Romeo and Juliet

In ELA we are reading Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. This book is about these two teenagers, Romeo and Juliet who fall in love. the only conflict about these two teens falling in love was that they belong into two families who are enemies. this foebidden love lead to a horrific misunderstanding and them killing themselves. From what we read so far, Juliet is feeling conflicted emotions because her husband Romeo killed her cousin Tybalt.

The character I like the most and feel is the strongest character is Juliet. I feel Juliet is such a strong character because if I was in her position where my husband killed my cousin and I didnt even know the whole situation I dont think I would know what to do with myself especially if I loved my husband as much as Juliet loved Romeo. Juliet had so much feelings for what happened because some of the words she used to describe Romeo were "O serpent heart hid with a flow'ring face! did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Just opposite to what thou justly seeem'st, A damned saint, an honorable villain."

After all these conflicted feelings Juliet had for Romeo showed how confused she was, but in my opinion she made a very rash decision by sticking with Romeo. I guess this shows the true love Juliet has for Romeo but putting him over a close family member who is now dead? I think that was a little silly of her to do.

We Are The World by Michael Jackson

One of my favorite songs is "We Are The World" by Michael Jackson because I really like the flow of the song and I like the message the song is trying to send to the world. The message I think the song is trying to send is that not everyone has the greatest life and that everyone in this world is a family and what does a family do? They help one another when in need, so we as a family should help those who are less fortunate than we are. In the  chorus it says,  "We are the world, We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start giving. There's a choice we're making, we're saving our own lives. It's true we'll make a better day, just you and me." This tells me that we make the world as it is, so WE are the world. Some of us make each and everyday a happier day so we should start giving some of that happiness to who needs it the most. Doing this will make each day better according to the song.

In the beginning of the song, the lyrics were "There are people dying, and it's time to lend a hand to life, the greatest gift of all. We can't go on pretending day by day that someone somehow will soon make a change. We are all a part of God's great big family, and the truth, you know love is all we need." This part of the song also showed me that if we wanted to make the world a better place, we don't neccessarily need to do anything grand, we can just give what every single person needs and wants, love. We can't just act like people are getting hurt in the world everyday because we al know for a fact that it happens and we all know that it's not okay and sometime it can lead to majorly bad things, such as death maybe.

This song makes me thing about what goes on in the world each and everytime I hear it. This song also makes me think about what I could do to make other people happy when most of their life is depressing and I feel like a good person for that. For instance this year, I made two new friends and as I got to know them, their life is pretty messed up and I decided to be that shoulder to cry on they've been looking for and now I'm extremely close with them and i feel like a better person for everything I've helped them through so far.

Death Penalty

In the article, "The Death Penalty Debate", by Patricia Smith Illinois became the 16th state to abolish the death penalty. Later on, people debated whether it was the right or wrong choice for a variety of reasons. some people feel that it was a smart decision because maybe the people on the death row are innocent or maybe the people on the death row didn't do anything so horrid to deserve the death penalty. some people feel that the law shoul dbe re-thought because of the "Eye for an Eye" quote.

I the article, it said, "Many death penalty supporters interpret the biblical phrase 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth' to mean that those who commit murder should meet the same fate." these supporters made a good point because this made me think about the saying "what goes around around, come around". so if you intentionally kill someone, maybe it's not such a horrible idea that someone killed you.

I think that people should go with what Presdent Obama suggested because if someone did a really terrible thing, maybe prison isn't the best place to go because you'll never know if something like this will happen again, or worse. Think about Osama Bin Laden, he did something beyond wrong and was killed for it and everyone in America was so excited about it. Well this is no different than the death penalty. 

The Outsiders

I just started reading the book The Outsiders written by S.E. Hinton and so far I feel so bad for the main character Ponyboy. Him and his brothers are in a gang called the Greasers. Ponyboy is the youngest of all his brothers and he counts on them for everything! He looks up to them with his life. But when i comes to the Socs, another gang, Ponyboy has to be extra careful. The Socs are a gang who is the Greasers arch nemesis and they like to beat up people for fun.

As I started the book on page 4, Ponyboy was sitting on a log alone which ended up being a bad idea........ the Socs surrounded him. One of them came up to him and said "Hey grease. We're gonna do you a favor, greaser. We're gonna cut all that long greasy hair off."

Another one said, "Need a haircut greaser?" Ponyboy finally took up the courage to say no, but one greaser got into his head and really scared him! "How'd you like that haircut to beginjust below the chin?" He said. Ponyboy inferred that they wanted to kill him so he started calling for his brothers and started screaming!

