Weather Report Article

There have been some interesting weather patterns throughout Pakistan recently. But the main story has been the sandstorm that covered all 10,200 square miles of the Cholistan Desert. Some families have had to deal with the sand covering tobas and animals and family members blowing away in the harsh winds. We interviewed two residents of the Cholistan Desert. Shabanu and Dalil Abassi. Here are some things that happened during the sandstorm according to Shabanu:

“The night that the [sandstorm] happened, I was sleeping and my sister, Phulan woke me up. I thought that my skin [because of the sand], was being pierced by a thousand needles.” The storm’s high winds prevented Shabanu from seeing anything until the winds subsided. Her luck didn’t turn out very well.

“We found that our camel, Mithoo, Sher-Dil, our dog and my grandfather were all gone. The storm injured Shabanu’s grandfather fatally, but he was found alive under sand. He survived for a few days. He died in his sleep. After talking to Shabanu, we interviewed Dalil Abassi, Shabanu’s father. It was a very scary moment for him because he was the head of the family. He had to make sure that everyone was safe.

“When the storm hit, I was very scared. Not for me, but for my family. I didn’t want anything to happen to them.” They stayed inside and waited out the storm. Somehow, Dalil’s father blew away. “I was very scared [for my father], but I knew Allah would save him.”

We also talked to Dalil about his other daughter, Phulan’s wedding. “I wasn’t worried that the storm would hurt the wedding. “I knew that Phulan wanted this very much, and I knew she would do to what she had to do [to make the wedding happen]. Lets all send Shabanu and her family our best wishes. 

John Paul Jimenez

Why horses?

John Paul was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil but moved to the US because of college. He has traveled all over Europe, Germany, England, Spain, Holland, and France. He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, French and English. “I speak so many different languages because of school and because of all the places I have lived in.”

John Paul went to college wanting to become a lawyer like his father was in Brazil, but he still loved riding horses as a hobby. He asked his dad to send over his horse, but when he got to college and people started to see his talent with horses, and they wanted him to ride their horse.

“I really missed riding horses as a junior rider, so when I when to college I realised, this passion was too good to go to waste.” His passion turned into a job, he didn’t expect it kinda just happened. Little by little people saw him and told him that he could make a living out of this and he agreed and choose horses over law School. “One job took me to the next thing, and then I became a professional rider.”

“My son Jonathan, when he was little we were looking for ponies and horses he could buy.  When people saw that I could teach, a lot of parents would come up to me ask me if I could teach their kid the way I teach mine, so then I let people some into my barn with their ponies and kids and now I am here.”

Even though he has always loved riding and wants his children to ride, he doesn’t force them. “They love to ride…because they love to ride!” Although he enjoys teaching and riding with his kids, they don’t listen as well and take corrections differently.

“I kinda go with the talents, because some little horses can be amazing and some big horses can be terrible. It’s more of a feel for the horse, more of getting to know the horse.” Riding wasn’t about winning or making a living, for John Paul it was about teaching and learning from the horse.

When he is trying a horse to see if he will buy it, he has someone else ride it to see if he should try the horse of go look for other ones. “If I don’t like the horse, I don’t get on. I watch the horse in his stall and in the ring, if I don’t like his attitude or the way he moves I move on.”

“Well obviously when I am performing in the Grand Prix you get a little more nervous, but if you know what you are doing and have a plan you are good to go. You have to have the right horse too, you know horseback riding is a partner sport, you and the horse split the work evenly.” John Paul is known for his famous record in the Grand Prix, but everyone makes mistakes. “I was in a big show in Florida, an open class. There were a lot of people were in the ring and my horse tripped and slipped and I fell right on my leg.” It was a show that lasted over more than one day, so he couldn’t finish the rest of the competition.

The scariest moment of his life was on a horse but that didn’t stop his passion and bravery. “I was riding a little horse, we were going over a little gymnastics when his legs got caught up in the poles and he fell next to me.  He would have landed on me, and  I would have died. I still had to go to the doctor and have my leg checked out. Within three weeks I was back and riding.”

THE END

Who the hack are you is an assignment we are doing in humanities.

You are the interview and you choose anyone to interview (you just have to have access to them), then you have to write a hand written letter to them. Then you set up a time to meet and them you prepare questions. We had to spend a lot of time on the questions and make sure that there is a constant theme for all of them.

Now we are interviewing but we have to record the interviews so we can later form it into a essay!

For the Beowulf project Julia put us into small groups of one and two. Each group was given a person or a place to draw. The drawing had to be detailed because we got all the description from the book.. We were being graded on how well we worked as a group and how well we payed attention the the book and it’s details.

I was really proud of my work because my group put a lot of time and effort into it. We tried to make really clean and good drawings. but here and there we would mess up on matching characteristics with drawings. I thought that that was the most challenging part.