Journal Entry 69 Title: Slang

What’s up? This is slang, I think. I’m not sure exactly what this means, but I know people use it when they see another person in the morning. I think it means something along the lines of “how are you”, and “hello.” In the morning, when I see Mr. McCool, I would say “What’s up?” Whiz is another slang. It means a smart or talented person. He is a comp whiz. He is very talented in computer science. There are a couple of slangs for bathroom. John means bathroom. I want to use the john, but my brother is in it. I can’t think of any other slangs. I think I would have to google them. A psycho is someone who is mentally ill. I met a psycho down the street, and he was talking weird stuff. The quarterback is like the leader. That smart guy is the quarterback of the class. Racket means noise. There is a lot of rackets outside late at night yesterday. I think google is another slang. We use it so much that it became a verb. Google menas to search on Google. We can google stuff. I am now going to google some of the meanings of slangs. XDDD

Journal Entry 67 Title: Fighting Words

Words are very important. Even though they don’t do anything much physically, they hurt you deeply. They can cut you like a sword. It is definitely something to fight about. If someone insulted me, that would be a personal attack. It would be time to fight back. I have gotten into many arguments because of this. Someone said things about someone I cared a lot about. I would then get very angry. Why don’t they think about the words before they come out of their mouths! It is very necessary that fights are used to defend myself and other people against such attacks. I would fight to defend my family, and maybe a close friend from another person’s words. I might not fight physically, but I would hurt him back with even sharper words. >:( I would cut him like I’m cutting tofu, or other fragile food. I would break him because he broke me and my friends. Many things are trivial, but hurting friends this way is no way right. I would not allow anything bad said about my friends. This was beyond what I could bear. Words can very easily turn from something abstract into something physical and dangerous if they are used in a bad way.

Journal Entry 66 Title: OOPS!

At school, I met this person. At first, he looked weird. I did not want to get close to him because my first impression was a negative one. It seemed to me like this person would be weird as well. However, one of my classmates turned out to be a very close friend to him. Slowly, I began to know this person better through my classmate. It turned out that I was absolutely wrong about my first impression of a weird person. That person was not weird at all. He was a friendly, nice young man. We got along very well together, and we had a lot of fun together. It was the opposite of my first impression, and I was surprised by this result. This incident was very significant because it gave me a very good friend. This friend provided many supports to me, and I was really happy that I had a chance to meet this new friend. Even though the first impression turned out to be wrong, I was glad that it turned out this way. I would be very sad if this person was really weird, and I did not make friends with him. I would regret my actions.

Journal Entry 68 Title: Analogy

When I walk into the room, the Life Science room for the Chapter 6 test, it is like entering the Colosseum. I am all tensed up knowing I wouldn't come out alive. The second the test was passed out, it felt like the lions were sent out into the field. Looking at the test paper, they look like the lions that were angry, hungry and their eyes full of misery. I stroked first, leaving one of the lions a wound streaming with red, warm blood. I attacked with my spear, dodged furious claws coming toward me, and blocked tons of attacks. Just like how I answered all those tricky, evil, and to-hard-to-understand questions. I stroked hard, but some were foolish attacks that made me open my defense, giving the lions a chance to injure and harm me vitally. With my hands on the wounds, ignoring them, I ran carelessly toward the lions and stroke as hard as I can, as long as this cruel and savage torturing event ends sooner. I killed and I attacked, I dodged left and blocked my right. All I can do to make this over. Then, when I stood still, glancing at the lions lying on the floor, dead(?), just like how I check if I wrote anything wrong. Suddenly, a lion jumped up and tackled me, sitting on me and biting parts of me off. A question I missed on the test, caused my death and a failing grade.

Journal Entry 65 Title: Below the Surface

I sometimes discover that a person has a different personality than from what I had expected. Once, I met a person at school. At first glance, I thought he would be a weird boy because he looked weird. I based that judgment on his surface and appearance. However, when I get to know him better, I found out that he was not weird at all. He turns out to be a very fun and interesting person. We became good friends, and we had a lot of fun at school together. He was totally different from the person in my imagination. I had put my judgment onto his personality, and that turned out to be completely wrong. Afterwards, I felt guilty. I didn’t think it was very nice to judge him before I met him. If I really believed that he was weird, I wouldn’t have made such a friend like him. Now, even his appearance had a different view to it. Because I know his personality now, his appearance changed accordingly. I think that if everyone judge people based on what they see on the surface, then many people would have their personality unknown to the public, and no one would care about who you really are.

