In humanities we are writing poetry, we were learning about the poet’s tools. I wanted to use repetition. Here is the poem I wrote:

One Question

I ask you one question

Will you give me one answer?

No

You will not

For you are not even here

I am alone

forever

A single leaf blowing in the never ending wind

Forever me

The only one in a vast, infinite, sea

A small light in the darkness

The lone soul

Only one question

That will never get an answer

Where are you?

In humanities we are writing poetry. In class we looked at Rumi poems, then we wrote our own. Each of them had a theme I chose to write a poem with the theme Death.

Rumi Poem: Death

By Ruby

this is not the end, death is simply another life

the night does not take the day

when the darkness falls the light of souls come out and live again

if you take the hand of the king of the stars

it will not be the end

your soul will dance on in the deep velvet of night

soon others will join you are bright shining lights

and there will be a light of day in the darkness

for you ever laugh the joy of light

we reach up but it is so far

but do not worry love is there

and the small sliver will grow as we are letting it all go

let the joy of your days ever ring in the hearts of the land

the ones who are bound here

you dance but need no legs

when the dance is done you will watch from above

do not be sorrowful

for this is not the end

we are here and you are there

but soon we will be together in the never ending dance of the stars

In Humanities we have to write a article about something in Shabanu and make a video about it. Me, Oni, Milei, and Meadow’s theme was travel. We wrote about the Sibi fair. We showed all the perks of the Fair. We made a video about an interview with Wardak (Miles).

Do You want to have the best time of your life? Come to the Sibi Fair!

The Sibi fair is the best place to go if you want to have some fun in Pakistan. It has wonderful games and rides. It also has a great selection of camels for trading. The Sibi fair has amazing musician and they will serenade you into the night. And a good trade means good fortune.

The weather at the Sibi fair is humid and lovely. It rains periodically for the camels to get healthy and for us to refill our jars. The sand surrounding the fair is just enough heat to toast your toes.  When the sun rises up above your head it shines over everybody’s beautiful faces. The Sibi fair is welcoming to the 2nd pillar of Islam, Salah, for the five moments in the day. There are amazing spots outside in the sand for camping and festivals. There is also a lot amazing food. On the fairgrounds there are many stands lining the streets. You can get many different foods for low prices. The food is all made right there in front of you and is very fresh. There is also water and other drinks to for you, whenever you need them. “The Chapatis are simply wonderful!” Said Murad.

On top of that there are mysterious wonders in this fair. Like the magnetic man. He can place metal objects on his body and they won’t fall off. They also have the balancing brunet. She can take anything and balance in on her head. The Sibi fair has many more like the jumping jack russel, the morphing man, the cackling camel etc… These attractions are so powerful that it pulls in crazy people like the scary Man Woman. It has been to the Sibi fair multiple times, but don’t fear so far it hasn’t attacked anyone. We also have the notorious Wonder Wheel! You can ride it while eating a piping hot pan or your freshly cooked chapati. When you are up there it is amazing with the wind in your face and the sun gently beaming down at you. You can go there with your best friend or with your loved one. The trading at the Sibi Fair is great and you will not be disappointed. You can get the best camels in the eastern region. You can spend your time walking around, browsing for anything you want. It’s a great bargain. You can spend your time walking around the Sibi Fair. There are many booths to go to and many items to choose from. As you can see, the Sibi fair is the best place to go in Pakistan.
The video

In Humanities we are reading a book called Shabanu. Shabanu is about a young girl who lives in the Pakistan desert. Each week we have a different thing to do. This week we had to write to posts from  a point of view of two of the people from the book. I did Phulan Shabanu’s sister. I also did Auntie Shabanu’s aunt. I did a how-to for Auntie and diary entry for Phulan.

Phulan’s Wedding Preparation Goes Wrong 

“Why ruin her wedding?” His eyes look weary. “She’ll have the rest of her life to worry” Page 148

About Phulan: Phulan lives in the desert with her sister, mother, father, aunt, grandfather and two younger cousins. Phulan has a good relationship with her younger sister, Shabanu. Though as her wedding to Hamair gets closer she gets more distant from Shabanu. Phulan’s main goal is to marry Hamair and have lots of sons.

