Earth Day Blog

Awesomeness, it's Earth day the day before yesterday, which is April 22. Earth day was early celebrated in US, but now we have almost every country to celebrate this day. Earth day is a day to show the appreciation and awareness for the Earth's environment. Basically, we try to do things we can do to save energy and to improve the Earth's environment. Saving energy can be seen everyday, but it's more obvious at that day. Some schools, companies, and shops do activities or things that saves energy. For example, closing lights in the morning, since it is bright enough. And, for some companies, they turn off the air conditioning for the whole building, which will save a lot of energy.

I remembered, when I was in local school, at earth day, we always turn off light in the morning, and try not to use the projector and the computer that much. We sweat a lot, because we tried not to turn on the fan or air conditioner. We sometimes have events on the Earth day, like making poster saying things that relates to the theme of Earth day.

I bet we can all think of things that we can do on Earth day, and also every single day in life. We can watch less television. We can turn off the AC,. and don't use elevator that much if you can walk properly. Turn off lights is a really common one, and so as going on to public transportations like bus, trains...etc. I thought using less hairspray would be a good thing too, because I think hairspray can cause a great air pollution too.

I just want to say, protect the Earth as best as you can, and go green if you are not, and stay green if you are. Yay~! :D

Blog #5: Bull Fighting

Bull fight is basically Matador, which is the one who is playing tricks or swinging and run with the red muleta, and the bull will chase along the muleta angrily. After that, the matador will kill the bull by poking the bull with a espada. I think it is a inhumane sport, because it's pretty violent. It might be entertaining to the audience, but we're not the one who's be torture and then kill. Being a matador is also very dangerous, because sometimes if the bull is too angry, then it might just run onto the matador and that kind of crush will kill the matador. Bull fighting reminds me of gladiator fight, because they are both violent, and dangerous. Gladiator fight is where slaves/criminals fight for their freedom, and what they do is that they put animals that are carnivores, which are like lions, tigers into one area, and the slaves has to fight until they die, and the last one that's alive gets the freedom. These two sports are both inhumane, I don't really like it.

Gaza hit by new Israel strikes

January 11, 2009, Israel had been sending more and new tank fire and air strikes into Gaza. The Gaza had been fighting for months, and the Israel had been fighting for 7 days. The war starts with Gaza, Hamas. The Hamas starts firing rockets into Israel, and there are more than four people have been killed by rockets fired. After the Hamas people fired rockets into Israel, the Israel starts sending soldier over, and they had start bombing areas to stop the rockets being fired by Gaza. Most people that lives in Gaza are Palestinians. Last week, there were more than 400 Palestinians have been killed, but they still haven't give up. So far, there are 820 Gazans and 13 Israelis have died in 14 days of fighting. I think Gaza should just stop now, and Israel should too, peace is the best thing of all.

The New Colossus- Elements

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus 1849-1887

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lighting, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Elements in the poem: In the poems, there are elements. There are simile, metaphor, imagery, hyperbole, alliteration, and rhyming. Most poems form in stanzas, which is short paragraphs.
Simile is sentence that compares things using like or as. There are only one simile in the poem, which is "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame", it is telling that The Statue of Liberty is not like the brazen giant of Greek fame.
Metaphor is sentence that compares not using like or as. "Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand", sunset gates is like telling how the sunset form like a gate. Another one, "whose flame Is the imprisoned lighting", it is comparing flame and imprisoned lightning, wich is the fire thing that The Statue of Liberty is holding.
Imagery is a kind of like visual descriptive sentence. In the poem,
"A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lighting, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."
These lines is the imagery of The Statue of Liberty.
Alliteration is occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of a word. In the poem, "...world-wide welcome", the letter of each word all start out with "w". Another one is, "..wretched refuse..", both of the word has occurrences of the same sound at the beginning of each word.
Rhyming is occurrences of the same letter or sound at the end of the word. In the poem, there are 4 different groups.
- fame, flame, name, frame
- land, stand, hand, command
- she, free, me
- poor, shore, door
Hyperbole are sentences that has exaggerated statements. In the poem, "beacon hand", beacon means like a fire or light. Beacon-hand would be like a fire hand, I think exaggerated, because no hands can be like a fire, it's just The Statue of Liberty is holding a torch.

Culture(Language Arts)

Culture is a human tool for survival. Culture is divided into many different categories, for example like food, music, art, religion, language, geography, or special behavior or beliefs that specialized a group of people.

I am apart of the Taiwan culture. I am also from a family of Hakka culture, because my fathers parents are Hakkanese, so I am Hakkanese too. I think the Hakka culture is very cool, and I meant by everything, food, language, music. The best thing I like about Hakka is they treat people nice, and they have a thought that's about respecting elders or everyone. But there are also one thing that I don't like about Hakka sometimes, it's they like boys more than girls, I think it's not just my grandparents, I think every family that are apart of Hakka culture have those thoughts. My grandparents are okay, they don't always have the thoughts that they have before, they "update" their thoughts as the society changes. I am a Buddhist, and I do things like- "Bai-Bai", it's kind of like Christian's prey. The Buddhist also have a thought in mind that's about respecting people, be nice to everyone, never be selfish or greedy. I think the culture that I am apart of is awesome, and my family is good and cool too.

I think it really depends on people, because there are people they think culture are exclusive, but some not. For example, if you are in a culture that believe in one religion, and the other culture believe in different religion, and if two religion has argues or fight between each other, or if the religion has a thought that's about being exclusive or not being apart of other culture or religion, then you won't be apart of many cultures. For me, I think I am apart of many different cultures, I came study in HIS, so I have to get use to culture of different countries, because we are an international school, so there are people from different countries. Both of my parents also have different culture, although they are from the same country, but they're parents still have different cultures. I think being in different kind of culture is quite interesting, because you got to face different kind of problems, things, people, and of course food!!!

I am not really sure whether people have false assumptions about my culture. But I am guessing there are some people who thinks that Hakkanese are not good at Chinese and only know Hakka, so sometimes people humiliate Hakkanese. Although some of the Hakkanese are not good at Chinese, doesn't mean we couldn't do stuff well or we are not strong enough or powerful. I really like how some groups that popularize Hakka, for example like ICRT(International Community Radio of Taipei), everyday at night they arrange a short limit of time to teach people speak Hakka, and I think it's really helpful.

Culture is special behavior or things that specialized a group of people. Identity is a characteristic or special things of someone or something, it also means similarities.