Common Place

During Spring Break, I stayed here in Hawaii, and kicked back and just relaxed. I went surfing alot this spring break and it was definitely fun. The teachers didn't assign me much HW so I was able to use most of spring break relaxing. I really appreciated the little HW because we only have 10 days of spring break which zoomed right by. I had a friend from Japan come over, and we slept over at a friends house and just partied and relaxed the last 2 days of spring break. Surfing was really relaxing and it was fun although someone hit me and one of my skegs on my surfboard. Other than that, Spring break was just really relaxing. My friend from Japan, a school friend and I went surfing and it was super fun with them. I haven't seen him for a while because he had to move back to Japan and he had been studying hard for entrance exams and couldn't make it over to Hawaii in the summer. I was kind of worried that he and I lived in such different environments that we grew up differently and we changed, but he never changed and apparently, neither did I and it was as if he never left. It really seemed like he's been there for life and I guess that's what it feels like to have a best friend. It didn't seem like we haven't seen each other in a long time. I guess once a friend, always a friend. There's nothing that can break that. Alot of things brought back a ton of memories that I didn't even know I had in my brain. He and I and my other friend just cruised together as if we were always hanging out like this. But I semi consciously knew that he's going back in a week or so, so I plan to make the best out of my opportunity. I don't exactly know which essential question this pertains to, but to me, this is really important and it means alot so it's gotta be a part of an essential question. I just haven't realized it yet.

MOsquito Coast Movie

We finished watching a movie called Mosquito Coast during class today, and we were supposed to compare that movie and the book we are reading now called Poisonwood Bible. Poisonwood Bible is similar to Mosquito Coast because both families are Caucasian, both families go to a very wild place and are not used to such natural habitats. The fathers in both stories are self centered and think that they can do everything and anything. I believe that both fathers are trying to do good for the Family, but everyone in the family is going somewhat crazy because of such hardships they face in the wild. Both fathers think they're doing the best for the family, but both Fathers are so caught up in the moment that they drive their family down a deep hole. The movie has sons and daughters and are very hard to compare with the 4 daughters in the book. The two story lines are very similar although what they each do to survive is different. Also, they both have another Caucasian family living near them.

Walk Activity

This may be really bad, but I did the best I could to imitate Ruth May's innocent personality and her naive personality. I hope it works out.


We're visiting Hawaii for the first time today. I hope there aren't any devils there, because I hate the devils. Father says that Hawaiians are rather religious and that it should be a godly place. In Hawaii, there's going to be 6 white people: Me, Leah, Adah, Rachel, Mama, and Father. I saw some pictures of Hawaiianese people. I think they're called Hawaiianese. Anyway, they look really dark just like the Congolese. I hope there are no naked women walking around. That really upset father because they weren't cherishing the bodies God gave to them. When we got there, we were greeted by white people! We thought they were private escorts just for us, but turns out, this place is nothing like Congo! It's like an anti-racism party where it doesn't matter who you talk to and are seen with. Father and God are going to get Angry for joining the devil's party. We got to a school called *******, and it was pretty fun! I joined this fun class in somewhere called the ****** units, but Father doesn't like dirtying the soul, so I made sure I prayed to God after I played with all the dark children. There were so many computers in the class! I had never seen so many before! On our walk here, we saw so many bad people saying bad things! We say people like Leah and Adah, except they had this weird "slang" talk that is really bad and I'm going to tell Father. They had these Chickens in ******. I think they made the bad children fight with the chicken until their death. Outside were many utensils and rides that kids were on. Some of them looked dangerous. I think they put all the bad kids on the swings so they can fling them away. They had the really bad ones climb this big Banyan tree and see who falls off first.

SAT analysis

This is kind of late. i forgot about this too. Well, the SAT was difficult. I knew what I wanted to say, but I just couldn't grasp the right words and language to express my thoughts on it. I had alot to say, I just lacked the ability of sentence structuring (if that word exists). The people's blogs I've read didn't quite help me as much as I hoped for because their approach upon this essay was different from mine. The ideas they wanted to express were different from mine, the idea approach and how to get the readers convinced AKA strategy was different. Reading other essays helped me because people had different writing styles, and it gives me a different perspective to what kind of writing is more likely to attract readers. Mr.Watson said the first 15 lines decide whether or not a reader continues to read or not. Because of this, writing style, and making it sound more interesting is key to the SAT.

