Reflection

Today in English class, everyone in our class paired up into two and presented the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, a famous play by William Shakespeare. My role was Romeo and we had been memorizing the script since three weeks ago. When I was practicing yesterday, I was very confident about the memorizing part. I could memorize all the words and sentences without pausing or thinking. Other than memorizing the script, the teacher also told us to do some actions, like actually act it out whole we memorizing the words. This part is where I think I did a really bad job on. My partner was a shy person, and I'm not really a action kind of person. So we didn't do any movements at all. I was so nervous in the middle, I forgot one sentence in the middle. But over all, i think both of us did a great job on memorizing the lines, but we really needed to work on the acting part.

Absent

If a person is away from home for many years, it is going to be very nervous for him to return home. Unlike ancient times, it is very rare for people just leave home for many years and come back later, since the transportation today is very convenient. It only takes sixteen hours to travel to the other side of the Earth by plane. But in ancient times, there were no planes or trains. It takes much more time to travel from places to place. If a person is coming home from five years of separation. He is definitely going to be exited but nervous at the same time. Because he probably has to idea if there was anything happened to his family or not. Especially if the person has a chid. His child will not probably recognize him after so many years. Exited, nervous, scared and confused are his reactions. 

Odyssey

After watching the movie "The Odyssey" and reading the story, I recognized some differences between the story in the book and the movie version of the story. The first difference i found is that when Odyssey and his crew met Cyclops, in the movie, there was one man that got eaten by Cyclops. In the book, Cyclops caught two companions of Odyssey and beat their brains out. The second one I found was that in the movie, Odyssey and his companions used a wooden log with sharpen tip to poke Cyclops's eye in the morning. They only stayed in the cave with Cyclops one night before they escaped and Cyclops was drunk the night they met him. In the book, Odyssey didn't take action until the evening of the next day. Also in the movie, when Odyssey and his companions escaped, they hid under the fur of the sheep. But in the story, they hid under real sheep.

Hero

What makes a hero? There are some universal traits about heroes, but different cultures and societies may consider different people as heroes. I think a hero is someone that is important to the society. A hero has to have positive attitude to influence others, since heroes usually have some impact on the society, it is important for them to be a role model for everyone. Also, I think a hero should have some common traits with others to prove that he is actually part of the society, or else the person would be more consider as a god not a hero. There are many super heroes in the world today. Some of them are from comics and movies, some of them actually exist. Everyone can be a hero, a hero doesn't mean super power or god-like form. It is just a person that is willing to help the society and in some level willing to sacrifice for others. 

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

I agree with the quote "appearances can be deceiving." There are many examples of this. One of the examples are beautiful but deadly flowers. In movies, there are many scenes about  characters accidentally eat poisonous flowers, because the flowers are too attractive and beautiful. Of course, the result of eating these beautiful flowers is death. Lily of the Valley is very beautiful. It is pure white, and shaped like bells, at the same time, it is very deadly. All parts of the plant—the stems, the leaves, the flowers and the berries are extremely poisonous. The symptoms included reduced blood pressure and increased heart rate. Even though Lily of the Valley has very attractive appearances, but it is very deadly at the same time. 

Mislead

There is an quote, "appearances can be deceiving," means that things look different from what they really are. In movies, bad guys always look like bad guys. Every time when a villain comes out in a movie, we can always recognize him by his appearance. Bad guys or villains in movies have similar character traits, fierce eyes, big nose, and rarely smile. But this is just in movies, it is not the same in reality. Teachers and parents always say that don't judge a person by his or her appearance. When I was in grade three, there was a boy transferred to our class. He never smiled. He was very quite, and had no facial expression. At first, no one in our class went to talk with him, because he seemed like a person that was hard to get along with. After knowing him for a while, we realized that he was actual really nice. But just don't like to talk. 

Historical Moments

921 earthquake was one of the deadliest earthquake that hit Taiwan. I was only three years old when this disaster happened. I woke up in the middle of the night, crying, and ran to my parents room. My mother asked me what happened but I didn't reply. She thought that I had a nightmare, so she hold me in her arms, trying to make me fall back into sleep. After a few minutes later, the house started to shake. "Earthquake!" my mother yelled. My father quickly ran to my sister's room, checking if she was alright. Luckily, Hsinchu was not the epicenter, no one in our community got hurt or injured. I always remember my mother telling me that I am a detector, waking up before the earthquake.  The presidential election occurs every four years. When I was in second grade, it was also the year of presidential election. Even thought we were only about eight years old, but we kind of understood what was happening that year. Seeing flags and papers about presidential election, this election started to get into our class. There was one day, two of my classmates got into a fight. One one them shouted something that shocked the teacher. He said something about that the other student was a member of one of the two parties, that was why he was a bad person. As a child, I didn't understand this political things and why people are so intense about it.