point of View

If the story is from the son’s point of view, the story may be even more unclear than the original story. He wouldn’t know where the White Dog was. He would think the White Dog is just gone and would be back later. While he was packing up the night before leaving, he put everything that he likes into the bag. He didn’t exactly know where he was going to the camp. If he knew that he was going to the camp, he probably wouldn’t bring things like his baseball gloves. Readers will have a hard time trying to understand the background of the story if it wasn’t told from Mrs. Hayashi’s point of view. The son doesn’t really know what happened to his father, Junior. He only knows that he was gone, but didn’t know why. If the story was told from the son’s perspective, readers would only know that his father no longer lives with them, but they won’t know that it’s because Junior was a Japanese American and was sent to camps because of wars. We also wouldn’t know what Mrs. Hayashi’s thinking inside her mind if the son was the narrator. There are a lot of important details that gave us an idea on how the Japanese Americans were treated from Mrs. Hayashi and readers wouldn’t be able to know about it if she wasn’t the narrator.

Write a Letter

Dear Mrs. Hayashi

How’s the camp? We missed you so much. The cat is still in our house living happily. It was not used to our house for the first three days, but later it started to feel like home. Aside from your family, there were also three families that were forced to camps. I heard that they are all Japanese-Americans. I once walked across your front yard and the house seemed awfully old. By the way, I was just wondering where your white dog is. I heard that you didn’t give it away, so I figured out that you probably brought him along with you, but are you allowed to bring pets to the camp? I also went around the house and took a look at your backyard. I was surprised the bird was not in its bird cages. Did you forget to lock the aviary or did you also bring the bird with you? I didn’t hear that you were going to bring that bird with you. When did you know that you were leaving the town? I didn’t even know that you were going to move when you gave me the cat. I thought you just didn’t want the cat. Anyways, wish you good luck!

Sincerely,

Sean Yu

Narrator's Persona

The narrator has a better understanding of the events that are hiding in the Evacuation Order No 19. When the narrator, Mrs. Hayashi, said she was packing up and ready to leave, we could see that something bad is going to happen in the near future. If the narrator is from Mrs. Hayashi’s boy or girl, then it would probably not know what had happened to the bird and the white dog the day before they were about to leave. If the narrator is another person, then we might think that the white dog just escaped. From the narrator’s point of view, we could see what happened to Junior. If the story was told from the children’s perspective, they probably wouldn’t be able to know why they are leaving because they didn’t see the sign that Mrs. Hayashi saw. We can also see the characteristics of Mrs. Hayashi from the way she tells the story. It was apparent that she didn’t want to kill the white dog, but she had no choice at all. After the white dog was killed, we could start to see why she was buying the bigger hammer and what she saw on the sign when she on her way home.

School and Community Characteristics

Some teachers are treating their students as friends. The teachers would teach the students during class and play chess or even computer games with them after school. When students have questions on the lecture, the teacher would treat students friendly. The only organization where the students govern the school is the student council. There are either one or two class representatives for each grade and there is a president that rules everyone in the student council. Even though the student council has power to govern the school and arrange the activities such as winter dance or sports day, they still have limited powers. They could not do whatever activities they pleased because they have to be careful on how much money they spent. For example, the president of our student council is deciding on if we should have a vending machine in our school or not. He has to think about the cost of the vending machine and the percentage of students that recycle their cans after drinking it before he really buys a vending machine. The economic characteristics in the school are kind of different form local students. The students in the school are mostly from wealthy families that doesn’t have financial problems.

Life-Changing Events

Events that are harsh and require hard working in history have forced people to change their lives completely. It could be their moral lesson that they will never forget in their live forever. These events are probably something that is hard to accomplish or greatly significant to them. When people have done something challenging, it can really have an enormous change in their lives. I have experienced an event that made a sudden and significant change in my life after I was sent to the hospital for the big cut I had by the wooden door. The second I went into the hotel, I got all excited and played with the wooden closet door because it was the first time I saw closet doors that slide. I got a big cut and my pinky was bleeding after being cut. Ever since that, I am no longer that playful and immature ever again. It suddenly wakes me up and tells me to be more responsible on things I do. I could still the scarf on my pinky today, and every time I see that scarf, I would remember the consequences I will have to face for making foolish actions. It was a memorable and significant experience that forced to change my life more or less.

