Hi, all.
Watch The Dream is Now. It's a documentary. It's on Netflix. It's only thirty minutes long. It's very important.
It's also very frustrating.
The Dream is Now follows a group of youthful immigrants as they try and fail to achieve citizenship and their respective dreams. And after watching it, I have a request - a completely genuine request, believe me. Could someone please explain to me why we don't want to grant people citizenship? I ask this question constantly, but no one's ever been able to give me a straight answer. If these people were citizens, they would pay taxes. They would go to college. They would become successful, would be doctors and lawyers and psychologists and teachers and social workers and politicians and they'd join the armed forces and they'd do important, valuable things. Yes, they'd take up jobs, but they'd do amazing things with those jobs, just as well as - and sometimes even better than - a natural-born citizen ever could, because these people have the drive to achieve their dreams.
And don't tell me our population would rise, because it's already risen. They're already here. I just want to know why the kids who know perfect English and take all the hard classes and graduate high school on high honor roll and want to be damn rocket scientists can't just go ahead and do that because no one would give the a social security number.
I hadn't realized it was this bad.
This really bothers me, if you couldn't already tell. In The Distance Between Us, Reyna doesn't have this problem because she gets a Green Card. But these people can't; they're as good a proof as any that we need a better system.
Anyway, that's my fifth and final artifact reflection. I hope you enjoyed it. Grumble grumble grumble....
-Allie H-S
P.S: School starts tomorrow and the nerves are breaking me apart. I have never been this anxious before, but apparently all my friends are feeling it, too. I don't even have a specific thing I'm stressing over. It's not because I'm going to a new school, like everyone suggests; I've moved up in schools twice before, and I was totally fine. I think it's just because the last two years of school sucked, honestly. Treasure Mountain causes lots of social issues - the administration seems to think this is because of bullying, but I've never directly encountered that. I've only encountered angst and depression and exhaustion. I mostly blame the building.
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
August 20, 2014
August 19, 2014
Artifact Reflection 3
Hi, all.
Thank you for reading my slightly preachy artifacts even though you totally don't have to. (Unless you're my new English teacher, in which case you absolutely have to because you assigned it. This is your doing.) My third artifact is another article (to be found here).
This is an article posted by USA Today about how deporting everybody won't stop people from coming over. No matter how many children they catch mid-trip and send back to their country, it won't stop those children from trying again and again and again, because no matter how much money they have to pay cartels to help them across, it will never be worse than going back to their home in Central America, where they can't go to school for fear of being recruited by gangs and they can't eat dinner because there is never food on the table. The last line of the article is a quote from a fourteen-year-old boy from Hoduras named Brian. "'We've suffered a lot to try to make our lives better,' he says. 'If they knew what we've been through, they'd let us in.'"
I've never been particularly well-versed in political intricacies, even and especially those relating to border patrol, but I've always sort of viewed the deportation of illegal immigrants as treating the symptom. Maybe this is because I live in Park City, Utah and have never experienced the full and direct flow of these immigrant children I keep hearing about, but I struggle to believe that deportation can fix all of our problems for us. I figure, if you truly want to stop this unending flow of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, maybe you should make some sort of plan to help Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. I know that won't be easy - there is no magic button - but there are also many, many people who, given the means, would love to help. I also know it'll take a while - most important things take a while - but in the end, it'll be well worth it.
At the very least, I think they should work to move all these kids out of California and Texas. Just, you know, diffuse them into the midwest, where we can better handle them.
Maybe I'm just some stupid rich white girl, but...it makes sense to me.
-Allie H-S
P.S: I just realized, this is my fiftieth post! Yaaaaaay milestone! Woooooo!
Thank you for reading my slightly preachy artifacts even though you totally don't have to. (Unless you're my new English teacher, in which case you absolutely have to because you assigned it. This is your doing.) My third artifact is another article (to be found here).
