Gold Rush

Author's note: I decided to post this piece because I realized I never posted it. 

It is 1848 and today is the day I am setting out to go to the new state that was taken from Mexico. I have heard only few ventured to this remote place in the beginning , but I have heard that many people from the united states and even around the world have gone to this place. They all have a reason though. I hear that there is gold in the new place and I want some. Therefore, I am going to go and get some. I am going with a few others and leaving my family here for safety reasons. I will be walking from here. It shouldn't be farther than most of the places I have gone but it is still very dangerous, that is why I am not taking my family. 

Now that I am here , I have noticed that this environment looks dramatically different than where I am from. I have noticed that these gold mining companies have permanently altered this new places landscape, choked its rivers with sediment, and repeatedly buried thousands of acres of low-lying  farms. I looks nothing like what I am used to. I have also noticed that the majority of prospectors and miners, as well as many of the entertainers, merchants, packers and speculators who participated in each of the gold rushes, are Caucasian. Since I just got here and I am starving I am going to try to find something to eat. As I pass through the town,  I see that a lot of the prices have been raised fairly high. I am guessing that it is because everyone is finding this "gold". I figured that I should probably go and try to find some if these prices are going to stay this high. 

I have now been here for a very long time and I am starting to get irritated. I cant seem to find much more gold and when I do it comes in little bits. I am really getting sick of these prices for everything! Not everyone can find gold and these people just don't care that not everybody enough to pay for it. Ever since I got here more and more people keep coming  because of the fact that there is gold. The boost in its population is outstanding! Since I have been here I noticed that there has been a decrease in people wanting gold. Apparently, the new gold is wheat. People are starting to want wheat more than gold. I've decided that I want to go back to where I originally came from and possibly bring my family back here sometime soon to start up a wheat farm. 

                                              

The Lucky One: Compare and Contrast

Author’s Note:  I wrote this essay for my district writing assessment. This piece is comparing the book The Lucky One  to real life. 

The book  The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks is about a man named Logan Thibault who was recently in the marine core. While in the marines, he finds a picture during a surprise bombing.   He then finds himself being safe everywhere he goes with this picture causing him to drop out of the army to go find the girl in the picture. Realistically many people wouldn’t drop out of the army just to go and find someone because  of a “lucky” picture. Although some people might.  Apparently Logan thinks that this is the right thing to do though. This book has some parts that can be unrealistic, but overall the majority of it happens to describe things could happen to a lot of people in real life.

One thing that I found was really unrealistic in this book was when the author explains that Logan walked from Colorado all the way to North Carolina. In reality, probably know one in their right mind would want to walk that far. When Logan meets Beth, he is about to tell her that he found her picture when she assumes that he is applying for the job at her dog business. This causes Beth to ask questions about him. When she finds out about the fact that he walked that far, she thinks that he is a very strange man, giving herself a reason not to hire him.  She finally decides to hire him. The reason for this is when Logan tells Beth, ““Most people don’t know how to appreciate the silence. They can’t help talking. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to walk. ” Compared to people in real life,  the fact that he walked that far shows that it and unrealistic and different from real life.

Although walking so far is very unrealistic, there were many realistic things in this book. An example of this is the fact that Beth had been divorced and hadn’t gotten a date in a very long time. Since Beth had her son Ben, not a lot of men were looking for someone who already had a kid. I thought about this when Beth said  “Every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t.” I think that this kind of situation is common for people who are looking for a relationship and already have a child of their own. In the book  Logan realizes that he likes Beth and doesn’t care if she has a son. In real life, sometimes it’ s really rare to get a relationship like that. Overall this is a similarity between real life and the book.  

Along with the fact that Beth has son, she is also divorced. Divorce is very common now a day’s which makes this big part of the book very realistic. In the book Beth doesn’t like the fact that her ex- husband, Keith, is always so bossy to her son. This is also common for people who have divorced parents. Sometimes that is one of the reasons that the people get divorced. In this case , it was the reason. Ben also doesn’t agree with the fact that Keith bosses him around.  I thought about this when Ben said to Beth “I'm not going to live with you!" a small voice shouted from the kitchen doorway.
Beth looked past Keith to see Ben, his expression horrified. Ben started to back away. "I'm not going to do it!”.

In conclusion this book has many similarities and differences to real life. Overall I think that this book has more similarities to real life the differences. Some of the differences in the book make parts of it really unrealistic, but still  believable to the characters in the book. I think that this book is a good example of what a lot of people’s lives are like today. 

Gym Essay

Author's Note: I wrote this essay for gym class. :)

I have always not really enjoyed  gym. I always wondered what was the point of just running around for an hour and playing games. Ever since I came to Asa , I noticed that there is more to gym than just having it be play time for a half an hour. I learned that gym has gotten a lot harder over the years. For example, we no longer run for 3 minutes before we start class. Instead we start out with a ten minute jog and sometimes dynamic stretching. I personally like this because of the fact that it gets us energized for the whole class. This also helped me start running on my own time. I never really used to take an interest to running but ever since I started second hour gym, I realized that it’s actually not that bad and it’s a good way to stay active and healthy.

While learning how to stay active inside and outside of school, I have also learned a lot about being healthy and treating your body right. During this semester I have started eating healthier and being more healthy about my body. I don’t just eat whatever I want and leave it at that anymore. Instead I think about what I eat. Now that I have started eating healthy I have learned that it does more than keep you in shape. This year I learned that it can also help you with what your health will be like in the future. For example,  I learned that if you don’t take care of your body , there will be risks for  getting diabetes or heart attacks when you are older. Over all, I have learned a lot about my overall health and what I should do to stay healthy .

While learning about staying healthy, I have also liked the fact that we get to challenge our selves  by setting goals. For me I don’t really like that fact that we have to improve on what we got in the past but I do like setting personal goals for myself. Being social in gym has also helped me with my goals. I have friends who like to push me to do my best at my goals. Overall I think that P.E. has helped me become a healthier and more physically active person.