The end of the movie!

Today in human geography we finished up the movie. Before the movie ended a lot of things happened to the boys. Daniel talks about his friend that had a breakdown; he says that he does not blame his friend for doing this because there are so many images of the war in Sudan in their minds and it would cause anyone to go a little crazy. It is the fourth of July, but even thought this is a happy time for us; watching fireworks, and listening to them, it makes the lost boys scared and somewhat sad because the loud noises makes them remember the bombings and the shootings that went on. After this John talks about how he knows that God created him for a reason, he did not live through burying all his friends for nothing. John was right because he is making a big difference in helping Sudan; he organized a march to raise awareness about all the bad things happening to his homeland. The lost boys have a reunion in Michigan. While at the reunion John comes upon the conclusion that he thinks the younger boys will forsake their culture because America has changed them greatly in the way they dress, talk, and act. After the reunion the boys go back to their houses; Panther talks about how he wants to go to Pitt. University to get his bachelor’s degree. He also talks about how different things have become for them like how at first 200$ was so much money to them but now that they have bills to pay and need to buy everything required to live their standard of a lot of  money has changed. Panther wants to go back to his country to marry his girlfriend and to educate his country with all the things he has learned. John calls his mother and is going to meet her; meanwhile he becomes the secretary for the lost boys unity in phoenix and wants to raise money for the lost boys and girls in order for them to go to school. We find out that Daniel gets another job at the supermarket and talks about while he was working he saw a woman crying and he comforted her because no one would, he says that she felt a sense of home while he was with her. John finally after 17 years of separation from his mother, gets to see  her again and he also gets to see his sister. When John enters the airport he talks to some people interviewing him and says although he is happy, he is sad for the other lost boys who have yet to be reunited with their families. When John sees his mother he runs to her and he hugs his sister and then he hugs his mother; his mother was so overwhelmed with emotions that she collapses into his arms and cries and so does he. Anonde is his mother’s name; she was so excited to see her son that she danced and sung all the way out of the airport. Panther also receives a big moment; he gets to go back to Africa and he gets married to his girlfriend and he hopes to bring her back with him, he says he is going to put a school in his village because he got his degree in economics. Panther was also one of the lucky few to see his family again. We find out that John founded a non-profit organization to help out Sudan and he also makes it known that he wants to build a medical center in Dinka. Unfortunately Daniel has still not been reunited with his family. I thought that this was probably the most amazing stories that I have ever heard. I can say that I enjoyed the movie at parts, but it was also probably the saddest story I have ever heard. I am really glad that we got to watch this movie in class because it really opened up my eyes to what really goes on in the world, we live in a place where we take things for granted like showers and money and even food, but some people are not as lucky as us and they don’t have the nice things that we do. Seeing this movie makes me want to do something and help out countries like Sudan. I found this website and maybe if we all donated we could get some water wells for Sudan and get them fresh water-http://thewaterproject.org/wells_for_sudan.asp?gclid=CLaL1bDo4LICFVSd4Aodd30APw

The Movie!

Today in human geography we had Mrs. Stathis as our substitute. We talked about what notes we have been taking on the movie so far and we also talked about how the boys must have felt about living in the refugee camps for a really long amount of time. They were there so long and once they were done with learning everything they could while they were there they must have gotten bored. Then we went on to continue the movie at chapter 15. Daniel, Panther, and John Bul Dau have all gotten jobs to support themselves. John works 3 jobs- 1 in a factory, 1 in the McDonalds, and he is also a night guard. Daniel works in the downtown part of Pittsburg processing checks. Panther is working as a busboy in a high class restaurant. Later they all talk about how different the people are in America, they are less friendly and they said that they used to know everybody but now they know no one.  Also one of the boys goes missing and then the police find that he has gone crazy and he is admitted into a psychiatric ward.

the lost boys coming to America!