This is an article posted by USA Today about how deporting everybody won't stop people from coming over. No matter how many children they catch mid-trip and send back to their country, it won't stop those children from trying again and again and again, because no matter how much money they have to pay cartels to help them across, it will never be worse than going back to their home in Central America, where they can't go to school for fear of being recruited by gangs and they can't eat dinner because there is never food on the table. The last line of the article is a quote from a fourteen-year-old boy from Hoduras named Brian. "'We've suffered a lot to try to make our lives better,' he says. 'If they knew what we've been through, they'd let us in.'"
I've never been particularly well-versed in political intricacies, even and especially those relating to border patrol, but I've always sort of viewed the deportation of illegal immigrants as treating the symptom. Maybe this is because I live in Park City, Utah and have never experienced the full and direct flow of these immigrant children I keep hearing about, but I struggle to believe that deportation can fix all of our problems for us. I figure, if you truly want to stop this unending flow of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, maybe you should make some sort of plan to help Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. I know that won't be easy - there is no magic button - but there are also many, many people who, given the means, would love to help. I also know it'll take a while - most important things take a while - but in the end, it'll be well worth it.
At the very least, I think they should work to move all these kids out of California and Texas. Just, you know, diffuse them into the midwest, where we can better handle them.
Maybe I'm just some stupid rich white girl, but...it makes sense to me.
-Allie H-S
P.S: I just realized, this is my fiftieth post! Yaaaaaay milestone! Woooooo!
August 3, 2014
Artifact Reflection 1 - And Also Happy Esther Day!
Happy Esther Day, everybody!
This post has a very specific purpose, so I'll try and keep it short, but for those of you who don't know, Esther Earl was a really amazing person who died of cancer when she was sixteen. Partly because I never actually knew Esther and partly because this post is meant to be for school, I don't think I can explain Esther Day well enough and in few enough words to keep it from dominating the post, and I certainly can't do it as well as this vlogbrothers video and the rest of the playlist it's been added to. Hank doesn't explain Esther Day until about two minutes in, but I think the entire video is very important, so I urge you to watch all of it. (It's three minutes and thirty-eight seconds long; I think you can handle it.) In short, Esther Day - August third - is a day to tell your friends and family and everybody who's important to you that you love them, and not just assume that they know. Last year, my friends and I held a party, but this year, circumstances wouldn't allow it. So I'm spreading the word this way, because the internet it powerful, and maybe somebody will read this who doesn't already know about it. Let's hope, I guess.
Right, so, to the school part of this post. I stumbled upon my first artifact for The Distance Between Us this morning! It's a newspaper article. (I am so original.) I found it in my actual physical newspaper, but that's a little harder to link to, so I have it online here. In it, Roxana Orellana talks about her recent trip to Honduras, the country she grew up in, but no longer recognizes. Like Reyna Grande, Orellana's mother moved to the United States and promised to come back for her children once she got settled. Five years later, her mother returned for her. Honduras was poor then, but not life-threatening. After Orellana moved to the United States, crime in Honduras increased dramatically, crimes such as murder happening regularly in broad daylight. "It’s different now, a place that forces kids to make adult decisions and trek in terrifying conditions hoping for better. The violence of drug traffickers and gangs has poisoned the culture, leaving wreckage that sometimes seems beyond repair."
In The Distance Between Us, Reyna returns to her hometown of Iguala, Mexico during her senior year of high school. The government has privatized the railroad since she left, and trains no longer come there. As a result, Iguala has plummeted even deeper into poverty. Like Roxana Orellana, Reyna goes to stay with her maternal grandmother, and she finds it hard to ignore the poverty that surrounds her, while as a child, it was all she knew. (At this same point in the book, I find it hard to ignore what a shallow, two-faced monster her older sister has become, while it's all that Reyna ever knew, but I figure that's a post for another day.)
