The Taming of the shrew

1. Biana is the name of the girl in The Taming of the Shrew.
2. Bianca is the name of the girl in 10 Things I hate about you.
3. Katharina is the name of the other sister in The Taming of the Shrew.
4. Kat is the name of the other sister in 10 Things I hate about you.
5. Kat and Bianca's last name is Stratford.
6. Stratford-upon-Avon is the english town that William Shakespeare was born.
7. Katharina's suitor is named Petruchio of Verona in The Taming of the Shrew.
8. The guy that gets paid to date Kat is Patrick Verona in 10 Things I hate about you.
9. Bianca can't get married until her older sister, Katharine, does.
10.Lucentio asks Petruchio to marry Katherine so he can marry Bianca.
11.Joey asks Patrick to date Kat in exchange for money so he can date Bianca.
12. Petruchio agrees to marry Katherine so Lucentio will stop bugging him.
13. Pat agrees to date Kat for the money that Joey agrees to pay him.
14.Petruchio and Katherine end up falling in love.
15. Pat and Kat finally become a couple in the end.

Extra Credit: reflecting on 9th grade.

English in Mrs. Gilman's class was pretty fun. We read some books and most of them were okay but others were not my favorite. My favorite book that we read was Romeo and Juliet. It was kind of hard to understand the language they use at first but you get used to it after a while. Mrs. Gilman does a good job at explaining the meaning behind the passages and it's also fun to watch the movies that go with each movie throughout the year. For every book we read, we get to watch the movie version of the story once we finished each book. I didn't like the book Animal Farm. I don't like reading about things that wouldn't really happen in real life. Animals don't talk in real life and the whole story behind it just made me mad. My favorite assignment was probably writing the "freshman odyssey." It was really fun and gives you an opportunity to talk about yourself in a fun and creative way and reflect back on all the struggles you had during your first year in high school. My least favorite assignments were the ones where we had to draw things. I'm really bad at drawing so when I was finished with the artistic assignments, I didn't feel good about my work because it looked so bad. I also LOVED doing the blog assignments. It's always fun to have a new way of doing homework.

Favorite part of the movie

So far, the movie has been pretty good. I really like how Everett represents Odysseus. George Clooney is a great actor and really seems like "good leader material." He leads his partners and takes control of all situations just like Odysseus does with his crew. I really like the part of the movie where Everett and his friends get in the car with George Nelson who is the bank robber or also known as "baby face." This part is kinda crazy because money is flying everywhere and the guy doesn't even care. Then later on in the movie, it shows him robbing a bank and taking money. This part is really stupid because he doesn't have a mask on and he is yelling his name like crazy like he is proud of it and it kind of represents when the cyclopes is yelling his name. So far, the movie is enjoyable.

Epic Simile

Going to play volleyball is like going to outer space, being able to let your mind think freely and all the distractions able to float away, jumping high so it feels as though you are flying, moving as swiftly as if there was no gravity, time passing as slow as a turtle and the feeling of winning like putting the American flag on the moon.

English Power Point: John Steinbeck

Jsteinbeck

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Romeo and Juliet: Glog

Extra credit blog

This picture is an original picture that I took in the summer at the Japanese Garden in Olympia. It reminds me of Romeo and Juliet's relationship because it is beautiful. Romeo and Juliet's relationship is really romantic and cute but has some issues throughout the story. Just like their relationship, this flower has red spots but is still over all a beautiful flower. Romeo and Juliet ended up dying in the end but, they died to be with their love forever.

Video Blog

I found this video on you tube. It is a video of Edward and Bella from Twilight. Twilight very much so relates to Romeo and Juliet. Just like Romeo and Juliet, Bella and Edward are from two different kind of families. Edward is a vampire and is not supposed to make friends with humans because people are not supposed to know their family's secret. Bella is just a normal human who falls in love with Edward. Even though the two are not supposed to be together, they always find a way to make it happen. Just like in Romeo and Juliet. :)

Romeo and Juliet: photo

The picture I chose to post, is an original photo that I took sometime this summer (I don't know the exact date.) This picture reminds me of Romeo and Juliet's relationship in many ways. To me, it symbolizes a rocky road. There are parts when the stepping stones are pretty even with no little pebbles or "obstacles" on them. Like in Romeo and Juliet's relationship, it's very up and down. The "obstacles" resemble their parents fighting and not being able to tell anyone. Also, an obstacle Romeo faces is when Mercutio gets murdered. At times, their love is amazing and it feels nothing can stop them, but at other times it seems nothing is going right.

Romeo and Juliet act 2

In act two of Romeo and Juliet, many interesting things happen. The thing that I found the most interesting was Friar Lawrence agreeing to marry the lovers. At first there was hesitation but Friar decided to marry Romeo and Juliet in order to try and end the fighting between their families. Friar just wants to make everyone be in peace. He also wants Romeo and Juliet to be a happy married couple.

This interesting thing is very common in americans lives. Many people get married without their parents' consent. Also, many people get married and end up absolutely hating their in-laws. My cousin married someone whose parents could not stand his parents so it was not working out too well. They are now not living in the same state as either one of their parents and don't really talk to them anymore either. I think it's dumb for parents to fight. If the children love each other, let them be!

Romeo and Juliet: choose a character

The character I'm choosing to write about is Romeo. Romeo is a person that sits there and feels bad for himself. He is also someone who doesn't know what he wants. At the beginning of the book, he is just talking about how depressed because of love. He talks about how he loves Rosaline. Then like a day later he is in love with Juliet. He feels bad for himself and heals that by finding some other girl in no time. I find Romeo charming but kind of an older kind of "player."

