Response Post: How Rokhsor Sees It

Okay so I was looking through posts and I saw this one. It really caught my attention. Rokhsor posted this and said,

And hell yes, I lose respect for people who disrespect me. But they have to be people who matter, if it someone I barely talked to, then I will laugh at them because they are pathetic and need help. But if it is a friend, then hell yes I will lose all respect and if I could, I would get them arrested and make them know that they are retarded and I hate them but then again, that is just me. I do not want to change your point of view.

Okay my response to this quote is that I don't feel the same way about this. i feel that if they are a friend of mine then i will never lose respect towards them, no matter what they did. I feel that if they are my friends then they should be the ones always by me even if they lose my trust, they would have to do a lot to lose my respect. I respect everyone, even if we aren't friends and you do something that I do not appreciate. I guess it depends on what type of person you are because I am the type of person who it takes a lot to get mad, I am playful and I laugh a lot. I love everyone to an extent. I am not trying to diss anybody but I feel  that what  Rokhsor said is not cool at all. I feel that this is what a drama queen would do. Like I understand where she is coming from but I do not feel that it is really that serious that you have to call the cops on someone. Especially if they are your friend. I would think it would be vise versa. I would think that she would do that to someone that she does not know, not someone who she knows and built a friendship with. Like I said before, I guess it depends on the type of person you are.

Warriors Don't Cry Part 3

In today's discussion me and my group discussed if we thought if it was the right thing for Melba to go to Central High school to integrate it. We also asked if she should be grateful that she went and integrated the school. Gina's answer to this question was that she thinks she should not be grateful about it. Peter said the same thing, that he believes that she should not be grateful about going to the school because of the experience she had, and because of the things she went through everyday. Although I see where they are coming from, I have to disagree with them. I feel that she should be grateful about going to Central, even though she was harassed and bothered throughout her high school experience. She was one of the great, brave leaders who made it possible for me to go to school with other races besides my own, and to get the same opportunities as them.

Another thing that we talked about was how the word "nigga" went from being an insult, thrown at blacks from whites, to being a way to greet people or just another word thrown around unconsciously. I feel that people don't really understand it, I see black people walk up to one another saying, "Wassup nigga." I don't think they know how long our people fought and how much they fought just to not be called that, and here we go seeing blacks calling each other that like it aint' nothing. Same thing goes with the bus, I am actually guilty for this one. Our people fought to be able to sit on the front of the bus. Rosa Parks went to jail just to sit in the front of the bus. Now if you look in the back of, there is a majority of black people. Do we not care about what our people fought for, or is it that we are to ignorant to see it.

Another thing we talked about was how she ended up marrying a white man, when in her high school years, she never pictured herself marrying a white man.  That is what the white people feared, and that was one of the reasons the whites didn't want the blacks integrating the schools because they felt that they would be grandparents of mixed babies. While Melba was in high school and she heard that they parents thought they would marry their kids, she said she would never do that she only wanted to get her education and leave. But in the future she ended  up marrying a white man. I feel that she should have married Link, which is the guy who saved her throughout her junior year at Central. I feel that if any white men, it should have been him, and plus he liked her but she was afraid they would get hurt because of the racial differences.

I love this book, and I like to know what my people went through. I always like to learn more about my history.

Response post: ShiYun

While going through Google Reader I came upon this quote from Shiyun that said,   

"Does our image really matter that much in our lives?"

With this quote, I feel that this is a very good question to ask with the society we live in today. To answer the question I will say that certain people feel their image is the most important thing in the world. Because people read magazines and books and watch movies, they see the body image that they think everyone should have. But what they fail to realize is that their body is perfect the way it is, but all they want is the perfect model body, that perfect skin, that long hair. I know for a fact that people's image is what drives them crazy, they get stressed out because they don't look like a model in the magazine, or because they don't have the body that a celebrity has.

IN the songs that we hear today, all they say is that they ant a girl with a big butt, and if they don't have a big butt then they are nobody's. I know that women and even girls get surgery to have big butts, or they wear pants thinking they will make them look like they have a butt, or they will wear the new underwear that have butt pads to make a person but look bigger. Another thing that drives people crazy to look good is they go on these diets that they think will help them, when in actuality they hurt them and even damage them for life. They become anorexic or because they feel they will get fat they will always throw up their food and become a bulimic. They have to have the perfect body, and they think people are lieing to them when they tell them they have the perfect body. Everyone around them sees they have a perfect body shape but they are so cought up in themselves that they can't see their beauty.

Warriors Don't Cry POst 2

We are now at the second paperclip. The book is getting very good. I am really into it now, I am really enjoying the fact that I get to know a little about what went on with some of my ancestors back in the days, and even some of my great aunts. IN this part along with a little of the first part, Malbe the main character is going through hell at this school and she starts to question her decison to go the Central to integrate it. On Thursday in our lit circle discussion groups we discussed a level three question. Gina asked a question about where the line is  drawn for a police officer between when he is a civilian just like any other person, and when he is on duty.

This question was a very deep question because in our story some of the police officers were throwing down their badges while standing to protect the Little Rock nine from getting killed. My response ton Gina's question was that I felt a police officer is always on duty, even when they are at home sleeping, they are on duty. We connected it to the Oscar grant case. About where the line is drawn for Meserly of when he can kill a person and call it doing his job, and when he kills a person and he is not on duty. and when he is a trained officer doing his job that he was told to do. I feel that if an officer throws down his badge then he is no longer on the line of office but if he stands up0 there like a man and follows the orders he is given, then he is more than a man and he has the right to kill to protect.

In the book because one of the girls got expelled things at the school got worse. One of the white men was a selfish man, he was willing to throw one of the black students to the mob in order to save his life and the lives of the other black kids. Luckily A man was there who had a complete different opiniopn as them and saved their lives. IN this book blacks are not treated as equals clearly and they are hated and they are wanted dean by many people. But will thewy survive the school year and get to summer break? I think they will, but I will soon find out.