In my last post, I ranted about how horrible and depressing The Distance Between Us was. I actually finished it yesterday though, and it had the happy ending it so desperately needed. And it occurs to me that those first three hundred pages of unbelievable misfortune made the last twelve pages of hope so much better. Because honestly, we would never care that Reyna graduated from college if we hadn't seen everything that had stood in her way, and we wouldn't care that she'd put her family back together if we hadn't seen everything that had torn it apart. To likely misquote Batman Begins (because that's just my style), "it takes dramatic examples to pull these people out of their apathy." As a fifteen-year-old white girl in a middle-class family, living full time in Park City, Utah, a resort town and one of the nicest cities in America, I find it is really fucking easy to spend all my time on the internet and connected with the world, and yet remain blind to all that goes on in it.
That said, I think I'm gonna read the newspaper more often. Ignorance is bliss if there's a spider in your bedroom, but when I look at the world at large, I think I'd like to know the true state of it. Maybe then I'll know how to do something of value and help it.
-Allie H-S
This post has a very specific purpose, so I'll try and keep it short, but for those of you who don't know, Esther Earl was a really amazing person who died of cancer when she was sixteen. Partly because I never actually knew Esther and partly because this post is meant to be for school, I don't think I can explain Esther Day well enough and in few enough words to keep it from dominating the post, and I certainly can't do it as well as this vlogbrothers video and the rest of the playlist it's been added to. Hank doesn't explain Esther Day until about two minutes in, but I think the entire video is very important, so I urge you to watch all of it. (It's three minutes and thirty-eight seconds long; I think you can handle it.) In short, Esther Day - August third - is a day to tell your friends and family and everybody who's important to you that you love them, and not just assume that they know. Last year, my friends and I held a party, but this year, circumstances wouldn't allow it. So I'm spreading the word this way, because the internet it powerful, and maybe somebody will read this who doesn't already know about it. Let's hope, I guess.
Right, so, to the school part of this post. I stumbled upon my first artifact for The Distance Between Us this morning! It's a newspaper article. (I am so original.) I found it in my actual physical newspaper, but that's a little harder to link to, so I have it online here. In it, Roxana Orellana talks about her recent trip to Honduras, the country she grew up in, but no longer recognizes. Like Reyna Grande, Orellana's mother moved to the United States and promised to come back for her children once she got settled. Five years later, her mother returned for her. Honduras was poor then, but not life-threatening. After Orellana moved to the United States, crime in Honduras increased dramatically, crimes such as murder happening regularly in broad daylight. "It’s different now, a place that forces kids to make adult decisions and trek in terrifying conditions hoping for better. The violence of drug traffickers and gangs has poisoned the culture, leaving wreckage that sometimes seems beyond repair."
In The Distance Between Us, Reyna returns to her hometown of Iguala, Mexico during her senior year of high school. The government has privatized the railroad since she left, and trains no longer come there. As a result, Iguala has plummeted even deeper into poverty. Like Roxana Orellana, Reyna goes to stay with her maternal grandmother, and she finds it hard to ignore the poverty that surrounds her, while as a child, it was all she knew. (At this same point in the book, I find it hard to ignore what a shallow, two-faced monster her older sister has become, while it's all that Reyna ever knew, but I figure that's a post for another day.)
In my last post, I ranted about how horrible and depressing The Distance Between Us was. I actually finished it yesterday though, and it had the happy ending it so desperately needed. And it occurs to me that those first three hundred pages of unbelievable misfortune made the last twelve pages of hope so much better. Because honestly, we would never care that Reyna graduated from college if we hadn't seen everything that had stood in her way, and we wouldn't care that she'd put her family back together if we hadn't seen everything that had torn it apart. To likely misquote Batman Begins (because that's just my style), "it takes dramatic examples to pull these people out of their apathy." As a fifteen-year-old white girl in a middle-class family, living full time in Park City, Utah, a resort town and one of the nicest cities in America, I find it is really fucking easy to spend all my time on the internet and connected with the world, and yet remain blind to all that goes on in it.
That said, I think I'm gonna read the newspaper more often. Ignorance is bliss if there's a spider in your bedroom, but when I look at the world at large, I think I'd like to know the true state of it. Maybe then I'll know how to do something of value and help it.
