Journal Entry 31: Compare and Contrast Dogs :)

I agree that most dogs are not alike in personality and appearance. Dogs such as, golden retrievers and chihuahuas have different personality and appearance. The difference in their personality is that most golden retrievers are considered more friendly, loyal, and intelligent because golden retrievers help blind or deaf people and help or rescue people while most chihuahuas are more violent and aggressive because chihuahuas like to bark at strangers and attack strangers but of course they do not bark at their owners. The different in their appearance is that golden retrievers are medium sized dogs while chihuahuas are small sized dogs. Golden retrievers have gold or cream colored fur while chihuahuas have tan, black, white and many other different colors of furs. Golden retrievers also weigh more than chihuahuas and chihuahuas also live longer than golden retrievers (chihuahua: can live about 15 years and golden retriever: can live about 11 years). But in some ways dogs can also be alike because dogs like to lick people, dogs like to sniff stuffs, dogs like to bark at strangers, dogs like to stick out their tongues, dogs like to wag their tails, and dogs like to pee on sidewalks or corners haha :D

Journal Entry 30: Thanksgiving :)

Well today is Thanksgiving (OH YEAH!), which is a holiday celebrated mostly by American people and Canadian people. I like Thanksgiving because on Thanksgiving, students do not need to go to school and people get to have a big feast with a bunch of delicious food, such as turkey and pumpkin pie. On Thanksgiving, people have to be thankful for something and I am thankful to my parents because if my parents were not here on Earth today then I would not be here on Earth either. Another reason I am thankful for them is because my parents work very hard to earn money, to send me to this school (Pacific American School), where I can study in an English environment since I am not that good at Chinese, so I probably can not go to a local school to study. I am also thankful that "someone" (I am not sure who) made the internet because then I can get in touch with my friends very easy, since using the phone and writing letters are expensive. I also would not have entertainment such as Facebook, YouTube, or Skype, if the internet did not exist. I probably would not be writing in this blog either, if there was no internet.

Journal Entry 29: Heroes Revisited :)

I searched up the word "hero" in the internet dictionary, Dictionary.com and it says that hero means "a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities". I searched in another internet dictionary, Merriam Webster it says that the word "hero" means "a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability". Both dictionaries have different and same meaning for the word "hero". The difference is that in the dictionary, Dictionary.com it is talking about a hero is a man with abilities, while in the dictionary, Merriam Webster it says a hero is a mythological and legendary figure. In both of the dictionaries, it says that a hero has heroic qualities (heroes do brave deeds and heroes have great abilities). I prefer Dictionary.com's definition better because in Dictionary.com's definition, it says that heroes do brave deeds and I think that is true and in Merriam Webster's definition, it says that heroes are mythological or a legendary figure but I think that heroes can be a real person not a made up person. If I could change the definition I would say heroes can be a woman, not only a man or a made up person. In my own way, I would say that a hero can be anyone that does good things that help other people, not like borrowing people a pencil, which helped them, but like helping people get out of danger and something like that.

Journal Entry 28: Great, Old Knowledge :)

In the story "In Trouble" by Gary Paulsen, the author is trying to tell the readers in the end of the story that somewhere in the dogs, in their humor and the way they thought, dogs have great, old knowledge and we humans lost that kind of knowledge (in the story it says: ''they had great, old knowledge; they had something we had lost"). I think that the author, Gary Paulsen says that dogs are very smart deep inside of them because when he was sledding with the dogs, he lost control and went flying out into space with the sled and he got wounded in the knee. At that moment the dogs ran away, but one of the dogs, Obeah brought the whole pack of dogs back together to help him. I am not sure, but I think from that sledding accident, Gary Paulsen learned that humans lost the type of knowledge of helping others in the middle of fear because the dogs were stuck in a very cold weather but the dogs still came back from running away and helped him perhaps save him from that terrible accident. The dogs taught him that kind of knowledge that we humans had lost.

Journal Entry 27: Animal V Human :)

I think that not all animals are different from humans. Humans are considered mammals just like some of the animals. Most animals and humans are alike because they both need water, food, and shelter to live. Both human and animals have personalities and feelings. I think that humans are smarter than animals, unless that person is sort of stupid or something. One of the differences between animals and humans is that most animals have four legs while humans have two legs. Some animals are different from humans, such as fishes because fishes live in the water and fishes sleep with their eyes open, while human live on the land and humans sleep with their eyes closed. Amphibians are also a type of animal that is different from humans because they are cold-blooded and they can crawl or jump, while humans are warm-blooded and humans can walk. Animals can not talk like humans, animals just make weird noises like woof, meow, rawr, moo, quack and so on. Animals can not control their emotions and humans can control their emotions. Animals can not go shopping and humans can go shopping and animals can not wear pretty shoes and get pretty hairstyles like humans.

