Fact or Fiction? Friend or Foe?

This weekend is going to be extremely busy because next weekend a lot of my family is coming to visit to celebrate my little sister’s First Holy Communion. I basically know exactly how everything is going to turn out. Tomorrow (Friday May 9th) I’m going to go to school, then after school, I’m going to my school’s soccer practice, then right after that yet another soccer practice! I’m going to be exhausted, but hopefully I’ll be able to hang out with Cam or something afterwards. Saturday is going to be even worse. Even though I’m going to sleep in, after I wake up I’m going to have to clean the bathrooms, and do my chore of dirty clothes. All this before 1:30! At 1:30 I have my last soccer game of the season. Hopefully we’ll win, but that’s not probable because we haven’t won a game yet! After the game, I’ll probably come home and work around the house to get ready for the company arriving next week. Sunday is Mother’s Day, so my mom said we don’t have to go to church because she wants to sleep in. I’ll probably wake up relatively early so I can make breakfast in bed for her. Breakfast in Bed is a tradition in my family, for special holidays like birthdays, mother’s day and father’s day. After relaxing for a while I think we’ll have to start straightening up a bit. I’ll also try to get some homework done. That’s most likely my weekend but next weekend is going to be way more exciting!

Looking through the second edition of the Space magazine, I came across a slide show of photography by a highschooler from Salt Lake City, Utah. She had some really interesting photos of everyday things, people would normally pass by. The way that in some pictures she would use wierd camera angles really put an artistic edge on her shots. I really enjoyed the picture of the money on the side walk. I really liked the angle of the photo where it you racked the focus to grasp the focus of the foreground like the quarter and the rock and made the background softer and more unclear. I really loved the whole slideshow and it gave me a lot of ideas to make my photography better.

Emerald Isle

    We pull up at around nine at night but I can already smell that familiar salty water from last summer. Upacking the car in darkness, I can hear the waves crashing done so clearly. I feel at peace. The house is just as good. With a sailors decor it brings you at ease. To your left you’ll find a stair case leading to the beautiful living, dining and kitchen area. A wall to wall window covers one side of the room facing the sea. Straight ahead you’ll find 4 spacious rooms all with comforting feelings of the ocean. I fall asleep quick that night knowing the excitement that lies ahead.

In all our efforts to raise awarness and to help stop the conflicts in Darfur, the violence has seemed to find it’s way back! In Darfur, the violence has started back up and has gotten so bad that the U.N. feels that it is no longer safe for the peacekeeping troops to be there. I think it’s absurd that it has gotten bad enough to remove the peacekeepers, after all the things people around the world are trying to do to stop the genocide, it has found a way to increase it’s violence. This may be very discouraging but it also will make you realize that it’s going to be a tough “journey” to stop the genocide but in the end, it’s going to be way worth it. We cannot stop now after all of our attepmts at trying to end these conflicts! We will all have to work harder and faster to have a chance at ending this thing once and for all. This is URGENT! Darfur needs all the help they can get! 

Over March 6th and 7th of 2008 Mr. Mayo’s and Ms. Drexler’s blog to raise awareness about Darfur got six hundred and seventy-seven comments! I am really glad to see such a good turnout and also am really happy that I was a part of it. I was recently looking through the comments left and there was one posted by an 8th grader in Virginia named Macy. She used the same prompt I used about sitting down with a darfurian our age and I have to really agree with what she said. She talked about how she would basically congratulate them knowing that she could have never survived what this person went through.  One part of her comment that I thought was really moving was when she said “We are so privileged and ungrateful in this country compared to others that we don’t even see what is going on in the rest of the world. I bet that all of the teens in this country would be shocked to see how much we have and how little they do, and I think we need to begin to stop being so ungrateful and help the people in Darfur.” After reading this, it really did get me thinking and made me realize how much I take for granted. It’s funny how what started to be a small classroom project could get so many people talking.

I had never heard about the atrocities happening in
Darfur before learning about it in class. I hadn’t known that 15,000 innocent people die a month and that 2.6 billion people in
Darfur have been affected by this mayhem. If I had known any of this I would have gotten involved much sooner. Now that I do know, I have participated in call-ins, sent letters and attended a couple City Council meetings.  

        Learning about
Darfur has become an interest of mine and I have really gotten involved with some of my friends. We try to do everything in our power to raise awareness and help people who are right in the middle of all of it. Sometimes I imagine and place myself in a darfurian child’s shoes but honestly I could not bare what they go through everyday. It amazes me that more then 20% of children under five years old are suffering from severe malnutrition and many of them dying each day! 

        Everyday, I wake up in a warm bed, take a hot shower, and have a healthy breakfast but never stop to think about how lucky I am to be receiving all of these resources. If the majority of the world would take a second out of their full schedules to think about the people in
Darfur then I think we could get much more done to stop all of these conflicts. This blog is only the beginning of our collective effort and our global responsibility.

While looking at some of the resources on the wiki, I came across a game called Darfur is Dying. This game is a virtual simulation in which you can play from the perspective of a displaced Darfurian. You have to survive all of the hardships that the people in Darfur endure everyday. It really shows you how surreal things are over there and it really makes you think and makes you want to help even more. That’s where YOU come in. You can help! By participating in International Darfur Awareness Day on March 6th and 7th of 2008. You can post your comments at this site on that day. Every little thing can help!

After reading the two articles I can say that China is in somewhat fear of what could happen to the Olympics and their reputation if they don’t start pressuring the peacekeeping act on the sudanese government. In both articles they talk about China starting to pressure Sudan about the peacekeepers and also in the second article it talks about new bombs being dropped in the Jabel Moun area. After reading these article it seems Sudan is being very strict with their rules on what troops are allowed to come in to Darfur because scandanavian troops were denied entry and Thai battallion are still waiting approval. Which indicates that Sudan feels threatened by the U.N.’s progress in this whole ordeal. Personally I think that Sudan is trying to use the littlest things to keep troops out of there and I aslo think that China is using this opportunity to regain some countries respect. China must feel threatened that people like Steven Speilberg, who can make a influence on people, have left their role in the Olympics this summer because of these conflicts and because they feel that its not right. I’m assuming that is a primary reason as to why China has decided to speak up now and not before. But overall it seems that these conflicts are nearing an end slowly but surely so please help make a change by participating March 6th.

 1) I think my favorite post would have to be the freewrite I did about the two men in africa. Mostly because I used my imagination and wasn’t worrying about if it was good enough or not.

2)I think that doing our work in a blog form is a really good idea because it keeps our work neat and organized. Plus I think a lot of the students like the technology aspect of the blogs.

3) I think my writing has progressed a lot over the last few months. Looking back at past post I can see things that I could have made sound better and such. One thing I think I do well while writing are my introductions and conclusions. One thing I may need to work on is run-ons. I’ve seen that I’ve improved on this but it could be better. 

Last night, at around 9 pm, me and some other students in our class were part of a skype conference with some teachers and students from around the country. We basically talked about the International Darfur Awareness Day blog and explained it to everyone. We explained how we think the Awarness Day will help and also what we think about it. One question that I enjoyed answering was “Is this still just a class project or has it become something more?” The cool thing is that it’s not just a class project anymore but more of hobbie or an interest of mine. And that is what I would like to see done, if I see or here of someone who takes part in this blog and then get strongly interested in it to learn more and even host things to help, then I will be satisfied. I think that the conference was a good idea because we got to share our knowledge on Darfur with people around the U.S , and show them how much we know about it and how deeply we are interested in it. Getting to argue our thoughts with other students and talking to teachers about what we know, was a very good experience because honestly I hadn’t known how much I knew on this topic.