Fifth

We did a lot of things at Ashokan, one of my favorite things was blacksmithing.  In blacksmithing  we had a choice to make three things, a heart shaped trivet, A fire poker or a plant hangar.  I made a plant hangar.  It was so much fun hammering 2,800 degrees metal into awesome shapes.  I learned at Ashokan, better friendships and how to play basketball.  Last year, I really did not get that much outside time because I played a lot of D&D this time I spent more time outside.

In this activity we were broken up into pairs and we had to look at this homework assignment to understand what to do:

Our #1 Goal: Using evidence in the form of quotes, we will create detailed drawings of characters and settings to better help the whole class understand the book.

Must haves:

• A list of both internal and external characteristics:
  • Internal= personality qualities (brave, timid, deceitful, etc.)
  • External= physical qualities (tall, brown hair, crooked teeth, etc.)

• At least two quotes from the text that directly related to your drawings (remember to cite your source!)

• Color
• Detail
• Evidence of effort
• Evidence of being an excellent collaborator
• Have fun!

DO NOT GOOGLE! You are forbidden to Google any images of these characters or settings. Remember: Anyone who has ever drawn anything from this book used the text and their imagination. This is your job too. Maybe, since you’re such good readers, you’ll even do a better job than some random person on the internet!

I am really proud of this piece more than a lot of others of mine, because I think in this project me and my group had a lot of fun and laughed a lot, unlike any other projects but we got everything down by the time it was due.

The thing that I found challenging about this project, was that we were not allowed to get anything wrong on the poster because we were getting all of the info out of the book.

I found that when making a website it is easy once you know the basic, Maybe, 10 tags you have to put in while programing.  When you make you might think it is hard, I agree it was hard but because there are a ton of ‘techy’ people in the room, it is easier to learn.  When you learn it, you can teach too someone else…  When working on my website, I found the hardest thing was to look at someone else website and think, “wow how could anyone do that.”  well #1 it is usually Johnny or Some other tech brainy and they want to show off, or they spend 4 hours of their day working on it, or it just because you have to deal with it because you either don’t care to show off or just don’t want to make it elaborate, again to show off.   The thing that I like about my website, is that it is nice and short and it does not have thing after thing after thing after thing of puny un-important details.  I also like the colors the stuff on my website and the way I put it there.   I think it was a great idea to do this and I think that we should do it again because a lot of people liked it and it was a great learning opportunity for lots of other things.

My spaceship would be a very fit place for everyone.  Even people who liked totally different things.  There are salons, to arcades, to yards, to schools in the ship.  One floor,(the third) is totally empty, it is empty because that is where the driving cabin is, we do not need to show that, so I do not show it.

A boy went to bed on a night where the wind whistled outside his window like the sound of wind on a high mountain cliff.  It was the  sound of a wind whizzing about. Slowly the wind went around, like a snowstorm coming over the cold mountains.  Except he was nowhere close to the mountains and the cold weather.  It was a night in early September.  There was a breeze blowing and it was 75º outside, yet it had a crisp choppy autumn feeling.  It felt like a crunchy, juicy apple that you eat in the fall.  The street was for once quiet and the shouts from the teenagers eating across the street at Dallas’s BBQ had died out over the night like a fire slowly fading out.  The lights in Central Park had gone on, casting an eerie  glow on the small trails across the wild park.  It had drizzled earlier so a wet smell wafted up from the streets.  Along with the smell of the Italian restaurants and the BBQ and all of the other smells(some good some bad.)  They all floated into a window of a room.  There was a fish tank above a couple of drawers, next to that was a desk that was poised in front of the window and lots of ledges with books and collections.  In the far side of the room there was a table with a lamp casting a glow over a bed, with a heap of covers and stuffed animals.  Out of the middle of it, a face had been left, uncovered.  That was me.

My eyes fluttered as I started to dream.  I sank into my bed.  My stomach and chest sunk into the bed, my hands sunk into my chest and my head sunk into my pillow.  My pillow sunk into the bed and my head slipped out into a totally different world.

I whirled and whirled, finally I got my senses.  I is in a sunny garden, surrounded by flowers.  The flowers were arranged in paths that all went to the center of the garden.  There is a statue of my family all huddled in a group, with our heads in the air, spitting water out of our mouths.  The fountain is surrounded by a lake.  The statue could only be reached by a row boat.  There were a few islands some covered with flowers.  There were cherry blossom trees, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes and rose bushes.  On some, deep within the foliage, there were a few Gazebos hidden amongst orange and pink trees and bushes.  There were many swans and turtles and fish in the lake.  The lake is so clear that you could see the 100 feet to the bottom in the center.  Many bedazzled dragon flies flew around the lilypads, once or twice being zapped by a frog’s tongue.