Dear Diary,

So much has happened and I am so happy. There is one horrid thing that happened and I am worried, but right now I want to think about the good things. It felt like years since we had left home and I couldn’t wait any longer to marry. So much was still to be done before the happy moment though. When we first came we set up our small huts. Oh I hoped that I would have a good house, for me and Hamir to live in. I needed a good place to raise my sons. When I  met Hamir’s mother Bibi Lal,she was so  nice!  She embraced me then said “How I wish my husband, peace be with him, were here! He would be so happy to see the daughters of his beloved cousin marry our sons.” What a wonderful thing to say! I was truly enjoying the attention and  fun. Then they showed us the cottage that Hamir had built for me. A cottage, it looks like any of the other cottages, but this one was  mine! It was the place where I would  have sons with Hamir! It is a small thing, but to me it was a palace. Everyone painted a little thing to bless me and I felt happier than ever! Then we talked about the others who will come to my wedding. Everyone had paint on their hands and in their hair. I wanted to paint, but I couldn’t and I didn’t want to bring bad luck to my house. I truly didn’t want bad luck.

I thought of Mama and how she only has me and Shabanu. No sons. She acts like she doesn’t care, but I wonder if sometimes she wished we were boys. There was something Auntie said, “If God had blessed you with sons, we wouldn’t have to break our fingers over wedding dresses.” Yes, Auntie was right, but the wedding dress they made is so beautiful. This reminds me of Shabanu because she is always so hard working, but not a dainty lady. Dadi yells at her a lot. I love her, but she needs to learn how to follow the rules! Soon she will be married and what will happen then! I don’t want to think of that.

Now the most horrible thing has happened. Shabanu and I were are at the canal getting water and talking about Sharma and Fatima. I got excited and said that Sharma thinks I will have a son in the first year. I did hope it was true because it would be a wonderful blessing. I kept  talking about how if I ate lentils he would be fat and healthy. I was still voicing my day dreams and thinking of Hamir as we filled the pots of water. I thought of him more and more as my wedding got closer. I asked if Shabanu thinks he’s handsome. It would be dreadful if he was not! I remembered what he looked like, but that was a long time ago. Shabanu said yes after a while. Then she left me to do my own washing. When I was done I put the basket of cloth on a pot on my head and another pot under my arm. Then I walked up the path.  I saw Shabanu standing there surrounded by a group of burly men. I was  horrified! What did they want? I kept calm for I didn’t know what to do and acting scared was not a good plan. The biggest one turned to me and said “We’ll pay you handsomely- land, jewelry, money, anything you like”

What? No, they couldn’t do this. There are rules and this is too far! I was about to get married! I’d  just stand up to them and maybe someone would come to my rescue. I had no such luck. The next moments went by in a blur. Shabanu said something, the men laughed. Then the big man said something else followed by more laughing. Then Shabanu smashed her pot of water on the ground. I did the same and she pulled me up on a camel. We were riding so fast I felt like we would  fall at any moment. We were there! I saw Mama near the fire. We stopped, then dismounted. We explained everything. My heart kept thudding and I felt sick. Dadi said to pack and we did so. He said he would stay and hold them off. Then we mounted the camels and took off. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t and I didn’t know what to do. I could barely sit up.

Auntie’s Guide to Living in the Desert

“If God had blessed you with sons, we wouldn’t have to break our fingers over wedding dresses.” Page 3

About Auntie: Lives in the desert with her husband’s family, and her two sons. Auntie likes to show her husband’s family that she’s better than them because she has two sons well they only have daughters. She spends her days sewing, cooking, mending, taking care of her sons and waiting for her husband to send her gifts.
If you want to be a good Muslim woman in the Pakistani desert you better listen to me. I live in the desert with my husband’s family. They have two daughters, no sons! I’m so much better than them I have two sons. That is very important you always want sons. Those who don’t have many problems and more work to do! Every morning you need to pray for rain. One of the most important things raising your family. If you have boys you must make good strong men out of them. If you are cursed with girls though they have some use. You must teach them how to sew and cook so they can make good marriages.  You want them to marry rich so they don’t have to take care of discussing camels. My nice, Shabanu, she has an obsession with them! She’s lucky there’s someone who is willing to marry her. Now you have a place to live make sure you are near water. You want to have lots you need to bathe and wash your clothes and drink. You don’t want to look like a dirty pile of rags. So if you follow all of this you will probably have a good life.

Pictures from: http://www.shughal.com/structural-wonders-pakistan-8-types-traditional-houses-live/

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/30/Desalination-plants-built-to-fight-Pakistan-drought-may-also-grow-fish-farms/3681438197352/

In humanities we are learning about and writing poetry. We started out by doing haiku’s, which are short poems with simple rules. Haiku’s only have three lines, the first line only has five syllables, then seven syllables, then five again. We wrote  a couple to get the hang of it. Later we looked at some haiku’s that were in the New York Times. These were done for a competition  about New York City. You could choose to write about a topic that had to do with NYC. Some of these were, strangers, island, 6 A.M.. In class we also got to choose one of the topics to write about.

