Weekly Writing Piece:I stared at the picture of our family, and they stared back with soft smiles and blank eyes. My stomach churned while thinking of them. I felt my eyes grow dreary.
I rubbed my fingers across the only photo of my wife, with her arms folded, her face tired, and her smile slight but sincere. I remembered her voice as vividly as it was when she had bid her last goodbye to me. It hurt to know that the already faint smile she had always adorned across her face would soon grow to a frown because of my absence. I remembered giving one last look at her gaunt face before I boarded the ship. She crouched down beside our daughter, wrapping her arms around her and struggling to keep the weeping child still. Even my wife who never cried had a tear stream down her face. They watched me board the large ship with only a small brown briefcase in hand. I was herded onto the deck along with other men and women, all dressed heavily for the trip. I held onto the railing, laying my briefcase against my ankles. I searched around the crowd of people below me, hoping to see the two of them again. There were many other women in thick coats similar to the one my wife wore, along with many other little girls dressed warmly from head to toe like my daughter was. I failed to find them. It was too late, My heart sank as the ships horns bellowed into the night. Ship crew in dirt-stained shirts and overalls came to pull up the platform of the ship that was the very last connection between me and my home. I felt the ship slowly lurch away from the port, and already I felt my heart grow heavy. I missed them. And now, being miles and miles away from them. The feeling has gotten worst. I looked at my daughter in the photograph. I frowned and breathed heavily as I remembered how ignorant she was of what happened. Of why I left, and about how harsh the world was in general. I remembered the innocence of her misunderstanding as we road the train to the port. She sat leaning her face against the window, staring at the blur of trees and shrubs pass as the trained rolled forward. She turned her head to look at me and she asked "Where are we going?" A brief silence filled the air after. And quickly her mother reassured her and said "We need to bring your father somewhere." "Where?" she responded. My wife and I exchanged looks. I then answered with, "A big ship, getting ready to sail off to the sea. Your father's going on a trip, not too long, not too short. I'll be back in no time after I work." Another wave of silence hit our small train compartment. The little girl just stared up at us both, she was expressionless, her large brown eyes blinking. After a small while, her lips curled into a smile and she let out a burst of laughter. Moments like this usually lifted my spirit, but not this time. This only meant that she had failed to understand. "You're silly daddy...." she said giggling, her voice trailing off as she turned her attention back to the blurred green scenery outside the train. I smiled grimly and pat her dark colored locks. My wife placed her hand atop of mine and managed a weak smile. Both of us knew that there was no way to tell her, she would have to find out when it happens. Although I had chose to work for the both of them, I felt like I did more damage to the family having left, more damage than I would've done if I were to leave our family poverty-stricken and weak. It was too late to go back, I was already thousands of miles away from them. I am sailing in the middle of the ocean, my briefcase being my only companion on this journey, and with this photograph the size of my two palms as the only thing I have left of my wife and daughter. I am like my wife, the one who never cries. It is rare for me to get so wound up to actually shed a tear. From when I was a young boy, to where I am now, it has always been about work. There was no time for a man to cry, a man only worked and cared for a family. But for just this once, I shed tears. Not one, not two. Nor three. I let them stream out of my eyes as I breathed heavily. I held the frame of them close to my chest and I laid my head onto the table.