-Allie H-S
May 16, 2014
Pageviews, Concern for Ava's Demon, and 2002's "Spider-Man" (Respectively)
Hi, all.
So, first thing's first. You got me...
EIGHT EXTRA VIEWS! YOU WIN! WHICH MEANS I WIN! WHICH MEANS I LOVE YOU! Just to be clear, I loved you anyway. BUT NOW WE WIN! Thaaaaaank youuuuuuuuu! ^.^ *gives you virtual cake* Caaaaaaaake! (Next time you can, go buy yourself some actual cake. Because you deserve it.)
Second thing - I realize I talk about Ava's Demon kind of a lot on this blog, but I'm actually a little concerned because it stopped updating recently (I don't have the exact date) completely without notice. Maybe it hasn't been as long as I think (my memory is just shot lately), but the author's usually pretty good about that, so I hope she didn't die or anything? Also, I think she has a tumblr, but I don't know what it is, so if anybody has that info, I would like it very much. ((UPDATE: nevermind, it's here, and also she was just sick for a while. it's all good.))
Now. Let's get down to business [to defeat the Huns]. Because Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, every now and then I go on a Spider-Man media binge. This time, as I'm sure you can guess, the binge was brought on by The Amazing Spider-Man 2. So after watching that and its precursor movie, I grabbed the slightly older series, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (AKA Tobey Maguire/that-kid-from-Gatsby/early 2000's Spider-Man. That one). Because IMDb is the very greatest movie reference site ever, I have its Spider-Man page here.
I feel I need to point out that Spider-Man is in no way a prequel for The Amazing Spider-Man. I think people make this mistake because both came out so recently (in the same ten years, at least), but no, these renditions are in no way related other than that they were both based off of the original comic series. In other words, trying match up and then make sense of the storylines is like trying to match up Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with 1995's Batman Forever. Both are great individually (Batman Forever has a special place in my heart), but make absolutely no sense put together, I assure you.
That said, let's review a movie, shall we?
Knowing me, this may take a while.
Let's start with a synopsis. In Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire plays high school senior Peter Parker, who is fairly smart but painfully awkward, has been in love with his neighbor Mary Jane Watson (MJ) since the fourth grade, and lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City. Here, dear Peter goes on a high school field trip and is bitten by a genetically modified spider that somehow got out of its container (which is never revisited or explained). He wakes up the next morning with spider-like abilities, such as that to climb and stick to walls and that to shoot webbing directly from his wrists. Additionally, his eyesight is now perfect (he previously wore glasses), and he has super-strength (he was a total wimp).
Meanwhile, Dr. Norman Osborn, father of Peter's best friend Harry Osborn, is the owner of Oscorp, the city's largest science research lab. Dr. Osborn has been working on a human performance-enhancer for quite some time, but his higher-ups threaten to pull his funding, so he skips through the process to human testing - the human being himself. A possible side effect of the performance enhancer was insanity, and thus it drives him insane, turning him into the Green Goblin.
Peter has a fight with his Uncle Ben, who tells him "with great power comes great responsibility" and is killed shortly thereafter by a street thug in a car robbery. Peter then decides to become a superhero and fulfill his responsibility to rid the streets of crime. You know, basically.
This movie is great because it's lighthearted and Tobey Maguire constitues a very likable Peter Parker because he's cute and socially inept and just completely lost for MJ. So if you're into that, go for it. Go see this movie for its cuteness, and to broaden your experiences of Spider-Man. It was fun to watch. (Particularly in a group.) But if you really break movies down like I tend to, um...be warned, I guess. There are a few kinks in the plan.
So when I watch or read things, I tend to put writers into two categories: those better at plot and those better at characterization. These were plot writers. To say the least. The most glaring example of this is MJ.