I wrote three one was about 6 A.M.. I choose this because I am always up at 6 A.M. and it’s a part of my everyday, but I don’t often think about it. Well I was writing it I really had to think about how everything looks and how I feel. This was a hard because I have to choose descriptive words that also have a certain amount of syllables. I also wrote two haiku’s about strangers. I decided to write those when I was thinking about 6 A.M.. I was thinking about looking out y window every morning and seeing people and wondering about them. I had to come up with several drafts before I got it to the way I wanted. Here are the final poem’s:

6 A.M.

Birds chirping, soft light

The only one throughout all,

Enjoy the time alone

Strangers

What’s it like to be

you on the merry-go-round

of life?

Strangers

Standing there, waiting,

the unknown engulfs me, who

are you? Why always waiting?

For this project there were many steps. The first step is writing a letter.

1 The letter

We had to write a letter to someone we would like to interview. In the letter we had to ask when we could interview them and if we could. I chose to wright to Dan I had read a little bit of a Who The Heck Are You? about him and I wanted to learn more.

2 The Questions

After I wrote the letter I had to come up with questions to ask during the interview. This was hard because I had to avoid yes or no questions. Here are the questions I asked:

1. Where did you grow up?
2. What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?
3. Did you get into a lot of trouble when you were a kid?
4. What was your experience in school like?
5. What did you study in college?
6. Did you get into the college you wanted to?
7. What did you do before you worked a LREI?
8. How long have you worked at LREI?
9. What is your favorite part about working here?
10. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you? 

3 The Interview

When I was done coming up with questions I had the interview. Some of the questions go answers that were too short. I also had to come up follow up questions. I thought it would be hard to come up with questions on the spot but it turned out easier than I thought. During the interview I was kind of nervous but it turned out well.

4 Step two

After the interview I went on, to step two. Step two is where I had to find all the important parts and divide them into the beginning, middle and end. I also had to come up with a grabber statement. A grabber statement is a sentence at the begging that grabs the reader’s attention. This was hard for me because I wanted to make it interesting, but not give away anything. Once I had put all of the finished step two I moved on to start my draft.

5 The Draft

In my draft I hd to find away to write everything I wanted. This was a little hard because I had to make it interesting but make it all fit. Once I had finished a whole page we started to peer edit. Peer Editing is easier than self editing because it’s not my own writing and easier to spot things. When I finished the whole thing we had a publishing party.

6 Finished

Here is my writing:

Who The Heck Are You?

by Ruby Wexler

When you’re the oldest of four you have great responsibility, apparently not for Dan.

Dan Bobrowski, fifth and sixth grade science teacher reveals his life. From getting in trouble to surfing in Hawaii Dan goes on an adventure that create the science teacher we had today.   

Dan was born in Michigan but moved to North Carolina when he was nine. He is the oldest of four kids. Having three siblings is very hard. When he was young, Dan wanted to be a farmer. He loved plants and found them very interesting. Later on in his life he wanted to be a dentist. Dan wanting to be a dentist was surprising because now he is a science teacher. Though being a farmer has kind of carried on through his life until now. Dreaming of what he wanted to be was not the only thing that he did… Dan was a troublemaker.

One of the things he and his siblings did was convince his babysitter to play hide and seek. This doesn’t seem too bad except Dan had a plan. He convinced his babysitter to hide under the porch which had a door and deadbolt lock on the outside. When she was inside he lock her in. Then they made her promise to give them all sorts of stuff. When she got out she told their parents and they didn’t get any of the stuff.

“That got me grounded for the longest.”

Dan loved school. He liked all of his subjects.

“If you would of asked me back then I would of said recess or lunch was my favorite. But actually I liked all my subjects I just didn’t want to admit it“.

He had very good grades. Dan’s teachers thought he was a good kid even though sometimes he wasn’t.

When it came to getting into college Dan got into his first choice. At the University of North Carolina Dan studied biology and chemistry. He did some pretty wacky things in college. One day a guy down the hall from him went around shaving people’s heads. Dan thought that it would be cool to shave his head completely bald.

“I wore a lot of hats that week”.

That was a bad idea.

After college Dan went to Hawaii worked a science teacher for two years. In Hawaii Dan learned new things and had some cool experiences. He learned to surf the blue waves of the North Pacific Ocean. Every day after he was done teaching for the day Dan would go and surf. Surfing wasn’t the only thing Dan did in Hawaii. Dan is very athletic and loves to run. He ran in two marathons. Dan did all of this well also coaching an eighth grade basketball team. When he was done in Hawaii Dan came to New York.

