Today, in E.L.A., I learned about a study of Philosophy where you could learn about what kind of decision maker you are. For example, today in class we listened to an article that sort of ringed around the question "what would you do?" The story we listened to was about 2 boats that were stranded and in deep danger because the boat was about to sink and the narrator was in a position where s/he had to decide if s/he was going to leave his/her friends that s/he made on the boat. If so, then they would only have about 2 hours or so to pull the boat back up to sea level. If s/he stayed on the boat, then they would've had 5 hours but s/he would've been risking his/her life.
    So basically the point was that, you had to decide which path you would take at the end of the story. I think it asked something like would you have stayed on the boat for the benefit of having 5 hours to bring the boat back up but decreasing your chance of dying, or would you have jumped on to the other boat with a benefit of being rescued and continue to live but decrease the time the other people have to pull the boat up and be rescued as well. This actually made people (my classmates and I) find out what kind of decision maker we are!

Unpacking Quotes...

   Unpacking the quotes by Shakespeare can sometimes be difficult and can sometimes be easy. For example, what I mean by this is that when Shakespeare writes in one of his famous playwrites, "Romeo and Juliet", there are a lot of things that the characters say that can make you go, "wait- whaaaaat???" and there are some things that characters say that can make you think, " Hmmm, that sounds sort of similar to how people today would say it..." or "Oh, I get what that means!!" In the book, "Romeo and Juliet", in act 1, scene 1, line 207-210, Romeo says, " Well in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit with Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit, and, in strong proof of chasity well armed, from love's weak childish bow she lives unharmed." At first, that made me go, "wait- whaaaaat???" most likely because when you read it without breaking it down or "unpacking" it, it sounds like sentences with it's words rearranged! But when you unpack that quote, like I'm about to do, what you just read will sound a little more clearer if not a lot!
   So, when Romeo says, "Well in that hit you miss.", he's most likely saying that you missed the shot or the hit. When he says, "She'll not be hit with Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit,...",  he's saying that no one will make her fall in love because she is like the virgin goddess of chastity and huntress, Diana. When he says, "...And, in strong proof of chastity well armed,..." he's saying that in strong armor of chastity that is well armed,... When he says, "From Love's weak childish bow she lives unharmed." he's saying that from having weak, childish love, Juliet still lives "uncharmed" or correctly.
   So with that discovered, in this quote, Romeo is saying, "You missed the shot (hit), Cupid,  because no one can make her fall in love with anyone but me because she is like the virgin goddess of chastity and huntress, Diana. In strong armor of chastity that is well armed, from having weak, childish love, Juliet still lives "uncharmed" or correctly."

Romeo and Juliet... The tricks of Shakespeare...

   So I learned that Shakespeare liked to include a lot of different technique-like tricks, such as personification, metaphors, similes, classical allusions, reversed words, reversed thoughts, reversed sentence constructions, and allusions. I thought that the reasons why he did that (other than for the sake of how he was as a person) is because most readers and/or audiences gravitate more towards special techniques that go on in a book, a play, a movie, etc. I think that these techniques pull the audience more into the depth of the scenes because the types of "language tricks" that Shakespeare uses makes the audience think more than just read or observe/watch. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses a metaphor, personification and a simile in Act.2 scene 3 in lines 1-3, "The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, check'ring the eastern clouds with streaks  of light; and freckled darkness like a drunkard reels..." This brings the reader into more of a clearer imagination of what Shakespeare is describing. I find it capturing. I can capture those very details and create an imagery of what Shakespeare describes.

The Monsters of Templeton...The End...

     I finally finished my book, The Monsters of Tepleton,  which was... SOOO BREATHTAKING because there were so many secrets uncovered which led to the theme and the message at the same time, and then all the puzzle pieces were finally being put together sloooowwwwly but it was really interesting. However, at the end, even though all of those things happened, there was still one mystery that left me sort of in the middle of things... Sort of like that feeling when you know something is completed or finished, but then theres that one "cliff-emotion" (feeling incomplete) that you have where you also just know in your gut that something's missing. That was exactly how this book left me. Even though i do like those kinds of books, it still annoys me with ending like that- ESPECIALLY if there's no sequel... ughh! I hate that.
  Anyways, I have to say that I really did like reading this book and I enjoyed every part of it- even if those parts made me feel like I was hanging on the edge of a cliff... There's really nothing you can do about that if you think about it... You just have to read the book, and learn at the end what the purpose of those special cliff-hanging moments were for. I did, and that really made me appreciate the book overall. It was deeply interesting!

The Monsters of Templeton...

   I'm half way through, The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff - which is a really good book because not only is it extremely interesting, (SPOILER ALERT***) but it's about a girl name Willie Upton who arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in storybook Templeton, New York (which she swore she'd never come back to) after a disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor. When she arrives, a prehistoric monster surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, changing everything in the town, Willie's mother, Vi, tells her a secret that she's been hiding for nearly 30 years, and as Willie puts her archaeological skills to work, digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep when dark mysteries come to light and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed. That grabbed my attention right away because I like books that almost have an edge to it and make you want to keep turning pages. I find it interesting.
    Anyways, I'm really looking forward to getting to the end of the book because there's this thing going on  in it where secrets, mysteries, messages, and themes are combining which makes the book even tougher to resist reading without a break! My hopes for this book is that it continues to leave me hanging because like I said before, and I really just don't know why, but I like those kinds of books! I just do. It sort of hypnotizes me in a way and makes me feel like I've literally stepped into the page and entered the world of the book! That's exactly how The Monsters of Templeton is designed, and I guess that's why I find an interest in it...

Poetry and Shakespear...

    As I've been recently learning about poetry and studying the techniques of Shakespear , I've notices that his way of expressing poetry is much different from the way poets express today. What I mean by this is that Shakespear wrote his poems in ways that you would almost never imagine of writing in such a way. Not only because he he's been around in the time where english was spoken differently, but the messages/ themes he puts into the poems are very interesting. For example, in one of the sonnets he has written that I learned about in class, he writes about the characteristics of a girl and the way he describes her isn't really the normal way a man would describe a women. He actually admitted that she was pretty ugly, realistically, but his message was that he speaks the truth and he is unlike the way men usually describe women...that would be that they have (for example) hair that flows like the waves, or eyes as bright as the sun, etc. Shakespear points out the fact that this women may not meet the standards of other guy's imagination of a fake girl, but she is beautiful because she is real. She may not have eyes that beam like the sun or roses on her cheeks but she is real, which-to Shakespear, makes her beautiful! That message is just one of the many that he sets out through his poems, and that's what makes his way of poetry have a sprinkle of uniqueness...  

The Post Pick...

 Okay, so to start off, I've read a lot of amazing posts written by students and it was really hard to pick which one to write about....but I had to go with...Kim's post on her story,
"Fat Cat"purpleskky.blogspot.com because it really made me remember the fact that we have a lot of smart people in this world and the characteristics have nothing to do with it at all! As Kim described her book, she included a few key points that were pretty deep! One of them was that Catherine came up with a way to loose a few pounds from all natural foods that existed millions and millions of years ago AND still create a genius science project! Obviously it didn't matter if Catherine was fat...she was still able to create a great science project from her own mind in which she never thought would come in such a value! It shows that a lot of people who may think that they aren't that bright do have the capability to prove themselves wrong! Even I caught myself a couple of times thinking that I wasn't too brilliant (not to brag, but I don't know WHAT I was thinking...)...because I realized that I have a capability to be genius just like what Catherine was able to realize and my look, size, proportion, etc. have absolutely nothing to do with it! It's all about the genius inside! And I think that Kim's blog post brought us to that point.