0 Comments
Weekly Writing Piece:She sat alone on the empty field,
eyes closed, body still, and lips sealed, Her hands gripped the grass and felt the wind blow, at that very moment, her breath began to slow. Thoughts of her father flashed through her mind, following feelings of anger, hurt, happiness combined. She remembered the train’s horn as vividly as it was, for no one missed something as much as she does. She remembered his blue eyes and the warmth of his hand, as well as his voice and hair colored like sand. She remembered the mother she had so long ago, who is now bitter, quiet, and unlike the one she used to know. The day he had stepped onto the train was the worst of them all, since then she had waited patiently for her father’s call. Growing up alone, with a broken-hearted mother, was difficult to endure, and was a life like no other, But throughout all the pain she still felt his love, for she searched through her pockets and unfolded a small paper dove. _________________________________________________________________________________ She held her father’s hand tight, all the way through the trip from morning to night. Her face was adorned with a streak of worry, for in a few moments time he would have to be in a hurry. She heard the train’s horn wail far but close, this was the sound that she had feared the most She gripped his hand just a little bit more, and clinged on to his arms and to what he wore. He grabbed her shoulders, turning her face to face., And at that moment her heart began to race. He handed her a white paper bird, and pulled into an embrace without one word. And with that hug she buried her head into his chest, and it hurt a million times more than she could’ve guessed She heard the horn wail not far, but now here, as he boarded the train, it followed in her tears. Weekly Writing Piece:He was dressed in clothing black and white, His finest suit was pulled out tonight, He packed all his belongings, leaving our house bare, All his pictures, books, and memories, and even all the things to wear. He pulled up his luggage onto the table, "I'd bring you along if only I were able" He sat down to share his one last memory with me, A simple warm dinner, with bread, eggs, and tea. I swallowed down my tears as my stomach began to churn, I'll I have left to do is to weep and to yearn. He put his hand atop of mine, and looked me in the eyes, No matter how many miles apart we'll never lose our ties. And in that same hour he was gone in the night, the crying and all the pain were soon things I could not fight. I wept and mourned alone on the kitchen table, "I would've asked you to stay with me, if only I were able" It is currently the 15th week of school! NOOOO DEBATES THIS WEEK! So on Monday, we were all freaking out about debates. We were really nervous for it and were still in the midst of making our actual speeches. We confirmed with Matt what arguments to use, but we haven't wrote our speeches totally on Monday. Our debate was scheduled for 1st period on Tuesday. Which was really scary considering we were the first group. Here is our group roles
Due to having more than 2 people in our group, only one person was required to do two speeches. I felt confident in beginning the debate and having our first argument, and so Sammie took the two spots. We worked really hard on our debates on Monday night and studied it like crazy. What Happened on Debate Day: We came in looking pretty fresh since we had to dress nice. And we were all really nervous. Sammie and I saw that Natalie didn't have any speech written on Monday, so we both contributed work to make our conclusion for the debate. When we checked in with Natalie, she seemed very overwhelmed with it all. She didn't know what to say for the debate and wasn't confident. We gave her the speech that we wrote, but she was still scared and nervous. It was difficult calming her down, for she ended up crying a bit. After she was calmed down, we were ready to start the debate. Sammie and I practiced a lot before hand and we timed it several times. We were to be under 2 minutes. When it came to the actual debate, we all stumbled a bit and were extremely nervous. There were many cameras and videos and recordings happening, along with the audience. It was pretty scary but I was able to handle it okay. I tried speaking slow enough where they could hear me well and understand better, but I tried speaking fast enough where I would get all of it in under 2 minutes. It was difficult to do, but I thought that I and everyone else in the group delivered the speech well. Sammie did a great job on the 2nd argument and we both worked together to make the rebuttal, using the research paper that we already had to make a speech in the break time. She did great as well as Natalie and I was proud of them. Debate Aftermath: I felt bad that Natalie was so overwhelmed about everything. I wondered if it was our fault that she didn't know her part. I don't want to say what or how things went, but I just feel sorry that she wasn't that happy with how she did or with the whole project in general. We may do the live debate, and we may not. But I would definitely be open to doing it again, just because I feel as well as my partners feel that we all could have done a lot better. Yes we did win, by 6 points. With our score at 14 - 21 or something. But I still think we could have done a lot better in delivery and with our conclusion, arguments, etc. We could've overall been a lot stronger. Hopefully we can have a chance to do it again, but yes our debate went well. I'm proud of my team and myself. I was so surprised that I ended up convincing myself that athletes are not overpaid. Everyone is on the yes side, even myself a few weeks ago. But after changing, I feel that it has worked out for the better and I am almost fully convinced that they aren't overpaid. It was strange changing my internal feelings and opinions on something just for a project. But yes I was glad to be put up against that challenge. I was able to change my view on things to work for the better. How strange. I am proud of our team! Poster - We are trying to get all our poster checks done by the end of the week. We had another series of critique on Monday for our photoshop posters. I was proud of our posters and I need to finalize it by Friday. Critique - Change Libertarianism part, change introduction, change title, change background of LeBron James background, change graph, put more spaces between the areas of words. Preparation for Exhibition Do prep for exhibition! I am apparently making the videos for the debates on exhibition night. Must do that as well. I must combine all the footage and sound recordings, as well as make the whole debate video. Successes this week: Our Debate Difficulties this week: Our Debate In general I have never felt so stressed. This week was a pain. It was half great, half horrible. Sometimes the school work gets too much, like overboard. Glad that debates is over, but there's still a lot to do. Feels like a lot is being crammed into our last two weeks before break. A LOT TO DO. We currently wrapped up the 14th week of school, awww.... THINGS WE DID THIS WEEK Essay - We finished our Essay fully this week. It was yet to be put in the required MLA formatting, but we gladly finished both our essay and our graphs. We had 11 pages full of good arguments that we were ready to put into our debate. Debates - This was our last week for debate and my team and I were really nervous about how our performance would be. We had our essay finished, and we were in the midst of writing our full out speeches and deciding our individual arguments, rebuttals, and parts for the debate Arguments - Below is our arguments. Sammie got some help from her Aunt who knows a lot about debating. Her aunt kindly edited our paper and we were able to prioritize which arguments we should use. We will start writing our speeches next week. Posters - Based on the information on how essay, we were to make a poster representing our side of the debate topic.
