Scene and Characters for A Midsummer's Night Dream

I think that the two characters I would like to the play the most would either be Puck or Bottom. Those two provide most of the comedy of all the characters. Bottom has a very funny voice and has many ideas of how to solve problems. Puck can change into anything he wants in order to play tricks on people. I personally would not mind having this trait so I think it would be very interesting to play someone who does this. I think that both Puck and Bottom are the funniest of all the characters and therefore would be the most fun to play.
Although these characters would be fun to play they would also be very tricky to play because of the way they change their voices or bodies. I think that bottom would be played as someone who is very loud and always speaks his mind. He is always the first person to answer a question and even though he does it in a funny way, his answer is usually very helpful. One of the reasons he gets so many laughs is because of the way he exaggerates the voices. When ever he talks as a girl he talks very, very high. And whenever he talks as another guy he talks very, very low. This overemphasis makes the play a lot funnier and Bottom's character a lot more fun to play. Puck is very mischivous. He always likes to play jokes no matter how much harm it may cause or even when he does it on accident he still laughs about it. His job is to make Oberon laugh, however, he seems to try to make himself laugh more than Oberon. Puck can also change shapes which is a great way to play a pramk on someone. Puck enjoys the thing he can do better than anyone else which makes it even more enjoyable for him. Overall, Puck may be a bit cruel, but he merely thinks that everyone will find the same things that he finds funny, funny as well. This causes him to be a bit more cruel and michivous than he needs to be.
For Bottom I think the scene that I would like to do the most would be in Act 1, Scene 2; lines 68-107. This is where Quince is handing out parts and Bottom wants to play each one. This is a great scene that shows Bottom's over-the-topness and how good he is at playing all different parts and how his voice can change so dramatically. Another scene that Would be fun to play as Bottom is in Act 3, Scene 1; lines 121-164. In this part, Puck has just turned Bottom's Face into an ass and then Titinia wakes up and falls in love with Bottom whose face is an ass. This part is one of the funniest in the book so far and shows how quick Bottom can change his mind. At first he doesn't believe that Titinia could actually like him but then very soon he changes his mind and starts to love this new attention.
The scene I'd like to play for Puck is the beginning of Act 3, Scene 2; lines 6-37. This part is when Puck reports to Oberon that Titinia has fallen in love with an ass. This part shows all the sides of Puck. How he is so happy to acomplish hi job. How funny he thinks it is that she is in love with an ass. And while he reports you can tell how happy he is by his voice that gets very high and very excited. This part shows how mischivous Puck is and how much he enjoys messing with people.

Flat world reflection

1. The thing I liked best about this project was the podcasts of everyones story. The reason I liked this was because it allowed us to get to know the people who's story we listened to even better. One of the main goals of this project was not only to write a paper but also to interact from different kids around the world. I learned a lot about them by reading their papers but I learned the most about them by listening to other kid's stories. Listening to stories allowed me to do two things: First, it allowed me get to know the person better by hearing their voice. It's like an aim conversation verses a phone coversation. If you meet someone for the first time over the phone, you feel like you know the person a lot better than if you just type to them on aim. Second, it allows us to realize what parts of their story are most important. Because we have different cultures, they would emphasize different things than we would in their stories. By listening to the story we can tell what is important by how they read it. This also makes the story more enjoyable. The podcasts were very fun and helpful.

2. The thing I liked the least about this projects was that we had to correct a different thing each week on the other persons paper. One week it was word choice and the next week it was sentence fluency. I didn't like this because I don't think it allowed people to be as helpful as possible. There might have been some people that realized that one part of a story needed a lot of work but because they were assigned to correct something else, didn't fix it. This is bad because the person won't get the best feedback possible which will make their story not as good as it could possibly be. It is also bad because if we are correcting something that the paper already does very good, there's really nothing we could do. We should be able to correct whatever we felt like needed the most work.

