After the accident of Egor, a lot of things happened too. People started to get sick, some students got the disease "Mono", they couldn't go to class and was separated with other people in case the disease spreads. It is very bad to miss classes because once you miss a class it is very hard to catch up  to others. I missed couple classes a few weeks before because my alarm didn't work and I was unable to wake up. Then I couldn't get what happened in classes and struggled very hard. I can feel the stress  of sophomore year already, many people said that they also couldn't finish their work and couldn't sleep till midnight. I can't imagine what junior and senior year will be like. My grades failed on this first quarter, I will have to work hard the second quarter because it is very important, I hope it will get better in the future.

    Now we are almost over with the first quarter of school. Many things happened in these two months, the thing and surprised me the most is that two of our ELL students got kicked out. It really shocked me that our friends just gone and will never come back again.

    I still remember the first day of school when I came to Bell Buckle two years ago, it was the orientation day. Everybody was very shy and we just followed a returning students leading us playing games. I saw a young, blond hair boy that I essentially thought is an American. He didn't talk that much and I heard his English was not very fluent. The next few days of school I found out that he is a new international student who comes from Russia. His name is Egor, at first he was very naive and small for the first semester. Then the next two years he became more popular, bigger and stronger. Lots of people liked him, but just on the first day of this week, I didn't see him in Algebra class and I thought he might slept over or had other stuff to do. But then I didn't see him for the next few classes, I felt weird and I heard about him in a conversation during lunch that he was found doing drugs and alcohols. I was shocked and I didn't believe it is true. But later then I went to his room and found him crying so hard. He got kicked out of the school because of this and it's too late for him to regret. I felt bad for him because we were good friends the first year although he had later some special racism to asians later. I will miss him so much if he leaves. He is very funny and without him our classes would not be that fun anymore.

    So all I want to say is that I wish him will get better in the future and we all need to work hard to become a better person.

    Hello everyone, I didn't get a topic from my teacher this week so I am just going to write something happened recently. School is still continuing, I felt much more stressful than last year. The amount and difficulty of homework have also increased a lot. I also slept over last week for two days because I was too tired and the alarm didn't work. I felt tired because I exercised too much. I am runnning cross country this year. I run three miles and play soccer for an hour everyday which makes me very tired. Then I had to do homework which is also very hard.
    My goals for this year are to get good grades and get taller and stronger. But the biggest goal is still to follow my old spirit, be happy and enjoy life. So I might not be able to finish my homework because I need to stay organized of my daily schedule. I know it is going to a big challenge for me this year, so I will try my best on everything, both in academic and athletic. Keep working!

The First Week of School

    Hello, my name is Jake. I have just begun my third year of school in America. To me, school in America is much different than school in China. You might be interested what school is like in America, so let me tell you how my first week of school was like.

    Two years ago, I could hardly read, write, listen or speak English. Now it is much better but I still have a lot to do. Speaking is my weakest part because I didn't talk too much last year. The first week of school was just as usual as before,  some new students came, also many returning students backed to school. All things were just as same as before. One big change for me is that I decided to become a boarder this year. There were many factors for this decision and I have considered it for a long time. First is I think to ride back and forth from Murfreesboro to Bell Buckle is too busy and tired. Last year I became so tired of school because of this. Second is I have to prepare for college. If I can live on campus it will be much easier to finish homework and attend more social activities. I know it is very expensive to live on campus so next year my family will probably go back to China and it will also reduce their stress as well. 

    On the first day of school we just took a short view of the syllabus and rules of each class. Then the rest of the week we started learning the easy parts of each class. I have some old friends in school and I also made some new friends. But I don't really have a best friend that I can talk to everyday. I guess I will just see how everything goes on and continue working.

      I learned many things this week, either from class or outside. There are some that are important, and there are also some that are normal, but I think the most interesting one is I learned how sound works in physics class.
      The weeks before we were trying to build a trebuchet by our own. Now we are finally back to the normal studying of knowledge, I am always interested in it. We are learning how sound travels now, sound travels by creating waves that can be transported by objects like air, wall, water... In vacuum, sound can't be heard because there is nothing it it including air. The speed of sound is about 331 meters per second, and it is much slower than the speed of light, which is the reason why we always see lightning first and hear thunder next.
      This is probably the most interesting thing I learned this week, there are many many other interesting things that we haven't found out yet. I hope our world will become more beautiful.