Difficulties this week: I had difficulties this week trying to work on both debate, posters, and our rocket. I feel really stressed out this time of the year since it's so close to exhibition. There's a lot of stuff to do, but debate is what's really making me worry. I am very nervous for that and I'm still not 100% sure on my speeches for this. Sammie and I were both really scared for going first on Tuesday. It felt like there were high expectations on our team coming from Matt. I was worried for that, and the poster was very unexpected. I didn't think we'd be doing a poster until this week. It was hard getting everything done in when it was really last minute. Successes this week: I finished making the poster! It was really last minute and I am very proud of the first draft I had. I was glad that people gave nice and helpful critique and I was excited to see how it would look like in photoSHOP. I was also very satisfied with our essay. I was surprised that we actually were able to write a longer one than our first one after changing the sides. Surprisingly I convinced myself to believe in the "NO" side for our debate, and it definitely worked. Goals for next week: Do a good debate! (win) Finish poster! Help out with exhibition planning! Do more extra weekly challenges! DO NOT PROCRASTINATE We currently wrapped up the 9th week of school, woo! Difficulties this week: SPORTS CHANGEMAKER I had difficulties this week on our Sports project. The deadline was DONE BY FRIDAY! And so I was really stressed out by this. One of my partners was doing the essay and I was in charge of doing the documentary. I was lacking in resources for the documentary and we needed so many things, I had to record both of the songs, edit the film, and I also needed the narrations for the film. I entrusted my other partner to do the narrations for the documentary but they didn't give me anything by the end of the day. I was forced to narrate it myself. (I'm sorry but I have to mention this it's necessary) It was really overwhelming, the amount of things I needed to do for the documentary. It was even more burdening when I had to do the work that someone else was responsible with. It was already enough editing the film, and writing the song, and being in charge of the whole documentary itself. But it was stressful when my partner said they couldn't push through with their part of the project. I ended up finishing the project but it took a lot of cramming on the last day. I should've worked harder over the week but it took more time to do things that weren't my part. Sports Change Maker: Here is our documentary and our essay. Our essay is still getting critiqued and edited but we are working towards getting a 1000 word essay. Successes this week: I was able to do a weekly challenge this week which was something I had put as a goal from the week before. I was able to successfully finish something, the documentary, even if it super crammed, I still think it was a decent project. Goals for next week:
!We currently wrapped up the 8th week of school (woo)! This week we had one text given to us (Seminar included) and we also spent a lot of time to work on our project. Immanuel Kant Article: This week we had a text on Imannuel Kant. I found it extremely interesting, which helped with my performance in the Socratic seminar and such. We had 40 pages and we were required to have reading logs for 20 pages. Reading a text that long in one week was difficult and it made our seminars really long. Project: This work our project time was sort of cut shorter this week due to other class work. On Monday we had to present what we had for the first week of projects. On Thursday, we had to present our prototype end product to Matt. It was difficult to get things done this week due to other things we had, and there was some confusion within our group on whether or not our idea should push through. We are currently working on our documentary. Two interview are scheduled tomorrow during lunch. We have a lot of footage from a race and from Mike teaching, now we are working in sections. Sammie - Currently interviewing people, writing specific questions for interview Annika - Writing a score, helping film and interview, editing documentary prototype Andrew - Scheduling, in charge of contacting interview people, interviewing as well Successes this week: I feel that I had a good seminar this week, and I believe that the text this week was the most interesting text that we've been given. Or at least for me it was. I feel like I was able to contribute to the seminar a lot more this time since I was more interested in the text. I felt more confident when I spoke [p=-[p Difficulties this week: Our project group had a hard times getting done this week. It was hard getting interviews done and it was hard scheduling things with other people. Last weekend we doubted our ideas and wondered if our Mike documentary was really good to do for the project. We had to expand our project to HTH Teachers making a difference in our community, whilst playing sports and stuff. So we figured that out, but still interviews were difficult and some were pushed back. It was also hard doing project work at the same time as class work (article annotating, reading log, etc). One of my group members couldn't do project work because they had unfinished class work to do, the class work was limiting our project work time. Goals for next week:
So we currently wrapped the fifth week of school. Field Trip: Balboa Park "The Hall of Champions" We had our first field trip of the year. Our team headed over to Balboa Park's museum "The Hall of Champions". It featured athletes that have made it to the hall of fame and featured San Diegans that have made it into Sports history. We had a sheet and we wrote down things we noticed about 5 different exhibits in the museum. I personally thought that some of the exhibits were really interesting and well showcased, but there were a handful of areas that were very dark, had too much information, and just weren't appealing to the public. We took away these things to bring to our future exhibition, months away from now. We thought off new ideas in class on the next day, stating pros and cons. Sports Inspirational Speech: Ethos Pathos Logos The challenge this week was to write an inspirational speech. We studied a lot about other inspirational speeches, watched videos of people, identified what they said, and related it to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. We watched the famous Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech. We really broke down his speech into the three categories.