Phrases That Will Make a Cao Girl Go Insane: Response

  While reading through my peers blogs I came upon a very interesting one that I can greatly connect to. I was reading Tiffany's posts and I saw this one that really grabbed my attention

." Oh My God." Why does it have to be God? Can't it be "Oh my goodness" or "Oh my gosh?" Tons of people use this phrase with respect and some people use it like it's a dust.

IN this post Tiffany is saying that this is one of the phrases that she hates people to say. She says it drives her insane. I can agree with her, it drives me insane as well but for a different reason and on a different level as hers. I am a Christian girl who reads the bible, and in the bible it says not to use God's name in vain. So since I was a little girl I was brought up not to say God's name in vain. When I hear people say it, to be honest it makes me feel weird because I was taught to not say that word.

When I am with my bestest friends who I grew up with they all know not to say God around her, and if anyone is around her and says "God" she will let them know that they are not allowed to say that around her. When I get with my friends I say OMGOSH! or even OMGOODNESS! If I am texting someone or putting a post on facebook I say OMGOSH! and OMGOODNESS! as well. I sometimes wonder why people don't say "Oh my gosh" but my mother doesn't even like me to say "Oh my Gosh" because she says the word "gosh" is to close to "God"

So agreeing with Tiffany people should really say gosh and goodness instead of God.

Warrior Don't Cry Blog Part One

I have chosen to read the book, Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals. Before I got this book, I did not know what this book was about. I later found out, after receiving the book that it was a bout a girl and her eight friends going through a period in time where segregation existed and they were the first black children to integrate schools. They were later called the Little Rock Nine. I really like reading this book, I am always eager to learn what my people went through to get the privileges I have now.

In class, in my book group some of the things that we discussed were, about Grandma India; the way they depend on the lord in everything they do. I asked a question about if the anyone in the group thinks that if Grandma India was in Africa would she believe in God (be a Christian), or if she would believe in Allah (be a Muslim). The response that I got back was that they think she would be Muslim because the white people are the ones who introduced Christianity to them. Regina said that if the whites would not have captured and enslaved the Africans then they would not have converted them to Christianity and they would depend on Allah instead of God. She also said that the reason so many blacks in present days are Christain are because the whites converted our people to Christians and that is what our people have been doing ever since slavery.

We also discussed how different Melba's(the main character) life was now that she was integrating the white school. We said that she just wanted to be a normal kid. She felt as if she was doing the correct thing. The Little Rock Nine all had parents who pushed them, all of their parents were considered in the high class of the black community. Melba's mother is a school teacher, and unlike today teachers were of high class back in those times. Me and Gina said that the black people who did not agree with the integration of the school felt as if them being segregated from the whites was as high as they could go. They felt as if because this life that they were living was so much better then slavery this is as far as they could ever go. But the people who believed this was good knew that it could only get better and the kids integrating the schools was a great step forward in being equal to the whites.

I am really enjoying reading this book. To be honest I have read ahead then I should have but I just had to know what would happen next. I do not real a lot of true stories but this one in particular is very interesting and I love it. I can't wait to read more.

"How The Garcia Giorls Lost Their Accents" Book Review

In English class we just finished reading the book, "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez. In this book she uses a very unique writing style to tell this story. She has chosen very unique character with the same background and history, who all grew up to be different in all kinds of ways. Alvarez has chosen to write her book in reverse chronological order, this adds a little confusion but it is very unique. The characters stories really fit the style of writing, because they are all tied together in this book, the book is good. The main characters of the story are the four Garcia girls: Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia; their parents: Carlos and Laura. Her unique characters and her unique style choice are both the foundation that make this a good book.

Alvarez has chosen a very creative way of telling the four girls stories. She first starts the book off when the girls were adults and have returned to their home in the Dominican Republic. This writing style is very creative, when the reader starts to read the book, it tells us how the girls ended up as grown women. In the second part it tells little stories of their lives of when the girls were teenagers and in their early twenties.In the second section of the book, she informs the readers of events that shaped the lives of the girls and in some ways affected how the girls grew up yo became who they were. In the last section of the book, behind the third paper clip, she tells the reader of how the girls were raised, what events occurred while they were younger. Before the reader even knows how the girls grew up, like it would be in a regular book, we read about how they end up and adults.

In the beginning of the book there is a quote that describes how old the four girls are, it also tells the reader how the mother felt about the girls. 

“The mother still calls the four girls even though the youngest is twenty-six and the oldest will be thirty-one next month” (Alvarez 40).

 This gives the reader a little understanding of how old the girls were in the first section of the book. This also lets the reader know that the mother still felt as if her daughters were little and she still feels as if they are still her little girls, just like any mother. All mothers find that if they have been calling their kids something since they were young they will continue calling them that, like some people say now, "Old habits die hard"

There was a main character in the book named Yolanda, she was the penultimate girl born into the family. Like her sisters she has experienced things both pleasant and unpleasant. In the last section of the book Yolanda, or as she was called by others Yoyo, was a little girl when she received a drum from her mamita. She played the drum all the time and she loved the drum, her mom did not like it as much and she was soon sent to go outside and play it. She ran into kittens in the back shed while playing outside one day and took the kitten that she liked the most. The mother of the kitten was not pleased with this and she heard her baby calling for her but Yolanda stuffed the kitten into her drum and beat on the top of the drum so the mother would not hear her baby calling for her. That night she went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night and

"Sitting on the foot of my bed, poking her face in so that the gauzy net was molded to her features like an awful death mask, was the black mother cat."

This happened night after night until they moved away to the States. I believe this is a symbol of how a mother protects her babies. Just like Yolanda's mother protected her and her sisters until they were old enough to protect themselves, the mother cat set fear into Yoyo because she had  harmed to one of her babies. The cat is a direct symbol of the mother protecting her babies and providing for them most of their life until they are old enough to fend for their own needs. Yolanda grows up to be a good woman.

