Thanksgiving Thanks

Thanksgiving. What a happy time for so many families across America. You feast together with your loved ones and heartily dig into a numerous number of luxuries; pies, mashed potatoes, pasta, yams, salad, bread, corn, apple, cranberry, and of course-- turkey. But Thanksgiving was a day about celebrating differences in culture too. Depending on what family you're from, you might be eating food from your own family's ethnicity or just trying out all kind of new dishes.

And if you feel that your Thanksgiving dinner isn't that great of a meal, (All my life, mine was too. I ate cup noodles last year. Alone. ) know that the first Thanksgiving had mostly just deer, corn, shellfish, roasted meat and cranberries.

Abraham Lincoln asked us to give thanks to our blessings on the fourth Thursday of November. I'm thankful of the wonders of the universe. I'm crammed into a consciousness that I can't comprehend one bit. I don't think it makes much sense at all and I doubt it'll ever make sense. In addition to that, I can not express my gratitude enough for stories. Books, television shows, audio recordings, experiences-- anything that can house a story is something I'm thankful for.
One more thing. I'm thankful for what have been and what is. Any life or any tale is something remarkable. I'm thankful for the perseverance of any living or non-living thing that ever was once here. And hey! I'm thankful for you actually reading this right now. That's pretty impressive in itself.
And I kind of am a bit happy that there is something other than nothing, even though still no one is sure why.


[But of course, I have to acknowledge that Thanksgiving is a completely sole American holiday. A small apology to anyone who's from Britain or Canada. ]


Well, Happy Thanksgiving! I sure hope you're not like me and is out there having a great time on this November 28th, but even if you're not.. No. I can't offer anything positive about spending it alone and doing it nothing. At least we'll be in it together?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE. 


Now go have fun! Sleep well and don't die admist your dreams. You wouldn't want to let the bugs bite and devour you whole whilst you sleep.


With love,
Hannah Wu

On Socialism.

Well, it turned out I was right. The next book we'll be analyzing for this class is going to be Animal Farm which correlate directly to the Russian Revolution of 1917. My partner, Adrianna Marquez, and I were assigned a topic to study and we chose "socialism".
It was difficult finding images of socialism that aren't biased comics, because how do you show an idea? I had to settle for prominent events and figures instead. I would also like to issue an apology on the belatedness of this presentation. I'm earnestly sorry about that.

And here, I present to you a handy guide that I hope will prove at least somewhat enlightening. Alternatively, you can view the powerpoint here on google documents.
Just in case anyone forgot, Helen Keller was a girl born blind and whom later learned to become literate and speak through her teacher, Anne Sullivan. 

If you find any errors here then please correct me! You'll be doing me a favor. And if it turns out that you can't visit the google document page, then please contact me as well. I know it's a lot to ask, but I'll really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. I wish you well.

Sincerely,
Hannah Wu

Behind the Blog.

Before I make my first official post, I would like to have a little "about the author" display. First, I would like to make it clear that any interpretations or poorly worded essays you may see in the future comes from the fingertips of a mere and completely average high school student. I am most definitely not a studied scholar. I will frequently make atrocious grammatical errors, so tread carefully.

Chances have it that the only people who will be reading my blog are those forced to my fellow classmates in English. Regardless, I should still introduce myself. I attend a public high school in California and I enjoy reading and photography. Due to a poor habit of skipping or skimming between passages I have not completely finished a book in years. 

I don't have a definite favorite book, but I do like the Iliad. The insults, the battles, and the complexions of Achilles' character snared me right in. Right now I am reading multiple books in a very slow pace. One nonfiction book I'm reading is "The Emotional Life of Your Brain" by Richard J. Davidson. It's on neuropsychology and it talks about his personal discovery of what he calls "emotional styles". From what I understand 27 pages in (No. I am absolutely not slow. I'm very quick.) is that we all have distinct way on how we react to things; which we owe due to particular regions of the brain. From what he's saying, it is completely possible to rewire how you think and feel.

Another lovely tale I'm reading right now is "The Vintner's Luck" by Elizabeth Knox. This one is a lot harder to process. This book takes place in the 19th century in Burgundy, France, and follows the story of a winemaker named Sobran Jodeau. On one particular day each year, we get an insight into his life; from age 18 until his death. The prose is difficult to digest and is oftentimes unclear on what is happening, but I think I'll keep reading.

In terms of digital photography I can hardly say that I understand the technicalities of it. Yet, I would sometimes go out somewhere and takes pictures of mostly nature, particularly birds. I don't exactly like taking pictures of purely birds, but I do know of one or two places where hawks go to hunt and I can take a shot of a bird in flight. 

Of course, these few things don't really inform you much about myself as I'm sure those who has the luck to read and photograph are in the billions. At the moment I'm starting to drink tea. I'm liking it so far although I prefer it cold. That's something I'm going to have to change. 
To add on to this useless pile of info about myself; around the end of last year I was fairly inflexible--only able to touch my toes and nothing more. But in the summer I started to just mindlessly stretch a bit when I'm sitting or lying down and it got to the point where I'm now able to do the splits.
This is all fairly bland, isn't it? Apologies, but I don't know anything worth noting about myself.



Thank you for reading this and I hope I didn't sound too pretentious writing this lot of words. I sincerely hope you have a wonderful day or evening! Rest well.

Regards,
Hannah Wu
 

Introduction.

Every blog needs a preface. I'm filling that requirement now with this post.

To start off, welcome to this humble abode on the internet.  I've been meaning to make a blog for a while now and my English course has given me the chance to start off. I am still muddled on what exactly the prime purpose of this blog is going to be, so of right now I lack a premise. (Hence the title.) I do have just the inkling that since this is an English class after all, I will be analyzing hopefully great pieces of literature. The book we will be reading next is Animal Farm.

Regardless on whatever direction this blog will go, I want to genuinely thank you for stopping by.


Thank you. 

-- Hannah Wu
November 20, 2013