VOCABULARY

Idoneous: appropriate, fit, suitable, apt.
Suppurate: to produce or discharge pus, as a wound; maturate. (EWWW!)
Viscid: having a glutinous consistency, sticky.
Doyenne: a woman who is the senior member of a group, class, or profession.
Birr: force; energy; vigor.

READING RESPONCE

I am so close to finishing the book Troy, by Adele Geras. I usually can finish books within a couple of days, but for some reason this is taking me forever to finish! It is not like it is not interesting, or does not have a good plot, but it isn’t book that I find myself not able to put down. I like it a lot, but I would not be able to read it for hours on end.

The book takes place during the Trojan War, and in it the Greek gods are real and living. In the story, Aphrodite is sick and tired of all the fighting, and finds other means of entertaining herself. One of those means is a huge love triangle, between three best friends, one of those friends’ sisters, and a soldier that got wounded in the war. The other way of entertaining herself is messing with Helens and Paris’s relationship.

It is very scrambled, and I wish that one of the best friend (the boy) would show up in the story more. He is my very favorite character in this book, yet the problem is he only very rarely appears in the story line! Another thing that bugs me is how the gods will sometimes show up and talk to people, but after a few minutes the people that they have spoken to forget the conversation entirely, or think it was a dream. I wish that someone would remember one of these occurrences at least once.

Vocabulary :)

 Viscid: having a glutinous consistency; stick; adhesive

Solecism: a nonstandard or ungrammatical usage, as inflammable and they was.

Immaculate: especially clean or tidy; pure perfect or without flaw; uniform in color or appearance.

Prodigious: large in force or extent (metaphysical)

Cyclopean: of or characteristic of the Cyclops.

Rhadamanthine: stern and inflexible judgment

Junoesque: beautiful qualities of the goddess juno.

Foods I Love and foods I hate :)

Foods I love/foods I hate

                Some foods that I really love are:

     Cherokee Casserole—I really like this food, and I have ever since I was little. It is a type of creamy rice casserole, and it tastes AMAZING! Its funny that I like it though, because the main ingredient is rice, and that is not exactly one of my favorite foods.

     Salmon—I love salmon, but it’s about the only seafood I like eating. I love it, either plain, or with tartar sauce. I do not however, like eating it with lemon, because it seems to ruin the flavor. I am extremely sensitive to sour, and even a little bit of lemon is too much.

     Costco Burritos-I love the microwave burritos from Costco! They are so easy to make, because you only have to throw them in the microwave for a minute and fifteen seconds (though I add 30 seconds more than that because I think it cooks it better, even if I have to let it cool down for a while after) and then it’s ready to eat. There are two different kinds—bean and cheese, and beef and bean—and  they both taste really good.

Some foods I hate are:

     White rice—I do not mind this food, as long as It is in something, but I do not like eating it plain. I think that it tastes bland and has a weird texture.

     Shrimp—I am the only one in my family that does not like this food.

     Crab/lobster—this is also one of those foods that I cannot eat because of the texture and because it’s very bland. I do not like most sea food.

How I am different from my family

There are some things that set me apart from my family. One of these things is, my looks. I am a blue eyed blonde, though my hair is getting darker. Every other person in my family has darker hair than mine, and their eyes are Hazel, or brown. When I was little and my siblings were mad or frustrated with me when I was little, they would always tell me that I was adopted.

Another thing is that I use different words, and say the words differently. Personally, I can tell when people are related, because they express certain words similarly. Sometimes, I will notice that I speak more like my close friends than I do my own family. My dad grew up in California, and he says things differently, though some of the words have rubbed off on me.  We talked about this kind of topic in my World Geography class, and my teacher was saying that that is very normal, because friends or the people in the area where one lives and media have a larger influence on a person’s speech than their parents, though there still is a little bit of influence from them.