As you find out in the beginning of the book, Yolanda grows up to be a wonderful  lady, but she has, like the title says, lost her accent along with her three sisters. They moved away to the Stated when they were little girls and while in the states they became accustomed to how the Americans lived and what they do. When she got back to the Dominican Republic she was not as fluent with her Spanish as she was when she was a little girl.  While in America Yolanda along with her sisters were exposed to things that she was never told of.  She was introduced to a lifestyle that she was not used to living in and people that she could not connect with.

"Alvarez's family was highly influenced by American attitudes and goods. Alvarez and her sisters attended an American school.Although she was thrilled to be back in America, she would soon face homesickness and the feeling of not fitting in. She missed her cousins, her family's large home, and the respect her family had in the Dominican Republic."

Any reader can see that this book was based on the life she lived in America while she was an  immigrant in America. I feel that overall this was a very good book. The reverse chronological order added a little confusion to the book but that along with the diverse and unique characters were the basis of this story. Without that style and these characters with their marvelous stories, this book would
  not have been as creative as it is.

Garcia Girls Part 3

In the last section of this great book, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents I found it quite interesting. On some parts of this book I could not really get into the book like I wanted to but it was nice. In the last section of the book it is talking about their child hood and then it goes back around to the beginning. While in class we discussed this part of how at the end of the book it went right back to the beginning. We made jokes of how we would have to keep rereading it over and over for the rest of the semester because this book was a circle. I thought about this for a while and I finally understood that the purpose of this story was the story was a circle.

The way the women were raised by their parents was shown different when they grew up into grown women.  For instance when Yoyo was a little girl she was paired up with her boy cousin. They were the only co-ed pair and they were always together. All the adult women always told her that she should stop hanging out with him and start hanging out with the girls. So she could practice being a girl instead of staying in that phase of being a tomboy. One day for a present she received, from her mamita, a drum with a set of drum sticks to go with it. She loved that drum set and she beat the drum like there was no tomorrow. She annoyed her mother with it so she was told to go outside with it.

She broke one of her sticks and her aunt sat on the other stick when it was on the couch. She says it was not the same when she used other objects to play her drum, but she used them anyway. She found Kittens in the shed in the backyard one day and she really liked one of them so she decided to take it. She was scared because of the mother cat. So she stuffed it in the drum and beat on the drum so the mother cat would not hear the meowing of her baby. The mother cat came into her bed room every night after that day until they moved away to the States.

When she got older she was much more of a lady and she was always with the ladies. She grew out of the tom boy stage and became a woman of the states. She grew out of her accent along with her other sisters, only to return to the Dominican Republic again one day.

Response to Alex Tang's Issue Of Violence

I came upon this quote while reading through Alex Tang's Post,

I am tired of hearing about the on going violence that has destroyed the city of Oakland. People need to grow up and learn how to deal with their problems in a peaceful and formal way. Violence can not be the response to everything because that will only make the cycle of violence continue.

I agree with Alex when he says he is tired of hearing this. I can really understand where he is coming from with this. With all of the violence going on in Oakland little kids are getting killed because of stupid mistakes that people make by trying to kill people. People have in wars and kill an innocent bystander by accident and take away a life. With this cycle of violence Alex is right, it will never end. Lets say I did not like a person because of something they did a long time ago so I killed that person thinking it would solve the problem. That person might have a friend who would kill for them so they come and kill me, then I have a friend who kills that friend. That is how it always is with this violence. It will never end until  someone becomes the bigger person and stops killing.

He is right, this ongoing violence is killing Oakland along with its reputation. People who are not from Oakland feel as if they will get killed coming to Oakland or fear that their kids lives are in danger if they come here. Little do they know that there are actually safe parts of Oakland. Oakland has really changed since my parents times of living here. They used to be able to walk down the streets at night and be perfectly safe, now a parent is scared for their kids lives when they stand in front of the house. My big brother is scared for me and my little siblings to walk around West Oakland because he fears that we might get hurt because of all the crazy youth that just kill people for the fun of it or because of the accidental deaths that occur among the youth today.

With this cycle of violence people will keep killing people. Someone will have to stop it soon or else things will get uglier then they already are. And as of now things are pretty ugly. So imagine if they got uglier.

I Made It! continued

I had to pick a card and I got seven of hearts and I was very nervous because it was my first time doing this. I watched all the girls who went before and after me tryout as I peeked through the door. When it was finally my turn to go I ran out onto the floor and stood in "Game Stance" which is with my hands on my hips. I waited for my instructions of what I had to do. He finally told me that He wanted me to do jumps,heel stretch (hold your foot in the air with one of your hands), Scorpion which is hard to explain, cart wheel, round off, front roll and a back roll, and the motion drill. I did my first jump which was the toe touch and all of the judges had an impressed look on their faces. I got through with all of this, I did not even do my dance yet and all the judges were wowed already. I finally finished that with a smile on my face the whole time and full of spirit, ready to move onto the dance and the cheer .

The coach counted me into the dance, I did the dance very well and I was on beat the whole time. When I was done with the dance the music was cut off and it was time for me to do the cheer. I did the cheer and I did great the whole way through up until the very last part where I clapped at the wrong time. Other than that little mistake I did great in my tryout. When I was done a couple of people went after me and when they were done everyone was called into the room to do the dance all together. After we did that we were able to go home. They said they would call us that night. I did not receive my call until the next day and I was very anxious to hear how I did even though all of my friends and even my mother and father said I made it, I wanted to hear it from the coach. He finally called me the next day while I was cooking breakfast. I was so busy getting popped in the eye, arm, and neck to notice that my phone was ringing.

I was sitting at the breakfast table eating when I pulled my phone out and saw that I missed his call. I was very upset, I was waiting for that call all night and when he finally called I MISSED IT! I called back and did not get an answer so I left a voicemail. I called back a couple of hours later when I was at the Stone Ridge mall and he answered I was very excited. I told him who I was and why I was calling even though he knew all of that. He found my name on the list and told me how the grading went. HE said that to make the traveling team someone had to at LEAST score a sixty, then he told me that the maximum score for the traveling team was a 120, I was very anxious because he was taking a long time to tell me how I did. HE finally told me that I scored a 115 out of a 120 and he said welcome to the Bay Area Dynamics. I was jumping around and smiling so much, people were looking at me like I was crazy and I said thank you and got off the phone. My mother was in another part of the mall so I called her and told her, I texted all of my friends and told them that I made it. It was only a couple of minutes before a few of my cheerleaders that i coach, and my aunts and cousins started to call me a text me congratlating me on making the All star team.