Satire in "The Storyteller"

The story told by the bachelor was a satire to mock and make fun of the aunt’s story. The bachelor used the same story as the aunt, except that the setting and the details of the story was different. It used all the descriptive details that helped the children imagine what the story was like in their mind. Saki is trying to make fun of people who are too “realistic” and “proper”. The aunt felt that the bachelor’s story was not anywhere related to reality. A garden with pigs instead of flowers and other plots in the story expressed the aunt’s attitude towards story telling. Saki used the bachelor’s story to make his point by making the bachelor’s story similar to the aunt’s story, but making it more interesting and detailed, which made the children enjoyed the story. When the bachelor finished his story, the aunt said that his story was improper, making herself look even more stubborn and an uncreative person. This created the satire and the point Saki was trying to make: everything in the world is unfair where one may have its own wants when they weren’t really that hard working and another person may be doing things obediently and not get the things he or she deserved.

Motivation for Telling a Story

The aunt’s motivation was to make the children be quiet. The bachelor has the same motivation as the aunt. Beside from entertaining the children, the bachelor was also trying to make a satire to mock at the aunt for her terrible boring story. At the end, the aunt criticized the bachelor’s story for being “improper” because of the non-realistic events happening in his story. The aunt was just trying to make the children silent by telling the story with lack of details. She wanted the children to stop asking questions when they were looking outside the window. She was just trying to get over with it while the bachelor was into the story, making the children get a clear picture in their mind like a little movie running in their brains. The bachelor was trying telling the story with details in order to keep the children quiet. He also wanted the children to enjoy his story and I think that most story tellers might have the same motivation, which is to let readers enjoy the story you are telling. The aunt won’t be considering as a good story teller since her motivation wasn’t to let the readers enjoy her story.

Omniscient Point of View

We could tell how the aunt and the bachelor felt about each other’s story from the omniscient point of view. The choice of words from the story can greatly affect the plot by showing the story where the readers can read every character’s mind. It would be quite different if it were told by the bachelor or the aunt from a first person point of view. There would be thoughts and criticisms on the other person instead of an argument between the two if it was told from either the aunt or the bachelor’s perspective. For example, if the story was from a first person point of view, it would probably show how the bachelor felt about the aunt’s story and how he was going to tell the children his own creative story. If the story was told from the children’s point of view, they would tell the readers their thoughts on which story they prefer better, which was obviously the bachelor’s story. There would only be one side of the story if it is told from a first person point of view instead of understanding how each character felt towards the different “stories” presented in the story. Readers could tell easily what each character wants or believes from an omniscient point of view.

Satire

1. Repeats things every time.

2. Interrupts in class.

3. Fools around during class.

4. Keeps asking questions instead of asking the teacher instead.

5. Tries to imitate other and mock people when they are the one who really looks stupid.

6. Not washing hands after using the washroom

These are the five things that I hate the most about people. Most of the time, I would try to tell people to stop it instead making a satire out of it. I don’t think making a satire is a polite way to tell people not to do something annoying. Telling people that you don’t like their actions is always the best way to make someone stop doing that action most of the time, but this is not always the case. I do make satire out of people when people don’t listen to me and keeps doing things that will annoy me. Once, one of my classmates kept on asking me questions on the lecture because he doesn’t understand. I started to get annoyed and told him to stop, but he didn’t. So I decided to interrupt the teacher and asked the teacher every question he asked me and he felt embarrassed. I didn’t want to answer him the questions and miss what the teacher was teaching while I was explaining.