Today in human geography we continued the watch “God Grew Tired of Us”. We picked up at the part where Daniel, Panther, and John Bull where getting on their first plane ride to America, Daniel and Panther in Pittsburg and John Bull in New York. When Daniel, Panther and some others first get into the house in which they are to live in they are totally amazed at how the electricity works in the house, like the refrigerator and the lights, and also how taking a shower works. They were also amazed at some of the foods that we eat in our daily lives, when they went to the store to buy food they were totally shocked from seeing so many different foods that they haven’t tasted. John Bull talks about how awful it was when he was back in Sudan, and then when the boys were travelling, he said that 13 year olds should not have to bury their friends and others but he had to along with some of the other boys. He said that since everyone was dying and all this tragedy had struck, he figured that God had grown tired of them, because of all the war and death. When one of the other men was interviewed he said that even though this opportunity was very good he and the others were sad because they left the camp and are in a good place now, but the others are still in a bad place. Everyone said that they wanted to have this opportunity, to support themselves and have a good life here. The government is giving the boys three months to get jobs and eventually pay back the money that was paid for them to fly to their destinations.

Going over tests!

Today in human geo when we walked in we got chocolate chip cookies! After that we said our prayer that we said every day. Then for the rest of class we spent our time going over our quiz and making sure that the answers were right, because they will most likely be on our midterms. We pretty much zipped through the quiz except we all kind of gave answers and talked about our answers for the push and pull section of the test. The last thing we did was try and get to the place we left off in the movie that we are currently watching(God Grew Tired of Us) it kind of took us a little while to see exactly where we left off, but we had left off at the part where Daniel and Panther are about to leave for Pittsburg  and Daniel gives up his corn rations in order to get candy for all the little children, and then they sing a song to all their friends to remember  them, and then the bell rang ending our class for the day.

"God Grew Tired of Us"

Today in human geography we had our first test; it was mainly about all things having to do with the population. After the test we started watching this movie called “God Grew Tired of Us”, the parts we watched today started out with 3 people being interviewed, their names were Leopard, John, and Daniel. They were all talking about having a war come to where they lived which was Sudan, this war was somewhat over religion, children were locked in houses and burned to death, and all males, no matter what their age was, were to be shot and killed. People fled the city and walked through the dessert and found refuge at a refugee camp for boys, at this camp they were known as “The Lost Boys of Sudan.” At this camp they were provided food and clothes, then later on they had to walk back through the desert, the international aids came to their rescue in the desert and took them back to the camp, they provided the boys with education and clothing, but some of the boys got to come to America which they were really excited about. Some of the pictures that were shown in this film are really gruesome, children of very young ages had almost starved to death and looked like skeletons, watching this movie really makes you realize how good we have it where we live and we should be grateful.

projects!

Today in human geography we got a surprise, no test! The reason we didn’t have our test today is because Mr. Schick wanted everyone to give their presentation before we went onto the test, which will now be Monday. My group went today; we did our project on the country Indonesia. During our presentation we talked about a few things, we talked about push and pull factors for our country, like Indonesia has a high death rate from HIV/AIDS and they also have a number of other diseases there, this would be a push factor- making people want to leave the country. We also talked about the net migration rate which was – 1.08 migrants per 1,000 of the population, the crude death rate was 6.28 deaths per 1,000 of the population, and pretty much the last thing we talked about in our presentation was the crude birth rate, this was 17.76 births per 1,000 of the population. That was the end of our presentation.

presenting our projects

Today we started our day off with our prayer, and we started reciting what the President of UMBC told us in our assembly that we had with him the other day. After this we all got with our groups that we did our power Points with and we checked with each other to make sure that our emails had gone through to the person that was building our project, and sending it to Mr. Schick. Then after talking to our group members we went on to begin presenting them. There are a lot of things that we learned from other people’s power points that we didn’t know beforehand, our group hasn’t gone yet but I think others will benefit from our slides, just as we did theirs. I think this project really shows how helpful the world fact book is, I mean we just started this project yesterday and the website has everything you need right under the country’s name that you are looking up.