1st week of ski instructing

I just finished my first week of ski instructing. I am a ski instructor at the kids camp/ski school in Belleayre mountain, New York. I pretty much babysat 4 year olds on the bunny hill for the first two days. But after that I got to to teach twelve year old and nine year old brothers how to ski for the first time ever. That was weird because I am only two years older than the twelve year old. The rest of the week I got kids down the green trails and even in some cases, blues. I feel that in this time  I have grown so much as a skier and a person. I am looking forward to this weekend where I will be teaching more (and getting paid 11 dollars an hour!).

Ski Instruction

For the first week of winter break I am going to be instructing kids on how to ski. I am going to be doing this at a mountain called Belleayre that I have been skiing at for 10 years. I am excited and scared to become an employee. I will get paid, but I will have a great responsibility, taking care of the kids. I probably wont even take them on the mountain, probably just fetch hot chocolate, and guide them down the bunny hill. But, in the end I am getting paid, while working up the ranks to a job that I will find fun, and hopefully worthwhile.

BLOG POST #1

A moment during this week when learning was fun and engaging was when I practiced and played a tournament with my CS:GO team. CS:GO is a competitive team shooter that has thriving professional e-sports teams. I had the opportunity to join a semi-professional team, and I accepted the offer. I am alongside four other fellow comrades in this endeavor. They are all in high-school, except for me. I am the worst player on the team, but I can hold my own. Even so, they value me as an important part of the team, so I do my best to make sure we win our matches. During matches and practices I learn so much from them, such as aiming tips, better decision making, higher quality communication, and special grenade lineups that allow us to gain the advantage on the enemy. I have elevated my skill level immensely since I joined, and I hope that we get promising results in the future.

Here is an article on e-sports if you would like more specifics about what it actually is, how it works, and how people are making money off of it. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/technology/esports-explosion-brings-opportunity-riches-for-video-gamers.html

Social Justice Interview Invisible Children

My group interviewed Emma Goldman, an intern located at Los Angeles. I learned that Joseph Koney has not been captured yet and that Invisible Children has expanded their mission since then and are now focusing on stopping multiple violent groups in Central Africa using rare natural resources to fund their violent activities. They are trying to broaden their goal into reducing the violence in Central Africa and bringing children home. She also told us to look up for more information on their website. She motivated our group to look into reaching out with amnesty groups in New York to do a hands on fieldwork. I want to remember the way that these violent groups are funding their activities and incorporate it into our fieldwork somehow. The next steps our group are going to take is going to be reaching out to other sources we have already found, and reaching out to local amnesty groups. She was very vague in our interview about what she was saying and didn’t really seem like she knew the details about what their group is actually doing to help, so I would like to investigate this with the next organization we contact.

Digital Art Poster

This digital art poster depicts a man with a fireball in his hand looking out into a street in Zagreb, Croatia. At the end of the street there is a house on fire and behind that there is a beautiful medieval countryside. There is also a mystical heavenly waterfall. The ground that the man is standing on is a puddle with rocks and grass from Tanzania, Africa. There is also a red Ferrari on fire. There is movement because your eye shifts from looking initially at the fireball, to the Ferrari, and then to the house, because of the fire and how far away the element is. There is also emphasis on those different elements created by the fire. There is balance because of the regular arrangement of the wisps of smoke. There is proportion and balance shown through how the person and the house are completely different sizes, but balanced to look as if the person is bigger, because of the perspective in distance.

African Bio

Name: Oliver                                                                                 March 2017

Humanities                                                Africans in NY: Creative Narrative Assignment

          Free Life

By Oliver Eig

 