3. One surprising thing about some other students was how blatantly some plagiarized. Some students almost exactly copied famous fairy tails such as Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. They used the same characters and changed only the smallest details. They only changed it after three or four people said how much alike it was to these fairy tails. And even after they tried to fix it, you could still tell the concept was the same even though they changed the characters and a few other things. I was very surprised at how lax other schools plagiarism policies were.

4. Honestly, I don't think that this project didn't helped my writing that much because it was reviewed in a way that we will probably not need in the future. It took us six weeks to correct our paper which is a lot longer than we will normally have. I also feel that the feedback I recieved was not ground-breaking. The stuff they told me to correct was stuff I already knew I had to correct but I had to wait until the certain week to do it. And sometimes the feedback that I received was just lazy. For example, the week we were correcting word choice, someone told me to use the thesaurus so that I could have bigger words. The only thing it helped me realize was that I should pay more attention to having all six categories in my writing the next time I write a fictional paper. Overall, I don't think that this project helped me become a better writer.

5. The most challenging part of this project for me was making this story interesting. Because I chose a story that had a very good point but was not very interesting, it was hard to add fictional parts to the story to make it more interesting while at the same time making sure that I still get my point across. The main point of my story was that my dad was honest and returned money he had been overchanged when he was very young the next day he found even more money lying on the street. It was hard to make interesting because I had to think of a believable but exciting event that made my dad decide to return the money and realize that what he was doing was stealing. It was hard to be creative but believable at the same time.

6. The most important advice I can give to future students is to make sure that you have pretty much your whole story done before it starts getting corrected. If you don't, not only will you start to fall behind but you're story will not end up as good in the end. When people see a partially done story they don't correct very well since it's not done. Also, for the rest of the story you hadn't finished, that part will miss some very important corrections which will cause that part to not be as good as possible. Even if you're story is not great, write out the whole thing before you start recieving corrections. That will make sure you won't fall behind and you're story will be even better because you recieve better corrections.

7. Overall, I think that with a few tweaks in terms of how we correct the papers, this project can be very good. It allows us to get to know other cultures and other kids at the same time as we do school work. Because of the interaction it could become a very fun way to get you're story corrected instead of just having the teacher correct it and just hand it back to you. It would also be very helpful because we would learn how to correct other people's papers better which would allow us to correct our own papers better in the future. Right now this is a fun project and with a few changes with the way we correct it could be a fun, and very helpful writing project.

Helena Characterization For Act 2, Scene 2

In act 2, scene 2, of A Midsummer Night's dream, Helena continues to be the same one dimensional character as before. She does not realize that Demetrius will never love her and she still continues to put herself down in order to give her a reason as to why Demetrius chose Hermia over her.
In this scene demetrius directly tells Helena to leave him alone and to stop chasing him but yet she does not. This again proves how obsessed she is and how she will do anything just to be in his presence. The only reason she would allow herself to be verbally abused by Demetrius so much is because she feels she needs to spend as much time as possible with him. This also shows how little self confidence she has because these remarks that he makes to her would hurt any other person, however, she is not fazed by these comments. She brushes them off as if they were the norm, which they are.
In this scene we also get direct evidence of how she views herself. She calls herself as ugly as a bear because beasts that meet her turn around and run away. We already know that this is not true. She is just as beautiful as Hermia, but because her self confidence is so low, she views herself as ugly as a bear. As I've said before, she says this not only because she has low self confidence, but also because it gives her a reason to think that Demetrius chose Hermia for a superficial reason. We see this when she says that because of her looks, it is impossible to rival Hermia in the chase for Demetrius. This again proves that Helena can not accept the fact that Demetrius chose Hermia because she was the better person, not just the most beautiful.
Overall, Helena does not change at all in this scene. Instead this scene shows how lowly she thinks of herself in greater detail. In any messed up love story there always seems to be the crazy obsessed girl who lusts after the man she can never have, and in this story, Helena is that girl.

