Religions!

                                                                          Religion

There are many religions around the world, and we were given five different religions to look up information about- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. First Christianity, this religion was founded at about 30 AD in Palestine.  This religion is under the category monotheistic because Christians only believe in one god, and the Christians have a holy book called the Bible. About one third of the earth’s population consists of this religion and they all worship one central figure; which is God, and because there are a pretty high amount of Christians there isn't really one place where there is a huge collection of them, but there is a fair amount of them in the north. Next is Judaism, this was founded at around 1812 BC in the Middle East. Judaism is monotheistic because like Christianity they believe in one god. This religion has a holy book called the Torah, their central figure is God and also this religion has about 14 to 15 million followers.  Many of these followers are located in the United States and Israel. After that there comes Islam, which was founded at around 570 AD in Saudi Arabia, and this religion is monotheistic.  Islam has a holy book called the Qur’an and their central figure is Allah, which means God in Arabic. There are maybe 1.5 million people in the world that practice this religion, and many of its followers are found in Algeria. Then there is Buddhism, this religion was founded at about 580 BC in southern Nepal, and is polytheistic because they believe in many different gods. Their holy book is called the Tipitaka and the central figure in this religion is Shakyamuni Buddha. There are around 2 million followers to this religion and most of them are found in Tibet. The last religion we researched was Hinduism, this was founded in 3,500 BC in India and this religion like some of the others we looked at is polytheistic. There are a few holy books that accompany this religion, they are called Vendas and Upanishads, and there isn't really a central figure because there are just so many different figures in this religion. There are around 1.5 million followers and many of them can be found in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. I liked doing this assignment because I learned a lot of new things about other religions that I hadn't known about before.

Notes about languages

Today in human Geo we talked about how some countries are affected by what language they speak. We started taking notes on how Arabian countries speak mostly Arabic and how this is important; they can benefit from this because they need to be able to speak with most of the people in their country and know what is going on, and also in order for them to learn certain things this is helpful. Mr. Schick talked about when he went on a trip to France he wanted everyone to think that he was French and that he tried so hard to speak perfectly to others and one time he did exactly that. Eryn told us that she will be attending the school trip to France and Spain, and she will be staying in a hotel and touring around France. Doori also told us a story of when she and her mother were talking to a French man but it was kind of hard to understand him. We didn't finish the note taking, but what we mostly learned to day was about how people spoke in different countries and also we learned the term- Lingua Franca which means that the language is pretty known and spoken.

Our presentations

Today in human Geo we presented our projects to the class. We learned that the Native Americans lived in America about 12,000- 17,000 years ago, and that when we conquered America, we pushed them out of their own home and they eventually ended up on separate reservations, which is the only land that they can truly call theirs now. My group did our presentation on the Vikings. We talked about how they arrived in America at around 1,000 AD and the very first Viking to arrive was Leif Eriksson. The Vikings came to America on big long ships, but they were not the first, the Native Americans were there before them, also we talked about what they built their homes with like turf and wood. The Vikings also farmed wheat, barley and rye, but they left after a while because of conflicts. The last group did their presentation as Christopher Columbus, and he did not intend on finding America, he was just trying to find a shorter route to India when he stumbled upon this big piece of land. As everyone knows, Columbus and his men did conquer America.

Columbus Day

Today in human Geo we went over the test we took on “God Grew Tired of Us.” After we had gone over all the questions we talked about how today was Columbus Day and we didn't have off like we used to. So we got into talking about how Christopher Columbus wasn't the first PERSON to find America, because when they got here there were already Native Americans and also there were Vikings for a while but they left because of the conflict of the natives. We split up into like three groups of six or seven and each group had to choose what they wanted to be (Vikings, Native Americans, or Columbus) our group got to be the Vikings. After we assigned our groups Mr. Schick told us that we were to create a power point on our topic using the questions that he had given us to answer about the group we got. We will present our information to the class tomorrow.

the test on the movie!

Today in human geography we had a test on the movie that we just recently finished. The movie “God Grew Tired of Us” was probably one of my favorite movies, because we really got to see what went on in other countries besides our own. The story was very touching and made our class really inspired to stand up and make a change and do something for this country. The next class we have we will probably talk about how we are going to go about raising awareness and what charities we want to do. A few of the people in our class including myself really want to go to different schools and have them watch this movie so that they understand why we were so inspired by this story and hopefully they will feel the same way. If that idea works than maybe after we talk to some other schools they would get inspired by us and they could go and talk to other schools, so this could possibly be like some sort of a chain reaction that Sudan could really benefit from if we all choose some charities that give to Sudan. We have the power and the ambition to do this, so hopefully our contributions will help out.

Charities!

 Today in human geography we began class with our prayer and then we got started talking about how there a lot more people were posting things on our open source page on Mr. Schick’s blog. So Mr. Schick asked us if we had any favorites of all the charities trying to help Sudan. The first person to talk about their favorite charity was Doori, her charity was outreach Africa. Doori explained to us that this charity provides the children of Sudan a really good education and we all talked about how it was good because if you give the children a chance to learn we can help them help themselves. Next I talked about the charity that I found which was called the water project. This charity provides wells for Sudan because most of the people in Sudan do not have clean drinking water, they drink out of streams and they drink very unclean water. I really like this charity because it would allow our class to have a fund raiser and then give the money to this charity, it is $5,000 per well. We also talked about maybe instead of having John Bul Dou coming and talking to us we could have Panther come and talk to us because It might be cheaper.

research on the lost boy foundations!

Today in human geography we started class off by telling Mr. Schick what charities we tried to find last night in order to find out a way that we, as a class could help out Sudan. We split up into groups to search for different sites that could possibly help us figure out how we should go about helping this place. Mr. Schick put an open source on his blog so that we could see some of the websites that he and some other teachers found, but since it is an open source we could find different websites to put on that page. Our class kind of goofed off with the page for a little while but then we got a second chance and we were set strait. After we did all of our research Mr. Schick told us that he had emailed John Bul Dou and told him that our class wanted him to come to our school and speak about what is going on in Sudan and what he is trying to tell people. John responded with an email telling Mr. Schick that there was a day that he would come but there would be a fee and he wrote in the email what he would go over during the course of his speech. Of course we are very excited! I feel that our class really got into the story of the lost boys and we truly want to do something in order to help them and Sudan out.