Hello. I am Deborah Squash, and I was an enslaved Angolan for General George Washington. I am 22 years old. I would tell you how great it was to have been working for him, but it wasn’t. These men did not think of me as human, but property. When I came here from Angola, they exchanged me for rum. All I did is work, and if I didn’t work, I would get punished. I was not the General’s personal slave. No, all I did was work in the kitchen, and occasionally the field if my master sells some of the field workers away. But, at least in my opinion, I am an excellent cook. The General always told me to cook certain traditional meals that his mama used to make for him. But one day I decided to try to impress him by making my mama’s curried chicken. He was outraged and disgusted. He whipped me so hard I lost feeling in my back for eleven days. He was not a very nice man. This was why, two weeks later, I decided to run away from him to New York. The other reason was that I did not want to be owned. I was not the only one that tried to escape. Sadly, many people got caught and were punished worse than I would like to imagine. At this time, New York was a Royal Colony. So my husband Harvey and I got to live under a British loyalist man under the name of Lynch. Harvey belonged to Lynch, while I still belonged to George Washington. When we worked for Lynch we used to farm in the bouwerie I remember praying that the Loyalists won the war because if they didn’t we would have to go back to that devil of a man Washington. My heart crushed when we lost the war, I was so excited to live with Harvey without fear of being taken away to Washington. Luckily, our British saviors did not give us back to them. General Carleton fulfilled his promise of not giving the blacks back to the Americans, regardless of the outcome of the war. He came up to me and Harvey, and said, “Washington and his men may come looking for you and the other negroes that belonged to him. There is a ship leaving for Nova Scotia in 45 minutes at the New York harbor. Be there.” So as he directed, we went to the ship 10 minutes early because we were so eager to get away from New York. After we arrived in Nova Scotia, Harvey built a cabin for me and him to live together as a peaceful, free, and happy couple. That is exactly what the cabin did for us.

   Yesterday, I went into town to buy some herring, Harvey’s favorite. I despise the stuff. He says it tastes good because of how salty it is and it makes him feel like he is in the ocean. Whenever he says that I just say, “Why do you need to feel like you are at the ocean by eating a fish if you can feel that way by actually being there?” Sometimes Harvey just says anything.

When I got into town I saw the Robinsons, A family that came over on the same boat as us from New York. They have two beautiful boys that love going shopping with their mama. Their mama, Renée, is from St. Lucia, which is an island in the Caribbean. Before coming to Nova Scotia, she never knew what being free felt like, she was born a slave, unlike me and Harvey. I scanned around the market for the fish stand. I found it and made my way over there. I scooped up a few pounds of herring and one pound of king salmon, my favorite. I gave the man working the stand 10 shillings and made my way out of the market and started walking down the street towards my home. People walked past me, buzzing with conversation. Nova Scotia is so beautiful, with the large, looming, bushy trees and the cobblestone roads that highlight the bright green grass. Eventually, I reached my lovely home and when I opened the door I was enveloped by a hug from Harvey. This is what a free life looks like.

I am very proud of this piece. The part of this piece I am the most proud of has to be the second half of the piece, because it entirely fictional except for the part that Deborah and Harvey moved to Nova Scotia. I have learned a couple of things while writing this piece too. An example of one of these things is how I developed a newly found understanding about how enslaved people were not only treated poorly, they were treated poorly most of their life. The part of this piece I need to work on would be the first half, since I feel like I force a bunch of fiction in with the non-fiction and it does not have nearly as nice of a flow as the second half.

My Crucible Essay

Name: Oliver                                             Humanities

7th Grade                                                                         The Crucible

      The Importance Of Reputation (Or rather, unimportance)

                        By

                Oliver Eig

 

People have experiences whenever they do something. Those experiences can shape how people think about them. For example, If a regular person heard about someone going through a near death experience, they would think of them as a traumatized person. Or if someone served in the army, they would be thought of as brave. This status is called reputation. There are good reputations and bad reputations that are gained by people doing bad or good things. If someone has a bad reputation and want to change that, they may redeem themselves by doing something that someone may do to gain a good reputation, like doing community service. This has been happening a lot around the world and will keep happening if nothing changes. Throughout all of the world’s history, people have abused their reputation in different ways in order to get what they want in life.