Goodness

I think that goodness is always rewarded. I think the bachelor’s story is the version of life. He tells the story with descriptive details and creative explanations for the children’s questions. The children believed in all the answers he answered when they were asking “why” questions. I remembered I met these kinds of storytellers before. They usually don’t tell the stories based on educational purposes, but for entertainment. Instead of making the story with a good moral lesson, the storytellers like the bachelor would make listeners focus on the story based on their imaginations and creativity. I was once told a story by one of my father’s friend. He used both narrative and descriptive details to back it up with his story. Without the details and feelings, the story would just be a story without any interest that grabs the listeners’ attention. It was all the narrative and descriptive details that made me went into the story and became one of the characters inside the story. The storyteller knew what kind of stories he should tell when I was boring that day and he used his different tone voice to make the story more interesting. He made me learn what a real good storyteller is like.

Saki's Purpose

The aunt’s story was not interesting and it could be seen easily by readers. Both the children and the bachelor were not pleased with the story even though the aunt didn’t agree with them. When the children were asking why the sheep were driven out of the field, the readers could see the children weren’t convinced with their aunt’s poor explanation. The children think the bachelor’s story was beautiful while on the other hand the aunt thought it was improper. The bachelor would have different incidents that explains the “why questions” differently. Unlike the aunt, the bachelor had fully convinced the children with his explanations that handled the children’s questions. Aunt only made up poor excuses that made the children unsatisfied. If we think back to the aunt’s earlier story about a good girl, we can compare it with the bachelor’s good girl story. The bachelor’s story has a more complex message and plot that explains every action and reason for a person’s action in descriptive details. It shows how story tellers can be good or bad by the way they tell stories. If the children say something, the aunt would be stubborn and say something that’s not creative while the bachelor would try to be humorous or imaginative.

Influence of Childhood

A writer’s childhood may influence greatly on his or her writing. A person’s personality or the way he or she act may reflect on his or her writing. I think my unique experience would be a good source of inspiration where I can tell my story as my moral of my story. For most of my stories, I would always include my first basketball game as an experience, especially childhood period. Writers from different childhood and background can influence greatly on their writing to express their feelings toward something or someone. If the writer’s from the city, they may feel proud of being born in a wealthy family while on the other hand a person from farming families might express poverty or slavery in their stories. I wouldn’t be surprise for readers to find out a person’s background from reading his or her stories because childhood can greatly influence people’s writing. If I was writing a story, I would always tell the story from my point of view in order to tell the readers how my childhood or experience had greatly influenced on both my writing and myself. Writing is just one way to express one’s self and show how they feel towards certain things.

Point of No Return

Most people are always emotional when they are in a situation they cannot change. I’ve been in this kind of situation before and I would be emotional and kept saying to myself that “I shouldn’t have done this!!!” I would always blame myself if anything like this happens. I would think about the mistake I made during the moment and not a solution to what I should do next. I haven’t met someone being calm before when they are in a situation where they cannot change. Most of them would get either crazy or cry. I really wish I can know someone who’s calm in this kind of situation so he or she could help me calm down. I can be really emotional if I cannot change the situation anymore. I would learn my lesson for that time and never make the same mistake ever again, but when something similar happens, I will always remember what I had happened before and still be crazy about it. Usually when situation like this happens, I would kept on asking my parents, especially my father, what I should do because he thinks of a solution or at least try to deal with it even if the situation cannot be change anymore.

My Favorite Stories

One of my favorite stories was the three on three basketball tournament story. It is a short novel for children. I try to put myself into the story and imagine myself playing the tournament. I could feel the passion and the heat in my body when I was standing on the basketball in front of two hundred students. This has been my dream since third grade: to become a basketball superstar in my school. Another story I like was Escape from Slavery. It gives me a picture of how African slaves were treated. It showed me a very different kind of life than I am living right now on the other side of the Earth. All they do was hard working after hard working. They were never educated, causing them to be illiterate when they became adults. I felt hard to imagine myself in a family that has different backgrounds and race with me. The hardest part to imagine was to work for these families without getting paid or benefits. I felt terrible for the writer and the slaves around him for doing such works and still get harsh punishments. The story made me sad and almost cry while I was reading it.

What I Like About This Class

This is my most organized class out of the eight classes this semester. Every, or at least most of the homework assignments are done either through our blogs or the Wiki-space. It makes students have an easier task where we don’t have to bring the paper version to school, avoiding the risk of forgetting to bring our homework to class. Writing homework online is also an advantage for the teachers. Teachers can use the date and time on the website to determine if the assignment is late or not.

