Reflection

During my sophomore year I grew a hatred for writing because almost every essay that I turned in my teacher would give me a 78 or 75. The commentary that she would add would only discourage me from improving. I didn't know exactly what I was doing wrong therefore I was scared of expressing my opinion in my essays and that caused me more to estrange myself from writing.I really thought that if I was doing that bad then I shouldn't even consider taking AP Language then, but something told me to give it a try.

From the first day of school when I met my AP Lang teacher I knew that this year was going to be different. Through this course I was able to grow more as a writer. I'm no longer afraid of picking up a pencil and writing down my ideas because I know that I won't receive harsh criticism but rather advice to improve.      

There have been golden and copper essays that I have written. For example for me the rhetorical essay was the best and easiest because we were taught the structure and we practiced writing in class rhetorical essays. Working with rhetorical devices made it also easier to find and explain the devices and why they are being used. Now the hardest to write was the argumentative essay  because you have to come up with everything on the spot.  The structure is rather confusing and finding examples take some time to think about. So I really didn't like writing this kind of essay. 

As we progressed in our AP language class we were exposed to different kinds of literature. There was one book that I thought was going to be very interesting but as I read it I just kept falling asleep and that was Devil in the White City because all it talked about was building the exposition and only once in a while would the killer pop out. Thankfully though there was one book that had what I was looking for : The Things They Carried. The book was very entertaining because it had action and it always kept the reader wondering if it was a fictional or a non fictional story. Right now we are reading the Great Gatsby and I am enjoying it because it contains mystery and romance and it is rather short and easy to read.

As the year end I realize that I am ready for next year and the year after that. I have learned that deadlines have to be met and if you want to do good in life you have to finish what you start thoroughly and completely with no regrets. 

And well Mr.Thomas I really enjoyed your class it was a fun adventure that's coming to an end but will remain as a beautiful memory. I thank you for all the knowledge that I have gained through your class and thank you for always ending my day with a good laugh. I am really going to miss you and your class. My only advice to you is always keep being the cool and awesome teacher that you are.

The Things Astrid Carries

I wake up each morning and without thinking I pick up the things that I always need and carry them everywhere with me. They are things that are personal to me and that only I can carry. Five things that I always carry? Hmmmm....

First of all one thing that I can never take off my neck and feel naked without is my gold coin necklace. It's funny because sometimes people ask me what is inscribed on it I tell them I don't know. Honestly I don't, I think they are initials for something they are H R L. My dad had actually bought this necklace before I was born and when I turned 6 he gave it to me. Ever since then I have worn it and it's been with me through good and bad times. I feel as though this necklace is a lucky charm that helps me out and protects me in a way. When I'm nervous about something like a test I grab my necklace and I rub the little coin and it gives me confidence. Even though I don't know exactly what the H and L stand for I have recently found out that the reason why my father bought it was because of the R  in the middle. The R will come to be the initial of my middle name : Rubid. Therefore this necklace represents Rubid, a girl who was given this name by her father who love and takes care of her. So my necklace reminds me everyday of my father who loves me.

The reason as to why I am able to wake up each morning ,to go to school, is because I have a dream in mind. My biggest dream in life is to be able to cure cancer. I know it sounds crazy and maybe even impossible but it's the only thing that keeps me motivated to keep trying. I know that it is going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort but if I am able to believe in myself and keep trying ,I could help and give hope to those who needed. This dream helps me look forward in life and helps me realize that everything I'm doing right now is for a good reason and I'm not just wasting my time.

Tim O' Brien has his special person who is Martha, but I don't have one. I actually have two and they are two of the most important people in my life - my mom and dad. My parents are my everything and they are the reason as to why I actually even try. They lived a hard life as children and actually didn't have much of a childhood. All there lives they have worked and not for themselves but for us there children. They come home tired yet happy to come home to there children. They have raised me to be the person that I am today and have also taught me to never give up. They support me and wish only the best for me. They are my hope that I can never leave home without.

Unbreakable, Guardian and Kind Hearted.
Those three words pretty much sum me up. I have grown up so much that I just don't let anything put me down and I don't care if people say bad stuff about me. I guess this is what makes me strong enough to protect others. Many of my friends describe me as a mother because I'm always telling them what is good for them and I help them out when they need help. After all I care a lot about others and I'm pretty nice too if you get to know me. Therefore I feel like these attributions has made it possible for me to meet people that have left me with life lessons and good memories. My personality may seem cold at first but it's actually warm and only people who don't actually get to know me very well may drift away while the others stay close to me and learn who I am. Therefore each year after I get to know someone I gain a new friend.


