Blog 7

When I look back on English 20-1 the main thing that stands out to me is the poetry anthology project. It was my favorite part of the year because we were given so much creative freedom, as well as time to work on the projects, that our finished products all turned out to be incredible. Not only was I extremely proud of my project but I loved coming in to class the day we turned them in to see what my classmates had created as well. Another thing that stands out is ‘The Road’. Have you ever looked at a painting that was wonderfully done, but the picture was so grotesque that you wanted to look away? Yet, you just could not bring yourself to look away. That describes my feelings toward ‘The Road’. I loved it, but at the same time I hated it. I have recommended it to almost everyone in my family and I still hope they can’t bring themselves to read it. I do not wish for them to take that painful journey. Finally for what we would change, I wish we got to read more. I loved doing the film studies of course, and all the projects were tons of fun, but reading has always been my favorite thing to do. I would have loved to do another novel study. I don’t even know what book I would want to read, I just know that I loved hearing what people would have to say about the books, stories, and plays we would read. It was like we had our own book club. The best piece of writing for this was for sure during twelve angry men. It was fascinating to see our own opinions about the case change with the characters in the play. Overall, this has been a great year for English and it gives me high hopes for next year.

blog #6

The best part of spring break was traveling to Amsterdam. Even though the weather was pretty freezing the whole time we were there I loved it so much. The architecture was so interesting, the mix of modern contemporary buildings and buildings that looked like that they had been there for a hundred years made the whole city scream, ’this is a place where artists live.’ Even the graffiti was beautiful. Walking around the city was freezing but it was so interesting to see the different types of cultures that existed. I didn’t expect to go into a Buddhist temple but I’m glad that we did. The sculptures were like nothing I’d ever seen before. Even though we were freezing on the walking tour of the city it was still fascinating. We learned that there were hooks on the tops of the building that would be used to lift furniture into the windows of the buildings because the stairs are too narrow to get anything into the building. We also walked through a street market for a while. Me and my group were talking to one of the venders and he asked us where we were from and we told him Calgary he remarked, ’oh! The Olympics.’ We also had several different types of Dutch cuisine, like crockets. On the final day in Amsterdam we went north to see the windmills, as well as to see how clogs are made. They used to hand carve them until the 18^th century. Now they have a machine that can make one clog in under five minutes. But then they have to let them air dry, no wind, no light, it has to be completely by the air or the clog is ruined. Then we went into a windmill and got to see the inner workings of it. I felt very prideful to be part Dutch that day. Overall it was an amazing experience.