Descriptive Paragraph

 

I have changed my mind over the past weekend on what topic I am going to do. I originally thought I was going to do my research topic on lucid dreaming, but I think I would rather do my research the paranormal activity. I think if I am to do this topic, I would research my father and Mrs. Ferguson. I know Mrs. Ferguson on a personal level because she is my next door neighbor. I have also talked to both of them before and they have told me about some encounters that they have with ghosts. I think they would be good primary sources for a paranormal topic. Plus, I am pretty sure that I have had my own encounter with a ghost before, and I think it would be pretty interesting to see how my encounter and their encounters compare and contrast.

Reflection
 

Today I researched a couple different topics. I found two that were very interesting to me; those were paranormal activity and lucid dreaming. At first I was set on doing my research project on the paranormal, but once I started researching lucid dreaming, I think I have changed my mind.

 

On one hand, I have always been intrigued with paranormal activity. I love to watch those ghost hunting shows, and have personally been the Pythian Castle which I firmly believe is haunted. I say that because when I was there I caught the voice of a ghost on my phone. I am very interested with how ghost apparitions appear. I want to know more about how they manifest. I have heard a lot about how they apparently take energy from batteries and use that to show themselves or at least communicate with people. I am very interested to find more answers about them.

 

On the other hand, I came across the topic of lucid dreaming. I had never heard of lucid dreaming before, but when I started reading into it I learned a lot. I read from multiple sources that lucid dreaming is the ability to control your own dreams. There are ways to practice lucid dreaming and get good at doing it. The most common way is to lay down straight with your arms at your side and your eyes shut. You CANNOT move AT ALL. This is why it is so hard for people to practice lucid dreaming. I personally cannot stay still at all! But supposedly after you lay completely still for 20-30 minuets you will start to feel like your body is getting heavy and it feels like there is a weight on your chest. When this happens, it means your body is "turning off" or went to sleep but your mind is still awake and conscious. If you do it right you can start controlling your dreams in total clarity. You can literally do anything you want!!! But if you do it wrong your body enters sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is where you are awake but you cannot move your body, it is temporarily paralyzed. When people enter sleep paralysis, they often have hallucinations. Often times if you are scared the hallucinations tend to be bad ones, such as seeing an intruder in the room, or seeing ghosts or witches. But sometimes if your not scared you can hallucinate a cartoon character or something cool and peaceful like that. I'm nit 100% sure if these facts are correct, but I do know that this is the general idea about lucid dreaming.

 

I'm  about 70% sure that I am going to do my research project on lucid dreaming. I don't know why I am so interested in it, but I think it's because if it actually works there could be endless possibilities with what you could do. 

Article 2 Response

Something that Matters

 

After going through and watching some of these stories, I realized that there were a lot of interesting things that people are doing in the world. Although there were many cool stories, only three of them really stood out in my mind. I really enjoyed watching and reading about these three, because it reminded me just how good people can be even in hard times.

 

The first story that caught my attention was called Lamon Luther. It was actually about a man named Lamon Luther. He is a man that owns his own furniture company. I say that, but its actually furniture that is made out of scraps of wood from various places. It could have come from an old house, or barn, or just wood that someone found. Anyway, Lamon heard about a bunch of homeless people living out in the middle of the woods and he wanted to check it out. He found people that had been living out there for years and decided to give them the opportunity to change their lives. He gave many of them jobs to create furniture. They interview a man that had lived in the woods for fifteen years, and he said he was able to move into a house after one month of working for Lamon Luther. This story just inspired me, because most people wouldn't have given those homeless people a second look. Luther on the other hand gave them jobs.

 

 

The second story that really caught my attention was the one called "The Oregon Public house." It's  all about a local Pub in Oregon that brews its own beer. The owner of it realized that there were a lot of non for profit organizations that were struggling financially. He decided to lease a ballroom building in town and renovate it. Many local people volunteered to help him. It took a year and a half but it finally finished. Now they use the building for people to host parties and various activities. Every party held there has freshly brewed beer served, and all the money from the alcohol goes to the local non for profit organizations and charities. In doing this, he ended up bringing the community closer and the ballroom essentially gives back to the community.

 

 

The third story that really caught my attention was the "Good Spread Peanut Butter." I really liked this story. Its about two men Mark and Alex, they went mission to help kids get better nutrition growing up. They came across a company called mana. This company invented what they call a "super food." Basically this "super food" is a bag of nutrients that they give to kids overseas that are on the brink of death, due to lack of nutrients. One scientist said that mana's nutrient bag was like peanut butter on steroids! After finding this company, Mark and Alex immediately wanted to help out. But they didn't work for the company, so they thought of a different idea. The started their own company called "Good Spread Peanut Butter." it was just all natural peanut butter, but they made a deal with the company mana. For every pack or jar of Good Spread peanut butter sold, they would donate one pack of mana's "super food" to a child in need. This story really makes me want to buy some good spread!

 

Mycoskie's questions are pretty interesting to think about. I could come up with a lot of answers for these. For the first question though, I would have to say if I didn't have to worry about money, I would probably hang out with friends and family and go on some trips. For his second question, I want to teach kids. I like to help people, and I really enjoy the look that people get one their face when they learn something new that you just taught them. The last question is what cause would I serve? I think I would try to help as many kids grow into adults, and hope that I can impact each of their lives in a positive way.





The Pecha Kucha I watched was called Superior Skydiving. In it the woman talked about how she wanted to sky dive ever since she knew it existed, but how it took her a long time to finally go because it was so expensive. She talked about how much she loved to sky dive right after her first jump. She made so many friends that first day that the told her she wouldn't have to pay to jump anymore. They told her that she could learn to pack the chutes as payment for jumping. She also talked about an injury she got from sky diving, but still continued to do it anyways.