The last thing everyone tells me is different from my families is my creativity. My mom and dad always say that they are not creative, but I think they are, just in different aspects besides art.  I really like doing art, it’s one of my favorite things.

Last night, while watching TV, I heard a soft knock on the back door... (Make-up)

Last night, while watching TV, I heard a soft knock on the back door. Alarms went off in my head, and all I could think was “Who would knock on the back door?”  I was a little frightened at first, but I dismissed it, I was being silly. Relatives and close friends would occasionally come to the back door, but usually they walked right in. I peeled myself from the couch and  trudged over to the big white door.

The metal doornob was cold on my skin as I turned it and pulled the door open. When I first saw the figure standing out there, I was startled and took a step back. It was a man that looked like he was in his late 20’s or early 30’s, and he was stooped over, but not from any back problems. He had slightly long hay colored hair, and when he slowly looked up to make eye contact with  me, it blew across his eyes.

I didn’t know what to say to  him, and before I could think of anything, he shoved past me into my house. I finally found my voice and yelled at him to stop, but he was already heading down the stairs. Was I being robbed? Was this man some type of serial killer? Did I have something they wanted..?

As that last thought came into my mind I realized exactly what was going on.  I raced at full speed after the man, and my fears were confirmed. I got to the basement and heard him tearing through the spare room. Nobody had ever found this place before, and it was supposed to stay that way. Panicked, I went into the room, but before I could reach it a gust of wind threw the door shut and I was locked out.

About a minute later, I was able to open the door. Even with all the mess, broken glass and splintered wood, the first thing that caught my eye was the man on his back in the middle of the floor. His eyes were rolled back and lifeless. As I sucked in a breath at the sight, a heard a voice behind me.

“So you still think that you have everything under control on your own?”

Imagine you are stranded on a tropical island with your classmates

            If I unexpectedly got stranded on a tropical island with my peers, I don’t have a single doubt that things would get hectic pretty quickly. Without any supervision, everyone would try to do anything they wanted. The only problem there would be, there wouldn’t be much to do—especially stuff they would want to do.  And no matter how hard it would be for them, everybody would have to do their part to make the group as a whole survive

If there were no rules, it would almost be impossible to survive. Most likely, people would try to figure out a way to survive, or get help, even if it meant doing extremely dumb things. Rules would need to be set up very quickly to keep track of everybody and make sure that nobody would get hurt. Rules like ‘no wandering off alone’.  If the rules set up were broken, there would have to be consequences, differing depending on the outcome and the rule, not the person who broke the rule.

Who would make those rules though? Even a band of classmates on an island needs a leader. A leader would have to be voted for, not just take control because they think they would be best for the job. Unfortunately, most ninth graders would go for the most popular, funny, hunk of a guy on the Island. This would probably not be the best idea, unless he is a lot more responsible than he seems. The best possible thing that could happen would be if everyone being stranded on the island made them realize that popularity isn’t everything, and they would pick a strong, smart leader, that actually knows how to lead their classmates.

Life would definitely be hard living on an island with your classmates, but not impossible. 

Reading Response :)

I recently finished the book The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. In the beginning, I did not like it very much. It was not exactly the very first book I would pick up from the shelf.

The reason I chose to read this book was because my world geography teacher recommended it and had said that it was very interesting and good. When I first started reading it, all I could think was that everybody has a different opinion, and mine and hers differed greatly.

When I finally got closer to the end of the book, I started to like it more. I liked it when there was more action, and I found that my favorite parts where when they met with other people besides every one that set off and escaped from the camp in the first place.

From the description on the back of the book, and also from what I had heard from people who read the book too, I thought that the deaths would get more into description, and that it would be more heartfelt and sad. Instead, the people that died in this book just slowly faded, before dying, without any type of mourning. At least, that is what it seemed like to me.

I did like this book, but I wish that it had been paced just a little bit faster. I know that you can’t really expect anything to fast paced from a historical fiction, but I felt like he went into unnecessary boring detail.