Blog #1

Part 1: In this upcoming school year I'm excited all the projects we will be doing and I'm excited about the new class I am in. In humanities class I'm really excited about the Original Theater Production because it's going to be at an actual theater which will make it a little more challenging because we will have a bigger audience. I'm excited about reading Hamlet because I remember reading the graphic novel of Hamlet in 9th grade and it turned out to be very interesting. I think I'm also excited about the books we might be reading in humanities this semester.

Part 2:

"Go Ask Alice"

A book I read during summer was "Go Ask Alice" this book was recommended to me by my 10th grade humanities teacher, Maria Pelayo. After reading this book, Maria and I basically talked about the lessons of the book and how parents are the biggest influence on children and how they should really talk to their children about topics like drugs and what to do in such circumstances. Parents should really communicate with their children and know what's going on in their lives and help them with any issues they have.

I felt like this was a very sad and scary book. This book is a diary of a fifteen year old girl in high school who is a drug user. The first time she was introduced to drugs was in a party with the "popular kids" she went to while she was visiting her grandparents. Without knowing she drank a coke they gave her at the party with LSD in it. After that she kept trying different drugs and hanging out with the people at the party, which were only a bad influence for her. After that she started becoming a different person and left home two times. After the second time she left she came back and decided to become a good person to make her family and her grandparents proud of her. At her school she was known as a person who was once busted for having drugs and she sometimes felt lonely and scared and she felt like she shouldn't have been born. Her past would sometimes hunt her down but she tried her best to keep being a good girl no matter how hard it was or how lonely she felt or if the only people that supported her were her parents she still tried her best and at the end she decided she wasn't going to keep a diary and three weeks after that she died of an overdose. It is not known if it was an accidental overdose or a premeditated overdose. After reading that she died I was shocked and sad at the same time because she had been trying so hard the last months to stop using drugs and to make her family proud but at the end she wasn't able to make it and she died. All her hard work and effort and tears were basically not worth it because she died.

It was shocking that all this happened because of her "friends." They would invite her to parties and that's were they would trick her. Also the bad influences and friends around her made her use more and more drug. It was like if every time she tried to stop there was someone who would give her drugs. Even when she definitely decide to stop using drugs the "dopers" at her school kept calling her names and telling her that they were going to get her. They even put drugs once on a food she ate and that made her go to a mental hospital.

This book teaches you that drugs are very dangerous and that they can change a person so quickly. It can make someone do something they wouldn't do if they weren't on drugs and act crazy. It takes the people who use it to different worlds which they think its awesome but when they don't have it they feel horrible and like everything in the world is not worth it. One time Alice said that she felt like Alice in the Wonderland because of all the different shapes and colors she saw. Drugs can destroy a person's life and it can destroy the people around them. She would have probably been a successful psychologist in the future and have a happy life with Joel but because of drugs she died being so young and barely have lived anything. Drugs were the ones that lead her to her death and basically destroyed her life.

"The Color Purple"

Another book I read during summer was "The Color Purple" recommended to me by the senior, Kelsie Rich. After reading this book Kelsie and I basically discussed about the different lessons a person can learn by reading this book and also about women rights and how women were looked upon through out the book.

I felt like this was very interesting and sometimes sad book. I also felt it was unfair sometimes all the things that kept happening to the main character, Celie, and in general how the women were treated. Sometimes it made me mad the way most men thought they were better than women only because they were men. This book was mainly about Celie, a colored woman that was raped by a man she thought was her father but later finds out was her step dad. Later she was forced to marry someone she did not love just to care of his children and clean the house. She was robbed of the two children she had with her step dad and they were given to a couple, Samuel and Corrine. Later Celie's sister, Nettie, ends up working with Samuel and Corrine and traveling with them to Africa were she learns a lot about slavery and many different things and where she constantly keeps writing letters to her sister.

After a long time Celie finally finds the letters and starts to read them with her good friend Shug Avery, a very famous singer. Celie's son-in-law marries a girl named Sofia. Sofia taught Celie that women have to stand up for themselves and be independent and don't let men treat them like robots or maids. Throughout the book Celie changed a lot. She changed from being the "perfect wife" that did everything her husband told her to do with no excuses to a woman who knew who she was and stood up for herself.

This book talks about the way women were usually treated back then. How they were just there to do whatever her husband told her to do and be a "perfect wife." It also talks about color and how it made a difference in the way people in general looked at you or treated you. This book also talks about God and how most people think he's only at church but He is everywhere. It also talks about family and friendship and how it is very important in anyone's life.