Spring Break

    Everyone likes break, the same as everybody, I just spent a joyful spring break at the western part of America. The top 10 are: 1. Delicious food 2. Universal Studio 3. Grand Canyon 4. Roller coaster 5. 4D movie 6. China town 7. Casino 8. Small games 9. Circus show 10. Airport

    At the beginning of the break we went to Los Angles, there is a fabulous China town there. It has all kinds of traditional Chinese food there, the one I liked the most is the one that has delicious spicy food. It's almost been a year since I last went back to China, so I was very excited and waited very impatiently. And after 5 hours of tired flying it made me more impatient about it. I visited some popular American restaurant too, the one I liked the most is called Ruth Chris's. My favorite food is steak and I ate a ribeye steak and it was juicy.
    The second one I liked through this trip is the Universal Studio, I learned all the movies from the 1900's to now, there was also parts where it tells us how those movies are made. There were some traditional and popular ones like the Jurassic Park and the Fast and the Furious. But my favorite one is the King Kong. We went on a tour bus and we experienced a fabulous fighting between a huge dinosaur and King Kong. After we put on 4D glasses the show began. I felt we are actually in the situation, our bus was also moving toward and back and sometimes leaning to one side. The dinosaur and King Kong are about twenty meters tall and ten meters wide. At that time I realized how ruthless it was on earth long time ago, they were more bloody than barbarians these days. Finally the show ended by we fell down into a cliff and it lasted about five minutes.
    I also visited many great places through the trip like the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas... But I am not going to talk about it anymore because these two were my favorites. I hope you also had a wonderful spring break.

St. Patrick's Day

    St. Patrick's Day is a Irish holiday. Probably most of you never heard about it before. So today I am going to tell you about its tradition and where it comes from.

    St. Patrick's Day was first established in Ireland. People celebrate it because they want to people to remember their protecting god St. Patrick. St. Patrick save people in Ireland at and gave people all the good things at about A.D. 400. Also at that time, people didn't believe in any religion or faith and they were not organized well. He spread ideas of Christianity and made a lot of people become Christians. Then their country became better because of this.

    Now people celebrate it each year on the seventeenth of March, people use the color green to represent his great personality and the things he did before. Also Ireland decided to put this date as their national day also. We can see how important it is to them by this.

    But in my country, we don't have this holiday, so I didn't know about it before and some of my details in here might not be accurate. But I learned more about other country's culture and I am very glad to hear it.

My future

    All people have plans and are interested about their future. The same as everybody, I also have plans and is interested in what my future will be. I will tell you my plans and some of my predictions,   also the future I am expecting.

    First, I think I will have a beautiful wife, in appearance and also mentally. She will be nice to me and we will spend our whole lives together. I know there will be hard time and we may argue. But the best thing in life is to stay with each other and overcome all the challenges we will face. I hope we will have two children, one boy and one girl. And our family will be joyful.

    Second, I will have a good job to afford all the requirements that we have. I hope I can find a job that will be joyful and meaningful, it will be something that is good to the society and not hurting my health. Also the job must give me a lot of money so my family doesn't have to struggle for starving and living.

    I hope my parents can stay well and I can take all of them to travel when they get old. When I was young they worked very very hard for me and almost took me to places all over the world. Because they just want me to have fun and have a better understanding of the world. When they get old I want to use my own ability to travel with them and let them relax. I will probably cry when I do that because it is just exactly the same as my parents are doing right now. The most important thing that I want is just we will be happy and enjoy our lives.

    To afford all of that, I have to study hard. I will try my best to achieve this goal and I will continue working hard.

Kugelmass Episode

    If I had the ability to jump into books and experience the events in the book, I would choose to jump into the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and I would choose to be Bruno's father. I want to be Bruno's father in the book because he does many bad things in the book to other people and I want to change that. 

    In the book, Bruno's father gets a promotion and his family has to go to there with him. Bruno's father's job is to help Hitler organizing the Jews. His family also suffers because of this.

    If I would be Bruno's father, I would quit this job and find another better job. It is too ruthless to kill thousands of people and the environment for his children to study is also inappropriate, kids should not learn things about blood and death during their young age. And Bruno won't be dead at the end and the whole family is broken.

    What I will do after I find another better job is I will work hard to make the family have a better condition and take more care of my two children because they are still young and they need a lot of parents' love.

    Probably when they grow up they will become good people and do things good to the world and society. Also the Nazi won't be that strong if it doesn't have many followers. The whole world will be in a better place and there won't be more wars and kills. It is good to everyone. I think that's why I want to jump into this book and change the events because I am a good person.