Brunelleschi's Dome

Looking at Brunelleschi’s past and his achievements, I think he had a lot of courage. When he went to present his idea of the dome, he had to stand up to a lot of very important people. He was disapproved, everybody thought he was absolutely nuts. He was scared and embarrassed after his presentation, so he stayed home for a few days. He thought of a better idea to represent his idea, maybe even without words. He showed his idea with an egg; an egg has a dome shaped top. He asked the gentlemen (there were no women) to balance the egg on its bottom. Everybody failed, and Brunelleschi showed his idea, slamming the egg slightly on the table. He balanced it properly without allowing it to fall. The gentlemen were flattered and jealous, Brunelleschi’s idea had worked. I think this showed a lot of courage of him. Even though he was disapproved, he came back with another idea and was not afraid. To me this showed how he found the idea of the dome and also his allowance to be the one to build it.

Funky Ideas

A lot of times new ideas come from peers or siblings, but most of the time really it comes form your imagination and the way you think. Sometimes new ideas come from past experiences and memories. So the quote that concludes this, is that scientis have proven ideas simply form in the brain: "All ideas come from the brain, whether it was formed in the head or said to the person.

My Favorite Short Story From the Unit

During the unit of short stories, we read three short stories: The Sniper, Lamb to the Slaughter, and Thank You, Ma'am. When I had to chose a favorite I decided to choose the one that had an interesting plot, and different ideas through out the story, which I thought was Thank You Ma'am. The author of this short story was Langston Hughes, reading his story, I thought that the things that happened in the story happened to him as a young boy. It excited me by the action in the beginning and the continuous suprises. I enjoyed this unit a lot!

Love can be shared, but never bought.

Discovering what I believe in was easy. But expressing it in a good way so that people will understand what I mean was not as easy. I practiced, wrote drafts and talked to my parents about it. Finally, I got a few interesting ways to express myself.

Almost every morning, I walk into my grade’s deck. I say: “good morning” and “hello” to people and wait for a response. One day people don’t respond and look at me as if I’m crazy, and I feel rejected. But when the next morning I ask the same person again, they smile and happily respond with a rather long answer. Every time this happens, I think to myself: “that’s weird…”

That’s why I think sometimes people are rather harsh, and sometimes the same people are friendly and very nice. I think this shows mood-swings, but also love that emerges from people, which sometimes may take time. It shows kindness and respect to another even though we are just children in the seventh grade.

At school, we have house t-shirts, and on the back of those it says a few important words which I like to relate this piece of writing to. The words are: honesty, kindness, responsibility and respect.

I believe that love exists in everybody. Some people may not see it or notice it yet, but everybody has it in them since they were born as a baby. That’s why I believe in the life-style of animals, in fairness, honesty, kindness, responsibility and respect. I even sometimes believe in myself. Having talked to my parents, they say I should believe in myself a lot more.

Whatever you believe in, I know that it is ok, and I hope everybody does and that it‘s fine to share your feelings and thoughts. That is why I share what I believe in with my heart and with pride, and especially my love.

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Battle for the English Throne

The game we I played as a class in my 7th grade Humanities class, was educational. It is a game where you can choose what you want to select (multiple choice). When you click the right answer you have another ch0ice of two selections. Everytime you pick an answer, something would happen. What I enjoyed about the game were the reactions of the voices, especially the foot-soldiers. I learned what were the consequences when you picked the wrong answer. The Battle of Hastings (where the game was based on), occured in Hastings in the south of England in 1066. William Duke of Normandy, attacked from the south after a ruthless battle in the North. Harold Godwinson (English) arrived at night where they attacked immeadatly when the Normans were still sleeping, killing hundreds. The English set up a shield wall just on top of the hill of Hastings, that is how they dominated the battle. After a number of fake retreats and side and back attacks by William, Harold falls, and William wins and becomes King of Enlgand. I think this is a good learning experience because for kids playing a game as homework motivates them, and it was another way of sending the knowledge to the kids in my class.

The Life of a Teenage Girl

In the Historical Fiction Novel: Catherine Called Birdy written by Karen Cushman, Catherine the main character leads a complicated and extremely frustrating life of a teenage girl. The story is led without gender equality, with the lack of freedom and the power of the church, which takes place in the Medieval Britain. Girls and women meant absolutely nothing in those times; they were ignored and only used for the boring and hard work of life. Men had the power over everything; they would decide what people were going to do, instead of people deciding for themselves. Since Catherine is a girl, she was nothing, the only thing that made her more important was that she was the daughter of a country knight, who had a village and a dozen servants. She had no freedom, since she had to learn how to be a lady and learn how to do the hard and boring work. In Medieval time, the Church was more important and more powerful that now. Every day there was a day for a particular saint which was different every day. It would be celebrated if it was your own saint’s day. Girls had a hard time staying happy in the days where men were in power, where freedom was only to men, and where the Church changed everybody’s lives.

The Black Void

I called this story the black void because there were a lot of relationships with the color black, and this void was totally endless. I expected that the person with the black dot would leave the community to keep it simple and small. Because the lottery gave me a feeling of that it wasn’t nice, it made me think that people would leave the “village”. I really wanted to know how this cruel thing was going to end, but I also didn’t want to read it because I expected it to be ugly. I totally followed the instructions because I opened it the day afterwards. I hoped not to get the black dot because in the story it was a bad thing so I thought it would be bad in our world too.

After all the tension with the black box the lottery itself came and the box was the most important thing in the story for a while and the tension created by the pieces of paper made this very scary and un-expecting. When I read the end of the story I was very thrilled and thought it was a totally mad story when I did like it in the beginning. My predictions weren’t correct, but were pretty close so I felt proud for coming pretty close. If the author would have described more about the stones it would have easily made sense in very less seconds.

Leaving a void in this story created our tension and questioning after a while, because it totally didn’t make sense with so many voids cramped up together, which made a big void, and made it pretty weird.

This big void created a lot of power, which made us all question and want to keep on knowing something, which creates frustration and when frustration is created it is a lot of power I may say.