Girl In Translation

      I have just finished reading " The Girl In Translation" by Jean Kwok. This book is about two Chinese  immigrants, a mother and her 11 year old daughter Kimberly. When Kimberly and her mother first came here, they both got a job in Kimberly's aunt factory, who was responsible for bringing them here to America, Kimberly aunt also gave them a low-rent apartment to say in, the apartment had broken windows, the walls were broken, and rats and cockroaches ran all over.When Kimberly first started school, she thought that her teacher hated her and became the Chinese girl in the  class. While having a real tough time in school she was able to make one friend in class who ended up being her friend up till college. Nothing was going right for Kimberley, until she discovered her talent in school. Kimberley ended up going to Harrison High School with a full scholarship and to Yale with a full scholarship. While in her last year in Harrison Kimberley found out that she was pregnant, who the father was someone she loved a lot but that much that she would give up her scholarship to Yale. She ended up going to Yale and graduating as an Surgeon and being the mother of her own son.
      If i would ever fall into Kimberly's situation I would do everything the same way as she did. What she did was in my perceptive was a good thing to do. Other people would say she did the wrong thing because she gave up on love but i think that her putting that aside gave her the chance to become so big. If she got married she would have never gotten the chance to get the future she got by not getting married. I really thought this choice that Kimberley made her show the world that she, who came to america not knowing a word in English ended up in such a good position  She showing that if you believe this will happen.    
    

Babies Understanding Languages before Learning to Speak.

This is a response to an Article about babies understanding the language they are hearing in their mothers
  womb at the age of 8monthes and 2 weeks. Christine Moon a physiologist at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington where she and her team is studying how babies inside the womb are learning languages. They are doing a project where they are taking babies from Sweden and babies from the united states ages 7-75 hours old and putting them near headphones where Vowels from the American language and Swedish language is being played. After this experiment they found out that American babies responded more to the Swedish vowels and Swedish babies responded more when American vowels were played. This shows that babies stopped paying attention when their native language was being played since they are already familiar with it.  
While reading this article, it reminded me of my baby brother when he was a couple months old, who is now 1 year old. when he was a couple years old he would make sounds that were similar to the vowels in my native language. When he grew a bit older, he started to put simple vowels together to form simple word like Ma And Baba which means mom and dad, then he learned the meanings of those words.
While reading this article it was very interesting how i can make those connection with my brother, and really interesting about how babies can understand languages before being really exposed to them.              

Shiver

I have just started to read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. It is a love story about a girl named Grace and a boy named Sam. The strange thing about this love story is that the boy Sam is or was a wolf, who can change into a human once a year at summertime. this love story started as Sam as a wolf, watching Grace, who is watching the wolfs in the forest which is behind her house. Ever since then grace always felt a connection between her and the yellowed eye wolf. Grace never knew this but when grace was eight years old she was attacked by wolfs, when Sam as a human saved her, which made him turn into a wolf.

When i first read the blurb of this book i immediately thought of beauty and the beast which only similar tie is that it is a love story with a wolf. One question that i thought of was that when the authors of both these stories wrote this did they have any of the same thoughts or idea. Did the author of shiver base her story on the beauty and the beast?

I think there is a connection between the beauty and the beast and shiver because they have a same idea that love can happen everywhere, where you least expected it to be.

Girls vs Boys

Most girls and boys think that boys are better at sports like soccer, basketball or baseball. Also i thought that boys are better at sports than girls, but never found out why. Why is it that boys are always considered to be good in sports?  Well many things could be the answer.Well reading the book " Girls On The Edge " gave me my answers.
 One answer to this question is that if girls find that the coach or the physical ed teacher favors people good in sports and ignores the ones not that strong in sports, the girl will quit the sport easily as counting 1,2,3 or just stop participating in class.
Another answer that really interested me was that theses sports basketball or soccer were sports originally for boys. So the way you would play these games is fit for a boys to play not girls. Girls body is much more sensitive to a boys body.
My opinion on this is that i think in order to have more girls participating in sports they have to make it fair for both boys and girls. Make the rules in a way that it both fit for boys  and girls.

During the winter break i read the book SOLD by Patricia McCormick. It is about a girl named Lakshmi who is about 13 year old gets sold  to mumtaz, who has a business which turns innocent girls into prostitutes.13 year old Lakshmi get sold to mumtaz by her step-father who spends all his families money on beer and cigarettes. Lakshmi was taken to the city being told that she is going to be a maid for a rich family be her step-father and got sold to mumtaz for 10,000 rupees { 184 dollars!!!!!!! } only. Mumtaz takes her to a room where she lost her virginity, that when her life starts to work as a  prostitute to pay off 20,000.

I don't find this is really fair that this happened to Lakshmi. She got tricked by her own father. Her had a lot hopes that she could send money to her mom so they can buy a tin roof . Lakshmi just wanted help out her family, instead her life got destroyed. it is really sad when you think about. it is really scary when you think about it and put yourself in her shoes.

Currently I am reading a social action book called " Girls on the Edge " . It is about three girls with their stories about how their issues such as cyber-bullying, how people see them, and their experience with anorexia.

It is really sad to know that things like this actually happen. Girls starve themselves to be " Skinny ". they don't know by doing this they are putting themselves on risk of death. They want to be someone that is liked and known by people around them  "boys". They don't see that it isn't important to be themselves, they see it as i have to be like her. I think that it is more important to be yourself then pretending to be someone else just to be liked. It is not bad being yourself, like me i am not exact-ally skinny, but i don't really care because i know that there is people in this world that care for me for who i am not my weight. I am fine, living this way. I have friends.

Also people who are getting cyber bullied need to ask for help. they should know that they aren't alone. there are people in this world that can help them get through this. and always remember the people who are bulling you, do it for fun, or maybe because they are jealous, they want to hurt you purposely so it can make them feel better. don't let them take over your life. ask for help and you will get it. 

The Abandoned Book

This blog post is going to be based on a social action question: When did you find yourself resting the text? What does your resistance about you in the text ? I am going to be answering this question on this book that i abandoned The Lovely Bones by Alice Selod. In this book there is family of 5, 3 girls, a mom and a dad. One of the girls were Susie Salmon " salmon like the fish " Susie would say. Susie was murdered because she was beautiful. No one knew who murdered her and why.Except Susie of course; most people believe that after they die there soul goes up there, well instead Susie going there she went to a place that was right in between of earth and heaven. from there she would communicate with her dad.  
     I abandoned this book about halfway when the search for Susie's murderer just began. While i reading this book a fear grew inside of me, what if this happens to my family, what would i do? i started to put myself in to that book. this book showed me that you don't know whats going to happen and when it is going to happen. You should be grateful, you don't know how much you love something until it is taken away from you. Like me i constally have little fights with my sister about why she did this, or why she did that, but when she goes away to somewhere for hours and hours, i go crazy about why she isn't coming home, i show people some reason to cover the fact that i miss her. 
while i was reading this book i began thinking about what if this happened to my sister , i placed her in Susie's place and i got afraid that i won't be able to do anything about it.
this book helped me appreciate that spend your time well you never know when you are going to lose it.