My mom had called them all and told all o them in less then five minutes, all I could think was wow i made the team and boy does news travel fast. But I am very excited that i made the team. I can't wait until practice starts and I finally get to see the uniforms. YAY!

I Made It!

It was about two weeks ago when I had to go to my first cheerleading practice so I could learn the Tryout dance. I was supposed to go with my friend Katrina Dizon but she was to nervous to go with me and she didn't have a ride to the practice area. On the first I got there on time and I was excited but I was also nervous because I knew i would not know anyone there. I was getting over my cold so I was not feeling the best. We had to go inside and I had to stretch. I did not know what I was in for because I half stretched not knowing I would regret it the next day, and went straight into practicing my jumps. When I was done with my jumps it was time to start learning the dance.

There were only a few other girls present besides me, so we learned the first part of the dance  in about fifteen minutes. When we all knew the first part of the dance we moved onto the next part of the dance. We learned that in about fifteen minutes minimum. When we got the whole tryout dance done it was time to go home, so we left for the night to go and practice the dance. When I got home I showed my parents and sibling what I just learned. I would stop a few times trying to remember the next step. I got to school and I would practice in PE class. I practiced all the time even though I was very sore because I should have correctly stretched. I would go to coach my cheerleaders who were getting ready for their cheerleading competition in a couple of days.

The next couple of practices were about the same with the same people. On the last practice a couple of days before the actual tryouts there were more people at that practice than any other practice before. This time my friend Katrina came and learned the rest of the dance that I did not have enough time to teach her. At this practice we went over the dance slowly then we sped it up a little bit each time. When the coaches felt like we had the dance down we went on to jumps and because I have high jumps I went up in front of all the girls with a few other girls up there with me. After we did our jumps we went up into stunts. I was a flyer for a while then I moved into being the back spotter. That was really fun to me, I like the stunt I was put into. I asked some of the girls if they had practiced the dance on their free time, they said no they did not because they knew it .

When the tryout day came, I was very upset because there was a bunch of traffic going into Alameda and I was late. But when I got there I was happy because they did not start yet but i was going in the next group. I have never tried out for a cheerleading squad before so i did not know what to expect. I had to tryout alone in front of five judges.  When I got there, the girls that I had asked if they practiced on their free time were the ones who were the most nervous and did not have the dance down tight. Me in the other hand, I was very prepared because I always practiced when I was not doing anything.

Continued on to the next blog.

Oscar Grant

Hi Rahni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Garcia Girls Part 2

In the second part of the book of how "The Garcia girls Lost Their Accents" it is a bit more confusing to me than the first part. I feel as if the first part was much more clear than the second part. In this second part of the book multiple things happen that show the girls foundation and their living styles before they got older. In one of the short vignettes titled Trespass Carla who as the oldest girl experienced things that she was never exposed to in the Dominican Republic before they moved to New York. When she first started at her school she did not know what to expect and the first couple of months her mother caught the bus with her before and after school. When her mother stopped catching the bus with her, she would get to school and,

"...a gang of boys chased after her, calling her names... out of the sight of the nuns, the boys pelted Carla with stones, aiming them at her feet so there would be no bruises. " (pg 153) 

In this someone can see that she was treated with great disrespect and with no compassion of welcoming a new student into their school. She had been tortured so bad by these boys that she would have nightmares about them, she would wake up at night and see them at the foot of her bed laughing at her, the only way she could get rid of them is by closing her eyes and escaping with the dark of her eyelids closed. Not only did she get harassed by the boys but she also got followed by a pervert one day after school which resulted in an interview with the police after her mother called them.

Like I said before I find that the second part was more confusing then the first part, to me When they were older and grown women the author made more clear of the events that occurred. As they get younger it seems more confusing. It is still very interesting to read about how they turned out before actually reading about their foundation. It stays getting interesting as I read on. I find it very interesting how drastically their lives change as they move from the Dominican Republic to New York. It seems as if they become very different people who do not come from a background of strict rules.

Overall I find that as the book progresses on it gets more confusing but at the same time it gets more interesting because I always want to know what happened before what I just read.

Book Post: The garcia Girls

In the book "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" there is a veinet that is called The Rudy Elmenhurst Story. In this specific story there were multiple scenes in which Rudy tries to get one of the sisters, Yolanda, to try and sleep with him. He uses different names for having sex that really turn her off. The main thing I wanted to talk about was the scene where they are in the bed and he tries to get her to have sex with him. This is their brake up scene and he is mad because she will sleep with him in his bed but she will not have sex with him. He tells her that guys need to have sex but she is not convinced that he is the one. He is finally tired of waiting for her so he dumps her and calls her names that make her storm out of the room.
In this quote you will see that he is tired of her holding out on him. He wants to have sex but she is not ready.

"I thought you'd be hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit, you'd be really free, instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks from prep schools.But Jesus you're worse than a fucking Puritan."... "I got up and threw on my nightgown, packed up my clothes, and left the room,..."

When a person first starts to read this book they will be very confused. In this book the story is told in reverse chronological order, which means we are reading from when they are grown women back until they were little girls. This is not the kind of book that I would have picked to read if I was picking something to read on my spare time. So far it has been an interesting but a person will start to get confused when the author switches stories fast and when the topic of the story or the focus of the story is changed. It was  hard to comprehend at first but once you start to read it, it becomes interesting and you get pulled in it. Working through the difficulty is a challenge but it is fun to know how a character ended up without even knowing their foundation that was set for them. I wonder what will come up in the second and third parts.

