May 9

Letter to Rifdah from Shabanu

Dear Rifdah,

 

I am Shabanu, a Muslim girl from Pakistan. I am a nomad and I just watched your documentary on the Koran by Heart! You were amazing! Your voice was beautiful and you don’t even speak Arabic! I wish I could do something as amazing as that, but I am set to get married to my cousin Murad next year. At least he’s handsome!! I first saw him a couple days ago and he has broad shoulders and a deep set square jaw. He has perfect hands! They’re as wide as a camel’s foot! And he has kind eyes, they are serious too, but mostly kind!

 

I live in the desert with my beautiful sister Phulan, Mama, grumpy Auntie, my two annoying little cousins and Dadi. Dadi is the one who has chosen for me to marry Murad. My sister was supposed to marry his brother Hamir, but Hamir died from a gunshot and we are still in mourning. I am not sure that Phulan will ever be the same again, her silky black hair is now in a mess and her perfect face has gone pale.

 

You’re lucky you have lots of people in your country, I am stuck traveling with just 6. There are more people in my country of course, there are actually 201,995,540 people in my country but I am stuck with just 6 of them. And you can imagine how sick of them you could get if you rarely saw anyone but them. But 392,960 people in a country is still a lot of people, and you actually get to see them, they’re not just a number to you! I bet you don’t get sick of them often.

 

I heard that your father wants you to be a housewife instead of a scientist which is what you want to do. I would like to know what it would be like to be educated, especially in math in science! But, our goal in the desert is to have many babies, preferably boys, because girls cannot provide. That is why one of my goals in life is to have babies with Murad and provide for my family that I will start to build next year when the wedding has ended. My sister says I am strange because I help Dadi with the camels and all the “men’s work” but we do not have any brothers and Phulan is much too pretty to have to stand out in the sweating sun caring for smelly camels! Mama says that Phulan and I are better than seven sons but I’m not so sure I believe her when she says that. Sometimes she gets this sad look on her face and looks pained, like she’s thinking really hard. I hate to think that by being born a girl I have burdened this family even more by not being a breadwinner, and that is why I will act like a boy as much as I can as long as I can. Of course, that behavior must stop when I am married because I am to be the perfect wife, quiet, timid, able to bear sons and able to cook, sew and care for children. Do you know how to cook, sew and care for children? I do mostly, but I am still learning!

 

I am worried for my family, my sister is no longer betrothed to anyone, Mama and Dadi will soon grow old like grandfather, Auntie is always grumpy and isn’t in a state to help out right now, yesterday, she lost her son while he was still in her stomach. I will not be married for another year and it is impossible to keep track of Auntie’s two little boys.

 

Now that I have told you all about my life, I would like to know a little about yours. I have always wanted to go to Cairo but I am almost certain I will never get the chance to. But… what is it like? Is it beautiful? Is it crowded? Is it perfect? Will you ever go back? Do you want to go back? Does your father want to you to go back ever? Can you teach me the Koran? It sounds so beautiful! I wish I could meet you in person but I am sure you have more important things to do, like studying the Koran even more, so I will leave you alone.

 

Sincerely,

   Shabanu

 

Category: Cattafi, Humanities, Sixth | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 20

Guilds!

Last night (4/19/17) we had our guilds! Over the course of 6th grade we have been studying medieval life and we learned about all different guild types. Then we were sorted into our guilds, and I was put in the Medicine guild. I chose to be a bonesetter apothecary. On the night of the guild we had already done a dress rehearsal for the 5th graders and we were all set and ready to go at our stations in our rooms.I had a lot of herbs laid out on my table as well as some recipes, aloe plants, cooked apples, pieces of felt and wooden dowels. At about 6:10 people started to pour into our room picking out their ailments and wandering around the room. At some points I had 6 or 7 people crowded around my small desk toughing my props and knocking over things but that only helped me get more into character. I had a monologue rehearsed and ready to go, but I found myself only using it on about two customers. By the end of the night I had come up with a completely knew monologue that I had memorized and I used that one instead. It worked much better than the original because it was shorter and I could put more energy into it also. As I stood behind my desk I felt my feet grow tired and my neck grow hot but the rest of my body was feeling more and more confident and excited. At the beginning of the night I felt like I was Stella Story, but by the end I felt like Agnes Grimmoult.