If you were to ask me to which memories I wish I could go back to I would tell you to the memories were I'm truly happy. Which are when I was younger. When I was younger everything seemed so much easier and it a way it was soothing. It was calm yet cheery. It was probably because back then we were all still children who had no sense of purpose in life. We were just happy all the time all and slept so comfortably in the night that we wouldn't care about tomorrow. This memories are so important because they make me want to try hard in life in order to relive those happy moments in the near future. It makes me realize that I should have enjoyed more of a childhood instead of maturing so quickly. I deeply regret not doing the things that I wanted to do as a child because I felt as though I had to quickly grow up but as a child I failed to realized that at some point the rest of my life I was going to be an adult and being a child only happened once. So it makes me appreciate each day that I have and I try to be as happy as possible in order to make up for my childhood.

Neither from here nor there

My parents were both born in Mexico yet they came to the United States and became U.S. Citizens.Even with the U.S. Symbol branded on them they are more Mexican than American. Both of their parents raised them under the Hispanic culture and in Mexico, Mexicans tend to be strong followers of their culture. Therefore my mom has also though me every thing about our culture. There are somethings that really fascinate me about it but there are others that just isn't for me.

Last summer I went to Mexico ,it had been almost about five years that I hadn't been there.I got to experience so much that it made realize that my roots are really precious. For example we arrived there during the time of Peter of Saint Joseph's birthday. In Mexico it's really important the birthdays of their saints because the whole community throws a big fair in their honor. So they pray for about a week and then on the last day before there birthday, they turn on something called "El Castillo". It's a big tower that is surrounded with fire works. Once they lit it up fireworks burst and it lasts about 5-10 minutes.It's very beautiful and then on the day of there birthday they make a big parade where they put the Saint in carriage and take it around the community while people walk beside it singing. This is one of the traditions that I really enjoy because it shows our strong beliefs in Catholicism.It's very fun too because everyone in the community joins in and are happily enjoying this moment with one another. So I am fascinated with my culture because of aspects like these.

I also honor other traditions that Hispanic culture has with my mom. For example "El dia de Los muertos" or the day of the dead, we make a big altar that has pictures of our deceased and next to the pictures we place food, fruits, and drinks . On that day my mom gets up extra early to prepare the ingredients to make " mole poblano"  which is a spicy sauce that is poured on chicken and is one of the traditional plates that she makes. Mole poblano is very famous in Mexico and mothers tend to pass this recipe down to there daughters. I really love mole but the bad thing about though is that it has too many ingredients that require a lot of work to be mixed together.So even though I help my mom make it I really don't want to do it because it requires so much. So every time my mom makes it she asks me if I have memorized the recipe and I tell her no because I don't find myself in the near future making it by myself.

 I actually tend to find my self cooking more American food that Mexican food .For example she thought me how to make tortillas when I was 10.Since little my mom and dad were taught to eat tortillas with every meal they had. Honestly I don't like eating my food with tortillas and if my mom prepares something that requires eating tortillas I will not eat it and instead will make myself a hot dog, sandwich or my favorite: chicken alfredo. My dad gets mad when I don't eat tortillas and tells me that I despise my cultures food. But it's not true I do like mexican food but not all. I just eat what my tongue likes not what I'm forced to eat. Even if I don't like them I have to respect the fact that my mom makes them so I do eat them once in a while.

Hispanic culture also tends to include not only religion and traditional foods but also music. The only time I ever hear Spanish music is in parties that we go to. I don't like the music except for bachata or merengue but other than that none. I usually tend to listen to kpop which is korean pop music. Also the Hispanic culture is infatuated with soap dramas or as we like to call them telenovelas which I don't like as well but if you ask a Hispanic person about it they can go on and on about it. I on the other hand watch korean dramas. I don't know how it happened but I got to love the asian part of the world. I would have wished that I was born in Korea or Japan but no I was born in the USA ( not that I hate the U.S. or anything like that).

Emergency Couple

                                     Growl by EXO


My mom tells me that I am more Asian than Hispanic and that I should focus more on my culture. This gets me really mad because I do focus on my culture it's just that I don't always have to do  every thing a Hispanic does or like what a Hispanic likes.  It's not just that I'm trying to be another culture or someone else is just that I want to be unique. Is it wrong of me if I don't follow every Mexican tradition? Do i have to choose between being something or the other? Can't I create my identity even if it is a mixed one?
So in the end I have a created my own identity. I am someone with the heart of a mexican, with the tongue of an american, and with the unusual taste for asian entertainment.
I'm just me.

ps. I don't know korean but I do know how to read subtitles.