Romeo reminds me of one of my cousins. My cousin can never make up her mind. She can't make a decision if her life depended upon it. She would probably be best friends with Romeo. My cousin likes to make people feel bad for her even if there is nothing to feel bad about. This is an example of a drama queen just like Romeo.

Romeo and Juliet- premonitions

Honestly, I dream about a lot of random things. Many times have my dreams somewhat come true. My dreams that come true are not really life or death situation type things but more like conversations that i have with people in my everyday life. Also, some of my dreams are about people that I have never seen in years and I wake up and don't even know why I thought about them when I was sleeping.

One dream that came true, actually came true this week. I had a dream that my bestfriend and I would have a conversation at volleyball practice about why she opends her mouth really wide when she hits the volleyball. This conversation actually took place this week when we were putting on our volleyball shoes before practice. I remember having this dream like last year and it was really out of the blue. We talked about how wide her mouth gets when she goes up to serve the ball or spike it. She then tried closing it during practice and she couldn't get any of her serves over or hits in the court. I guess it was just the way she focused.

Shakespeare and movie

The movie that I think is based on a Shakespeare play is She's The Man. Now that I think of it, I really appreciate movies and books these days that make more sense but can have the same meaning and plot behind it as an important Shakespeare play. She's the man, is about a girl names Viola who pretends to be her brother so she can play on the boy's soccer team at his school. While playing soccer at the school, Viola falls in love with her roommate Duke who is actually in love with Olivia because he thinks Viola is a boy. Once, Duke finds out Viola is actually a girl and not her brother, Duke falls in love with her too. Happily ever after...

This movie is based on the Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. I think many people admire Shakespeare and try to be as good of a writer as him but fail in the process and fall back on his ideas. Basically, I think people use Shakespeare as their own ideas and try to be sneaky about it. Many of us smart people have figured out their plans to take credit for a brilliant movie when the magnificent idea was really of the intelligent Shakespeare.

A midsummer Night's Dream/Romeo and Juliet

A Midsummer Night's Dream was a very interesting movie. This movie was hard to understand. The language that was used was very old and not the easiest to comprehend. Also, it was very hard to put everything into perspective. For instance, the fairies were supposed to be much smaller than all the other characters but they were all the same size. Even after watching the movie for several days, it was still very difficult for me to follow. I think I followed the basic story but I could not understand the language that was used. I also think it complicated things that everything was in poem form.

I am excited for the Romeo and Juliet unit. Even though I believe it will be very difficult, I am excited to learn to comprehend the old style language. Also, I am ready to read a new kind of book and do something different for once. I think it will be frustrating at first but I will soon develop tricks to understand easier.

The worst part in animal farm

There are many things in Animal Farm that I did not like because over all, this book frustrated me. The worst part I think is how dumb the animals are. They have no mind of their own. I understand they are animals but it still angers me that they don't try or do anything for themselves. For this reason, I liked Mollie because she is the only one who had pride and basically had her own opinion about things.

Also, I hated how all the animals listened to Napoleon. They did everything he said with basically no question about it. The new motto proves this because Boxer decided "Napoleon is always right." These animals were so oblivious to what was going on, they wouldn't know it if they were being killed or being turned into bacon. I guess all this shows how dumb the people were during the Russian Revolution.

Animal Farm free write

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about Animal farm. At first I kinda liked it. The book looked skinny enough to not be overwhelming. Also, I liked how the chapters were shorter and were less stressful than the chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird. I enjoyed being able to read the book with a partner and going slowly to talk about things but at the same time it was extremely hard for me to focus with so much noise and every one at different spots. That activity was hard to stay focused but I ended up doing really well on the test.

As we go on, I realize that I don't like the book so much. For me, I don't enjoy reading about things that don't really happen. For example, all the animals can talk. It frustrates me to read about things that are not real. Also, in part of the book it talks about how the animal was giving out orders to a human which really annoys me. I guess I just don't enjoy using my imagination when it comes to non-existing things.

Winter Break Extra Credit

Well my winter break was quite eventful. Not! For the first half of break, I basically did nothing. I was house bound because I live on a pretty huge hill and considering we had around 12 inches of snow at one point, it was impossible to go anywhere in our sky blue mini van. I spent most of my days sleeping in until around 11:00 and getting out of my bed and moving myself to the wonderful plump couch in my family room to watch T.V. for the remainder of the day.

Since there was so much snow everywhere, most children were outside enjoying the white fluffy rain that made my break miserable. When you get to this age, going out in the snow is fun about 2 or maybe 3 times if you are lucky and then it gets old. Not only was I home bound, all of my volleyball practices and schrimages were cancelled because of this frozen pellets of rain falling from these huge gray clouds. The snow didn't cease to annoy me there. Once the snow started melting, my volleyball coach decided it was time to make up all of those missed practiced because of the lovely weather set-back. We had 5 practices in a row of volleyball with each practice being around 3 hours. I'm assuming you are realizing how sore my entire body was after this stream of practices.

In the end, the snow ended up being a blessing. Since all the schools were closed for all sport activities during break, the Valley allowed us to use their gym to get all those practices in and use their wonderful facilities. We had our first club volleyball tournament of the season on the Sunday before going back to school. Most teams we played were from places that got much more snow than us and only have had 2 practices all together. We ended up taking 2nd place, losing in the finals to a team from portland who each player was about the size of all my short ancestors combined and were a year older than everyone on our team. While I was complaining about the snow, it ended up being a blessing in disguise.