The other good thing about this class is that we don’t read much novels or stories in the book during class. We usually read the stories or novels at home and discuss it during lecture so we can share our different ideas. It would be a waste of time for a teacher to tell us read the stories in class when we can just read it at home and learn something out of the book during our class time. Also, if you have any problem with the homework, the teacher is always available after school for you to ask questions. This is important since after school is the only time where students can ask any questions without peer pressure.

What I Don't Like About This Class

I want to suggest something we did last year in our math class: to delete the worst two grades for the whole semester in student’s total grade. I think it’s a good idea because it’s a chance to have a good grade even though they bombed a particular test or quiz. I think writing a response on the story we read in the textbook can also be an extra credit assignment where you can earn the points if and only if you did responses on all the stories.

Another thing was turning back assignments. Because we do all of our homework assignments online, it’s hard for us to see if our answers in the homework are correct or not. I wish we could see the questions we get wrong after the teacher marks it. Teachers may use the word document or by email and tell us which number on the homework we got wrong. Overall, I would say that this class is one of the best classes I have this semester. It’s well organized and formatted where students can easily follow the instructions with out too a lot difficulties. I think we aren’t too fast nor too slow with the novels, so I hope the speed can stay like this.

Buddhist Doctrine

Buddhist Doctrine is just like the basic “common sense” of human rights. I don’t think it’s neither right nor wrong even though it may be useful to your life. You can definitely be a better person if you apply these doctrines to your personal daily life. There are different sorts of doctrines that are similar to the Buddhist. They all talk about how life is one kind of suffering every person has to face. I think there are always two sides to this doctrine. You can always think life as something that’s suffering, OR you can think of it as happiness. People may not agree to the Buddhist doctrines because of controversies between their believes and Buddhist doctrines. Personally, I think I believe in those doctrines in some way, but I don’t just sit down and think about the doctrines everyday. I do the right things and what the Buddhist doctrine says is right everyday instead of thinking about it before doing anything. The only thing I don’t believe is the Self. I think it makes life harder than it already is. I do not believe in the Self because I don’t think it causes suffering and pain even though I do agree that life is pain in some way.

Why Be a Prodigy

The mother wanted her daughter to be a talented child. The mother said that it was for her daughter’s own good. Jing-mei just wanted to try out everything to see if she’s talented at something. I remember I used to be push by hate playing piano even though I might like it if I wasn’t forced to practice it. I tried to resist them by saying “Oh gosh! IT’s Friday again! Piano lesson day…” in a very upset way. But I don’t really feel any better after saying that, so I stopped whining about it. I just felt like quitting and have my spare time. I didn’t like having piano lessons, in fact, I hated it. I finally could make my decisions when I was in eighth grade and I told my parents I wanted to quit. My parents accepted it and that was when I stopped playing piano. Sometimes, I still wanted to play it for pleasure, but I know for sure that I’ll never be a pianist for my whole life ever again after losing my chance of hard practicing. People always say that seven and eight years old are the best times to learn things the beset in the shortest amount of time.

The Influence of Others

I think both positive and negative influence have a big impact on me. A positive influence gives me some confidence towards something specific. Positive influence may make you a better person than what you had been before. People like my parents and friends definitely have a huge impact giving me positive influences. If there were no positive influence from my parents, I would be uneducated and lack of manners. People surrounding me may view me differently than how they view me now. Negative influences also have big impacts on your life. It can also change your personal traits or the way you act. Most negative influences come from television shows, internet, or even friends you have. A lot of children or adolescence learns from what they see on the internet or on the television shows. They tried to imitate the way they talk or maybe the way they dress and act. Most of the time according to their parents, those kinds of shows has a negative influence that makes their child or children bad. Friends surrounding you may also have a big impact on you. Depending on what kind of friends you have, you may have positive influence, negative influence, or even both after a long time with them.

Can Bad Be Good?

