Night from Germany

The Nazi party started in Germany.  This one guy named Hitler convinced thousands of people that the Jewish people were the cause of Germany's economic downfall.  This hatred towards the Jews was how the Holocaust started.  Millions of Jewish people died during it.  This tells me that German people are maybe a bit weird.  It also tells me that right now, they're still probably feeling pretty guilty.  That's why no one really hears anything about them in war. 

The thing that's going to stcik with me about this book is the soup scene.  I'll always have that image of people from the holocaust haunting me at night.  How their bodies were skeletons and their eyes looked huge.  It made me think about how much I take for granted.  This changed my thinking because I never thoguht that one person could do so much harm, and make so many people think a certain way.  The saddest part to me was when the father gets beat because he can't let himself out to use to bathroom.  The most horrifying part is the very end when he explains what it was like looking at himself for the first time after the holocaust.  I got very upset when they wpuld talk about the Nazi's just beat up Jews.  It amde me feel all angry inside.  I was confused when the book started because I wasn't paying attention.  Then the most touching part was just how dedicated the son is to his father.

Katy M.

The Youngest Doll

The time I was most scared was when I was with my friend Claire and we were in a graveyard on Friday the 13th playing the Ouiji board.  We had 13 candles lit up around us and were trying to talk to our friend Heather, who passed away last summer.  There was no wind that night and about 5 minutes after we started, all of the candles went out almost at the same time except for two next to eachother.  Then other things happened, but I'm not going to tell you.  The scariest movie I've ever seen is Chainsaw Massacre and it was so scary because I was little and there was a lot of blood.  Plus the guy was scary looking and it was late at night.  Many horror movies have one stupid character and a guy who's planning something bad.  Most are really predictable and bad.  But even if they are, I still can;t stop watching them!

-KatyM(:

                    

This literature makes me think that family's an important part of this culture.  I think this because the aunt is taking care of all of the neices.  In other places like some American cultures family isn't as important.  This story also shows me the type of things that are considered scary.  They didn't need blood, gore, and people killing each other to make the story scare the jeepers out of you.

                             

The Handsomest Drowned Man

Sometimes, I wake up scared that when I die my body will be put in a casket and my soul won't be able to leave and then I'll be stuck a scary creepy ghost that haunts people because I'm angry that I can't be somewhere else and I'm still stuck on Earth.  I don't ever want to be underground.  That's why when I die I want to be burned, and my ashes put in a basket.  Then throw them in the open air, off a mountain, off a cliff, into the ocean.  Just somewhere where I'm not in one spot for the rest of my life.  Where my soul can leave when it wants.  I don't want my funeral to be a big thing, or have it be a sad day.  I want people to have a party after I die.  Celebrate that my soul has gone on to wander the universe, and that I'm as happy as I always was.  My funeral will be like my mother's parents was.  They were both creamated, and their ashes were thrown off a cliff into Lake Superior off of their favorite point in Canada.  That's kind of like what I want.



  The story The Handsomest Drowned Man makes me think death for the Latin American culture is a big deal.  I mean, they didn't even know the guy and the whole village cleaned up his body, and made him clothes.  Basically prettied him up before they threw him back into the ocean.  At the end of the story they all remember him by making their houses able to accomidate larger sized people.  I think this shows the respect they have for the dead, and how they keep memories of the dead.  Yep, that's it.  Bye.



-Katy(:

"No Dogs Bark" by Juan Rulfo (Mexico)

I think as a parent, I will do very poorly.  I'll probably be more laid back and easy going, because I feel that kids have to make their own mistakes to really grow up and learn.  Some things just have to be learned the hard way.  If the problem was really bad I guess I'd have to do something more brutal... but I wouldn't want to and it'd have to be really bad.  I would probably just make my kids go to their room or something.  I would be like Ignacio's father in a way because even if my child was a horrible person, I don't think I could ever stop loving my child.  I might hate them and think that they're an incredibally horrid person, but that motherly love thing would still be there.

This story tells me that family is a very improtant thing in the Mexican culture.  Even though the son is a horrid boy, the father still loves him.  That's love right there.  He doesn't like his son, but he still cares for him because he is his son.  I also think that Mexican people have a lot of pride.  The son knows he's a bad kid, and he tells the father to just let him die in the desert.  He knows he probably doesn't deserve what his father is doing for him.

"Borders" by Thomas King

Nationality and ethnicity are both very important to most people.  To me, my nationality means more then my ethnicity.  Nationality is the country you live in, and to me being able to say I live in America means more then saying that I'm Canadian, Russian, German, and things like that.  My ethnicity is important, but if it really was that important I'd still be living in Canada or whatever, but my grandparents knew that America had more opurtunities and was better then where they grew up.



From this story I get the feeling that nationality doesn't really mean as much as ethnicity to Blackfoot people.   I think this because above all, the lady says she is Blackfoot.  Not American and not Canadian, but Blackfoot Indian.  This makes sense to me because there were Blackfoot Indians before there were Canadians and Americans.  She doesn't back down either, which makes me think she's very prideful.