Mary Jane Watson is a perky redhead with subtly accentuated boobs who wants to be an actrice and
speaks in a softly sweet voice. She'd never hurt a soul, says things you'd sooner expect from a sugary romance novel, and must wait ten minutes for Spider-Man to save her from the crumbling ledge instead of just crawling off it herself. Mind you, I am being perfectly objective; even though no one beats Emma Stone, and my official OTP is Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (which I am fairly, if not completely invested in), I actually quite like MJ. In other versions, she's been this sexy, green-eyed redhead with a sharp wit and a little black dress, a character who knows what she wants and always stands up for the little guy. But in this, MJ was basically the epitome of a weak female character. I am a bit influenced from also watching Spider-Man 2, in which this problem is I think exponentially worse, but still.
The other painful character is, I think, Dr. Osborn. One of the greatest things you can do for a movie is develop the villain, but they did not take that opportunity. His entire characterization is that he's a rich, uptight father turned crazy, bipolar scientist. His only reason for becoming a villain is that an experiment went wrong and made him a villain, which I think is a bit of a characterization cop-out. It started as just a conflict of interests - Dr. Osborn originally just wanted control of Oscorp back because the board kicked him off (because he's crazy), but Spider-Man fundamentally disagreed with killing the board members one-by-one, but he went after Spider-Man vendetta-style, like it was personal. Which is completely irrational. It's as if the writers couldn't think of a legitimate reason to make him want to kill Peter, so they just drove him insane instead.
My main dispute with stories is usually poor characterization because it's really important to me that characters - and by extension, people - are imagined complexly.
However, to end this on a good not, I should point out that there is a character in this movie that I particularly like, and that is John Jonah Jameson! JJJ is the cheap-ass, no-bullshit, always-talking-never-listening, fast-paced head editor of the newspaper The Daily Bugle, which Peter is a freelance photographer for. He's not particularly nice, as you might imagine, but he's completely hilarious in his own blunt brutality (and doesn't mean half of what he says). And though I've been trying not to compare the two because bias, JJJ is the main aspect I'd pick of the Spider-Man series that's actually better than The Amazing Spider-Man series. The latter is seriously lacking, but JJJ in this is fabulous, and all in all, he makes me happy.
So that's it, I guess. A fair post with which to end the year.
Thanks for reading,
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
(not really, though. it's just me.)
So, first thing's first. You got me...
EIGHT EXTRA VIEWS! YOU WIN! WHICH MEANS I WIN! WHICH MEANS I LOVE YOU! Just to be clear, I loved you anyway. BUT NOW WE WIN! Thaaaaaank youuuuuuuuu! ^.^ *gives you virtual cake* Caaaaaaaake! (Next time you can, go buy yourself some actual cake. Because you deserve it.)
Second thing - I realize I talk about Ava's Demon kind of a lot on this blog, but I'm actually a little concerned because it stopped updating recently (I don't have the exact date) completely without notice. Maybe it hasn't been as long as I think (my memory is just shot lately), but the author's usually pretty good about that, so I hope she didn't die or anything? Also, I think she has a tumblr, but I don't know what it is, so if anybody has that info, I would like it very much. ((UPDATE: nevermind, it's here, and also she was just sick for a while. it's all good.))
Now. Let's get down to business [to defeat the Huns]. Because Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, every now and then I go on a Spider-Man media binge. This time, as I'm sure you can guess, the binge was brought on by The Amazing Spider-Man 2. So after watching that and its precursor movie, I grabbed the slightly older series, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (AKA Tobey Maguire/that-kid-from-Gatsby/early 2000's Spider-Man. That one). Because IMDb is the very greatest movie reference site ever, I have its Spider-Man page here.
I feel I need to point out that Spider-Man is in no way a prequel for The Amazing Spider-Man. I think people make this mistake because both came out so recently (in the same ten years, at least), but no, these renditions are in no way related other than that they were both based off of the original comic series. In other words, trying match up and then make sense of the storylines is like trying to match up Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with 1995's Batman Forever. Both are great individually (Batman Forever has a special place in my heart), but make absolutely no sense put together, I assure you.
