Less Lies, Less Pain

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I believe lying to one another is committing a great sin. As the same human beings living in this world, we should cooperate and be honest to each other. But there are also challenging obstacles that we have to overcome. Every human is stuck in a cycle of greed, fear and pain. There are many times when they want to make themselves better than others, for their pride. There are times when someone is in this difficult situation and needs to hide something through a lie. These are only some things that lead to lies and big problems.

My grandmother always warned me that ‘the moment you lie to one person, you are breaking the trust between you and them.’ When I was in 1^st grade in Korea, I had one best friend that always looked out for me. But I had to lie to her many times to make her think that I was a close friend of hers. Once she found out about all the lies, she wouldn’t talk to me anymore. That’s when I realized that there are no such things as secrets in this world. When the time comes, secrets will always be revealed. And when someone finds out you had been messing with them, your friendship will be torn apart.

Lying to your family is the last thing that you should do. When your family realizes you have been lying to them, they would feel rather disappointed than getting mad, like others. This is because family is a relationship that is most trusted in our lives. Having a family is a great blessing and with families, you can share thoughts and happiness. This is why families will be most disappointed if they found out that you had broke the trust between them.

One person lying can lead to and involve many other people lying. This causes even bigger trouble. One lie can even lead to more and more lies. Lying is something that is endless for everyone. We lied to each other so many times that it’s become part of our lives…this is not a good thing. If this continues we can trust no one in this universe and our world will be full of lies. We have to stop this together.

Lying is not necessary or needed in our lives. There will be less trouble for you and many others if you just admit the truth then to just hide it. The truth will always be revealed. I hope our world can have less lies and more trust. ‘The moment you lie to one person, you are breaking the trust between you and them.’ This I Believe.

Survival or Death?

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The game that I played was basically about the Battle of Hastings. This battle was between Duke William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson of England. In this game, you are allowed to arrange your soldiers however you prefer and can be in both positions. Also, there are multi choices given to you for the game and when you pick one, it will show you what happens in result of your choice of command. A specifically enjoyable thing about the game is that you can choose which command to give and see what happens (you can see which one was a good strategy). The game also gives you a chance to reflect and give your own thoughts and opinions. During this game, I learned about the different strategies that can be used in a war and what time is appropriate to use them. During the Battle of Hastings, everything was very tough and fierce. Harold’s soldiers were at the top of a hill to fight and had a strong shield wall built for protection. This made it very difficult for William’s soldiers to fight against. But soon by an accidental mistake, William came up with a scheme for a trick retreat. Harold kept falling for this and many soldiers were killed. Soon, Harold was killed with an arrow in his eye and a sword in his body. This made William the new king of England. This type of game is very valuable learning because you actually get to experience the war yourself and get to be in the positions of each king. This game was a very valuable experience for me and to help my growth of knowledge. :D

Hunger for Freedom

The book, Catherine Called Birdy, is a historical fiction novel written by Karen Cushman. This book shows a tough journey of a young girl named Catherine with the lack of freedom from family restrictions, inequality of men and women and the seeking power of the church. In this book, there are many times when Catherine gets frustrated for having no rights to control her life but instead get it controlled by her father. This is proved by the marriage she was forced to accept with the pig, Shaggy Beard. This also leads to the fact that in noble families, marriages are mostly controlled by men and the fact that during the time of middle ages, females were to stay home doing all the housework and had no rights for freedom. This is proved when at the beginning of the book, all Catherine did was sewing and she was sick of it. Not only did the men control their lives, but there was the church. This can be proved by all the saint days that were written in the book

and the fact that Catherine had to follow them strictly, not eating food that were restricted on some days. Catherine had a difficult and a tough time with all the chaos that were going on. Back then, life in medieval times was difficult particularly for a noble girl. Like many others, Catherine had no rights or freedom but to follow and obey the orders.

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The Boy in The Striped Pajamas

No, I don't believe The Boy in The Striped Pajamas shows the Holocaust in the right way because it doesn't specifically show the terrible horror the Jews were in during the Holocaust. It should have mentioned more detailed descriptions about the concentration camps so that the readers could have a chance to reflect on their own and think about the huge disaster that was made in 1938. Showing the story in a child's eye view may interest the readers but most of the time it mainly talked about the house and the family and not much about the important bits such as father's job. This strategy also didn't touch much on The Fury and what they were behind. The author could have showed more of the times with Bruno and Shumel, and the interactions they had, where there were so many things in common between them yet more thing that were strangely different.

Although there were bits of important facts later in the book, there should have been more views of life of Jews. Why they didn't like them and why they couldn't be together is a question many people have been asking after the terrible war. The book should have had more focus on the terrible needs of the HOLOCAUST.

Holocaust Questions

1. Go to the website http://www.ushmm.org/. Go to the section that says education and click on for students. Then, click on antisemitism and analyze the picture. Why do you think there are TWO crows? What does the picture show you when you look at the faces of the Jews? What do you feel?

2. Read the second paragraph and place yourself in the position of the Jews. How do you feel and how do you think they felt when this terrible thing happened?

3. Go back to the home page. Click on Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust. Read the third paragraph and give three good reasons why so many Jews lived in Germany.

