realitya

Something that can make me go out of my comfort zone:

I think that going to live abroad for a certain period of time is a really good way of learning new things about the world. I met so many people, and went to so many places on my own, saw different things. This is what I did while coming to Canada, I wanted to learn more about the world, to go out of my comfort zone, of everything I knew. I think I will do this again, I am thinking about going to Germany because my German is not very good and it is one of the main languages in my country, so I could learn about another culture and get better in German.  Other things I can do is simply to always say yes to new opportunities, to not close any doors. And it can expand my vision of the world. Try to go out rather than stay home, meet new people.

Narrativereflectiona

Core competencies:

Critical thinking:

Develop and design:

What worked:

The peer editing draft worked well for me because it helped me to be able to see what I could change about my text. I think that having someone else’s opinion about my work helps me to see what I did well and not so well. Because sometimes it is hard to see, when it is our own text, what could be changed to make it better, I wrote it, therefore I am not able to know how it feels like to read my text for the first time, and to see what might be incomplete, lacking details. Also, it helped me to get inspiration because I was able to read other’s stories and to compare it to mine, to see how we all create a totally different story while starting with the same theme. And it brought me a new way of seeing my own story and what I liked about it, what I did not like. Also, I think it was a fun activity to share our stories and help others with their stories.

The Brainstorm part did not help me, I was not inspired in front of a blank paper and, it looked like nothing. I changed ideas at least three times. I finally got my idea when I stopped thinking about it. I need to go out, walk, do something else to find inspiration. When I try to brainstorm and put ideas on the paper, I can’t find anything because I am looking for it too much. I need to do something else and stop thinking about an idea, and the idea will come. That’s why brainstorm did not help me.

Creative thinking:

Generating ideas:

The theme was about how one’s vision of the world might change through time. At first, I wanted to talk about religion, about how someone can start to believe in any kind of religion, God, and how this can change this person’s vision of the world. I wanted to tell a story about it because I am a Christian, but I have not always been, and it changed my vision of the world. But then I did not know how to create a plot, neither a conflict about it. It felt like, if I had been able to write it in French, I would have, but in English, it is another story. Then I started to think about how we can create a world in our mind, through imagination, and I started to develop a character who lives more in her/his head than in the real world, I wanted the story to make this character evolve so that he/she would realize that he/she can’t live life in an imaginary world and should realize there is a real one.  Finally, this led me to childhood, I thought about how one’s vision of the world evolves when growing up. The imaginary world represented, then, children’s imagination and how they see the world.

Essay:

Strength:

I really like my theme, because I think that the reader can connect to it, to how growing up makes our vision of the world change and how we can sometimes lose a bit of our imagination. I think that my beginning is nice to read, and I enjoyed writing it, to describe the landscape, I really wanted to make the reader feel the character’s joy and feeling of freedom, innocence too.

 

Weakness:

I am not sure about how I created the conflict and if it was clear for the reader. The conflict is between Ella and her parents, but more than that it is between Ella trying to grow up, and the little girl inside her who wants to go back to her imaginary world, play in the wood and feel like a child again.

I think that I maybe did not follow a very clear structure, I am not sure about it.

 

core competencies

Positive personal and cultural identity: 2. Personal values and choices.

In the play, Death of a Salesman,  the reader follows the story of an average American family in the 1960s. The author exposes the different relationships between the members of the family and from the very beginning the reader understands that the Lomans have a lot of things that they should say to each other but that they avoid, and they often lie to each other in order to protect their relationships by avoiding hurting anyone’s feeling. But this is actually what breaks their family apart. Biff discovers that his father cheats on his mother. Biff decides not to tell his mother about it but it creates a gap between him and his father which leads to their conflict. All of that because Willy could not tell Linda about his infidelity and Biff did not dare either to tell his mother. What if they had told her, of course, she would have felt hurt and pain, but I think that if she truly loves her husband and if Willy was willing to fix his mistake, she could have forgiven him and it could even  have reinforced their relationship, to make it start again on trust and love. Because not telling the truth made Willy feel guilty for the rest of his life, he has remorses about it, and we see it by the way he reacts anytime Linda talks about stockings because it remembers him of the stockings he used to give to the woman.

