Winter Olympics

It is the year of the winter olympics and I cant wait to watch people from all over the world to compete in the unique winter games. This year it is held in Vancouver Canada. I see Vancouver as the perfect winter wonderland for the games. It is beautiful and has many mountains which can be used for luge and skiing. It is a large city with many complexs for ice skating and other indoor sports there are also many hotels for the spectators to stay. http://www.vancouver2010.com/

The sports that are played in the winter olympics are quite unigue and really interest me because of the danger skill and bravery you must have to participate in these sports. It is very different from the summer games where sports like soccer basketball track etc. are played. The winter olympics includes luge, ski jump, figure skating, speed skating, snow boarding and more. All the require trmendous skill and no fear because of the extremes you may have to exceed in these sports to win the gold.

One of my favorite sports would have to be speed skating. Its not only the intensity of the quick race when the participants are on their final laps but the sucees of two american athletes who races I love to watch. Shani Davis Apollo Ohno and J.R. Celski being among these american athletes have won many of the races beating out the other countrie. Apollo seems to have a certain strategy to his race, during the last couple laps hewaits for the others to make a mistake and quicly takes with the inside or outside lane when thand is immediatly passes them all and wins the gold. Shani davis is just pure quickness and has a perect stride to hi skating. He reminds me of Frozone from the Incredibles. J.R. Celski had a fatal injury and came back and raced very successfully in his races.

Another one of my favorite sports is luge. I think this is one of the most dangerous and incredible sports in the olympics because of the unbelievably high speeds that are exceeded and the ability to hit each turn without crashing while at these speeds. The track they use at whistler is the fastes in the world reaching speeds at 100 mph. Unfortunatly because of this extreme track during a practice run a georgian athlete crashe on a turn and lost his life. This shows how dangerous this sport is and how you must be skilled and fearless to take part in luge.

I also like Snowboarding mainly because of Shaun White's amazing ability, nicknamed flying tomato. He dominates everyone in this sport doing unbelievable tricks on the halfpipe and landing each one of his flips and twists. He won gold scoring a 46.2 because of his outstanding tricks that ordinary snowboarders dream of doing.

Sledding

It was a frigid winter day the grass was piled high with white sparkly snow and my friends and I were anxious to go out and enjoy it.





We wanted to live this winter day to the fullest. Have the best sledding adventure possible, but the only way to have such a sledding trip was to find the biggest mountain. we searched all of Livonia to find such a hill but when it wasn't found we decided to expand our search to different local cities then eventually throughout all of Michigan. We had finally came across huge hills in northern michigan which later, we found to be the sleeping bear dunes. This dunes were usually only occupied during the hot, swiltering summers but today instead of sand they were covered in snow and would be used for sledding instead of climbing.


We had the quickest sleds faster then any other kid and we couldnt wait to test them out. Taylor went first. She stood at the very top of the giant dune and looked out over the huge, iced over lake. she dived full force onto the sled and zipped straight down the hill. It was so fast she was like a blur to the rest of us watching and we couldnt wait to try it ourselves. So we climbed the mountain anxious to feel the cold wind slapping your face while speeding down the dune.


We went down over and over you couldnt get enough of this tremendous feeling it was like a rollercoaster. But we thought of a way that would make it even better. All of us went on two sleds piled ontop of eachother in a pyramid although the bottom girls were almost crushedand the top people wiped out it was still a blast. Many different ways to sled down the hill were being invented. The train, standing up and other crazy ideas that made our experience all the better.


Finally after a long fun day we were all exhausted. Gabe's mom arrived in a warm heated car and hot chocolate awaiting us. Although I would be sore and may have many bumps and bruises from this experience it was well worth it and I canyt wait to do it again.

Article Response

The UN should send troops into Congo.

One reason the UN should send Congo is to prevent another conflict similiar to Rwanda. We can save so many innocent lives that were not saved in Rwanda because the UN was ot involved. A repeat of Rwanada is very possible and we can learn from our mistakes in rwanda and prevent another brutal genocide. The article tells how the violence in the Congo is caused by Hutu extremists groups (interhamwe) that were forced out of Rwanda, and are now attacking the Tutsis in Congo. This proves that another genocide is very possible because they same groups ar involved and this time the UN should should also be involved.

First Semester Reflection

One thing I have learned over this semester is the colonization of many countries and how this affects the native people, the future of the country and government and famous conflicts that resulted from colonization. We had learned about South Africa and how the Dutch and British settled the country and caused many wars and apartheid which almost completely eliminated the major tribes of South Africa. Australia was colonized by the British and turned into a white dominated country while the aborigines were captured and attempted to be breed into white people by changing their religion and traditions and breeding them with white individuals. In America the pilgrims and other groups came to settle the land taking over Native American territory so more white people could settle. I learned how similar events occurred in each country that was colonized and resulted in almost complete elimination of the native peoples.


We learned a lot about Africa and the many conflicts that occurred there. The one conflict in Africa that interested me most was the brutal genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda. We debated about this and from it I learned almost every detail about the conflict. It also allowed me to see the conflict through other group’s points of view. For example the Hutu extremists group the interhamwe who were responsible for most of the killing did this not only out of anger but fear of getting themselves killed by another extremists group and the demand of Juvenal to kill the Tutsis. But they did also kill for land and money. We were told how this became one of the most horrific genocides in history and it was ignored by the UN, America and many other powerful countries. If this conflict was acknowledged more by other countries especially countries of power many of the 800,000 lives would have been spared. We watched a movie about this genocide called Hotel Rwanda. I thought this was a good movie and showed proof of the genocide well although this movie would be hard to understand without any background knowledge.