Journal Entry 61 Title: Summary of Tell-Tale Heart

The old man has weird eyes. And the narrator dislikes it very much. Not because the old man did something that made him angry, it was just because of the eyes. He observed the old man for seven continuous days. So everyday, for seven nights, around midnight, the narrator goes into the old man's room and observes him really nervously. But those seven nights, when the narrator finds the old man on his bed, sleeping, he finds that the old man always has his eyes closed, since he is sleeping. He even spent an hour just to put his head into an opened door. The narrator thought that it would be not possible to kill him while his scary, and horrifying eyes are not open. But during the eighth night, he slowly went in the old man's room to checked if his eyes were closed. The old man popped his eyes open, because he detected weird noise that made him scared. The narrator saw it and was killed. After killing him, he hid the old man's body in side a locker in a chair that is in the house.

Journal Entry 64 Title: Quiz or Circle?

One good thing about reading circle is that people share their ideas about the novels, which can help the students understand a lot more about the book. The reading circle forces the students to read the books, which is actually good for us. But, reading quizzes is a dead thing, we can't discuss about it with the others, what we can only do is think about and writing  them down. The discussion circle is a lot more better. We can discuss it with each other, not only writing about it, or fill in the blanks. The bad thing is that we will have to discuss and make other people talk. A lot of people will choose not to participate, they just listen and sit in the corners where no one looks at. Sometime they don't even listen. Discussion groups are fun and I like it when everyone is talking and sharing ideas. It makes students feel better when everyone is contributing about the novel and their own point of view. Even though reading quiz is a good way for checking whether the students actually understand or even read what the story is about, it is pretty much a waste of time and hard for me to just look for every answer for every single questions. Reading quizzes make students want to give up on the novels.

Journal Entry 63 Title: Your Game

I'm grouped with Jonah and Eddy. We are thinking about a game like Tower Defense combined with Monopoly. Tower Defense is a game where you could set up towers that would attack the black dots that would invade your castle. The towers will shoot out attacks and will decrease the blood of the black dots. Different types of towers have different powers, which causes their attacks to have different amount of damage and range. The towers can be upgraded when you have enough money. Leveling up can increase the damage and the range of your tower. But the towers can't move from place to place.

Monopoly is the game where you go around lands owned by yours or other players'. You gain money by having other players going on to your land. You loose money by landing on other players' lands. The tokens of the players move according to the dice. The game ends when one player ran out of money. The player with the most money wins. SO we gather features of Tower Defense, Monopoly AND the Westing Game, to make a game where players move around and attack each other. And the one with the most points left wins.

Journal Entry 60 Title: Deception

Misconception can confuse people, but it can also make the story a lot more interesting. The author used this technique to confuse the readers, to mislead us from the truth hidden behind the scenes. Also, misconception can some times give out clues to the answer, the ending of the story. The story Westing Game gave out clues little by little, then finally they tell the readers the obvious answer for those people who can’t infer and think. This book is a mystery-solving novel, so the author wants the readers to be into the game in the story, too. The author keeps a lot of the information from the readers to let the readers WANT to know what exactly happened, and keep on reading the story. When the author told us that Barney Northrup was SUCH a good sales man, he sold all 6 apartments to the 6 chosen ones. But then, the author said that Barney Northrup wasn’t even a real person. Which means he is either a ghost or he is a disguise of someone else. If it is really like that, the readers will have to cast out who Barney Northrup really is. That is what the author want the readers to do, while reading the story.

Journal Entry 59 Title: Hints and Foreshadowing

The narrator thinks he was not insane, he was just nervous. A nervous man that wanted to kill someone he does not dislike. A man that is "just" nervous would never do that to other people. He was not mad, he said, but he also said "so why would you say that I am?" This infers that OTHER people in the story or the readers with this kind of feeling, thinks he is mad, or said that he is mad. A man, a nervous man would never spent a whole hour just to put their head into the victim's room. BUT, a calm, and insane man would.  He maybe nervous about getting caught, but he definitely wasn't afraid of killing anyone, why? Cause he is INSANE!!!!! A mad man, a man that calls himself nervous. The shriek the old man had made when he was getting beat up made the neighbors arose their suspicious. Policeman came, to question this nervous man. The narrator acted calm, acted like the old man wasn't at home. How can a man that calls himself nervous be calm? And act so well. The policeman was fooled by his calmness and had no suspicion on him. But, the mad man, can hear the guilt inside him.