#9 Bollywood

i read an article on the first bollywood movie. it was titled Raja Harishchandra. it was made in 1913 in india and it had no sound and was black and white. since it was a long long time ago, they caste men as the entire cast because women werent in the movie buisness yet. the movie was based on the legend of King Harishchandra, recounted in Ramayana and Mahabharata. its plot consists of a noble and righteous king, Harishchandra, who first sacrifices his kingdom, followed by his wife and eventually his children to honor his promise to sage Vishwamitra. Though, in the end, pleased by his high morals, the Gods are pleased and restore his former glory, and give him divine blessings. this movie was a huge success in the movie buisness and lead to more interesting bollywood films.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raja_Harishchandra

#8 Culture

i read an article on the dragon dance. this dance takes place in china during their Chinese new year. it dates back to the Han Dynasty and has a specific look. This dragon has the horns of a stag, the ears of a bull, the eyes of a rabbit, the claws of a tiger, and the scales of a fish down the long body of a serpent. this is because the Chinese people believe it is so the creature can walk on land, fly through the heavens, and swim through the waters. the dragon dance is very important and one has to have skill to be involved. one person is the head of the dragon while the others are under the serpent body. the head controlls where the serpent goes and how it gets there. it is said that the longer the body of it, the better good fortune they will get. the dragon head has many colors on it. The color green on the dragon stands for an extraordinary harvest, yellow is for the solemn empire, prosperity is represented by gold or silver, red is excitement, and the dragon's scales and tail are silver symbolizing joy. this is a breathtaking performance and i hope to one day see it.

http://www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-dragon-dance.htm

#7 Change

When i read the book Speak, i see how much change Melinda goes through. she has been dealing with change for a long time. after getting raped at a party she knew her life was going to change forever. she used to have so many friends. and after she called the police to tell of her rape, everyone was mad at her for ruining the party and the cops getting a couple of people arrested. besides not having friends, her relationship with her family changed too. before she wasnt on super good terms with her parents, but now she doesnt even talk to them. she has trouble saying anything to anyone at all. im sure everyone is wondering whats wrong, but at the same time they dont care. she has to deal with this change because she cant change what happens in the past, she can only change whats in the future.

#6 Hope

For this blogging assignment we were supposed to read a text on hope. I am reading the book Prep right now and hope ties in with this story because the main character is a shy person. she has many dreams of which to have many friends. she hopes people will notice her and her unique qualities. after hoping that she'll make friends, she decides to put an effort into meeting people. she begins to cut peoples hair in the dorms for free. by doing so, she becomes recognized and noticed by fellow classmates. she didnt just hope to get fiends either, she hoped of having a boyfriend. after people started noticing her and knowing who she was, more boys talked to her and later she met a guy who went on to being her boyfriend. without hope she might have given up on her dreams. but she prevailed and triumphed over her struggle of being shy.

#5 Religion

My article had to do with hinduism and their beliefs and rituals. one thing that struck me as interesting was the ceremonies they do for new born children. some of the things they do when a child is born is to touch the baby's lips with a metal spoon or ring that is dipped in honey. another thing they do is have a ceremony of the childs first solid food which is usually cooked rice. when the child goes into their first haircut, they usually shave it to make the hair thicker and to give the hair to a deity. then the child has their ear(s) peirced and that is a specific ritual they preform. For a death in the family they usually resort to cremation but, if a child dies they burry him/her. after a funeral they undergo a purifying bath. hindu rituals are very different from ours in america, but they are very interesting.

http://atheism.about.com/od/hindusandhinduism/a/IndiaRituals.htm

#4 Gender Roles

People say that gender roles are diffrent today because we have become less descriminative about women in our society. i think that is an obsered statement. theres a part in society that people say that men are always better than women. I read an article in seventeen magazine about how a girl was held at gunpoint by a cop because she was a women and he was going to rape her. at the end of the article it showed ways to prevent bad things happening to girls at night. men never have to deal with the fear of someone stalking them on the way to their car or getting raped on their way to get fire wood for their family like the women in darfur have to deal with. these criminals feed on the fear that women have of being alone or being scared something is going to happen. i hope that one day gender roles of men and women could be equal.

#3 Different Culture

After reading the book Twilight, i realized that even though they live in the same time as us and in the same country, they still have a culture different than ours. Vampires in that book don't sleep in coffins or kill people for thier blood. But, they do have other elements in our life different than ours. first, they cant eat normal food, they must drink blood. could you imagine if all of us had to do that? that would be disgusting, some people faint at the sight of blood, so that could be a problem. second, they cannot go outside when it is really sunny. on sunny days they would stay out of school because the sun would expose their identity. here, we are lucky when we have a nice, warm, sunny day. lastly, they cannot have children. most women in our culture if they found out they couldnt have children because a lot of people love kids. overall im glad im not a vampire. it would be nice to be able to not get cold, run super fast,have impecible strength, and knock out looks. but being a human is good enough for me.

#2 Struggle

I am currently reading Speak. This novel is about a girl who is over coming her struggle of being raped. when she attended a party in the summer, an older football player did this to her. ever since that night she has had trouble speaking about it or anything else for that matter, thus the title speak. Melanie can barely relate to her other schoolmates because she feels incapable of saying anything to anyone at all. So she faces this dificulty of trying to come up with the words to say and how to say them. i really like this book so far. i usually like books with a lot of dialougue, but this story really illustrates what is going on. i would recomend this book to anyone because it is a story that captures you in a world where you dont belong; and i think most of us can relate to that durring a certain point of our lives.