Libertarian Chapter: Sports before the 21st Century We had a chapter on Libertarian beliefs. It was to be annotated and read for the 3rd socratic seminar we were going to have. 3rd Socratic Seminar: Here is my reflection and reading log for the Socratic Seminar this week Difficulties this week:
I had a hard time finishing the weekly assignment from last week due to the hw for this week. I will work hard to finish the weekly challenge assignments in the upcoming weeks. Successes this Week: This week the work load wasn't that heavy compared to the past weeks. I was able to attend to all my priorities inside and outside of school very well. I am glad that this week wasn't too much from each class. Some Goals for next one:
We currently wrapped the first MONTH of school. (woo!) Second Socratic Seminar: Utilitarianism/Morals We had another reading this week, (Chapter 2 of Sports before the 21st Century) The article was very interesting for me, and so I thought I participated well in the Socratic sem. Here is the Seminar reflection and the log 3rd Chapter: Sports before the 21st Century We were given the 3rd chapter of Sports before the 21st Century. It was focused on sports and athletes in the 1920's and how much their roles in society have changed from then until now. We were told to write a reflection on this topic and were asked to answer a question, "How do contemporary athletes compare as role models to athletes in the 1920's?" Difficulties this Week: I feel that again this week, there was a lot of workload. It's beginning to get harder to manage. I find myself unable to do anything else besides homework. And takes away from my outside curricular activities. I find that I don't have any free time whatsoever and I find myself sleeping later and later. I am trying to be flexible with my schedule, and I am trying to overcome this difficulty. I am putting homework as my first priority, and I am making sure to put my best into everything we do. Even though it affects the other things I do and affects my sleeping schedule and such, I think school is really important. Successes this Week: Due to the amount of time I put on these assignments. I feel proud of the work I have done and submitted. I have done my best and I have worked hard on my writing skills. We currently wrapped up the third week of school. This week we finished up the sports magazine cover assignment. Along with that we were given new readings. First Socratic Seminar: Aristotle Who Deserves What? One of the new readings we were given was Aristotle's "Who Deserves what?". With this article, we participated in a Socratic seminar. Overall I am proud of how I did in the socratic seminar. I was able to say my significant points and opinions during the seminar and I was able to bring other resources to relate to the text. But I still think I can improve a lot more on the next Socratic seminar. I could have been more prepared, I should've written down more in my prep sheet and should have organized my thoughts better. I feel like I should not be afraid to ask questions during the seminar, I find that I am sometimes hesitant about asking for clarification on things and such. Next seminar I will try hard to be more prepared and outspoken. 2nd Chapter of Sports before the 21st Century This week we read the second chapter of "Sports before the 21st Century". Along with the text we had to write reflection on it. What was difficult about this assignment was that we were given only one day to read it and write a reflection on it. It took me while to gather up my thoughts on the text so writing the reflection was difficult. I was able to turn it in. The reflection is yet to be graded. Peer Collaboration:
I thought I collaborate well with peers. When it came to the magazine photoshop work, a lot of people needed assistance on photoshop. I was really glad to be able to help a lot of people on photoshop. I was able to help people that were outside of my table and I am happy to know that I was able to help people with their project. Difficulties/Success this Week: Again there was a point in time where I had a hard time finishing so much homework. Each class gave numerous assignments, so it made it hard to keep up with everything. But I am getting better at managing my time because of this. Personal Goals for Next week:
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2016
Categories |