That said, let's review a movie, shall we?
Knowing me, this may take a while.
Let's start with a synopsis. In Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire plays high school senior Peter Parker, who is fairly smart but painfully awkward, has been in love with his neighbor Mary Jane Watson (MJ) since the fourth grade, and lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City. Here, dear Peter goes on a high school field trip and is bitten by a genetically modified spider that somehow got out of its container (which is never revisited or explained). He wakes up the next morning with spider-like abilities, such as that to climb and stick to walls and that to shoot webbing directly from his wrists. Additionally, his eyesight is now perfect (he previously wore glasses), and he has super-strength (he was a total wimp).
Meanwhile, Dr. Norman Osborn, father of Peter's best friend Harry Osborn, is the owner of Oscorp, the city's largest science research lab. Dr. Osborn has been working on a human performance-enhancer for quite some time, but his higher-ups threaten to pull his funding, so he skips through the process to human testing - the human being himself. A possible side effect of the performance enhancer was insanity, and thus it drives him insane, turning him into the Green Goblin.
Peter has a fight with his Uncle Ben, who tells him "with great power comes great responsibility" and is killed shortly thereafter by a street thug in a car robbery. Peter then decides to become a superhero and fulfill his responsibility to rid the streets of crime. You know, basically.
This movie is great because it's lighthearted and Tobey Maguire constitues a very likable Peter Parker because he's cute and socially inept and just completely lost for MJ. So if you're into that, go for it. Go see this movie for its cuteness, and to broaden your experiences of Spider-Man. It was fun to watch. (Particularly in a group.) But if you really break movies down like I tend to, um...be warned, I guess. There are a few kinks in the plan.
So when I watch or read things, I tend to put writers into two categories: those better at plot and those better at characterization. These were plot writers. To say the least. The most glaring example of this is MJ.
 |
| (courtesy of: nyctalking.com) |
speaks in a softly sweet voice. She'd never hurt a soul, says things you'd sooner expect from a sugary romance novel, and must wait ten minutes for Spider-Man to save her from the crumbling ledge instead of just crawling off it herself. Mind you, I am being perfectly objective; even though no one beats Emma Stone, and my official OTP is Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (which I am fairly, if not completely invested in), I actually quite like MJ. In other versions, she's been this sexy, green-eyed redhead with a sharp wit and a little black dress, a character who knows what she wants and always stands up for the little guy. But in this, MJ was basically the epitome of a weak female character. I am a bit influenced from also watching Spider-Man 2, in which this problem is I think exponentially worse, but still.
 |
| (courtesy of: comicbookmovie.com) |
My main dispute with stories is usually poor characterization because it's really important to me that characters - and by extension, people - are imagined complexly.
 |
| (courtesy of: splashpage.mtv.com) |
So that's it, I guess. A fair post with which to end the year.
Thanks for reading,
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
(not really, though. it's just me.)
March 28, 2014
The Louvre (and Scout Finch)
Hi, all. In this post, I recommend to you two lovely things. First, I give you...the Louvre!
The Louvre (loohv) is one of the most famous art museums in the world, located in the center of Paris. Now, I'm in French III. I love the language and the culture, but I try not to talk about Paris too much because, well, if you've ever been into any American shopping mall ever...
...I feel it's become a tad cliché. I mean, gorgeous! But cliché.
But this is something Parisian that I really just can't get over. My teacher showed it to us in French today, and...and...welp. o-o
You don't need to watch it with sound, but I recommend it, because the music's really pretty.
(I don't trust Blogger with videos, so here's a link to it on YouTube.)
When my teacher asked the class how many people had been to the Louvre, the anticipated answer was maybe two or three kids. But no. No! Nearly half the class raised their hands. Now, that's fine. Good for them! I'm glad! So long as they don't take it for granted. But when one girl was asked how she liked it, she only said, "eh, it was cool," and proceeded to stare at her laptop, vastly uninterested with the topic.