Journal Entry 26: Game Character :)

In my game the person who is playing the game (player) adopts a character, which is a cute, happy, furry, blue monster with soft pink cheeks and a pink little ribbon on her head. I am suppose to use my five senses to describe the monster, so I will just say that the monster smells like blueberry muffins and tastes like blueberry muffins, since the monster's fur is the color of blue. The monster really loves candies and the monster could not survive a day without a piece of candy. In the game the monster's story is that the monster was captured by these weird ninja dudes and the ninja dudes did not let the monster eat any candy. The monster starved to death and got really sad, so the monster rode her pet unicorn escaping to a nearby island called candyland, where the monster has to gather (eat) a lot and a lot of candies before the ninja dudes come and find the monster. So that is how the monster's story became a game (gathering candies). I do not really think that the monster expresses anything but you can just say that the monster is really happy to gather candies but the monster is also scared of the ninja dudes.

Journal Entry 25: EMERGENCY!!! :)

I have seen many emergency situations on the television and newspaper before where people had to deal with that emergency situation. I have been in many emergency situations myself. The most common emergency situation I have been in was natural disasters, such as earthquakes and blizzards. There was also once where I was in a car accident but I was really little about 1st grade, so I do not remember much of it. I have also accidentally fell in a very deep lake before in 5th grade because it was winter time and the lake in the park would be frozen, so there would be many kids playing on the lake but there was too many kids on the frozen lake, so the ice cracked and we all fell in the lake. Well when I was in those emergency situations I do not know what to do and I am not prepared for the situation, so the first thing I always do is scream and then I start panicking and then I forget the stuffs that happen after that. When a person prepares for a emergency situation, normally that person will still panic when the situation comes because it is really scary, so I think preparing for a situation is not a big deal.

Journal Entry 24: Setting in Art :)

There is a picture in the textbook (page 234 to 235) where I see a man dressed in blue and black clothes waving and beside the man is a brown horse (I think so) with a blue chicken picture on its body. The horse looks like it is eating trash because the horse is eating from this green bin with weird colored stuff, which is sort of messy looking. Behind the man and the horse is a woman carrying a child in her hands. The woman looks very sad and the woman looks like she lost something and the child is very freaky because it is missing an eye. The picture's background is very dark and very scary, there are faces blended into the picture's background and the houses are colored in white. The picture looks like it is from the past and it is located in a snowy village because the man is wearing long sleeve shirt and long pants and the houses are white. The mood of the picture is depressing because the people's face are not happy. When I see this picture it makes me feel uncomfortable because it looks very dark and I feel that something bad happened in the picture, which makes it scary for me.

Journal Entry 23: Game Conflict :)

In order to let a game become interesting you have to include conflicts in the game to make it hard for the character to reach the goal, or else the game will be very plain and very boring and no one will want to play your game. Conflict is a problem faced by the character, for example the conflict can be distraction or a struggle with another character. There are two types of conflicts, internal conflict (a conflict between yourself) and external conflict (a conflict with another person or a conflict with a natural disaster) but in games I think that there are mostly external conflicts. I want my game to be interesting so I need to include conflicts in my game. In my game the goal is to get as many candies as possible within a certain amount of time. The conflict for my game will be when the character gets near a piece of candy some screaming ninjas and screaming monkeys will come out to block and distract the character from getting the candies, so that it will be hard for the character to get near the candies. The character has to gather weapons along the way so when the character meets the screaming ninjas and screaming monkeys, the character will use the weapon to destroy it.

Journal Entry 22: Game Setting :)

If I am going to make a game in the computer, my game is going to be about this monster trying to find as many candies as possible in this place called candyland. Sometimes if you(monster) see a piece of candy and you(monster) want to go near it to get it, there will be a bunch of screaming ninjas and screaming monkeys coming out to attack you(monster), by throwing chocolate bars at your head which I find that really cool. In candyland it is really cold. There is also no gravity, so everything will probably be flying around in the air. In candyland almost everything is made out of candy, such as the floor is made of cotton candy, the trees are made of chocolate, the flowers are made of lollipops, the clouds are made of jelly, the sun is made of cake.

Journal Entry 21: Describe a Place You Know :)

Well if I should really describe a place with my five senses, I would describe my house because I am more familiar with my house than other places. My house is located in Taiwan. The first thing you see when you get to my house is this black and golden gate. After walking past the gate you will see this weird security guard then the lobby which is an outside one, a bunch of elevators and stairs, and also some weird decorations and stuff.

Journal Entry 20: The Influence of Setting :)

Setting is a time, place, or location in a story. Settings can influence the events of a story because basically events depend on the settings and it can cause complications, such as you can say for example, that the main character was in Antarctica and she or he froze to death. Well my own setting is in a country called Taiwan in Asia. My setting affects my events because I have to learn mandarin because in Taiwan people speak mandarin, so I have to learn it too in order to communicate with others.