The theme reputation is shown prominently throughout The Crucible by Arthur Miller by numerous characters. These characters are people like Judge Danforth, Hathorne, and Reverend Parris, except the person that has the deepest connection to reputation is none other than John Proctor. “I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It is enough!” (Miller, p. 130). This quote, stated by John Proctor, is a perfect example of someone being worried about how people see himself and think about himself. Judge Danforth and Judge Hathorne believe he has committed an act of witchcraft, which he hadn’t, although he had committed adultery, which he could hang for. The Judges got him in trouble with the law because he was accused of witchcraft. Proctor may have been interpreting his case of witchcraft as his case of adultery in his head. This, obviously, is embarrassing for him and his good name and he did not want the entire town to know. On the other hand, he also did not want people to see his name on the church and see him as a witch. He wanted his grandchildren to come to church without seeing his name branded as a witch, regardless of whether he was alive or dead. He cared about what other people think about him than what he thinks about himself. That is why he always asked Elizabeth for her opinion on himself, and she always responded with, “I cannot judge you, John.” This is the reason why he hanged himself to save his good name in the village. What John Proctor wanted in life was his reputation, even if it took sacrificing what he wanted in life, which was to live together with his family. This is the exact opposite of sacrificing your reputation in order to get what you want in life. More than 300 years later, a man has tried to build up his reputation, and eventually his hunger for a good reputation was his downfall. This man’s name is Joseph McCarthy.

Throughout Joseph McCarthy’s life, he has tried to make himself popular and look good. When he was running for senator one of his main “marketing” points was that he served in the army. His campaign portrayed this by displaying a photograph of him in a fighter jet, even though he did not fight in the army, he worked in the office. “The 41 year old McCarthy had done little to make himself known since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946. But this changed with the speech he gave on that cold evening,” (Fitzgerald, p. 9). After McCarthy was elected as senator of Wisconsin he calmed down a bit, since he got what he wanted, which was to establish a reputation. But eventually his satisfaction became diminished, and he grew a greedy hunger for an even greater reputation and fame. The way he chose to cope with this was to scapegoat other people as communists, which was considered un american at the time and still is today. He gave a speech saying that he had a list of 234 people in the government that were communists. This was the beginning of McCarthyism. In the wake of McCarthy’s speech, the group HUAC was born. They accused a lot of people, especially major celebrities of communism. This created a social uproar in the McCarthy Era. Many people, not only celebrities, lost their jobs and their reputation for having communist views. There are plenty of good examples of people like this in the modern era, McCarthy’s waiting to happen. Except there is someone else that instead of building his reputation up, then crashing it down, is just simply diminishing his reputation to a crisp. This person is none other than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a man that gets what he wants in life by tearing down his and others reputation, whether it be intentional or unintentional. He has and will keep doing this throughout his life. This character trait is one of the many reasons to be afraid under his presidency. For example, political relations. He could destroy some of our allied countries which would be bad if heaven forbid we go to war anytime soon. Or if we are doing business with them. Also, his consistent pushing of a Muslim ban may offset powerful muslim political leaders, regardless of whether they are one of the countries being banned or not. But, there are also internal issues with his presidency, which actually may be the most prominent. Since he wanted to become president, he found it to be fit to say awful things that may appeal to large amounts of uneducated people therefore helping him win the presidency. Uneducated in this context means unaware of the reality of the things he is saying. But these statements will not quiver once he becomes president, he will keep on making controversial statements until he gets what he wants. The question is what does he want? Here is a great example of the aftermath of him tearing apart his reputation for power. “In more than two dozen interviews, they described creative methods of punishing his economic empire and expunging the once-esteemed reminders of him from their lives, closets, golf bags and bookshelves over the past few months. They have thrown out — or cut up — Trump neckties, called off stays at Trump hotels, even stopped imbibing Trump wines,” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/politics/donald-trump-brand-reaction.html?_r=0). This was taken from an article written about Donald Trump and his relationship with the general public through his company. Since the country is more or less split into two about their opinion on Trump and his policies, some people have expressed their disagreement by destroying things related to trump and his businesses. This is different than Joseph McCarthy and John Proctor because instead of using their reputation to get what they want in life, Donald Trump has done the opposite. In order to become president, he had to throw away his decency as a human being to people who would have thought as him as a regular rich, businessman otherwise, and turn into a politician that acts very unprofessional, that discriminates people and is supported by the KKK. So in order to get what he wants in life, which is to have the attention of the world, he has to throw away, or dispel his reputation, which was not nearly as negative since he began his campaign. All in all, it is safe to say that reputation has affected Donald J. Trump in a rather fortunate manner. This meaning he gets to use his reputation to get what he wants.