Reflective Essay

Writing on my blog page has been a new way for me to learn to write this quarter.  Blogging is similar to writing typical English papers, but when you really think about it they have their differences. A typical English paper has one main focus and doesn’t really show the inner writer of the person. With a blog post a person can express their inner selves and focus on many things in their writing. For example when I blog I mainly focus on one topic.  I also get off topic but I quickly get back. This first quarter has really been nice. It had been my first time writing on a blog. I actually get to use my creative voice instead of my regular English paper voice. In my blogs I talk bout a range of things but one thing that I really talk about is the surgery I had this quarter. That topic takes up majority of my blogs. In that specific topic I express my feelings I ha towards the hospital and the surgery; my pains that were unbearable at times and minor at others; and my surroundings that put a little fear in me but not enough to scare me all the way. Blogging this experience was like writing a descriptive essay. This whole topic, with limited details, took up five of my blogs.  This quarter has been a difficult one, I was out for two weeks and I missed a lot of school and school work which really affected my life in a way that I did not like at all. When I first learned that we would be blogging, the first thought that came to my mind was, “Wow this class will be the easiest class ever” little did I know that I would be missing school and not be able to blog for a couple of weeks. While I was in the hospital, the only thing I could think about, besides the fact that I was in pain, was my blogging and my homework. My mother was the one who suggested that I blog about my experiences with my pains, surgery, pain killers, tests, and the recovery.

When the night nurse came into the room they gave me my first IV and connected it to some kind of fluid. The nurse asked me how bad my pain was on a scale of zero to ten, when zero was not at all and ten the worst of all. I told the doctor that I was at about an eight, so they injected 2ml of morphine into me. Slowly but shortly the pain left me and I was feeling a little better then I was before. On the scale I was about a four. The doctor soon came after the nurse and she pressed on my stomach and asked me where the pain was, I told her that it was on my abdominal pelvic area. When she was done pressing on my tummy she was telling me that she thought I had an appendicitis and I would have to drink two tubs of this drink that would light up my stomach when I had the CAT scan later.   

    I sat at my computer looking at the screen waiting for an idea to come to me. This is something I do before I write a blog. Other times I have to get up and walk around, let the blood flow through my body before I can actually get an idea. My inspirations for writing my blog posts come from all of my surroundings; all of the people in my life, along with my experiences like “An Unforgettable Time”.
My mother is one of my great inspirations to my blog posts. She helps me with all my writers’ blocks and when I just need ideas. I was in the hospital so I did not do a great deal of blogging like my class mates. Ever since I have been blogging I think about things more. When I am doing something, I think about it to see if it is something I could put on my blog. Because of blogging I was able to put up a poem I did “You Will Never Be Incorporated”, and get a little bit of feedback about it. I am more open with my writing now and I can easily write a blog, I used to have great difficulties with them. Doing the blogs have opened up my range on things that I view. When I take a look at something I will notice little details about it that someone else didn’t see when they looked at it. Incorporating these little details in the blogs or papers adds a lot more depth and clarity to that paper or that blog.

There was one time when I was at my house sitting down on my living room floor preparing to write a blog, my neighbor was over  and he watched me type up one of my blogs. He looked and did not recognize what I was doing, so being curious he asked me. I told him that I was blogging. He had no clue what blogging was so I explained to him what it was. Now he tells me that he has a blog of his own, he says he would prefer to blog for his school instead of write a formal essay. I introduced blogging to someone and now they blog. He gets to experience what I experience when I blog, instead of how I feel when I write an essay that I dread.

Overall, in my eyes my writing in this class has not yet improved to meet the standards that my mother and I have. I know for a fact that I could do better then what I have done this quarter. I just post blogs to get a good grade in this class just like some of my peers at school. I will not do that in the up coming quarter because I want to post something that will make people have to think about what I just wrote. When I think about it, I know that I will do better in the future, I will put forth more of an effort. I want people to have to really think about what I say. I want one of my blogs to be the topic of a discussion in class the next day. I want to have people commenting on my posts more frequently than they have already. I think that weekly blogs have positive sides and negative sides to them. A negative thing is people repeat what they say and they just put stuff up just for the good grade, even if it doesn’t make sense. A positive thing is people get to write what is on their mind and get the experience of daily writing.

Continued from An Unforgetable Time

After being questioned and tested, i was wheeled into another room on my bed.  I had to change out of my clothes into the hospital clothes and it was a great challenge to move so like a little kid my mother had to help me. When i was done changing, the doctors who would be doing my surgery came into the room and questioned me again. Another nurse came to check my blood pressure and he did something with my IV. I was high off of the drugs so when he did something wrong with the IV and my blood started to drip onto the floor making a pool of blood, and got onto the white covers the only thing i could do and say was, "Oh no, I'm bleeding" while holding my arm up with the little strength i had. The blood got cleaned up a little later and i went into the bathroom to go to the bathroom before i went into surgery.

When i got back to my room, I climbed into my bed and i was wheeled to the surgery floor where it was freezing cold, we went through many doors and over many painful bumps on the floor. When we got to our stop we waited outside the room and the doctor told me what would happen next and not to be scared. I was left in the hallway with my mother and she just started crying. I did not understand it but she told me that she did not want me to have to go through this. She kissed me and we prayed, she told me she would be down stairs waiting while i was in surgery. I was wheeled into a very cold room, transferred onto the operating bed and had very warm blankets placed on me. I laid in the middle of all this equipment and  just looked around and saw a whole lot of faces. They said i would have another Iv placed onto me but they would do it when i was under the anaesthesia. My butt was placed in this little dip in the bed and my arms were spread in an A kind of shape. People were all around me talking, the only thing i could focus on was the man putting the anaesthesia over my face. I soon fell into a deep blank sleep. Not the kind of sleep where people dream but the kind of sleep where everything is black.