What should've been the first PB post

I didn't think we had to do a PB post for our first meeting because we didn't talk about anything, so I figured I should do it now rather than later. Well, my job is to be the lexicographer, and I just jotted down all of the words I didn't know, and most likely, my group members wouldn't know it either, so it would just boost our vocab. We decided on our jobs as the most beneficial ones because some of them were kind of meaningless, so we selected 3 of the best jobs and gave one out to each of us. We could've done one hard job and have all 3 of us do it and make it real good, but we decided that wasn't quite necessary.

This I believe

http://shosurf.podOmatic.com/entry/2007-03-02T18_03_35-08_00

Common Place

I saw this article about this needy family giving to the Salvation Army. Even on a tight budget, she says "There's always someone worse off than you" and "you never know when you're going to need help one day". They know they are barely making it past each day with 5 children and she and her husband each working 2 jobs seven days a week. I think that's super tough. I complain alot about having HW, or that I don't have enough money for a surround sound stereo. But there are people who are in need of food and daily necessities in which I regard as something that is always there and has not much importance. More and more I value my health, my nutrition (which isn't so nutritional with all the snack bar food), etc. And now, this mother of 5 had to give up both jobs to raise her children, and Helping Hands Hawaii is helping many families like hers by putting them on their Santa's list for those who need a break and a bit of hope in their daily struggle. This seriously affected me and my thinking, because there is always someone worse off than you are, and that is sad. She gave to charity. Even with the fact that she and her husband could barely afford to eat with 2 jobs each, she had the heart to give little of what they could, to help others in need.

A place I know well

I kind of forgot about this blog post, so I'm getting to it now.

It is rather familiar, a place I go 5 days out of 7 to sit down and talk and play games and eat while I am not attending classes. People come, people stay and then people go. There is just a cycle of people coming and going so that every hour you come by, there will be different people there. Perhaps not all different, but always a different combination of people. But every second you see it, there are always people there; people lingering around just to talk and chat, laugh, play games, argue, etc. For some it is a quick pit stop in between classes to chat with friends and get caught up in this social world within Punahou. For some it is almost like their home. It is a place they can come back to to see loved ones and spend time with them. For everyone, it serves a different purpose. Whether that purpose is to spend time with friends and people you love, a place to eat, a place to get caught up, a place to get HW done, a place to copy HW, whatever purpose it may serve, this place holds importance to all of us whether or not you are conscious of it or not. We all have walked through it, seen it, it affects everyone's lives: "The Crack" (which is referred to the area between Pauahi and Bingham which is merely a "crack" between the buildings, hence the name "The Crack").

I tried to do this as well as I can, tell me if you think it's good or not. and what I'm doing wrong. That'll help my future posts to improve.

Literature 8

Today, we got into our Literature 8 groups for our first time after we've done research or done our jobs for Genesis. Our group just talked a bout the history of Congo that Maika and some information about, although he couldn't find alot because not much about Africa was taken interest in, so there was little information out there. He did find out though, that 1959 was a time of rebellion of Belgium and South Africa. I'm not exactly sure, but all we know was about the rebellion in Africa. We also had Caitlin do the character Analysis, and we talked about the characters at the end. We talked about how Leah, the oldest one is so girly and self-conscious about her hair and how she looks, while her 3 sisters seem to care little about their looks. The twins especially because they look like each other. I also mentioned that the mute twin was somewhat jealous of the other normal twin because she was less gifted than her sister. She said that her sister "cannibalized her" in the womb and that she took all of the nutrition form her to keep for herself. The author, in my opinion, seems to talk alot about the character's personality directly to the readers rather than have us read and find out through actions and context.
Today we spent most of our time going through words we didn't know, and there were many many many words from each of us, and it was tough going through it, and being the lexicographer, I had down a little under 50 words, maybe more since most of the words came from me, and the other 2 seemed more or less to be paying attention to any unknown words. Perhaps they kept reading and found out a vague meaning through context. Anyway, out first day was rather successful.