In New York he got a job teaching at LREI. This is his third year here. He really likes the community. How we all do things together and everyone gets to use their strengths.

“The basketball teams, and we all go on field trips.”

In science class Dan comes up with creative ways to teach. He also is a coach for the intramural basketball teams. Dan also has gerbils, he likes to keep track of their genes so he can figure out what their parents genes are. But Dan doesn’t live at school like he sometimes says.

Out of school Dan likes to run. He has mileages goals that he tries to meet. And Dan like to hang out with friends. That’s Dan Bobrowski the Middle school science teacher.

In humanities we just finished a book called Parzival. Parzival is a book about a boy who doesn’t know his own name. He sets out on journey to learn about the world, and goes on an amazing adventure. When we finished the book we had to write a essay about it. We learned how to do a essay but didn’t feel fully sure I was ready. Even though there was a prompt for each sentence and there was a choice of topics it seemed confusing, I like to free write and  am still working on other kinds of writing like essays there are so many thing to do and requirements that I get confused.

First we had to the come up with the thesis statement then we had to the body paragraphs which had a topic sentence, evidence, explanation, analysis then a conclusion. My thesis was Parzival goes on a journey and becomes king by his own free will because he is kind, brave, and determined. For each body paragraph we had to use one of the qualities to show how he became king. We couldn’t use the same words over and over again like for brave I had to come up with a different word for brave each time. Writing the Parzival essay was a challenge for me but I got throught it.

Here it is:

Free Will

By Ruby  

Would you be who you are without free will? Without free will everyone would just sit around and wait for fate and nothing would happen. In the book, Parzival, by Katherine Paterson, a young boy named Parzival starts to grow up not knowing about the world or even his own name, but then he chooses to go find out who he is. Parzival goes on a journey and becomes king by his own free will because he is kind, brave, and determined.

Parzival becomes king because he is caring to those around him. On page 41, after Parzival wins a battle for the kingdom, he makes sure that everyone has food instead of taking the feast he is offered. He fought a battle for a kingdom that he just came upon, then shared the feast. This shows that he is very kind. No one tells him what to do, he makes his own choices. Not only was he caring, but Parzival also never gives up.

Parzival rises to power because he’s determined. On page 49 he finds his way up Wild Mountain. He was told of a place that needed help so he was determined to be chivalrous and make things right. Parzival made his way up Wild Mountain without help but at the top it was more wild there was a mystery but there was a position he had to ask  Not only was Parzival decisive he’s adventurous.

Parzival took the throne as a result of free will and his bravery. On a lot of pages he is brave but one but on page 35 he showed his bravery. On 35 he offers to fight for a kingdom that he didn’t know. This shows that he is very brave to go fight against a king that was destroying a kingdom that he had just come upon. Without Parzival’s bravery, he never would have become king.

Parzival made lots of choices of his own free will. Without his choices he would never get anywhere or do any of the great things he did to become a great king and hero. Parzival helped many people with just being brave, kind and determined. Malala believed she could do something and she had her own qualities to help people. Malala is someone is fights for female education she wrote a book about it, and she got shot in the head and she won the Nobel Prize.

Our class went to Ashoken, where we had a lot of fun and we did a lot of different activities.  The best activity at Ashoken was blacksmithing because we learned something new, we did something that we can’t do at home, and we got to take something that we made home. But even thought this was so fun, we had to be careful not to burn ourselves. Everyone was so exited to tack your turn that it was hard to just sit on the bench where we had to wait. After we finished, we felt so energized and we couldn’t believe that we had actually made something that cool. On the other hand, with good comes bad…

The worst thing about Ashoken was the bathrooms because they smelled like rotten fish, they were too crowded, and the showers were freezing. Everyone had to shower and lots of people wanted to, but the showers were cold and kind of gross after everyone showering in them. The bathroom itself was horrible too; there was water on the floor and a lot of people slipped on it. One of the other problems was that there were a lot of people and not enough room. The sinks were crowded and there were long line for the toilets and showers. Let’s just say that it’s not fun in the bathrooms at Ashoken.

 

In humanities we are reading a medieval story. Our assignment was to draw a charter from the book. My partner and I drew Unferth a drunk man who is obsessed with being evil and works at the castle. One of the problems was that me and my partner Oni are in different groups so we had to talk after and before class and the other problem was that I’m not good at drawing.