This reinforces my own values about relationships, I think that what makes a relationship strong is when we can say the truth all the time, no matter if it might hurt someone’s feelings. Because if we don’t say what needs to be said, it stays somewhere, for willy, his guilt never went away.

 

Critical thinking:

The story changed my vision of success and also, showed that being loved and well-liked by people is not what we should look for to be successful. As shown in the story, Willy based his idea of success on his popularity and not on hard work. he thought he needed to be charismatic, and this is what he taught Biff. And they both fail. Bernard is the character that illustrates that to be successful we need to be hard working. Also, the disillusion of the American dream represented by Biff, explains, that the American dream can not be reached by everyone and that it is an illusion. That the business world is hard and that, also, it is idealized and does not correspond to everyone. It is a “fake” dream, a vision of happiness that is wrong, that says that making money and being well-liked is the ultimate purpose of one’s life.

#Manwithhata

 

As long as I can remember it, I have always felt like I was invisible. Not that I actually was but, I felt that way, that no one could really see me. As if I was no one. It started in middle school I think. I was always the kid that sits at the back of the classroom, as far as possible from others. I was too shy. I never got to really understand how it works, I mean, talking, laughing, making friends, feeling like being part of something, anything. I was nothing. I spent my whole days looking outside through the window, at the trees. Trees always change through time, they change colors, they grow, they lose their leaves and wait for the snow to fall on their branches, but finally, they always start the same cycle. Spring, they get green, smell like pollen, Summer, they get dressed with fruits, flowers, autumn they change their colors, winter, they lose their leaves. And then, an then what ? they start it all over again. And that was the way I felt like every year was the same, and like those trees, I was growing, but I was stuck in this same cycle. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, and i still felt invisible. Nothing was changing. So invisible that I wished I really was, to see if it would make any difference if my absence would be noticed.

High school, the last year, I started to wish it so hard. that it actually happened. I was invisible, and it felt strange, to look at the mirror to see nothing from me but my clothes. I went to school completely naked and that was one of the funniest things I ever did. Teachers thought I was sick. My roommates did not care much, they did not know me. Even my family did not notice at first. My parents were separated, and they both thought that day that I simply was on the other’s house. Of course, they would not ask, communication between them always depended on me. I was the carrier pigeon flying from one to another.

It lasted one week. I was outside of my school, leaning against a wall, looking at students going home, saying goodbye to their friends. And I realized how much invisible I was, how lonely I was. And at that moment I hated the whole world. I cared so much about being noticed, about being someone in others eyes. And I realized how easy it seemed to be, to just open myself to people, talk, laugh, live.  I always thought that everyone around me was the problem, that they were blind, that it was their fault if they never paid attention to me. The truth was, I never tried to interact with anyone. I was the problem. I had made myself invisible. And I wanted it to stop.

And suddenly, I saw my hands appear again. And I was so glad, so thankful because I knew, things were going to change.

Situation questions

#problemsituationa

  1. Do you think that John and Emily are deceiving themselves about being able to do well in their English class?

Yes, they are, they are lying to themselves, thinking they will be able to get a B in their English class while spending all their time doing sports and socializing. They chose to devote their time to one thing and to let behind the rest while keeping the illusion that, without working they will get a better mark in English.

  1. What do you think might be the result of the schedule they are following?

They are going to be drowning under too much work because they are too busy to work for their grades. They favor sport and socializing and don’t study enough.

  1. If they don’t do well in their English work, will they blame others or themselves?

They should blame themselves but maybe they will keep doing what they are already doing, deceiving themselves about being able to do well in their classes, and so, blame others.

  1. What, if anything, might you do differently if you were in their place?

Avoiding staying longer after their sports practice and going home as soon as possible to study their English. I would think about what the priority is, having a better grade in English or being the king and queen of the dance.

