Journal 39: Christmas Holiday Option 1

  When I was a little child, I wished that people celebrate Christmas everyday. Christmas is the time for people to gather together with their families and celebrate. It's time for everyone to stop working and relax, and the most important of all for a child, it's time for child to get presents from Santa. Christmas is a very fun and important holiday, because it means a lot to everyone. If people are separated during the rest of the year, Christmas is the time for them to stay together and spend this precious time together. Christmas is the sign of a whole new year coming. I celebrate Christmas even though I'm in Taiwan.My family and I held up a Christmas tree and we wish our prays of the whole new year coming towards us. I believe that Christmas is a fantastic holiday and we should  treasure this precious time and not waste it.

Journal 38: Mars

Where is Mars? Mars is a planet in our Solar System that is just beside Earth. It is the fourth planet from the sun. Although it is just beside Earth, it is 225,000,000 kilometers far from us. In the article, Destination: Mars, the writer tells us that astronomers are looking for life signs on Mars and how human can live on Mars. If we find a way to survive and live on Mars, we can replace Earth by Mars. Even though a lot of people believe there are signs of life on Mars, we still have to find a way to overcome the freezing temperature and the dry cold surface of Mars. I hope people could find a way to live on Mars.

Journal 37: Setting and Plot

Settings of a story can function as a character. It can affect the story by limiting the things used in an essay and the timeline of a story. For example, if the setting of a story is in a galaxy far far away, the story might be something about spaceships and space, because it is in a galaxy. If another story is in a forest in the prehistoric period, the story will not contain spaceships and guns, instead, it will have people hunting animals for living. If the setting of the story of King Arthur has changed from Britain to China, the story will be quite different than the King Arthur we know. If the setting of the story Robinson Crusoe has changed from a lonely island to a populated city, Robinson wouldn't have to find food and living so hard, he can just buy things from stores like we do now, and he wouldn't have to seek for help. This is what influences the setting will make when a story changes.

Journal 36: Writing is Difficult

Writing is very important in our life, because it can help us communicate with others. Writing is a way for people to express their own feelings. I believe the reason why Ray Bradbury said writing is difficult is because writing is reality to a person like him. Writing stories can be very interesting, but in the meantime they can be very boring. If you are writing a science fiction story, it might seem interesting, because all the things are from your imagination and they are not real. If you are a writer of history books, you may feel bored, because history is unchangeable. People who write history can only copy the events that were happened a long time ago. I believe that writing is very fun. We can express our own feelings and communicate with others by writing. For example, a book called "Outsiders" is a story based on a life of a teenager. The teenager felt very complicated and wrote down the story for people to read. He was trying to express his own feelings. This is the reason why I believe writing is good and enjoyable.

Journal 35: Chronological Order

Time is everywhere, people live in time, things get old in time, and nothing can stay the same under time. In the story there will come soft rains, the house was destroyed. The little time clock on the top left of every paragraph represents the time. When time passes by, the house is a step closer to the disaster, and the house was then destroyed. If there was no time, the house would have never been destroyed, and none of this would've happened. I believe the author is trying to tell us that every thing will die, grow old and break down eventually, and there are no such world that every thing is perfect.

Journal 34: Irony

Why do people fight wars? To satisfy themselves? To take from others? To compete with each other, or to protect yourself? People fight wars for a lot of reasons. People are always eager to get more, own more and take more. If people can stop their eagerness and envy of others, the world will be a peace, safe place without wars. In "There will some soft rains", people are served very well with machines, yet the world was destroyed by a nuclear war. Why did people fight each other even though they are satisfied? This is ironic because the nuclear war occurred even though people live in a our ideal life. People will always want to find more satisfactions when everything is all well. When people's problems are solved, other problems will come out. This is why I believe there is no ideal life if people don't stop their eagerness. People will risk everything, because they believe if they just succeed, it will be a better place, but not every time that the outcome will turn out to be a good one. When bad outcomes happen, wars or other disagreement comes out.

Journal 33: My Invention

Without inventions, people's life will be boring and without inventions. Everyone will be living their own boring life and nothing will be interesting. Without inventions, nothing will be creative, nothing will be outstanding and there will be no art in the world. This is why we need inventions. If I were an inventor, I will try to invent a robot. A robot is just like a clone of a human. They can help you do chores, cook breakfast or even help you finish your homework. A robot can also be very fun to play with. It can even accompany you as a pet will. To make it more realistic and efficient, I will make it like a human with metal skin. It will be super strong and uneasy to break. It will do whatever I tell it to do. I will use it to help me with my homework, my mom with the chores and my dad with his job. When I am out visiting another country, it can help us to do my house chores. Although my robot is a machine it still needs rest. Like human, my robot has to rest everyday and needs to be recharged every week. It will always obey me if I treat it like a human and take care of it.

Journal 32: Modern Technology

How have technology changed people's life? In the past, people didn't have internet, electricity, cars, computers, cell phones... Now, we have laptops, the World Wide Web system, touch screen cell phones and so on. Technology had changed during the last century, and it is Changing faster and faster as years past by. If technology keeps on changing this way, I believe those spaceships in science fictions won't be fantasy anymore. I believe a hundred years from now, people will be able to do a lot of things. People will have spaceships that can travel around the universe and explore the universe. We will have weapons such as light-sabers to defend ourselves from wild animals. We will be able to communicate with aliens and interact with them. We might even become friends! People will be able to live on Mars and other planets in the Solar System. We will be able to travel through the wormhole and travel through time in time machines. We will have every transportation electronically that no cars need fuel anymore. We will be able to plant cells inside human bodies to cure every kinds of disease. These are the things I think we will achieve in a hundred years from now.