Are you kidding me? It was cool? I go to the Fine Arts and Natural History museums at the U and I freak out like a little kid. I end up taking four minutes of video of snails for pete's sake! (Which are actually pretty cool. You should see them, really.)
Now, I have to be careful about calling people out on taking things for granted, because I live in a wealthy neighborhood in a very wealthy country. But she got to go to Paris! She got to test her broken, third-year French on actual people! And she got to go to the Louvre.
Actually, maybe I should set something straight. In science museums, I become like a little kid. In art museums, I really become a sort of pretentious culture sponge. I have to be careful not to get all faux-deep on those around me. At least, that's true last I checked. It's been too long: another reason I should be in the Louvre right now.
Okay, well right now it's actually like 3:30 AM there, but my point still stands.
Anyways. One of my many adolescent dreams.
The other thing I wanted to point out in this post - just a small thing - was this:
In English, we recently read To Kill A Mockingbird, which many people may think is a pain-in-the-ass book to read. If you're thinking that, and you have to read it like I did, just hold true 'till part two (heh, rhyme). Pay close attention to the characters, because the farther you read, the more attached you get, and the more interesting and meaningful the book becomes. (There will be fangirling, too.) It's beautiful, if a little sad. In my experience, most beautiful stories are pretty sad. That's just how it works.
And also Scout is adorable. (I might have to work on my transitions.)
Look at her! Cutie! Particularly if you know what scene that is. My mom and I watched the movie last night. :3
But so, anyways, read the book, then watch the movie, and then go to the Louvre. I insist.
-Allie
The Louvre (loohv) is one of the most famous art museums in the world, located in the center of Paris. Now, I'm in French III. I love the language and the culture, but I try not to talk about Paris too much because, well, if you've ever been into any American shopping mall ever...
...I feel it's become a tad cliché. I mean, gorgeous! But cliché.
But this is something Parisian that I really just can't get over. My teacher showed it to us in French today, and...and...welp. o-o
You don't need to watch it with sound, but I recommend it, because the music's really pretty.
(I don't trust Blogger with videos, so here's a link to it on YouTube.)
When my teacher asked the class how many people had been to the Louvre, the anticipated answer was maybe two or three kids. But no. No! Nearly half the class raised their hands. Now, that's fine. Good for them! I'm glad! So long as they don't take it for granted. But when one girl was asked how she liked it, she only said, "eh, it was cool," and proceeded to stare at her laptop, vastly uninterested with the topic.
Are you kidding me? It was cool? I go to the Fine Arts and Natural History museums at the U and I freak out like a little kid. I end up taking four minutes of video of snails for pete's sake! (Which are actually pretty cool. You should see them, really.)
Now, I have to be careful about calling people out on taking things for granted, because I live in a wealthy neighborhood in a very wealthy country. But she got to go to Paris! She got to test her broken, third-year French on actual people! And she got to go to the Louvre.
Actually, maybe I should set something straight. In science museums, I become like a little kid. In art museums, I really become a sort of pretentious culture sponge. I have to be careful not to get all faux-deep on those around me. At least, that's true last I checked. It's been too long: another reason I should be in the Louvre right now.
Okay, well right now it's actually like 3:30 AM there, but my point still stands.
Anyways. One of my many adolescent dreams.
The other thing I wanted to point out in this post - just a small thing - was this:
In English, we recently read To Kill A Mockingbird, which many people may think is a pain-in-the-ass book to read. If you're thinking that, and you have to read it like I did, just hold true 'till part two (heh, rhyme). Pay close attention to the characters, because the farther you read, the more attached you get, and the more interesting and meaningful the book becomes. (There will be fangirling, too.) It's beautiful, if a little sad. In my experience, most beautiful stories are pretty sad. That's just how it works.
And also Scout is adorable. (I might have to work on my transitions.)
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| (courtesy of: wikispaces) |
But so, anyways, read the book, then watch the movie, and then go to the Louvre. I insist.
-Allie
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