Movie Ending

Today we finished the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" in Mr. Schick's office which is basically the TV studio for our morning announcements and probably the coolest office. The movie ended with Jamal winning 20,000,000 Rupees on "Who Want's to be a Millionaire?" by answering the final question which was about the Three Musketeers and Jamal completely guessed and got the right answer. He also got the girl of his dreams, and became a hero for all those who live like he did. His brother was shot to death after going against his gang and letting the girl that Jamal loved go even though he helped capture her and in the end it was a really good movie and was good for starting off the Culture Geography Unit because it really showed the culture of India along with all the poverty and what it was like living in the Slums. The corrupt police department that captured Jamal let him go because they didn't have enough evidence and even the announcer who gave him the wrong answer so he would lose couldn't outsmart him. It was nice seeing the poor guy win for a change.

Slumdog Millionaire

Today I finally got back in class and I was surprised to find out that to learn more about our unit on Cultural Geography we watched a movie called "Slumdog Millionaire" which is about a boy named Jamal who is arrested and tortured for cheating on a game show called "Who Want's to be a Millionaire?" but he didn't really cheat and knew all the answers from all the past experiences he had living in the slums of Mumbai in India. This is supposed to teach us about the culture of India and the different aspects of life in places like Mumbai. The police is very corrupt and the level of poverty is through the roof so this movie is good to kick-off our Cultural Geography Unit. That's all I really know at the moment because I am going to miss tomorrow's class and a chunk of the film so I will have to pick up where everyone left off. on Tuesday.

Absent 2.0

Today I really thought I was going to get through school and go to my last mod class which was Human Geo but I couldn't do it. The medicine could only do so much and I started feeling sick and I did not make it all the way to the finish line so I went to the nurse and left early without figuring out what was going on with the new unit and soda. In addition to this we got a Spotify assignment which I found out from Mr. Schick's blog and I do not know what needs to be done so I have to figure that out tomorrow and will hopefully make it to the class without any problems.

Absent

Today I was absent in class because of an illness I have, we started the Cultural Geography unit today according to Mr. Schick's blog and did something involving soda and I hope I get to figure out what the new unit is all about and what we did with soda, tomorrow.

French National Anthem

The French National Anthem "La Marseillaise" is about five minutes long and all the lyrics are very military-based because of how it describes the enemies and tyrannies of France falling to the army and citizens of France but the anthem also is a symbol of the nation uniting and coming together to defeat the enemies because of the lyrics using words that refer to all the people of the nation like "our", "let's", "citizens", and "your". This anthem in my opinion is very catchy and put together well and sounds very nice with a whole orchestra used to perform it, but it is nothing like the American National Anthem. The American anthem unlike the French anthem does not focus much on killing off the enemies, but instead that when we talk about our flag still flying in the wind, we talk about America always standing tall and not being taken down no matter what. Both anthems try to deliver the idea of nation-pride and never giving into an enemy but in very different ways.


In English:

 Let's go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Refrain

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

More
La Marseillaise en français

Listen to la Marseillaise

Bastille Day article

Bastille Day online games

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!

What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!

Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother's breast to pieces!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

Refrain

We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!

Refrain

Test Day

Today was test day and I think I did a pretty good job on it. The test started out with about 30 multiple choice questions and I knew most of them. All of the questions were about the leaders of the countries we studied and I didn't study that hard but I am glad that I studied what I did because I had to know a lot of info about a lot of leaders. Once I got through all the multiple choice questions, which didn't take that long, I had to finish up the test with an essay about how assassinating the president is wrong and unacceptable in our democracy. I had a decent amount of time left before the mod was over so I took my time on the essay. The essay went on to take up most of the space that was given and I talked about how impeachment is how a president can be removed and how assassination is wrong and if you don't like the president you just have to deal with it. The whole test was finished with about five minutes left and I was one of the last to hand it in but I am satisfied with my answers and hope it gets a good grade.

Last Day of Presentations

In class today we finally finished up the presentations and will be taking the test Thursday. Today's class was first mod so we had an extra long class and was able to get through four presentations. The countries were Syria, Israel, Mexico, and Brazil. Syria was done by Alex and Paj, Israel was done by Steven and Trish, Jessica and Rosemary did Mexico and the last presentation was done by Ellie who I was impressed with because she did a good job even without the help of a partner. I got down a lot of notes and I am pretty confident with the upcoming test, especially with the help of Mr. Schick's blog on a summary of all the countries we need to know about. I don't understand why but it seems like every time we cover something or a country, it will always pop-up in the news and we are able to talk about and expand on it more.

Presentations Day 3

We continued with presentations today and the first people up were Karson and Cody. Karson and Cody did their presentation on Russia and put down a lot of information on Vladimir Putin, the president. I thought he was an OK guy but turns out he is really screwed up. He is doing a good job in leading Russia but as a person he is pretty bad. Next presentation of the class was Ryan and Megan who did their presentation on China. Ryan is already from China so he probably had a decent amount of information going into the project. China is a communist state and before I really didn't know what that term meant but now I know that in basically means that the government owns everything, which is a complete opposite of the U.S. Our class doesn't have Human Geo on Monday so I wonder who will continue the presentations on Tuesday.

Presentations Day 2

Today in class more people continued with their presentations and I continued with more note-taking. The first presenters of the day were Parker and John. This presentation took awhile. There was a combination pointing out the words that John couldn't pronounce right, Mr. Schick editing their slide and going back and forth between slides, and the fact that all the kids took notes at different rates. We finally got through it and I actually got down all the notes and learned something new. The next group was Adam and Kendall. This presentation was shorter but it had just as much information, if not more. It talked all about Japan and their leaders and both presentations in the end had all the criteria Mr. Schick was looking for. I don't know who will be starting off tomorrow but so far all this is pretty interesting.

Completion

Rory and I finished our project today and presentations begin tomorrow. We came up with a strategy to present our slides so that we can explain all of the information we put down while giving both of us an equal share of words to say. While putting the finishing touches on our PowerPoint Mr. Schick talked about some current events. The vote is today so that is a pretty big event which some schools even get off for. I am not old enough to vote so I don't get involved in that kind of stuff. but it is important so I learned about the top candidates like Larry Hogan and Anthony Brown. Also that there was once a vice president that took over a 100,000 in bribes, he thought he could get away with it and was impeached quick because not many people liked that. Some people are stupid and think they can get away with things like that.

Finished

Today Rory and I are pretty much done our project, I just had to go home and finish up a slide about Manuel Valls, then I was finished. I finished it so our PowerPoint is done but I don't know how it is going to compare to other people's slides or is Mr. Schick is even going to like it because he wouldn't tell us about what he was looking for or even the amount of slides he wanted so Rory and I just did the best we could and put down the information we were supposed to and hopefully our eight slides will be enough.