If you were to go farther,(towards the edge of the lake) you see a big island with beautiful statues of all sorts. There is for example, dragons, literally swooping over the garden; their big stone wings frozen in mid air.  The dragons looked as if to quickly swoop into a dive. The mouth is poised, as if to catch a human gazing into its deep mouth and swirling tongue!  There were Centaurs, and all of those mythical creatures, and of course they had real animals.  There is a big beautiful wood and a white, arching and beautifully carved bridge connecting the island to the mainland.  On that island there is a house, a huge house, about two square miles and six floors high.  It is an artwork of swerving wooden curves at sides and moss covered walls with water trickling down it!  There were also outside sections of the building in modern design  (metal and glass.) On the house there were also sections from the times of ancient China, Japan, South America, Ancient Rome and Greece.  There were outside sections from the Renaissance and from the White House!  It looked totally different although you think it would look bad, it surprisingly looked good!

But inside the house is a different story.  You walk in and you immediately enter the huge foyer.  It had big tapestries all over the walls of scenes of animals, scenes of ice, fire fighting and interesting things like that!  Then there are many beautiful offices, some with bright blue walls or with deep ocean blue walls.  There were environments painted on the walls or myths painted on the walls.  The offices were home to many of the secretaries and lawyers of the household.

Every place has to have entertainment so that is another reason why this place is created.  It is amazing at entertainment.  The place is a hubbub of game noises and beeps from the arcade.  I should save the best for last, as we are on the first floor(main floor.)

Then you open some HUGE doors (about 50 feet tall.)  There are guards standing to attention at the door.  You walk by and they snap you a crisp salute.  Then they open the doors…

You walk into the KITCHEN.  The kitchen is a big room with at least 200 stoves 6,000 closets and cupboards; also about 120 refrigerators, 400 sinks, 300 ovens, 300 toasters and LOTS of cooking space.  There are also about six, 100 feet walk-in refrigerators.  There are huge cooking tables and chairs to discuss the meals.  There is also in total about 31 million cooking utensils and four million eating utensils.  There were too many pots and pans to count.

There obviously is a dining room.  There is a main table with 75 chairs and 100 other tables, each with about 100 chairs also.  The main table is for all of the important people, and all of the other tables were for less important people.  There is a bar and there always is an orchestra and a singing group in the background.  There is a big marble staircase and huge four ton chandeliers made of diamond and crystal.  There were 300 waiters, 500 servers and 550 busboys.   There were people that collect menus and people that pick up food scraps off the floor for a living, just to be in the house!

Some of the awesome features of the house were that you could get a pin as a visitor and you can make a microchip with your favorite things on it.  When you walked in a room, your favorite music plays, your favorite temperature will be put on and your favorite art is displayed over electronics!

Like I said, the house is the heart of entertainment.  The house has six bowling alleys, a barber shop, makeup shop, spa and many more things in the basement.  On  the top floor there are 21 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms, a movie theater, and six meeting rooms.  On the third floor there are 731 more bedrooms and another meeting room.

There is lots other (pastime) entertainment.  There is a pool that is about 111 feet long.  It plays music under the water.  There is also an outside section of the pool.  You can get to that outside bit by waterslide.  You could also get there by going under a big glass screen, going on a lazy river, going on a shoot out(kind of like a geyser,) or going in a quick whirlpool.

In the outside pool there are 16 hot tubs.  The hot tubs are ranked in different heat “levels”.  There are 4 levels and 4 tubs in each of them.  There is, burning(175º F.)  There is also, hot, 105ºF and cool 60ºF.

This is the house of my dreams!

This is the “waten.”  The, wa, is for watch and the ten is for listen.  The case would also be priced for $10.00.  All the programing that went inside that would cost, $30.00.  What it would do is it would be able to listen to  what is going on and if some kids were fighting it would show that which one started the fight and if that it has a punishment needed.  It will help because it will show and work for anything.  (also there is a self destruct button in the middle of it so you can use it in a war and can have it explode itself and many other things as well.)

Even when you are separated from people, you can keep them in your heart.  Parvana stays in Kabul to be closer to her father.  She stays when Mother, Nooria, Ali Myriam go to Mazer-E-Sharif.  She stays with Mrs. Weera because father might come out of jail.  This shows that Parvana keeps her father in her heart at all times.  Nooria is getting married in Mazer-E-Sharif.  Mazer-E-Sharif is a free place, where girls can go to school.  Instead of going to Mazer-E-Sharif and school, she stayed in kabul, to wait for father.  As Mother and nooria are getting ready(planning) The trip to go to Mazer-E-Sharif, Parvana says on page 135,  “We can’t leave Kabul what about father?  What will happen if he gets out of prison and we are not here?  He won’t know where to look for us.”    This shows that parvana will forfeit something amazing for someone.  That shows that even when she is separated from father she is keeping him in her heart.

Some things that I do not like about New York are, the subway.  I hate the subway because there are lots of rats, the ceiling drips, people do not let people get off first, it is so packed and that the train squeaks when it comes to a stop.  I also think that there should be air conditioning in the summer.