4. Go back to the homepage. Click on Nazi rise to power and click on the election article. If you were Hitler, how would you be feeling right now and what would you be planning and going around in your mind?

5. How do you feel when looking at this article? Explain in detail.

6. Go back to the home page and click on the first concentration camps. What do you think is happening in the photo? Why do you think only one guy is wearing a white suit?

7. Reading the first six paragraphs of the writing, how do you think the Jews felt towards the Nazis when this happened? Do you think anybody tried to help?

8. Click on death marches and read the first paragraph. If you were back in that time and you knew the Jews were going to be killed, do you think you would follow the Nazis or support the Jews? Why?

9. Analyze the photo. What do you think is happening in the photo?

10. Reflecting on the terrible holocaust, do you think that if you existed back in that time period, you would have had the guts to stand up for what’s wrong? What is our big learning from this mistake we have made and have endured for a long time?

The Black Box, The Black Spot and The Blank Paper

I would title this story 'The Black Box, The Black Spot and The Blank Paper' because those three elements are very important in the story since the lottery (which appears a thousand times in the story) is all about these three main things. Also, these three main elements and not shown or told throughout the story, which created the main VOID for the readers.

As I read the story, I made a prediction that when something bad will happen to the person who gets picked in the lottery because everyone in the village seemed as though they wanted to get this over with and also get rid of it. They also thought that the one year went passed so quickly and if there is something good, you always feel as though time is so~ slow. 'Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more...'

When the end of the story was unknown, I felt as though my head was literally bursting with questions and tension to know more about the ending and what happened. There were questions in my head such as 'What will happen to Tessie?' 'What does the black dot mean?' 'Is this really the end of the story?' and etc. I was feeling very tense and desperate to find out what happens.

When I got the slip of paper and Mr. Housego told us that it contained the ending of the story, I was so tensed and curious why had to wait until 5 pm. For the whole day I couldn't forget thinking about the slip of paper. I also felt very relieved when I got the slip of paper and it didn't have a black dot, just in case it meant something bad. I followed the instructions and didn't open the slip until 5 pm because I was too scared that maybe if I don't follow the directions I might get myself into a huge mess.

I got so tensed as the story was reaching towards its climax and was so frustrated that I still had no clue of what the three elements meant; the black box, the black spot, the blank piece of paper. I knew the fact that all of them were very important, which made me go more wild since I didn't know how to put the story together. It felt like a huge empty space in the story that needed to be found in order to understand the story.

When I finally read the ending of the story, even though it was the 'end,' it still made me wonder for a little while about what exactly happened and if they actually stoned Tessie to DEATH. The author didn't really tell what happened to Tessie but he/she just showed it and the showing was done so well that I was terrified half to death.

My prediction was right about how I thought something bad was going to happen, but the ending was terribaly more horrifying than what I had imagined it to be. I thought they would just be seperated from their families, but they killed her! The ending was so horrifying that I can't forget it from my mind.

If the author had more repetition of the stones and gave more emphasis and impact on the children building up the pile of stones, I could have guessed that the lottery could do such terrible things to the villagers every year.

The author left so many VOIDS in the story because when authors leave one or more VOIDS in stories, the readers are going to read on and on into the story and get hooked in to find out what will happen next and how the story's going to end. The readers will also not forget about the story or even a book since they had so much tension while reading it.

In my opinion, there were two main powers of VOIDs in this story; No ending and Text clues and foreshadowing throughout. When there was no ending to the story, the reader was just left with thousands of questions of tension in their minds, which didn't allow them to realese since there were no answers given. Also, when the story kept repeating how bad a lottery was and about the black box, it really gave tension and curiosity as to know what happens in a lottery that is so terrifying.

This story was a great tale with so many strong powers of VOID that kept on making the readers desperate to read and know more.

Power of the VOID

The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides an exceptional education that challenges each student to develop the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible global (silence...) citizen.

I put the VOID before 'citizen' because that whole paragraph wraps up into that one word, therefore, as the paragraph nears to the conclusion, the listeners will get excited to find out how the sentence will end, just like when you're finishing a book.

I put the tension there also because when it says 'global' before the VOID, since 'global' means the world, parents especially will get tense to know how their child/children are going to contribute in school globally.

The moment of silence here will get the listeners' attention because everyone will want to know how this esceptionally educated school will effect the students. Parents will want to know how their students will change and what good things the school will give to the students.

Finally, the VOID before 'citizen' will make the audience very curious and tense because there are 3 adjectives before the last word of the paragraph. This will feel like a crescendo to the climax since the adjectives create the word to be more interesting and when there is silence before the climax word, the audience would be questioning a lot about what is happening.

Composers create tension in music in many ways. Here are the three ways composers create tension adn strong VOID in their music.

One way is to have unexpected rests, rests especially before this huge climax and after a huge crescendo, just like Mozart did. This will surely make the audience wonder what happened to the climax.

The second way to create VOID is to take away many instruments to not play in a certain section, so that the audience will feel this empty space in the music and will want to fill the empty space of music.

The final way to create strong VOID and tension into the audience is to fade away at the end of the music. As one part stops after the other, when it gets to the conclusion of the music, the audience will be very surprised and wondering if there is another part of the music left...another part of the music for the huge fortissimo (climax).