A negative experience doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. It can also be a good less on or moral. It might be a good experience for a basketball player to lose a game and become a better player next time he plays. A negative experience can always bring a lesson which leads to a better outcome the next time. It can improve a person’s ability or awareness after experiencing a negative experience. After the negative experience, one might no longer be feared of something bad because he or she is aware of it. Once you have the negative experience, you will never forget about the thing that happened to you. When something similar happens, you will always think about the past negative experience you faced before. A negative experience can make a person have room to make improvements. Not everyone’s perfect, so the best way to get better is to learn from mistakes, and a negative experience is definitely great mistakes you can learn from. Maybe you can not learn from every negative experience, but I believe that “learn from mistakes” is always a quote people should keep in mind. Everyone learn from mistakes or negative experience, in order to make oneself a better person.

Character Traits and Conflict

8. Mama is a large, big boned woman with rough man working hands. She works in the country side. She felt that Dee is different from them. Mama is not used to the city life that Dee had. She’s more than happy to live in her village with Maggie. She wanted Dee to have the same living standards as them so they don’t feel a big difference between each other.

9. Mama faced a lot of conflicts in the story. She faced external conflicts when Dee was trying to own the quilts. Mama had to argue and convince her that the quilts are for Maggie and not her. The conflicts and arguments between Dee and Mama is one of the external conflicts that she faced. Mama also faced internal conflicts where she had to decide whom to give the quilts to. The quilts are one of the most precious heritages in her family, so it was important for Mama to make decisions. She also faced internal conflicts at the beginning of the story where she thinks she doesn’t feel being together with Dee. She had an internal conflict that wanted to be the mom and daughter on television where they are a happy family without feeling any distance between each other.

Literacy Analysis

Maggie wanted the quilts for her marriage. She wanted the quilts to be passing down to her so it can be part of her heritage. Maggie knew that the quilts were on of the most precious objects that her family has passed down from her grandmother. Dee also felt the quilts important. It showed the heritage of Dee and where she came from. Dee could use the quilts to show people who lived in the cities. She wanted to express herself that she has a different background than others even though they all ended up in the city. The quilts showed the countryside’s life and how different they are from the people living in the city. Both Maggie and Dee wanted the quilts for certain reasons, but Mama preferred to give the quilts to Maggie since she has promised Maggie to give her the quilts for her marriage. She also felt that Dee was trying to be different from them whereas on the other hand, Maggie lives the same way Mama lived and felt happy with the life they were used to. Dee wanted to show her smartness in front of her family and then show her friends where she was from by showing the quilts.

Read With a Purpose

There is a conflict between the two visions of heritage. Mama thinks that the heritage should be passed down to Maggie since Dee is no longer similar to them. Dee thinks that the heritage should be passing to both Maggie and her because they are all part of the family. Dee accused Mama of not understanding her heritage because Mama didn’t allow her to have the quilt. Even though Dee didn’t have any purpose for using the quilt, she still wanted it. She wanted to show her heritage to people surrounding her living in the city. She wanted to tell other that she is from a poor, African American family and wanted to feel proud of her heritage. She wanted to feel special and tell others that even though they all ended up living in the city; she was different than others because she had once lived in a community that’s different from where she’s living now. She really felt being separated from Mama and Maggie because of the years living in the city that made her a different person from her family. She felt she was longer part of the family even though she has some genetic heritage from the family.

Reading Focus Quick Check

1. According to Mama, Dee was unlike the narrator. Dee would always look anyone in the eye without any hesitation. She wanted to be better than Dee and Mama and be separated or different that makes her special. Dee was like a city girl whereas Mama was from a poor place. Dee would be easily angered when Mama didn’t give the quilts to her. Dee was also being harsh to Mama at the end of the story and that showed that Mama was different from Dee, living in a regular life enjoying her instead of trying to get everything like Dee.

2. Maggie would have the quilts for the marriage between John Thomas and her. Dee would like to hang the quilts.

3. The story focuses on the idea of family heritage. In the story, the readers can see that both daughters wanted to share the heritage that’s being passed down. Both Dee and Maggie wanted to quilts as a heritage and use it as different purposes. Dee wanted to hang them where on the other hand, Maggie wanted to use it for the marriage between John Thomas and her. Dee accused Mama of not understanding her heritage because Mama gave the quilts only to Maggie and not her, and it showed that Dee didn’t get any heritage from her mother and her ancestors.

