Superior Skydiving Pecha Kucha

  Lyn Langlais did a Pecha Kucha on her passion for skydiving. I really liked how all her pictures were ones she took or ones taken of  her. She also was very passionate about her topic so it was easy to become interested in what she was talking about. Her pictures are what made me the most interested. To improve she needs to work on her talking, she stuttered and said "um" and "okay" many times. It needs to flow better.
 The presentation was pretty fast and seemed to be easy for her. I like the Pecha Kucha because of the set time and set amount of slides. It makes it really easy because you dint have to worry about it being to short. I will be able to fill my te slides because there are many place on my topic.

The City of Lost Children

Shenzhen is unlike many other cities in China, it isn’t known for its busy factories or its neon-lit shops it is now associated with abandon babies. For almost a decade, a baby has been abandoned almost every day somewhere in the city. Now Shenzhen is taking a controversial step to protect the abandon children. They are reintroducing the Foundling Wheel (well known in medieval Europe), where there will be incubators, blankets, oxygen on standby, and a button for parents to press to alert staff to the new arrival. This was frowned upon and provoked a national media outcry. People said that this would encourage parents to dump their unwanted children which is illegal in China.  “Abandoning a baby is a crime in our country, but during the process of committing this crime, babies are the victims. Since the root of the crime which is caused by various complicated issues cannot be solved in the blink of an eye, it is a good option to shift our focus to protecting those victims." said Peng Xizhe, a professor at Fudan University. ("China's City of Lost Children Brings in Shelters for Abandoned Babies; Shenzhen Is Introducing What Was Known in Medieval Europe as the Foundling Wheel: A Shelter Where Parents Can Leave Their Babies Safely and Anonymously." N.p., n.d. Web.) Inside the Social Welfare Centre there are 560 children currently living in the dormitories, half of them will eventually be adopted.  The other half are too mentally or physically ill for adoptive parents to cope with. Beside all these sad facts there is some good news: abandonments have steadily decreased as china grows wealthier. The Centre now only receives 100 to 200 children a year which is down by more than a third from five years ago.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10536358/Chinas-city-of-lost-children-brings-in-shelters-for-abandoned-babies.html)

Personally I think that, even though it’s against the law, the place to abandon babies is a safer option for parents to take their child to. With the family planning policy in China sometimes families are not allowed to have multiple children or they simply can’t afford it. Before parents would just dump their babies in the middle of nowhere they would freeze to death or other terrible things would happen to them.

Hyperlink:  http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA353777132&v=2.1&u=morenetspk&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w&asid=cbdcc0953035a36d450eb1268981cb3f

Citations:

"China's City of Lost Children Brings in Shelters for Abandoned Babies; Shenzhen Is Introducing What Was Known in Medieval Europe as the Foundling Wheel: A Shelter Where Parents Can Leave Their Babies Safely and Anonymously." N.p., n.d. Web.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10536358/Chinas-city-of-lost-children-brings-in-shelters-for-abandoned-babies.html

 

Racial Discrimination

 The theme for the three links is discrimination. I learned that looks can define how people look at you now and in the past. After 9/11 people that wore head scarfs or had an accent or even look to be Muslim were looked down upon.

 In 1985 a third grade teacher taught a two day lesson about racism and discriminating against people who look different. She started the first day by saying everyone with people with blue eyes were superior over people with brown eyes. Blue eyed children got five extra minutes of recess and were able to play on all the equipment and drink out of the water fountain, while brown eyed children couldn’t play on any equipment and they had to use paper cups to drink out of the water fountain. The blue eyed children started calling the brown eyed children “brown eyes” and they would get very offended even though they had brown eyes yesterday and the day before. It was the fact that the blue eyed children were told they were better than them and they were teasing them about it. The next day the brown eyed children were told they were superior and the blue eyed children were very upset about it.

At the end of the lesson she asked the kids how it felt to be discriminated and they all agreed that it made them upset being told “no” because of a physical feature they were born with, then the teacher asked if they thought that the African Americans and Indians were happy about being treated badly because color of their skin, all the children said that it wasn’t right and they were probably sad about it. The thing that surprised me the most was the card test that the teacher ran with the children, she had cards and timed a group of children with the same color eyes. The group that was “superior” that day was almost two-times faster than the day that they were the discriminated group. The kids said that the “racial” burden that was put on them mad them think slower.

Reading Responce 2

The book Trafficked is a action packed book, that is scary because this happens in real life daily. This is my first time reading this book, and I liked it a lot. I recommend this book to every teenage girl because its a topic that we need to learn and watch out for.
Hannah is a teenage girl growing up in Moldova (Europe) until her parents are killed in a terrorist bombing. While she’s still sad about her loss, she gets offered a job as a nanny for a Russian family in Los Angeles. She goes to America on fake passports and is very nervous but makes it into America.  In the beginning it seems like her luck has finally turned around, but living with the Platonovs family turns into a nightmare. The mother forces Hannah to work 16 hour days cleaning and helping around the house, and won’t let Hannah leave the house. The father, is full of secrets, and they refuse to pay Hannah. Stranded in a foreign land with false documents, no money, and nobody who can help her, Hannah has become a slave. And the more Hannah finds out about this family’s terrible secrets, the more her life is in danger. Scared and alone, Hannah reaches out to the boy next door, but in the end Hannah figures out she can only trust herself because everyone has secrets.

I think this is what Hannah felt like al the time because of her parents and her terrible life with the Platonovs.

Reading Response

Hunger Games is an action packed novel with a hint of romance. The Hunger Games in a very popular book; it is the first book in a three book series. I got this series for my birthday last year and I have read it a total of three times. I love how the author, Suzanne Collins, describes in detail the scenery and feelings.  This book is a must read for every age group! By far my favorite book!

This book takes place in Panem, is a very wealthy City surrounded by twelve Districts. Every year each district has to compete in the hunger games that the capitol puts on so that rebellions will not happen among the districts, so pretty much they just scare them into behaving. These games are aired on TV’s all through Panem. Katniss Everdeen from District 12 has to volunteer to take the place of her younger sister Prim after Prim's name is called forth to compete. Katniss doesn't want to hurt anyone but when it comes down to it her instinct is to fight and survive. When she starts to have feelings about the boy from her district, Peeta, who is competing too things get worse, and then she teams up with the Rue from District 11 and only one person can survive. Katniss says,

"The idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don't want him to die. And it's not about the sponsors. And it's not about what will happen back home. And it's not just that I don’t want to be alone. It's him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread."  (Page 297, Chapter 22).

The importance of this quote is to show how Katniss starts to feel about Peeta towards the end of the book. But who will it be? Rue or Peeta? Will she let them kill her so they can win? Or will she kill to save herself?

Fifteen Facts About Me

1. I have two older siblings, a 24 year old brother named Jacob and a 20 year old sister named Samantha.
2. I have two loving parents, Gina and Al Steffins.
3. I have a huge extended family.
4. I have a fear of spiders.
5. I have a fear of snakes.
6. I have a fear of clowns
7. I have a dog names Cici.
8. I hate feet.
9. My twin cousins that are six and their little that is two, I am with them ALL the time they are basically like my siblings.
10. I drive a jeep liberty.
11. My dream car is a jeep wrangler.
12. I work as a carry-out at price cutter.
13. My mom owns a daycare. She has anywhere between 2 and 10 kids a day.
14. I am the captain of the volleyball team here at Parkview.
15. My favorite type food is Chinese food.