'Nevermore'

 Directors and authors find it hard today in present 2014 to actually scare the viewers and readers because almost every possible scary scenario has been created. So how exactly do you create a good scary story?: you copy Edgar Allan Poe since most people do it. Edgar Allan Poe is our father of chilling and frightening stories that are hard to comprehend because of the diction yet when you understand what each word actually means you are able to enjoy the tale and get a good scare.

  One of Edgar Allan Poe's work was the Fall of the House of Usher. This work right here gave birth to haunted house stories. There many things that Poe did to create this story, that I would actually copy if I were making one of my own. For example, Poe, at the very beginning of the Fall of the house of Usher establishes a very gloomy and dark setting when he mentions that it is a "dull,dark, and soundless day". Poe creates this dark setting at the beginning of the story to hint at the reader that something is off. I would use the dark and gloomy setting to captivate the readers attention. This way they would want to know what place the protagonist is in and what they are doing there since it might be dangerous.

  Another thing that I would replicate is the meticulously description that he provides in the story. Everything that the main character sees or hears is given to us in a very descriptive way that makes it sound very realistic. By making it realistic the reader is put in the place of the main character making them feel and hear what the main character is feeling or hearing. By using descriptive detail  I will be able to make reader more nervous and scared.

  Even though the Fall of the House of Usher was a well executed organized story, to me it seemed a bit too long. Poe dragged on the plot of the story, so it took a while to actually get to the climax, which is what the reader wants to get at. But then again he does it for a reason because as he drags on the plot he is making the reader anxious to know what is going to happen to the narrator: Is Roderick Usher going to kill him? What happened to Madeline? Where is that knocking or banging coming from? By dragging on the plot I would be able to put the reader at the tip of there seat as they anxiously keep reading and waiting, building the suspense.

 While I was reading the Fall of the House of Usher I thought that maybe Poe was a bipolar person because he changes the mood of the story even though you don't really notice it. (Well at least I didn't only after looking carefully I noticed the change in mood.) At the beginning he creates a sulky dark mood, then as the story progresses he changes it to happy , and at the end it turns dark and sulky again.But I guess he changes the mood to catch the reader off guard. I would copy the change in mood in order to catch the reader off guard as well because it makes the reader more surprised and shocked at the ending. So even though the mood may change to a cheery one in a blink of an eye it could go back to a dark one getting us back on track in our scary haunted house story. 

 Finally the last thing I would copy is the small amount of people he includes in the story. Now a days they include so many people in haunted house stories that it doesn't make it scary anymore because instead of it focusing on the plot it focuses more on what the characters are doing distracting the reader. By choosing only 3 people in his story, Poe was able to focus more on the events that will happen to the characters and made it possible to understand what is going on giving that eerie feeling that the reader wants to feel. By only using a small amount of people I would be also able to focus more on the plot so the reader won't be dissapointed with the ending. 

Credz for pics: 

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/174/e/e/edgar_allan_poe_by_crisvector-d3jswe4.png

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqBSzVTjpJM7Vf9twBuhdgG8l26XmCNrSFU_rK-n2HMT2ngFyKZmoU5TgF2sru4uyES8GfhoLIcREdh0Gbs8pEHwIXpkUm9k7-z-JD59AhPGK7T8d-REsFJ70jgUzOxGtLLQpMdQlXi6y7/s400/house-of-usher-1mraj8m.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpsmrodq7i1qgptbdo1_1280.jpg

America=Occult=The conjuring

Note to reader: This is pretty long.

Puritans are one of the founders of America due to the fact that they were one of the first people here who created a home and a life in this new world. They were very religious people and yet very superstitious. They did not affiliate themselves with anything dealing with the dark forces and if one did they should be taken care of like in the Salem witch trials ,where innocent women died because they were accused of being witches. The funny thing about the puritans is that if they were so religious why would they believe that such dark forces did exist and that it existed between them? Why couldn't they just believe that it was a lie that it wasn't true? Why did they have to get so involved in it to the point of taking someones life? It's because the occult was a new experience that brought fear, hysteria, and curiosity to people who had never experienced it.

It has been over 384 years since the puritans had experienced the occult and instead of it only being a memory it has left a scar in America that can never be erased. It has only expanded not just to one person but to everyone. One great example that proves that, is Nathaniel Hawthorne's, Young Goodman Brown. This short story was actually published in 1835, 205 years later after the puritans and even though Hawthorne was not there to witness the Salem witch trials he is able to write a short story that emphasizes the occult. So why write about something that caused fear and death?
It's because that's what the people in America want to read.