A Midsummer Night Dream Character Analysis

Shakespere's A Midsummer Night Dream is full of many interesting and different characters. One of the most interesting is Helena. She is in a very tough predicament, she is madly in love with a man (Demetrius) who is about to marry another woman (Hermia). However, Hermia does not love Demetrius, but Demetrius loves Hermia. The only reason they plan to get married is because Hermia's father wants Hermia to marry him. If that's not crazy enough, we find out that while Demetrius was trying to get Hermia to fall in love with him, he slept with Helena. Basically, this is a very messed up love square.
Helena, unfortuneately, is in the worst position because nobody loves her. However, she is not only in love with Demetrius, she is obsessed. She chases after Demetrius in parts of the story to try to convince him to marry her. She also goes up to hermia to tell her how jealous she is of her and that she wishes she could be as fair or as beautiful as her. Hermia tries to be nice and says that she's not trying to take her man, but that no matter how much she pushes him away, the more he seems to want her. This causes Helena to become even more jealous and asks her to teach her how to do what she does. She is so madly in love that she doesn't realize she has no chance at all even though she knows Demetrius hates her. She is obsessed over a man and is in denial that nothing will ever happen between them.
In this book we find out that Helena is as pretty, if not more than Hermia. However, she does not view it this way. She sees herself as much uglier than Hermia which gives her an excuse as to why Demetrius doesn't like her. She cound not stand the fact that she is just as beautiful as hermia, yet Demetrius chose Hermia. Because of this, I think that her character would be very pretty but she would try to dress down so that she does not look as beautiful as Hermia. She would not put on make up or wear nice clothes in order to not look as good as hermia. This makes her feel better about herself because it makes her feel like it was a superficial reason that made Demetrius choose hermia over her instead of a personal reason. She would also not have much self-confidence because she has to go around begging to people to help her get what she want. She can't do anything on her own. Her character would be very needy.
She would also act very similarly as to how she looks. She doesn't want to look pretty so she'll act like other people are prettier than her and say that she isn't beautiful at all. She would act as though nothing ever goes her way in order to get sympathy from other people. She would complain how this one thing ruined her life in order to get people to feel sorry for her. This relates to her neediness because she wants to feel love, but the closest thing she can get is sympathy. She would focus too much on having other people give her what she wants instead of going out there and getting it for herself.

Sustainability Fair

Today our school had a sustainability fair on campus. It was to teach us how big the problems our earth has right now but to also to show us how much of a difference doing small things can make. The fair had about 10-15 booths; each teaching us about a different way to help our earth. One booth taught us about global warming. Another booth taughts us about the trash that was killing animals who got caught in plastic debris. There was even another booth taught us about how one 4th grade class raised money by recycling alluminum cans so that they could adopt three endangered tigers from a zoo. Because of the new HI-5 program, they recycled all their cans which got them $0.05 each instead of throwing them out and wasting good money. Not only that but they used the money to help protect endangered animals. We have all heard on the news about more and more of our animals going extinct and what a big problem is and this made me realize that if 4th graders can help just by recycling I should be able to do something to.
Another thing I already knew but that they were emphasizing at the fair was that we have just built a new middle school that is the greenest in the country. Everything possible was made environmentally friendly. The lockers were made out of recycled milk cartons, the desks and chairs were also made out of recycled products. In fact pretty much the whole foundation of the new middle school was made out of recyclables. All of the rooms are also heated by solar power instead of electricity which takes advantage of the fact that it's almost always sunny here.
Another cool thing about the fair was that they had many different posters all over the room that gave us information about how wasteful we are and how easily we could help make a difference. One poster said that we throw away aboit 4lbs worth of garbage away each day. Most of that is either uneaten food or products that could be recycled. Considering how many people in this world are starving we should realize how much we waste and try to use everything that we buy so that there will be more for other people. Another interesting fact is that by recycling one alluminum can, you could power a tv for up to three hours. I love to watch tv and I probably waste a lot of electricity by watching so much. But knowing this information its a win/win because if I recycle one can that I would have thrown away a help the environment and I don't have to feel guily about wasting so much electricity. Probably the biggest and most startling fact that I learned today was that the amount of paper and would we throw away every year is enough energy to heat 50 million houses for 20 years. That's huge. If we recycled all of our paper and wood instead of wasting it we could heat up to half the worlds homes each year. And if we keep recycling that amount of paper and wood each year we could keep doing that for years and years. That would provide so many familys that are in need with warmth each year.
So the next time you're about to throw something out look at it first to see if it could be recycled. Because if we all do something small it translates into something huge.