Category: Drama, Humanities, Sixth, Uncategorized | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 9

5th Grade Humanities

Good Morning! Hey, it’s morning somewhere!

In this Post I will talk about 5th Grade Humanities. This quarter we did a lot of projects but one of my favorites was My Personal Narrative. We made a story in our writer’s notebook and then a few weeks later we picked a sentence from that story that we could add on to and make more interesting. Here is my Personal Narrative:

The Lake

I went to a lake with my friends Chloe and her little sister Anuk from Germany. I met Chloe 2 days after I was born in the same hospital as her. She was born on May first and I was born on May second. She lived right next to central park in a brownstone and we would always go to her house on Saturday mornings. Then, two years ago Chloe, Anuk, her dad and her mom moved to Berlin in Germany because, her mom really wanted to go back and be in her home country.

My family and Chloe’s family were both in the same region of France without planning it so, we met up at lake and had a little reunion. Chloe’s mom and my mom had gone away to get pizza and look around the gorgeous town we were staying in so, me, Chloe, Anuk and Margot all went down to the beach and when we put our toes in we found out that it was connected to the ocean and it had tides. When we finally, finally got our bathing suits on we laid down and just listened to the sound of the beach. We heard: the soft sound of the water brushing up against the sand, the whap, thump, whap of the volleyball game going on behind us, the screams of the children and the shouts of the swimming instructors.

I saw a little sandbar poking out of the glassy water. I really wanted to go swim to it! I asked Chloe, Anuk and Margot if the wanted to try and swim there, and they all said yes and we’re super excited about it. We knew it would be lots of fun and that we could make it because we are all strong swimmers. What we didn’t know was that there was an extremely strong current we just knew there was a current and that there were really sharp, jagged rocks that can cut your feet if you just brushed your feet against them.

When we got in the water Anuk jumped right in and started doing the doggy paddle all the way to the sandbar. She started to drift with the current so I jumped in and held her and and we both swam to the sandbar. When Margot saw that I could do it she jumped and swam there no trouble at all. Chloe was a little hesitant but I helped her and when she could stand I let her go and sped ahead to make sure that Margot and Anuk were Ok. We chilled on the sandbar for about 15 minutes making sand castles, talking about the view and catching up because we hadn’t seen each other for two years.

All of a sudden the teal water started to creep silently up our sandbar. It was becoming high tide! We started to get really panicked because we knew rip tides and currents got stronger at high tide. I tried to get in the menacing water but as soon as I got up to chest height the water the current started to whisk me away. Anuk was already trying to swim back but the current was taking her away so fast that all you could see was her head. Chloe started to yell and wave her arms so that Florian would come rescue us but, his reaction was not quite what we expected. He just thought that she was waving so all he did was wave back and say “Hi”.

By now we knew we just had to get back to the shore no matter how far down the beach we got to the sand because, soon the whole sandbar was going to disappear. Three men saw us struggling and came into the water and let us hold onto them while they took us back to the sandbar to figure out a plan. They could stand in the water because all of them were about six feet tall. We got so lucky because they were three of the few people at the beach who were fluent in English. One guy was actually British he didn’t even know how to speak French.

At that point Florian had figured out what was going on and had jumped in the water even though he was in dry clothes to come help us back to shore.

The other three guys the beach where the highest the water went up was waist height so we got back must have know their way around this lake because they found a path back to safely. When we got back to our blanket my mom was there and so was Chloe’s and they thought that Florian had just taken us in the water made some friends and brought back the kids for some pizza and prosciutto. Long story short we had to tell them the entire thing so they would understand. As we did I watched the smiles fade off their faces and melt into looks of shock. For the next two hours Chloe and I did nothing but laugh at everything because we were in shock. Every single word any of us said triggered all of us falling onto the ground laughing.

A challenge with this piece for me was that In my all of this came from about 3 sentences in my notebook so, I didn’t really have anything to build on and I had to make it interesting.  I chose this piece because It is about some of my best friends that I have always wanted to see since they moved to Germany so it was cool to write about a memory that I had with them. The learning habit I focused was making a sentence even more interesting. Sometimes I would go back to a sentence and add scenery or sound to help it sound and be more interesting. From working on the piece I learned that you can always add more, there will never be enough to make it really interesting. I hope you liked my piece.      

 

Category: Brandstetter, Fifth, Humanities | LEAVE A COMMENT