When I woke up I was in another room with two women and a whole bunch of equipment again. I had successfully gone through the surgery. I laid there for a second trying to figure out where i was, and why i was connected to so many machines. The lady soon saw that i was awake and came over to me smiling saying that i was okay. I tried to talk but my throat was hurting to bad. i pointed to my throat and one of the ladies explained to me that they stuck a tube down my throat and i would have sore throat for a while. They unhooked me from all of the machines and wheeled me into my recovery room. The only thing  could say was, can you go get my mother, and a few minutes later my mother came into the room and gave me a big hug. She took a seat next to my bed and just looked at me with a huge smile on her face. A few minutes later i had to go to the bathroom, so i called my nurse in and she helped me out of the bed and had me hold the pole that my IV was connected to. I slowly walked to the bathroom without knowing that i had no underwear on and i had something on my stomach. I was about to use the  bathroom when the lady said i had to pee in a cup so they could get some tests, so i did. When i was done and i got back to my bed, my mom started laughing and i asked her what was funny and she told me that my butt was hanging out of my gown. I quickly covered up my butt and asked for some underwear.

I got them and my nurse helped me put them on. A little later my doctor came in and checked on me, gave me some pictured and said that the surgery went very well. When she left I guess i went to sleep because I opened my eyes and my cousin was standing by my bedside looking at me. I did not know that she worked there but i was happy because she gave me some food. I had a Popsicle. cherry flavored jello, nasty broth that i never finished and crackers. I watched television until they said i could go and walk around for a while. So i got up and i walked around my floor and saw a lot of sick people. I was bent over like an old woman because i could not stand up straight. When i got back to my room I watched television until they said i could go home which was around two in the afternoon again. My mom went to get the car and i had to get dressed alone which was a great challenge. I sat on my bed when i was dressed and ready to go, until another lady cam into my room to get me. This time i was wheeled out on a wheel chair and it was  fun. I got to my car and i crouched over and walked over to my car. I sat on the seat and rested as we drove. We got home and i sat on the couch and rested.

My mom woke me up so that i could eat, we and spicy Chinese food, it was delicious. During the time i was at my house i sat on the couch and slept on the couch. My mom made me walk around a few times and get things for her and myself. One day my PE teacher Mr. Susa came by to drop off posters that my lovely school mates made for me and some chocolate. I had my brother and sister hold up the poster so i could read it and my mother said i could not have any of the chocolate, so i gave them some and made sure to save some for myself later on. I missed going to school and all of my friends, so i onky stayed home for a week on no pain medications and i was fine. I returned to school a week after my surgery but i had to be careful, and i had to wear my belly brace at all times. This is a time i will never forget.

Continued from An Unforgetable Time

I already had an idea that they should not get that big, but i just sat and listened. When they were done talking to me about this they gave me and my mother two options, option one was i could get it surgically removed, option two was i could leave and be put on medications while they watched it to see if i would shrink or grow. My mother did not want me to get the surgery, she talked it over with my father on the phone and they decided that we would just watch it to see what happened. I guess i was still on the morphine because i was moving around perfectly fine and i could walk and kick and i felt no pain. Because of that they sent me home with vicadin and another minor pain medication, because I could not have morphine outside of the hospital. When i left the hospital it was about two in the afternoon. Me and my mom were very hungry so we got some food and went back to my house. The doctor said if i felt anymore severe pains that i should come back to the hospital for the surgery. At that moment i had no pain at all and i felt like i was on top of the world. When my dad got home he made jokes saying that i was only trying to get some attention and that i was not in any pain. We all laughed at that and went on with our lives.
This was a Thursday, and on Thursdays I have to go and coach my cheerleaders. Because i said i was feeling okay I tagged along and went to practice with my family. When we got there I was feeling a little pains but i did not say a word about it. I sat down fro a minute, then i told my mom that my stomach was hurting.  She asked me how bad it was hurting on a scale of zero to ten, i said about a six or seven. The other coaches walked over to me and my mom and said that i should go home if I'm not feeling well. My best friend came and gave me a hug and i just started crying because i was in a very uncomfortable pain. I took a vicadin but it did not work for me, so me and my mother went home and left my dad, little brother and little sister at the park. When i got home i sat on my couch that rocks and i out the heating pad over my belly and rocked until i went back to sleep. When i woke up my aunt was sitting next to me just looking at me. I was still in a lot of pain just like before, I'm guessing the morphine wore off. I could not get in a comfortable position and o kept on moving side to side, turning over and i could not stay still because o the pains. So my aunt left and my mom packed her bags with books and magazines, we were on our way to the hospital at eleven o' clock on Thursday night. When we got to the hospital I went through the same procedure i did the first time i was there the night before.
This time i could not even sit down in the chair. The night nurse that i had the night before cam in to check on me because when he left me the night before i was doing fine. He had a sad look on his face like he could feel my pain. I could tell he was sad that i was back, he asked my mom what was wrong and came and talked to me a little later. I laid in the bed still moving because of the pains. The nurses asked me a bunch of questions like if i was sexually active and if i smoked and if i drank. They put another IV into my arm and placed about six warm white blanket over me.

Continued on to next blog

Continued From An Unforgetable Time

After my wonderful time in the CAT scan room, I got transferred back to my regular bed and one of my nurses rolled me back into my room. When I got back to my room i laid there for a while with my parents and watched television while they injected another 2mL of morphine into me for my pains.A little later another doctor came into my room and she pressed on my stomach to see where my pain was, I told her that my pain was low, so she pressed on it and examined my belly. A man came into the room with a big machine saying that he needed to give me an x-ray, i don't remember much about that because I was drugged up. But i do remember being in my room laying there waiting, i dosed off into sleep. It seemed like i was sleep for about two minutes before i was woken up by the doctor. The doctor told me and my parents that i did not have an appendicitis, but they found a cyst on my left ovary. They were not completely sure if it was  a cyst so they would have to check. I did not know what they were talking about so i just sat there.

