End of the year~

Now that the time has come to an end of ninth grade, its also time to remember some old blogs that I did from way back at the beginning of the year. For the most part, I can tell that most of my blogs mention about romance. That is typical because I am considered as a romantic, I love to read and watch bout romance related things. Throughout the whole year, I learned from the blog assignment that everyone has their own thoughts about one subject and you shouldn't expect that the responses that are posted aren't similar or same as your own thoughts. But, most of all I thought that having a blog assignment every week meant that we had to remember things to do in the back of our heads or else we would be sacrificing our grade. From the blogs that I have written, I feel that I have evolve quiet a bit. For example, I would usually ramble on about things and my essay grades from class aren't so good. But, after reading my classmates blogs and the way that they worded their responses, I would get ideas on how to word my thoughts much more clearly out of my head. Having blogs have definitely benefited me, my essay grades have improved over the year and I have accumulated skills of writing I don't even notice.

   At the beginning of the year we worked on To Kill a Mocking Bird and Animal Farm. I found that we focused on symbols and themes a lot more than I am used to. Which helped me to understand that there are many types of themes and symbols in a novel. Then, there's Great Expectations, the novel by Charles Dickens had many foreshadowing that was kind of hard to catch. But, with the class time that we took to discuss about the book helped me to understand the book better than if I was just reading it by myself and not discussing it. Also, The Importance of Being Earnest had a pretty big part in my understand of literary techniques too. The play consisted many puns and humor that I did not get but was eventually deciphered during class. Last but not least, Romeo and Juliet was constantly of characters in the play using metaphors and allusions to express their thoughts. We also had a couple blog entries that were about poems. I don't think that there was anything that was really important that was in the poetry related blogs. But, I think that it was mainly on reading in between the lines of what the poet is saying. Also, the many devices that are used to construct the poem and not just random things or words that are just randomly put together without much thoughts.

"Great things are not done by impulse,

but by a series of small things brought together."

~Vincent van Gogh~

I totally agree with this saying. Every human being has to work hard for something that they want or need. To do that we must do little things that will build up to bigger things in the future . Every step or task may be hard, but if we think about the reward that we will get, we keep on going until we reach that goal or reward that we were running towards. This quote is like my blogs, each of them are little contributions to the improvement of my English knowledge.

Memorable Project

  Hm...something memorable of the year. I think probably the thing that I remember the most about is the one blog that we get to relate a novel we are reading in class to something that we have read or watched in the past. That's because I watched a lot of Asian Romance Dramas and I really wanted to share the dramas or novels that I read that was really good. Sharing my thoughts about the novel or drama that I watched with my cousins is good. But I wished that I could share with other people who are out of my normal social range and have them watch the drama or read the novel that was really good that I think should deserve more attention. Also, there doesn't seem to anyone that can relate to how  I feel about the drama. For example, sometimes when I talk to my cousin about a movie that I really liked, they would say "okay..." but I could see that they don't really have an interest in what I am talking about.

   For instance, there was a blog assignment that the students was supposed to relate something that was similar to the story line of Romeo and Juliet. The tragic play of Romeo and Juliet was filled with romance, but the romance in the play was too corny. I like to watch dramas and read novels that contain romance and Romeo and Juliet was one of them. But then when I read the play, there was many uses of literary techniques used in the characters speech that sometimes I don't get what the characters are saying. Reading Romeo and Juliet was probably the one novel that increased my knowledge on how much a author and use to compose a story that can be confusing.

A Good Experience with Poetry

   Well, telling the truth, I don't really read poetry or recite poetry with my parents. At first when I was forced to watch T.V. with my dad, which contained many historical sayings. I didn't know what they meant, but then later in life when I got older, I tend to want to know more about wise or so called old sayings. When I listen to the adults talk, especially the women, they often add a saying here and there when they speak, and I would ask what it meant. I feel that I don't really like poetry at all, but then when I hear a verse in chinese that I don't know and sounds interesting, I would want to search what it means. I don't read poems at all in my reading, but now that a assignment about poems is assigned, I went to find that one book that had multiple poems in it. There was one that I liked but couldn't fully understand.

人生一世，草生一春。
黑发不知勤学早，
转眼便是白头翁。

   It it saying that lifetime is only once and grass can only grow one spring day. Black hair as in saying when you are young and don't learn as much as you can or earlier, when you turn your head you already passed your lifetime. There was also, a story about the past but I don't want to translate the story.

   The positive impact that this poem had in my life was that, I keep talling myself that as long as one works hard,they will be awarded.Also, my parents would always tell me to learn as much as I can and that learning more won't harm you. In my mind, poetry is like a phrase that contains more wisdom than one can imagine. Poetry is like a paragraph that is shortened to about one to two sentences that contains more than what the original paragraph is about. So because of the shortened sayings, the meaning behind the words are harder to decifer.