I am so scared for Ponyboy at this point. I just think that for now he should just stick with his brothers before anything else happens to him. I hope this is what he does because that would be a tragedy if Ponyboy, the youngest of the bunch dies because he didn't know any better to stay safe and stick with his older brothers.

Slam

I am reading the book Slam by Nick Hornby and in this book, the main character Sam is a teenager with a pregnant girlfriend. He doesn't know whether he should stay with his girlfriend, Alicia or not because he's not sure if he should go into his mother's footsteps because when she was sixteen she had him and it interferered a little with her teenage life. Because of this Sam's not sure what to do, so he decides to read his idol's autobiography for answers. Sam is a big Tony Hawk fan.

Sam shouldn't stay with Alicia becuase he is only a teenager, it's not the best idea to be a teenage dad. Sam shouldn't follow his mom's footsteps if he wants to live his live his teenage life without having the responsibility to take care of some little baby . I think Sam did the right thing by breaking up with Alicia, I mean I know that sounds mean but, if you put yourself in his shoes, having a pregnant girlfriend at only sixteen, I bet most of you with do the same.

Alicia shouldn't keep the baby because she's only sixteen, if I were her and I had a boyfriend I really loved and had two parents that were university profesors, I would want to focus even more in school if I wanted to keep my boyfriend. I wouldn't want to stay home taking care of a child that people called mine!

All in all, I'm glad Sam and Alicia broke up becuase Sam should not be thinking about having a child in the middle of high school but yet again he is doing whatever Tony Hawk suggests so I Tony Hawk agrees with me. And for Alicia, if she does keep the baby, good luck to her! God bless her, I would hate to see her struggle, like just picture all the parents working their butts off at thirty and fourty and struggling to provide for their children, not picture Alicia, sixteen, taking care of a child. That's even worse! I hope Alicia doesn't keep the baby, makes life much easier!

Freedom Summer

In class, we read Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles and it was about segregation. After having Ms.Robbins read us this book, it really touched my hert because, it was so sad to hear how black people couldn't do anything that white people could do, so having a best friend whos skin color is different than yours? Wow. That really must be hard. This also makes me think of what it would be like if that was still to happen now. One I wouldn't have the friends I have now because my closest friends happen to be white, and two I wouldn't have the freedom i have now. :(

What really got me sad while having this book read to us was when the law changed about the town pool being opened to everyone but ended up not and the black kid, John Henry was devastated because he was so excited that he would be able to hang out with his white best friend. And to be honest, I really felt like crying. BUT, what lightened up my mood was the fact that John Henry's best friend who was white decided that he didn't care what people did, he was going to go everywhere with his best friend.

That made me really happy and it showed me how some friendships are so strong, not even the law can break you guys apart! Also he made me feel that no matter what your skin color is you should have an equal amount of freedom!

Change is Hard but it's Something We Have to Get Used to

I am currently reading the book "mockingbird" written by Kathryn Erskine and there is one protagonist whose name goes by Caitlin. Caitlin is a ten year old little girl with Asperger's syndrome. She always has her older brother, Devon help her understand things better. But unfortunately Devon pasted :/ and the thing that i just can't get over is how silent the house is now with Caitlin and her father.

Every Thursday, Caitlin, Devon, and their dad would always order and eat pizza at six thirty. After waking up from a nap, Caitlin waited until it was six thirty. She went to her father and said "It's sixthirty, time to eat." No answer. Again, "It's six thirty." She wouldn't stop bugging him so he agreed to eat, but refused to call the pizza guy. But, Caitlin refused to have the food provided at home. So their only choice left was PopTarts and salad with applesauce. They ate in the kitchen and according to Caitlin, things were much more quiet without Devon around.

Caitlin's dad was about to cry which wasn't okay so caitlin siezed the silence and said, "I wish we could have pizza with Devon. It's even Thusday. Pizza day" This almost made me cry! I really didn't like all this sadness in the house. I mean, I know what it's like to lose someone so very special to you, but does that really mean you have to stop spending so much time with your family and stop all your family traditions? If it were me, I would be spending MORE time with my family and make sure we are STILL carrying all of our taditions. Although I'm only in the beginning middleish part of my book, I surely hope to see things get a whole lot better in this household because the way i see it right now, this family is a wreck! I do not want to hear that a family is a wreck! I think that even though Devon is no longer there to help Caitlin with her Asperger's and is no longer there to eat pizza on Thurdays, Caitlin and her dad need to find a way to not think about Devon SO much and try to figure out how to get used to this drastic change in their lives.