 

The American dream

The famous “American dream” term was born, at first when the colonists from England were sent to America, “The American dream” was an ideal of how life would be in the new continent, it was an illusion, made to attract people to America. This ideal was that while coming to America, people would reach their dreams, be successful in their life, earn a lot of money and even more. It was the promise of a new future, a new world, a new life in a wealthy country where everything is possible. It also represents freedom, new possibilities, something that can represent well what the American dream is, would be the statue of liberty which is a great and famous symbol of America. It represents freedom and attracts thousands of tourists around the world to New York, just like The American dream, still, today, attracts thousands of people in America.

#americandream

How to avoid wasting our waste:

As seen during the class today, BC’s waste system is, nowadays not sustainable. But as the documentary filmed in a small village in Japan shows it, it is possible to reduce a lot of our waste. While recycling. I think that recycling is the solution to our waste, while recycling, we re-use materials rather than creating new ones, and so, we contribute to, preserve the earth’s resources and also to avoid a massive amount of waste that would have to go to the landfill. Because putting our garbage in landfills is not a viable solution in the long term, it is like what children do when their mother asks them to clean their room and they just hide everything under their bed. This is how landfills feel to me. We are just hiding our waste under the ground. To avoid the growth of landfills, recycling seems to be the best solution. It requires energy and money but it also saves all the energy that would be required to create new goods with new materials. Why creating more materials when we have so much, that we have to put it under the ground because we don’t know how to deal with it correctly in order to re-use it.

To make BC’s waste management system more sustainable, we need to develop the industry of recycling in Canada. Canada used to send its recyclable waste to countries such as China and Philipines because that is where there are industries that recycle waste. But they don’t want our garbage anymore. The solution is simple, we need to develop our own recycling industry. It would actually bring a lot of advantages to Canada and Canadians: first, it would solve the problem of the massive amount of garbage we create, secondly, it would bring a lot of jobs, it would avoid the growth of landfills and it would also generate money because of the benefits of selling products that are recycled.

And, if I understood well the situation, it seems like, if we do it properly, we can recycle almost everything. Isn’t that great, we don’t need to create more, we simply need to organize our waste, recycle it and reuse it, just like nature does. If we can do that then, they will be no more waste. Because waste is something you can’t use anymore. If we recycle everything is reusable.

I was curious to see how my country, Switzerland, deals with its waste. And it seems like, we are part of countries that create a lot of waste but recycle a lot. According to a graphic picture (I tried to include in my post but it did not work) in 2015, Switzerland recycled 93% of glass, 86% for metals, 83% for plastic bottles, 57000 t of clothes and shoes. The total percentage of recycled things is: 53% of our garbage is recycled and 47% is transformed in energy while burning it. I don’t know exactly the statistics from today but here is what I found.

So we can see that it is possible to re-use a lot, avoid wasting our waste. Of course, Switzerland is clearly smaller than North America, but I don’t think it actually changes anything. It is about our daily life, simply do a little effort can change a lot. I think that we can all do better.

 

 

 

 

 

How sustainable are different kind of aquaculture?

Sustainability of aquaculture depends, firstly on the environmental impact of fish harvests: in order to protect the reproduction of different fish species, and to have a sustainable fishing industry, aquaculture needs to avoid overfishing and taking fishes away from the cycle of nature. If there are not enough fishes so that they can reproduce themselves then they will be no more fishes. Therefore, any kind of commercial aquaculture is nowadays not sustainable because we tend to produce more than we need which leads to overproduction. From the number of a certain kind of fishes, scientists had advised harvesting, and not more, we harvested six times more than what was advised. To make aquaculture sustainable we need to regulate the harvesting of fishes to protect the reproduction of fishes, and so to not interrupt the natural cycle of the ecosystem.

Instagram account, lotf : simon223444

In the Instagram account, I made for Simon, I chose three events that highlight important character traits of Simon. His connection to nature, his cleverness about the way he sees things, clearly, and his understanding of human nature and of the fact that the beast is the evil in each of the characters of the book.

Here is the account of Simon. In his profile is written:

We have nothing to fear, there is no beast. Let’s live in peace. 

I added an emoticon of two hands praying to show that in the book Golding used this character to symbolize religion and righteousness.

First picture: the island

 

 


Second picture: Simon and the lord of the flies

Third picture: Simon in the forest