Vocab for "A Song For a Barbarian Reed Pipe"

-Frenum: a fold of membrane that checks or restrains the motion of a part, as the fold on the underside of the tongue. (p. 164)
-Tauten: To be tightly drawn; tense; not slack. (p. 164)
-Rectify: to make, put, or set right; remedy; correct. (p. 170)
-Censers: A vessel in which incense is burned, especially during religious services. (p. 170)
-reparation: the making of amends for wrong or injury done. (p. 170)
-Guttural: of or pertaining to the throat. (p. 171)
-Recluses: Withdrawn from the world. (p. 182)
-Gesticulating: to make or use gestures, esp. in an animated or excited manner with or instead of speech. (p. 183)
-Rictus: the gape of the mouth of a bird. (p. 187)
-Camphoraceous: any substance having medicinal or aromatic characteristics similar to those of camphor. (p. 187)
-Slough: an area of soft, muddy ground; swamp or swamplike region. (p. 187)
-Trestle: a frame typically composed of a horizontal bar or beam rigidly joined or fitted at each end to the top of a transverse A-frame, used as a barrier, a transverse support for planking. (p. 188)
-Infanticide: the act of killing an infant. (p. 191)
-Hunkered: To squat close to the ground; crouch. (p. 198)
-Gabbings: to talk or chat idly; chatter. (p. 200)
-Desultorily: lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful (p. 208)

The words in this chapter describe one of the most important things to do in a chinese family; talking story. This whole book consists of different stories that Maxine went through in her life. The words show is in many different parts of the story how often chinese families talk story and how important it is. Maxine's mother cuts out her frenum so that she can talk more when she is little. This shows that in chinese it is better to talk more than less. However Maxine's mother also doesn't want her to gab senselessly. This shows that even though talking story is very important, the story should have some value and not just be a pointless story. They also talk a lot about how the voice sounds because the way a story sounds is just as important as the story itself. She uses the word guttural to describe the way a word should not sound. The word gesticulating also tells us that when they are talking story using motions emphasizes certain points more which helps the story become more alive.

Vocab for "At The Western Palace"

-Nauseating: to cause to feel extreme disgust. (p. 131)
-Demure: characterized by shyness and modesty; reserved. (p. 133)
-Annotated: to supply with critical or explanatory notes; comment upon in notes (p. 133)
-Tiers: A rank or class. (p. 135)
-Benevolent: characterized by or expressing goodwill or kindly feelings. (p. 136)
-Exasperated: to irritate or provoke to a high degree; annoy extremely. (p. 137)
-Proprietress: a woman who owns a business establishment. (p. 138)
-Connive: to cooperate secretly; conspire.
-Gesticulating: to make or use gestures, esp. in an animated or excited manner with or instead of speech. (p. 148)
-Waylay: to intercept or attack from ambush, as in order to rob, seize, or slay. (p. 149)
-Seeped: To pass slowly through small openings or pores; ooze. (p. 151)
-Guile: insidious cunning in attaining a goal; crafty or artful deception; duplicity. (p. 153)
-Dappled: a spot or mottled marking, usually occurring in clusters. (p. 153)

The words in this chapter tell us that this chapter is about work; more importantly, a chinese woman's work in America. The word proprietress lets us know that maxine's mom owns her own business. Words like such as nauseating and exasperated show us that the work she does along with the work that most new immigrants get is very hard and tiring.