Thankful for a Classmate

       Well greetings to everyone that’s reading this blog right now. Although my family personally doesn’t celebrate thanksgiving, it’s still worth mentioning the people that I’m thankful for on this particular day of the year.  For this blog, we were told to openly present our gratitude to a classmate but I feel the urge to thank more than one person. Even though that’s my opinion, I guess I should just obediently follow the instructions (sigh).   

       

        After considering who I should thank which wasn’t that difficult because I don’t know many of my classmates personally, I had made the decision to give my sincere gratitude to David Zhen who sits next to me. Overall, I had known him for only since last year in biology class but that doesn’t stop me from recognizing the assistance that he had given me. At school, I usually meet with him before 2^nd period and then we would just talk for a few minutes about homework or something else before class begins. Sometimes I might have some trigonometry problems that I didn’t understand from the homework assigned the night before and he would try to provide for me a better understanding of the material. Even if he can’t comprehend it either, I still consider talking to someone early in the morning as a soothing act before going through the stress of the day. Luckily, we would meet each other again in American Literature class where sometimes if I have any questions about what we’re doing in class, I could ask him about it (quietly). When the day is finally over and I could go home, I would see him in the hallway and we would talk a bit to end the day. Without his help throughout the day to release the accumulated tensions, I probably would be really frustrated afterward and that would cost me a good night of sleep required to be able to actively learning the next day.

    If I had to use two words to describe you, I would probably consider “great friend” to be the most suitable. Thank you very much, David!

I know some of you can't read Chinese but these words mean "Great Friend"

I am a plow.

I am a plow. First of all, what is a plow? A plow is a device used to prepare the soil for planting crops. In reality there are many things that can be considered a plow and one of them that I wanted to focus on in this blog is war. War itself in my opinion is the plow that laid the foundation for a better future. It creates chaos and destruction in the process which is preparing the soil as referring to human society that’s necessary to bring about an era of peace and prosperity which would be the crops. Proven in many instances of history, war itself was a necessity in order to bring about the great changes that didn’t exist before.

As in the revolutionary war between the American colonies and Britain, the war took away many lives and cities were destroyed from the fighting but without it, America would’ve never gained its independence. Without independence, the United States today might have never existed and people could still be living under the tyranny of Britain. Also war could be the plow that creates unity in a country which was true in China. Before the second Sino-Japanese war, China was in a state of chaos due to the civil war known as the War of Liberation caused by the fighting between the Communist party and the Nationalist party. If the war with Japan never happened, then the two opposing parties wouldn’t have cooperated and formed the Second United Front to counter the Japanese army. Also without the fighting that happen after the war, mainland China would still be involved in civil wars between these two parties instead of being united under one government as it is in present day.

Chaos and mass destruction had occurred many times throughout history and without the existence of them to lay the foundations; human society might be in a worse shape today. War will most definitely cause despair and pain to the people in the process but how can there be prosperity without destruction?  Similarly, how can we construct more advanced buildings without first tearing down the old buildings that’s standing in its way? 

Yield

A new direction the class should take.(period)

Well, honestly, I don’t have any suggestion for a new direction this class should go towards. After learning in this classroom for about a quarter, I realize that there’s nothing that I don’t enjoy or even dislike for one bit. Overall this class is enjoyable, innovating, and produces a lot of productive discussions so it’s not boring to the point where I’ll just zone out. Probably you could guess by now that I like this class a lot more than my other classes which are why I’m going to write about what direction I would suggest for those classes.

In other classes as some of you who read this might agree is just too boring due to the assignments mostly being from a textbook. For example: In a language class, your teacher might assign you some worksheets or finish an assignment from a textbook. Most of the time, they won’t tell you to start a conversation with your peers using the language you’re learning or have discussions over a topic in the classroom. Due to the lack of practice and interesting discussions, I would just almost fall asleep in class because there’s nothing that interests me besides learning new vocabulary words or sentence structures. If the classes become more interactive and connect what we learn to non-school related events, then people like me would become more eager to learn the material. The time spent in classroom shouldn’t just be mainly focused on learning new material but should also discuss how the information you’ve obtained is useful in living your daily lives outside of school.  

                                                                              V.S

Evolution of Slavery. This is not the type of evolution we want!

      Well slavery is a topic mostly known through reading a history textbook because people might think that it only exist in the past but what they may not know is that like a disease, slavery had evolved into what's known as modern day human trafficking. Before we talk about that, let's get back to the traditional type of slavery which occurs in colonial America.  During that period, slaves obtained from Africa are shipped to the Americas through the triangular trade. On board the ships, the slaves were chained together in a dark space where they were treated inhumanly and diseases were easily spread among them causing high death rates even before the slaves reach their destinations. After arriving in the Americas, they had to work from sunrise to sunset in their master's home without being paid. Also their working conditions were terrible compared to the Africans in the north because the field slaves had be pick cotton which were full of thorns while the house slaves had to work longer hours. The basic needs were barely met considering how some slaves didn't have any clothing to wear throughout the year and others that have to work on empty stomachs for days. Clearly we can see that slavery had its toll on the slaves back in the colonial period but are they still presented in modern day society although slavery is a crime? As you can guess, the answer is yes but how is that possible? The next paragraph will explain it all.
      The term globalization is used to explain the exchange of ideas, people and culture internationally and due to the types of technology plus labor demands of nowadays, slavery had evolved into human trafficking where some people were lied to or even abducted to work for their so called "employers" or more traditionally known as "masters". Women and children are the ones most susceptible to these type of crimes because there are a significant amount of people living in poverty in the cities or even countries in the world which gives these employers many opportunities to spread the lie that they can help these people live a better life in another place. Due to these conditions, the women or even children will be lured into the trap and only finds out the truth when they were already sold to other employers who would threaten them with violence if they don't perform their duties. Women are often sold as prostitutes while children are abducted at early age to be used as labor in dangerous workplaces. In order for that to happen, the employers usually bride government officials in order to them to turn a blind eye to the crimes while also using threats against the victim or his/her family members in order to keep them from escaping. Often times these "slaves" are left on their own to survive because nobody notices that they're being kept against their wills and situations like these are similar to the colonial slaves who were promised land in the Americas after the completion of their service but were often not given any. As the world progresses toward a new future, so had slavery but how often do we notice it happening? I know some of you had seen this advertisement about how human trafficking is modern day slavery on public transportation but have you really notice it happening? Some people might not even know about this issue because the victims are just like normal people so if ever you see an instance of human trafficking, you should absolutely report it to the proper authority in order to free these victims.