Now in present 2014 it can really be seen that America is infatuated with the occult. It's everywhere and we see it every day. It's in the tv commercials, movies, books, and online. For example the movie, The Conjuring. The conjuring is the perfect example because it involves nothing but evil dark forces.It's a movie that is based on a true events that involve witches, demons, and exorcisms. Many people knew that it was a very scary movie and after hearing how scary it was it intrigued many to go see it. The exorcist is also another example and the goosebumps book series as well.Why is it that authors and directors decided to create works dealing with the occult? Again it's because that's what the readers and viewers want. Why do the viewers and readers want these? It goes back to the puritans. The occult is something that gives us a feeling of fear, adrenaline, and curiosity to know what the dark forces can be capable of. It is a feeling that we don't usually feel and we just want to get out of our ordinary life. By imagining supernatural beings and magical events we are able to entertain ourselves and engulf ourselves in a mysterious new world.

So what does this say about american culture? We are nothing like the puritans at all. We have established our own identity. Since we are exposed to so much of the occult we don't believe in everything and we are not afraid. We are more open-minded and don't actually take dark forces serious. For example you see little kids in halloween, trick or treating and even though halloween is related to the devil you see them dressed as witches, zombies, devils, etc. and asking happily for candy in the night. You see us laughing at movies that make parodies of movies dealing with supernatural phenomena. So instead of seeing something evil and dark we take it in as something that entertains us and gives us a good scare and a good laugh when we remember how dumb we were when jumped out of our sit at the smallest sound made in the movie.



credz for pics.:
http://cdn.mos.totalfilm.com/images/t/the-conjuring-exclusive-poster-131169-a-1364403294.jpg
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/ximages/earlyam/Puritans/crucibleimages/salem-witch-trialdrama.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/b6R52V9_S0I/hqdefault.jpg

Damon Salvatore, is one of the main characters from the Vampire Diaries. When Vampire Diaries first aired I was actually crazy about watching it but I hated waiting for the new episodes to come out so I gave up on that show. I am not even sure if even watched the whole first season but from the few episodes that I watched I got to learn who the handsome vampire Damon truly was.

Vampire Diaries has three main protagonists Elena, Stefan, and Damon.Stefan and Elena are the heroes while Damon is the anti-hero because at the beginning he is presented as Stefan's evil brother who is very cunning and carefree. He is a vampire that only wants one thing : BLOOD

So just like Ichabod Crane, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow",  takes advantage of his profession to eat till his heart content in his student's houses, Damon also takes advantage of who he is to drink to his heart's content. Being a vampire gives Damon supernatural powers that can control peoples mind this way he was able to take control of Caroline Forbes ( an ordinary human). He makes her do his dirty work, sleep with him, and makes her give him her blood and eventually turns Caroline into a vampire.

Ichabod is a very self centered person that thinks that he is handsome ( even though people described him as having rooster like features) and since he has a great deal of knowledge he thinks that he can get anything he wants even Katrina's heart. Damon shares this same characteristic of being self centered. He doesn't think he is handsome he knows he is handsome and from all the years that he has been alive he must have learned something! Damon really doesn't care what happens to the human race at all he just cares is about himself. He goes out drinking in the bar and always creates a ruckus in the city of Mystic Falls. He cared so much about himself that he screwed over his brothers feelings that he had for Elena. His self centered's will cause him a huge heartache when he tries to control Elena.

Elena is a human who resembles the first women he ever loved and turned him into a vampire : Katherine. Damon does everything to have this women in his hands but none of his approaches work on her. Ichabod really wanted to marry into Katrina's rich wealthy family but in the end Abraham was the one that caught her heart. Damon's brother Stefan is also the one that ends up stealing Elena's heart. So both Ichabod and Damon share the characteristic that they want someone so bad for a reason and have the main protagonist girl taken away by another man.

Later on as Vampire Diaries goes on the viewer comes to realize that Damon even though is seen as dark he actually has good intentions but because he is the person that he is he puts a facade that says "I was never meant to be good." He is an anti-hero because his way of helping Elena and Stefan are not the right way of helping even though his intentions can be seen. So even though this hero may have flaws and is not perfect like heroes are always portrayed he is considered a hero but just with anti added to it at the beginning like Ichabod.




Credz for pic and videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQDzC6Je6kU
http://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/the-love-that-consumes-you-passion-danger.gif%3Fw%3D500%26h%3D279
http://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/even-damon-does-it-3-taylor-swift-29830482-430-500.jpg%3Fw%3D500