Character Traits and Making Inferences

A) Maggie seemed to be nervous in this story after her sister went. She’s like a person that would feel uncomfortable when she’s separated from her sister. Maggie started to feel lonely and hopeless when her sister left. She believed that her sister is always right and viewed her sister with envy and awe.

B) Based on the passage, the readers can infer that the narrator didn’t have a good relationship with Dee. The narrator wished to embrace Dee and feel happy about being together like those children and parents on television shows that would hug and kiss each other when they meet. They seemed to be living far away from each other and they don’t really have a good relationship like those ones in the television shows. The narrator has always wanted a lovely relationship with Dee, but it seemed really hard because of living in separated places. According to the passage, they also seemed to have different standard of living. One is living in the cities where on the other hand, the Dee is still living in the countryside, who can barely afford living without financial problems. They are two different people who lives in different environments, but who wanted to be together.

How Does Heritage Contribute to Character?

A person color of skin, religion, and height are all heritages contribute to character. The heritage of a character is mainly the background of the person, which includes genetic heritage and some physical appearances for instance I look like an Asian because of genetic heritage. If I were born in an American family, then I might look like a white person instead of Asian. There are also some characteristics that do not contribute a character from heritage, such as discipline and having leadership. A person’s discipline comes from the education the person received during his childhood and life time. I think the background and religion of a person are the most important heritage. My father, grandfather, and my ancestors contributed my religious freedom, making me having the opportunity to believe in any religion I want. My ancestors aren’t Jews, or Christians, or Buddhist, or other religion, so I have the religious freedom now to believe in whatever I want or believe in nothing at all! I also believe that background of a person can greatly contribute to him or her. If I weren’t Chinese, I would’ve had different interests in academics. Instead of taking physics and math class like most Asians, I might be taking art classes right now.

Analyze a Folk Tale

In the folk tale” Coyote kills the Giant”, the main character is trying to kill the monster that eats everyone that goes into his mouth. The coyote is trying to be the hero who would jump out and save the world by killing the monster. If the coyote didn’t kill the monster and rescue the people inside the monster’s stomach, there might be more victims that would die. The fold tale’s moral tells the readers that if there’s no one willing to save the world by risking their lives, there would be more people that might die or injured. When kids read about folk tales like this story, the monster that kills civilians always have a bad ending, and there’s no exception in this story as well. The coyote saved the people walking around the forest. If he listened to the advice and stopped walking towards the monster, the people inside the monster’s stomach might never be rescued and died because of hunger. There are always morals telling kids that all the good and brave people can complete the most dangerous tasks and be the hero that saves the lives of other people in the story.

Compare and Contrast

John and the coyote are challenging themselves to overcome their fear. John wanted to go East to the forbidden place. He was a priest and he wanted to go challenge his journey. The coyote was also challenging his braveness. He believed that he has the ability to kill the giant, just like John believing that he could go East because he was a priest. The settings of the two stories are quite priest. The settings of the two stories are quite similar. In the Waters of Babylon, John went to the sacred places where as the coyote went into the giant’s body. The settings may sound different but it’s really not. Both protagonists have their journey at places where others were afraid to go. There were people in the stories that advised the main characters not to go to those places, but neither of the main characters listened to the advises that were given. After reading both stories, I found out that both John and the coyote went into another person’s property. John went into God’s property where on the other hand the coyote went into the big monster’s property (his stomach). Both of them have a happy ending at the end.

Conflicts-Internal and External

John faced a major internal conflict inside the story. He was struggling with his fears and he was deciding if he should go East to the “forbidden place” or not. There were a lot of stories told by elders that said it was forbidden to go East because tales said it was where the God lives. He was having a hard time deciding if he should go because he might just never come back if he went into God’s property. On the other hand, he can also be the hero that was the first person to come back alive from the East. John also faced a major external conflict in the story. He took eight days to finish his journey and it wasn’t easy at all. During the journey, John was once chased by dogs and he was sleeping in other people’s apartment without any permission. When he was being chased by the dogs, he ran, found a door, and shut the door and isolated himself away from the dogs. He later ran up the stairs and that was another external conflict he faced. He started to feel dizzy after running the stairs. John also met external conflicts when he saw the rivers because he used to be living in the hills.