Although each week I dreaded the “weekly article” it taught me how to take good notes on articles, by using margin noting, and how to make a well written, clear article response. The articles consisted mostly of news stories about Iran and their nuclear power plants, china trying to become the world economic power over the U.S. and difficult decisions about Afghanistan President Obama had to make. After taking notes on each article we had to write a good clear response with a thesis statement and a supporting paragraph. From this I learned to delete clutter and to stay on topic and get right to the point. I learned how to pull examples from the article to support my opinion on the article.


After our debate and Hotel Rwanda we wrote a letter asking for help in Rwanda as Paul Rusesabagina. In this letter we did not write as ourselves but took on the characteristics of Paul such as using guilt and bribary into getting help.

Cruise, Winter Break

This holiday break was like no other I have experienced before. Instead of hanging with friends and spending christmas at home in the bitter cold, I was in paradise spending 11 days with my family on a beautiful ship the size of a building.

The cold weather had just begun and I was already ready for the summer time. Lucky for me I left my friends back home in the cold and traveled to a sunny paradise. Unfortunatly our traditional family christmas could not be celebrated.

We arrived to florida anxious to go outside and feel the sunlight and warmth on our skin. But instead of sunlight heavy raindrops hit the pavement and flooded the streets of Ft. Lauderdale. The taxi had to take us through streets that were so flooded they seemed like rivers until we arrived at my grandpas house.

We spent two days in florida just enjoying the beach and the unique boardwalk resturants and shops until we would departure for 3 days on the open ocean on the Costa Atlantica cruise.

A giant ship welcomed us as we arrived to the check in for the cruise. I wondered how such a huge magnificient structure could float on water. The inside of the ship was even more unbelieveable then the outside. A huge lobby stood in front of us with beautful paintings and lights. A bar was was at the end of the ship surronded by comfortable places to sit and mingle with other customers. Three glass elevators were at the other end which took people to all 11 decks to their rooms.

The ninth floor had to be my favorite because that is where the buffet was, here they served food 24 hours everyday. The second floor held the resturant, shops and the main lobby. The top deck or roof of the ship had three pools, tanning areas, bars and a gym area to play sports. Unfortunatly for me i was sea sick the whole time so i couldnt wait to get off the boat and visit the first island St. Thomas.

I woke up to the beautiful mountanious scene of St. Thomas. We finally stepped foot on land and immediatlygot a taxi to tour the island and go to the beach. We went up every hill and looked down at the beautiful scenes of St. Thomas. We arrived at Magens Bay the water here was so blue and clear. From the beach we could look out to the ocean and see the mountains that surronded the bay.

Our next stop was San Juan Puerto Rico. This city was so beautiful and and unique. The most interesting part of the city was old town San Juan. A 3 mile long fort surronded the neighborhoods and cemetary of old town. The fort faced out to the ocean and was used before and during WWII.

Conflict in Rwanda

My opinion on the conflict in Rwanda its not just one group responsible for the start of this war but all have contributed. Some groups, such as the interahamwe, have contributed more then others but are all a cause to the start of this bloody conflict.

Belgium is deffinatly a big impact on this problem. If they didn't go into Rwanda and split up the 2 main groups the Hutus and the Tutsis and give out indentity cards. The made it so the Tutsis had more power which greatly upsetted the Hutus and staarted this conflict.

Another big impact is the Interahamwe group. They were led by Juvenal who was killed in a plane crash in 1994. THis crash could have been caused by the RPF. This event also started up alot of contiversy in this country. Juvenal raised the Interahamwe an motivated their killing of the Tutsis by money land, being brainwashed and sparing their own lives. It is a fact that this group is responsible for most of the deaths in Rwanda.

The United States also caused many deaths even though they were are far away from Rwanda. Us not getting involved concluded in a huge amount of deaths. If our military woulg get over the little embarassment we experienced in somolia and put thesesuffering people ahead of ourselves then many innocent lives would be spared because of our strong military.

Therefore, this war in Rwanda is not just one group or persons responsbility but many. Every major group in Rwanda and even around the world all impact the deaths in this country.

In our classs discussion about the Rwandan conflict it was very difficult for me to support the Interahamwe because of their unncassary killing.

In character (memeber of Interahamwe) the fault was put on Juvenal and somewhat the RPF. Juvenal brainwashed, forced and threatened us to perform these killings. If we stayed as moderate Hutus in this war we would not have survived the slaughtering by the RPF. It was either kill or be killed for us. And we sometimes had to kill pregnant women and children because they were being raised into RPF soldiers and would continue the killing of the Hutus.

I have learned so much about this conflict. Before our discussion i knew almot nothing about this event and afterwards i can answer almoat any question about it. This discussion made it possible for me to lookj a t this conflict from different peoples points of view. And if certain events were done differently or never happened then it would impact the war greatly and things could happen much differently.

American Scholar

Emerson's argument in "The American Scholar" about American society still holds true today.

One reason Emerson's argument still hold true today is because once you go to college you focus on one career path for the future. In college your educaion and classes are all focused on teaching if you want to be a teacher or engineering if you want to be an engineer. We widen our knowledge on a variety of things not just one.

In the article Emerson states, "Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an enigineer but he is all." He is saying this is not how America is today and it needs to be this way in the near future. He is saying people become the job they perform and nothing else and we need to keep our lives open to all jobs and skills and not focus on one to put a complete stable society into existence.