Reading Times

My reading for this week was not that good, because I seemed to always either be busy or just forget.
Monday: 10 minutes
Tuesday: 15 minutes
Wednesday: 10 minutes
Thursday: 20 minutes
Friday: 10 minutes
Saturday: 15 minutes
Sunday: 30 minutes

Lord of The Flies

By now in lord of the Flies, we are getting a good characterization on these boys. Ralph is leading the group, with Jack sort of side kicking him. Piggy is as always being excluded, but still tries to include himself. Simon is just looked down upon, literally (because he is really short). My focus so far has been the relationships between everyone. This happens in a lot of stories though, or even in real life; everyone gets along with one another except for one or two boys. In this case, its mainly Piggy. 

In the course of the chapters, my opinion on these boys have changed a lot. In the beginning, I used to feel bad for Piggy, but now I understand why these guys don't like him. He is a very whiny, high-maintenance boy who needs to be shot with reality. I also used to like Jack, because at first he respected that Ralph was overall leader. Now I think he is slowly going to take over. And Simon, I thought he would be one of the big boys, but it seems like he is almost as excluded as Piggy.

I can't wait to read more and figure out more about the "monster" and other things!

Towards the Midterm

Now that we have had school for almost a complete semester, it seems like it's only been a month or so, literally! I know that I will have to start preparing soon for the tests soon, even though I'm dreading it. When I look back at it, there are some things I understand very thoroughly, and others I'm somewhat confused about. Under literacy elements, I understand all of them very well, but if I go into depth about them, I don't know if I would be able to remember everything. For example, i know about setting, but i might not be able to remember all the depths of it (like physical, temporal, etc..). I also understand the paper we wrote on it too (even though I didn't at first).
One thing that was hard for me to understand, was how to make a literacy analysis statement. I tried my hardest and thought I did a good job, but I still think I need to review that a lot. Lord of the Flies seems to be going good. I love trying to find out where it might foreshadow here or what it symbolizes there. Its so much fun!
I'm excited to start reviewing and going over whats going to help me understand more for the midterm.

Plane Crash

This week in class, I enjoyed the discussion of what we would do if we were in a situation of a plane crashing on a deserted island. I think our group was very good at working together to make sure we "survived". In our group, Diamond acted as our "judge" I guess by just taking control over who was talking when, and what we were going to have to do to survive. She devised a plan so that if someone wanted to talk, they would have to raise their hand, and she would call on them. She also kept us in line by banging on the desk (or I guess sand?) to make sure that everyone was paying attention.
Overall, our group didn't have to many disagreements over what to do. In the end, I think everyone just said that we should either take the first graders, and send them off to find help (so they would leave us alone), or become one with Natives (we made this up) and eat the children. I think we all were just playing around and all decided we didn't want to have to deal with first graders all around us 24/7.
I'm not sure if this was 100% needed or not, but Emory came up with an idea of having a government. I wasn't really sure if we needed this, because everyone on this deserted island was only 14 or 15 or younger. She was saying we needed to have a democracy, which I think is a good idea, but only if we developed the island more, and became stable with our lives again.


This Week For Reading: Hard Love and Lord of the Flies
Monday- 15 minutes
Tuesday- 25 minutes
Wednesday- 20 minutes
Thursday- 15 minutes
Friday- 15 minutes
Sunday- 30 minutes

Free Post

This week is the last week in my 2012 cross country season. I am very depressed about it because over the last 6 months I have gotten so close to all of my cross country buddies, from 6 grade all the way up to seniors. I know that I will still see them around school, or have them in another sport soon, but it still makes me sad that next season, it won't be the same as it was this year. I don't think I have ever liked cross country as much as I did this year, because now I'm older and I guess since I'm older I have more seniority and talk to more of the upper class-men (in this case, just high schoolers). In middle school, I only talked to mainly middle schoolers. I don't mean that I wasn't allowed to talk to the older kids, but I just felt smaller and more intimidated by them. 

Now, it the exact opposite. I feel like I could talk to anyone on the team now, a senior to 6th grader. We all have one distinct thing in common, we love to run. The state meet will be next monday, and I cannot wait to see how all the girls do, from placing to just uniting as a team. We have all grown so close this year, and I know that by the end of the year, when it's time for the seniors to graduate, I will be crying my eyes out with happiness and sadness of everyone moving on in their lives, but also missing the old times that we all had together at summer practices or bootcamp. I think to myself all the time that if I'm already really sad now of people leaving the team, I can't imagine what it will be like when I'm a senior!

Hard Love

The book that I have just started reading is called Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger. The story so far is about a boy named John who loves to make zines and read zines. He has a particular favorite zine called Escape Velocity. He loved reading them so much, and couldn't wait for the next copy. He went to a store where the newest zine was being released by the author, delighted to find her there at the bookstore. 
The story seems like its a very gloomy/depressing story. This John boy has a very tough life, with his parents being divorced and him and his dad barely talking (even though he sees his dad every weekend). The story is supposed to be about first love, but I guess since I'm not that far into it, it hasn't really started to happen. Right now, I'm not very interested in the book, but from the summary on the back of the book it seems like it would be a book that I love. This might just be one of those books that you have to suffer through in certain parts, and then get to the good parts. I hope so, because I can't really figure out what to read next.

My reading for this week:
Monday: 30 minutes
Tuesday: 20 minutes
Wednesday: 15 minutes
Thursday: 35 minutes
Friday: 45 minutes