Unfamiliar Place

Once you walk into the building, it looks like an office building instead of a regular school. This is Pacific American School. Every classroom looks the same with white walls, white ceiling, and white floor, except for the auditorium. There are blue carpets that cover the whole floor with at least fifteen rows of chairs. The cafeteria is close to the auditorium and it does not smell good at all. There is always a stinky smell that is just too awful to be describe in words. The food also doesn’t taste good. It is always something oily, even the vegetables have an odd smell. Sometimes when we were having dumplings, they were awful and they were barely edible. After every period of class ends, you can always hear the same music that is played by Beethoven. The music was the bell that tells the teacher to end his or her lecture. When you take the elevator and reached sixth floor, you can see our basketball court. It is the only place where we take our PE class. Everything was unfamiliar to me, but as time goes on, I start to get use to it and this is part of my home now.

By the Waters of Babylon

My experience at Camp PAS last week was like a journey you see in a movie or story. I think the first day of camp was a big challenge because it was more tiring than running in a basketball practice. We first played paintball without wearing any helmet on top of our heads. It was probably the most dangerous paintball game I’ve ever played before. I could’ve been shot right at the back of my head and my dead body would be lying on the ground of a paintball battlefield.

After fifty minutes of paintball game, we started catching things in the nature such as branches and leaves. It was like I was trying to survive and get food in nature. We started hiking up the mountain to a temple. I was exhausted when I was half way through our destination. It was definitely like a long and hard journey to me. I felt like I was exploring some kind of land like Louis and Clark. Both of my legs were exhausted and I was about to give and start walking down, but I knew that my journey doesn’t end with me quitting, so I still convinced myself to walked all the way up to the temple and walk down.

Making Time Move Slowly

Finney is using descriptive details to make time seem to move more slower. There are a lot of thoughts made by Tom that were written down by Finney. For every action and step Tom makes, he would thought about the consequences/effect. Before Tom was about to break the window, he thought carefully about the result that could've have happened if he break the window and if he didn't break the window.

Values

• graduating from high school and going to a good college.
• going to a MUN Conference in my freshman year.
• winning basketball games on a school team.
• receiving a high score on a PSAT in 8th grade.
• getting a GPA higher than what i expected in freshman year.
• learning how to play gold and competing with kids who are older than me when I was in second grade.
• living in Vancouver for four years in my life, where I was always close to nature.

There must be something important in people's lives. Living up to a certain age may be a significant value for old people. Winning a gold medal in the Olympics may also be another significant value in their lives. I went to my first MUN conference when I was in 9th grade and that was an important event to me. It's probably the first time that I talked in font of 80 other kids wearing suits. That conference gave me an experience and since then, I was more confident and comfortable giving a speech without thinking what I should say in the middle of a speech. Winning my first basketball game was also a significant moment in my life. It was the first time I ever played on school team, wearing a jersey, and playing formal game. Even though we didn't the win the game, but it was definitely an important experience and that's the value that I have that is priceless.

Page 7 Picture Description

The movie looks violent. They are in a bamboo forest and all five of them look ready to fight. You can't really tell the gender of these people, but the one on the ground looks like a female. The setting kind of contradicts with the characters. The characters are dressed like Japanese ninjas in a Chinese bamboo forest. We can see that the four people in the air are professional that have some "super power" for them to fly(or at least jump taller than regular human beings). The smoke at the background gives us a creep and unfriendly mood.

Collection 1: Human Stories

• Birth of a baby
• Death
• Struggling during life
• Education of a child
• First time getting in love
• Being mature enough to work and earn money
• Hunting down animals for food
• Getting a happy ending
• Being bored while doing a particular thing
• Getting a child after being married

Willa Cather's:

• Birth of a baby
• Educating children
• Struggling during life