Throughout all of the world’s history, people have abused their reputation in different ways in order to get what they want in life. People have used their reputation throughout history in different ways to get what they want. This makes it harder for people to get what they want without a reputation. But it is still possible. For this to happen is all chance and luck when you are born. If your parents are wealthy, influential, or poor, and non influential. In America, there is more of the latter. Most people have to work for what they want, not just have it handed to them on a silver platter because of who their parents were or how much money they had. Although, you could be able to gain a reputation by doing reputable things during your life and then use that to get privileges, most of the people including those that were not born with a reputation abuse their’s and gain power or objects of power. As mentioned before, John Proctor, Joseph McCarthy, and Donald Trump are three people with different relationships with reputation and what they want. John Proctor, for example, had a reputation as a good farmer and townsperson. He cared deeply about how people thought about him. So when he was accused of witchcraft (and confessed to adultery), he wanted to keep his reputation in the village, so he did not have his name stapled to the church as a witch, and he did not sign the paper, therefore not confessing. Since he did not confess, he was then hanged. He cared about his reputation more than life itself. That was what he wanted, and what he got in the end. Joseph McCarthy, on the other hand, wanted to be popular and well known around the world. So he attracted attention to himself, and started making outrageous accusations calling specific people that he disliked in the government, communists. This gave him a reputation as a politician, but eventually people saw through him and came to realize that these accusations were false, which made him extremely unpopular and he lost what he wanted in life, which was to be well-known and well, frankly, a hero. So in the process of his growing hunger for a larger social status, he grew it in the wrong way, sending his dreams of being popular crashing down. Finally, there is Donald Trump, a man who has more than one relationship with reputation. The first of which was explained before, which was that he is unconsciously is tearing his reputation down because of all of the outrageous remarks he is making and how he is unpresidential. This is important, except he also has another, which very similar to McCarthy’s. This is how he takes other people’s reputation down to build his up. The difference between him doing this and McCarthy doing this is that McCarthy was accusing people of doing things, not personally attacking them. McCarthy was also trying to build his reputation as a person up, which Donald may be trying to do out of ferocious greed, but he already has a perfectly fine reputation as a businessman. The people McCarthy accused did not matter to him in the grand scheme of things. Trump just wants to be a bully and protect himself and his “reputation”. He has said put-downs to news networks, reporters, politicians, and even judges. So, even if you are not putting down people’s reputation intentionally, like John Proctor, we should still try our hardest to build other people up, not take them down. Even if you have good reason to take them down, don’t. It is the right thing to do. But, throughout all of history, not just American, and not just these specific people, people have been worrying so much about how they come across to people, from teenagers, to dictators. While what they should really be worrying about is how they live up to their reputation, and how they can make the world a better place. Nobodies first concern should be themselves. If they are a good human being, then they should be selfless, not a bully, not an attention scrounger, and not self absorbed like these three men. In conclusion, past reputations mean nothing. The only thing that is important and meaningful is what you do next.

Reflection:

Before we wrote this essay we were required to write a complete five paragraph essay comparing three different time periods to a theme. My theme was reputation. The three time periods that we were assigned to connect our themes to were: the McCarthy Era, the Salem Witch Trials, and Modern Day. Surprisingly, they all had a lot in common with my theme. But, in specific with my essay, I wrote a lot about people during those time periods. These three people were Joseph McCarthy, John Proctor, and Donald Trump. During the process of writing this essay, I gained an understanding of the theme reputation that I hadn’t thought possible otherwise. It was really eye opening. I am very proud of my work. I just got my grades back from my essay. They were very mixed. I got a 4 in my demonstration of an understanding of literature through written responses. I got a 2.5 in using proper writing conventions. I think that I got this 2.5 because I did not edit it carefully enough before and after it was peer edited. In the future I will make it my goal to edit more carefully.

Mandarin Chinese New Year Project 2017 Post

This is one of the things that I did in Mandarin class to celebrate the Chinese new year. It was on the bulletin board in the lobby for a short period of time. I worked on it with Elijah. The fish and the Chinese phrase is a pun. It is saying along the lines of: there will be plentiful of good luck in the new year, but instead of using the right character for the sentence, the sentence uses a homophone of sorts, which is pronounced the same and means fish. So it kind of means bring a lot of good luck and fish in the new year. The color of the paper and fish is red because red is the color of luck and warding away evil in the Chinese culture.

This is another one of the things that I did in Mandarin class to celebrate the Chinese new year. It is personal for me.

character means good fortune