Ending of 8th Grade :(

      Can you believe it? Yesterday was just like the beginning of the year! We were having fun with our friends and doing everything like normal. But today, we finally start paying more attention to the people around us and know that some of them are leaving. Everything is going so, so fast that we don't have enough time to adapt to the fact that we will loose our lovely friends. But we will just have to face it.
      8th grade had been an amazing year. It's full of both happiness and sadness, but we all end up having fun. Sometimes, our teachers give us tons of work to do in just a short amount of time. I am sure we all got stressed, but we didn't spend much time on that. Instead, we started working and tried to finish them as soon as possible, and made it!
      Now, the year is ending, and the time has finally come for us to get what we deserve, a longgg break, where we can go have fun with our family and friends.

Napoleon ... The Theme Park

After reading an article about a future Napoleon theme park, I think that this is a very creative and good creation for everybody, especially for future generations. Sometimes, children don't want and don't care about learning history, but by creating this theme park, children from all over the world can come and learn the history of Napoleon while having fun.
Nobody likes being forced to do something they do not like, instead, the majority of people in the world like having fun, and they tend to learn more while having fun. So, to fix the problem of children's hard time learning, if they visit the Napoleon theme park, it will very likely help them learn more about the history of Napoleon. Furthermore, this theme park will also be a spark to children's appreciation and love for history.
After visiting this theme park, they may start to search for books about other topics on history and maybe create another theme park in the future.

You can read the article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17397172

Is courage something you have to be born with, or can you develop it?

               Courage is something we can develop throughout our life. It doesn't matter if we're not born with it, because if we have a goal, and we aim for it, we will eventually get to it. Everything in our life depends on us and how wise we make our decisions. We can take action now to develop our courage. For example, if we want to develop our physical courage, we have to take action trying to do something we may not think we can do it. One person who demonstrates this courage is "Dab", who lives in Thailand. He was born with polio, and he had no hope in his future, until one day, he started to develop physical courage and began doing break dances with his crutches. This reveals that even if their are obstacles in our life, we can overcome them by developing courage. 

Jan. 27 - Trip to Day Care Center! :)

                On January 27^th, my classmates and I went to Day Care Center in Pattaya, Thailand to help take care of the children there and see how life is like. There were a total of 3 activities for us to do; sweeping the yard, help clean and organize the food storage, and playing with the kids.

                We were broken up into 3 small groups and rotated at each station. The first station I went to was the children’s classrooms to help them work. When we got there, the teacher’s assistant told us there were 3 classrooms with children ages 3, 4, and 5. My small group and I decided to go visit the 4 year olds. When we entered the classroom, the 2 teachers leaded the children into singing and acting to a song they have practiced for our coming.

                After the introduction was done, the teachers and their assistants helped pass out coloring books to each student along with baskets of colored pencils.  Then, it was time for us to help them with their coloring books. It was fun at first and I thought they were cute, but in about 10 minutes, when I was helping kid A, kid B asked me for my help so I went to help kid B. I didn’t it was something to be mad about, but kid A got angry at kid B and punched him and swore extreme bad words. I got shocked because I never thought these kids would fight or knew any swear words since they are just 4. So, I tried to stop them and helped both of them at the same time. 

                After our time with the children was up, we were taken to the Day Care Center’s food storage where we helped them tidy up supplies and ingredients in the correct shelves with the correct labels. It was hard work, but from that experience, I got to cooperate with everybody and worked hard. For some reason, we didn’t get to the last station, but stayed at the food storage until the end. When the time was up, we took some photos, said goodbye and thank you, and went to lunch.

From this field trip, I have learned new things, like working in the food storage, tidying up things and having cooperation, taking care of smaller children, etc. (I also learned that 4 year old kids know lots of extreme swear words and punch each other. :S) Although working in the food storage required hard work and we all got very tired with aching knees, it was a fun trip and we learned new things from this experience. J

 

Are Patriots Terrorists? - Boston Tea Party

          On January 18, 2012, in Ms. Torie's class, we had a socratic seminar about the Boston Tea Party. On December 1773, patriots went disguised as Mohawk Indians and sneaked up onto 3 British ships stored with tea chests.  The British knew that the colonists wouldn't pay the tax for the tea, but they still insisted on bringing the tea and the royal governor of Massachusetts said that the ships shall not return with the cargo, but with the tea unloaded.
          The patriots smashed the tea chests and dumped them overboard. Not that they didn't know it was precious, but they were trying to reveal the message, which was to stop the taxation on tea.
          In my opinion, the patriots are not terrorists, they know that the tea is very valuable, but they are just sacrificing to try to send the bigger message. It's just like the red shirts and yellow shirts today in Thailand. Both sides love Thailand, but they are doing what they think is right, but they just don't have the same perspectives. Also, I don't think it is fair at all for the British to tax everything, even tea. It is just too much. The patriots and other colonists are also people, they should have equal rights! What if the patriots haven't done this? Then maybe all this taxing won't stop and they can't gain their rights.