 But later they wheeled me out on my bed to another the same floor as before with the CAT scan, but this time i did not get a CAT scan. Because they wanted to see inside my uterus which was under my bladder, they had to give me an ultra sound. They said i needed a full bladder in order for them to be able to see through to my ovary. So i sat there for about twenty minutes having to urinate but having to hold it. The gel she put on my belly felt good when she rubbed it around.  She took several picture of my insides and she said that because i had a full bladder she was able to get great pictures. As soon as i was done there i got up and ran into the bathroom to go to the bathroom (at that time i could run). I felt like a little kid because m mommy had to go into the bathroom with me just in case something happened to me. 

When i was done with doing my business, i got back into my bed and was wheeled back up to my room where i sat there for a long while. My dad had to leave to go and take my brother and sister to school, by that time it was about six o' clock in the morning. I guess i went to sleep after he left because when i woke up my room was full of unfamiliar faces of women. There were OBGYNs in my room and female doctors who specialized in reproductive systems. They informed me of my over sized cyst, which was 7cm, and they told me that it is normal for a woman to get cysts but they should not grow to be that big.

Continued to next blog.

NIght Essay

Night is a true story based on a man who went through the Holocaust, he survived it and is still living at this time. In the story by Elie Wiesel who is also the main character, he encounters many conflicts as is moved from place to place throughout that time. With these conflicts there comes character versus character, character versus society, and character versus self, these are challenges that he thinks he will not be able to overcome, but proving himself wrong he still lives. Elie conflicts with his thoughts and actions of him and others as he survives the times of the holocaust.

In the story Ellie has many conflicts with himself, he doesn’t know if he is sure of what he used to be confident in. He has conflicts with himself because of his current thoughts running through his mind. He questions his faith and doesn’t believe that he has a strong of a faith as he did before all hell came down on them. HE is not sure that the God they are serving actually cares about them, because of what him and his family are going through. “For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the universe, the all Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31). As shown in this quote he is slowly losing his faith because of the brutal position at the camps he is put in. Losing his faith, he slowly begins to question if there really is a God up there watching over him and his people. He sees the other men spending every waking hour praying to God, and he is not even sure f there is really a God up there to pray to so he doesn’t know what to do so he works and listens to what he is told to do.

When Elie is taken from his hometown just to go into a ghetto and later into a dreadful concentration camp. The other characters had either major or minor conflicts with Elie that were dealt with in a manner that was not appealing to some but amusing to others some of the people found it terrifying and horrible. one day while at work Elie saw some commotion off in a corner, in that corner there was a man getting beat almost to death, it was his father. “Suddenly his frenzy broke out. The victim was my father, ‘You lazy old devil!’ And he began to beat him with an iron bar” (52). He witnessed his father get beat for so long that, like a tree he split in half. This is a perfect example of character versus character, and he didn’t even stand up or protect his father he just sat and watched like the other bystanders who had no connection to him.

In the concentration camps they treated the Jews as if they were on a status lower then an animal. In their eyes the Jews were not even humans, they were just people who worked for them and who they beat at any given time. There was some character versus society moments in the story. In one part the story they were all running and he had to avoid getting hit from the superior figures. He ran in the middle of the group so the men on the outside could get hit with the whips and truncheons. “Ten gypsies had come and joined our supervisor. Whips and truncheons cracked around me.my feet were running without me being aware of it. i tried to hide from the blows behind others” (37). The society in which he grew up in compared to the one in this camp is without a doubt completely different. He gets beat when something is done that he didn’t even do, and his little sister didn’t do it, a complete stranger did it.

Elie is put through hell on earth. HE has begun to question whether he has a strong faith and he began to wonder if there was even a God up there and why he would let him and his people go through such a little He got into conflicts with other men there, the leaders and he even witnessed his dad get beat half to death. He didn’t do a thing about it besides watch all this brutality happen. He was conflicted by his thoughts and actions, the actions of others were some of the things that helped him to survive and dodge trouble while in the camps.

Continued From An Unforgetable Time

When the night nurse came into the room they gave me my first IV and connected it to some kind of fluid. The nurse asked me how bad my pain was on a scale of zero to ten, when zero was not at all and ten the worst of all. I told the doctor that I was at about an eight, so they injected 2ml of morphine into me. Slowly but shortly the pain left me and i was feeling a little better then I was before. On the scale I was about a four. The doctor soon came after the nurse and she pressed on my stomach and asked me where the pain was, I told her that it was on my abdominal pelvic area. When she was done pressing on my tummy she was telling me that she thought I had an appendicitis and I would have to drink two tubs of this drink that would light up my stomach when I had the CAT scan later. She was in the middle of telling me that I would not be able to eat anything or drink anything with the exception of the two tubs of stuff. Right when she said I could not have any water, my mouth started watering, so I asked her why my mouth was watering. She thought I asked her if I could have some water, so she said, "No you cannot drink anything" and I just threw up on the floor right in front of her and she just looked at me for a second and then ran out and brought me two barf bags.

When I threw up they brought me the first tub out of the two tubs of that liquid. The kind nurse mixed it with apple juice and made it taste better. When I first sipped it was a little good but as I kept drinking it got harder to drink and it got nastier with each sip I took. When I was done drinking the first one which took about an hour, they brought me the next tub and they said I had thirty minutes to drink that whole tub. It was horrible but I drank it all and they took a while to take me into the room where I was supposed to get my CAT scan. Because they took a long time my stomach decided that it did not want to keep the nasty liquid in so I threw up another time, this time I threw up about a tub of the liquid into the barf bag. After my second time throwing up I went up a few floors into the CAT scan room and I met a man who would be doing the scan. He was a very nice man, he told me that the machine would talk to me and tell me what to do, also later into the scan he would inject something into my IV that would make my whole entire body hot. When he left the room I was pulled into this big circle then the machine told me to breathe, then it told me to hold my breath. I had to do that a few times, then the man came into the room and said he was about to inject the stuff in me to make my whole body hot. When it was in my whole entire body got hot, I thought I was going to start to sweat but right before I broke a sweat it went away just as fast as it came.

Continued on to the next Blog.