She did a decent job with her Pecha Kucha, but there are some thing that she could have done better. For example, she was having a hard time keeping up with her pictures there for a little while. She would describe what was going on in a picture, but then that picture would change and she would still be describing the first picture. That being said, she did do a good job describing each picture. There was also a point in the middle of the Pecha Kucha that she just quit talking for a few seconds and said she got lost, but then she continued. I think it would have been much better without that incident.  think this Pecha Kucha we are going to do might be kind of fun. I think I will be able to complete it with minimal mistakes.

The History of Chinese Education

      Upon reading my correspondent's letters and researching the topic, I learned that Chinese Education is much different from American Education. This topic interested me, so I decided to look deeper into the Chinese Education. I wanted to know more about what a typical day would be like for a Chinese student. I also wondered how hard their classes were, or what the requirements were to get into a University. I had so many questions and needed to know more.

     Education has been around for a long time in China. In fact, many scholars believe the history of Education in China can be traced as far back as the 16th century B.C. during the late "Xia Dynasty."  Back then education was only a privilege to the Elites. In the last 50 years the Chinese Education has skyrocketed. In 1986 the Chinese government passed a compulsory law that made nine years of education mandatory for all Chinese children. Now today 99.7 percent of the population area of the country has achieved the nine year Education Law.
     Since 1978 China has increased the college-age population to over twenty percent, whereas it was only 1.4 percent in 1978. June of 2014 there were 9.39 million students that took the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, otherwise known as the Gao Kao.  http://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/cedu.php

This is a picture of many Chinese Students taking the Gao Kao,
or the Higher Education Entrance Examination.

     I wanted to know what an average day would be like for a Chinese student. So I asked my correspondent Molly some questions about how school is like for her. First of all, she told me that her high school was the hardest part of her entire educational career. That sounded crazy to me so I asked her more about it. Molly said, "We had classes from morning to night, about twelve classes everyday." I wondered if her high school was so hard, then how is her University? I asked her about it and she told me that she has a whole lot more free time at her University. She even gave me a walk through of a regular day. During the weekdays Molly wakes up at 6:10 am then she goes to have breakfast, after breakfast she recites books, then goes to her class, then finally goes to lunch. After lunch she has a little time to take a nap or do some extra homework, then after the nap comes more classes. That is pretty much her everyday schedule. Although when she doesn't have classes she said she hangout with friends, or does some type of physical activity, or does more school work. The University life sounds much nicer than that of a high school student.

     After learning about the history of Chinese education and how Chinese student live their everyday life. I have learned that Chinese education is taken very seriously and is very important in Chinese culture. I think it is very weird that their high school is busier and in some cases even harder than their University. I know for sure that I would not want to go to school from morning to night. That would be awful. I wonder what Chinese students would think of American Education system if they went to school here?

Sources

"Overview of Education in China - China Education Center." Overview of Education in China - China Education Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. (Secondary source)

 

Molly."梦涵 ". Cole Oliver. November 20, 2014. E-mail (Primary source)

 



                                                                          

Reading book Response 4: Where the Red Fern Grows

In the last book response I posted, Billy had just saved his small puppy Little Ann from the frozen river that she fell into. After this happened he tried to be more careful when he chose to go hunting. Billy's dogs were becoming famous in the Ozarks. A couple of the few neighbor kids that Billy had (Rubin and Rainie) didn't like Billy very much and decided to challenge his dogs that they couldn't find the Ghost coon the lived around their farm. The ghost has eluded them for years. But sure enough after a long night of tracking the coon Billy's dogs treed the coon. But Billy didn't want to kill the coon and didn't want the two brother to kill it either. While they stood there arguing, The two brothers had a dog whose name was Old Blue, and Old Blue picked a fight with Old Dan. Then little Ann jumped in. The two dogs were killing Old Blue. Rubin grabbed the ax and was going to kill Billy's dogs, but he tripped and fell on the ax he carried. I'll let you guys read the book for the rest of that one.
page 126- Billy: "There are plenty more, why kill him? He has lived here a long time."
                 Rainie: "He's chicken livered, that's what it is."

page 128- Rubin: "I'll kill them damn dogs!"

Months after the Ghost hound night, Billy entered a tournament with all of the best coon hunters around the state. At first he did it for fun, but shortly after the first night or two he realized that he actually had a shot at winning the cup of money that the winner got. But that's enough of me spoiling that.

(This is kind of what I pictured the winning trophy filled with money to look like.)

 

I will say that Billy and his dogs go on plenty more hunts, but on one particular hunt something very, very tragic happens. I promise if you read it you will cry. But you'll have to read it to find out. That concludes the book "Where the Red Fern Grows."

Implicit Bias

All of these sites are very interesting. I was very interested with all of the 1st person stories that people had about 9/11 and Pearl harbor. But I the same time I also enjoyed taking the Implicit Bias test. It almost got challenging after a while.

Implicit Bias:
 When I first got to this link, I was kind of shocked with the content that it had on it. But after taking the little picture test thing that it had, and seeing the results of everyone that has taken it put together. It was kind of an eye opener on how most people view people of a different race. After completing this test it said that I had a small racial bias towards African Americans. But I really don't agree with that because I have a lot of "Black" friends and hang out with them on a regular basis.

Face to Face:
This site is very interesting. I didn't realize how many crazy stories people have to tell about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. I also didn't know that the government has wrongfully spied on people that have never done anything wrong.