An Unforgetable Time

I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling a little sick and having stomach pains. I paid it no mind because that was the day my menstrual cycle started. So I went on and I got ready for school and drove on to the store with my father. When we got to the store and I was feeling terrible so when my friend Alexia said hello to me i just looked at her and kept on walking straight to the aisle with the pads.

When I got to the school I was not feeling any better then when I woke up that morning. I still went through the first three classes. Before school started I went into the girls bathroom and I threw up into the big stall's toilet. I did not tell anyone about me throwing up that morning so I went to the classes and did the work that I could do. By the time lunch came around I was feeling horrible, I gradually walked to the College store and I bought me a bottle of water. When that did not help me Iwent into the office and I told Ms.Ahn that I was not feeling well. She was the first person that I told  I threw up that morning. Calling my mother to let her know I was not feeling well, like a concerned mother my mom told Ms. Ahn that she would call my father to let him know that I was not feeling well and that he should come and pick me up to take me home. He came a little while later and I was home.

Later that night at about twelve in the morning I woke up from my stomach bothering me. I kept moving around until about one in the morning. At one in the morning I was so bothered that I went into my parents room and told them that my stomach woke me up and I could not go back to sleep. My mother thought that I had an appendicitis, because when my little sister was six years old she had one and she had to go into an Emergency Surgery. When my mother got off the phone with the nurse it was about two I'm the morning. I put on a pair of my black sweats and a tank top and my puffy jacket. When we got into the Emergency room I could barely move and I was about to cry but I didn't. I had to go through a medal detector and I was really irritated but I did it, I had to get my blood pressure checked and my weight and a whole lot of these tests. I really thought that I was going to die because they were taking a long time and I was in a whole lot of pain. When they finally came to get me I had to go into this room and I had to change into the hospital clothing and lay in the bed. I was very uncomfortable because I could not get into a comfortable position because of what was in my body.


*Continued on the next Blog.

You Will Never Be incorporated

Because I could not incorporate you in my life,

He unsympathetically picked me up.

Along for the ride were many others,

All mortals of an immortal life.

Speeding down the road

Like the bullets fired from our guns.

People’s hard work and sweat

GONE

For our pleasure and happiness.

Pausing on a street glancing at our work

Blood on the ground

Broken down buildings

The city, a ruin.

Today an on, days feel like centuries

I thought it was over on that day

I thought I had incorporated you in my life

But now I know, I never will.

This is my poem for Ms. Corbally's class I just wanted to get some feedback on it and I want people to tell me what they get out of it. Like what do you think it means to you.

Rebuttal: Prostitution Should Stay Illegal

Here is my Rebuttal:


We all know that prostitution is illegal. Prostitution is illegal for reasons that bring danger to the citizens of America and even the people who are not citizens. The government can make this legal but that will not change a thing. They can make prostitution a business and they can put an age limit on the prostitution but that will not keep the youth out of being a prostitute. Our opponents state,

"Just like alcohol and drugs, children should naturally be kept away from them. this concept would be applied for prostitution. There would be an age required for prostitution as well."

Well now a days our youth are drinking and they are taking drugs, sometimes even hard core drugs that are illegal. This can be the same way if prostitution is legalized. A young person can get into the prostitution business if they want to because they have connections. Just like they have connections with getting drugs if they really need or want them, they can get into the prostitution business if they really needed to or if they wanted to, from  the connections that they might have. Legalizing it will not necessarily stop anyone from getting into it even if the government is involved.

Another point that we have is that when one of the prostitutes has a STD or is sick. When someone has a STD they can get with another person and it will spread like that. Making prostitution legal will not stop the disease form spreading. you can make this into a business but if one person gets a STD like AIDS or even HIV they will spread it very fast. the government can't stop the spreadoing rate of a disease, they can only try.

Our opponents may not think this is bad at all but we think it is. Having sex for money is not a natural thing to do. Sex is not something that should be with just anyone, and is not something that should be exchanged for sex. I understand that people like this and this is a way for them to get money, but when you think about it they are have sex with tons of different men and they are not really having a good time by getting their bodies invaded i know that I would not have a good time going to all different kinds of men everyday of my life. The women get depressed and they get spiritually hurt and in some ways they can get physically hurt.

In my opinion i think that prostitution is just an immoral thing to do. Making it legal will not make anything better. Okay the government will get invloved and they will take over the whiole system, the givernment can only do so much and can only go so far. So i do not think  that it wuld be a good idea to make this legal because of the impact it could have and of what things and people.

'Just Kidding' and 'Ganging Up'

Rahni Johnson


‘Just Kidding’ and ‘Ganging Up’

When I think back to when I was a little kid growing up, I was never harassed by anyone and I never participated in an alliance that made anyone feel bad. I always helped and stood up for those people because I knew I would hate it if anyone bullied me or hurt my feelings in any way. When I was in elementary school I participated in a club known as the Conflict Managers. The job of a conflict manager was to solve any conflicts that they were confronted with, it could have been a disagreement over a ball, you had to do your job and help solve the conflict and if it was a fight that was about to happen you had to do your job and help the people before the situation sprouted into a fight. We had trainings and classes to help us prepare for a real situation. Because I was good at this, and I participated in it for multiple years, I was able to train others. I really enjoyed helping people solve their problems, and it mostly took up most of my lunch recess time but I was committed. The reason behind people bullying others is they feel that other people’s pain will make them inferior to them, this is just saying that when a person feels they have no power, they want others feel just like them and they pick on them and that way they have inferior figures to boss around. I also think that people bully others because when they are at home they are taught that, that is the right thing to do and they are encouraged to do it so they keep up with the negativity. I think the motivation behind bullies wanting to hurt their peers is coming from people at their homes and also from their friends or maybe they don’t have friends and they don’t know how to make any. Also there is no one there to tell them to stop or that is wrong so they keep doing it and get the wrong attention. Bullies can open their eyes and see what they are doing is wrong, or they can get confronted by the principal or the victims’ parents and get into trouble. A way I can help bullies stop is to tell them they are wrong and need to look at it from another person’s point of view like how they would feel if they got bullied.