Haiku

Birds singing on trees.
Enjoying sunshine and breeze.
Everyone loves spring

Poem review

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire!

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the Fairy Queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green;

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours;

In those freckles live their savours;

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

This is a poem from Shakespeare, it talks about the fairy queen daily life and how could the main character serve the Fairy Queen. Which the main character endures many difficulties, goes everywhere in order to find the cowslip for the fairy. This works as a poem due to its rhyme and free verse. If you look at every end word, you may figure out that every word sounds the same.  And some of the sentences have both relations and same pronunciation, for example. Over hill, over dale. Over park, over pale.  These sentences separate into the different places of the poem, but at the same time, they convict the same thing that shows how hard the main character goes everywhere. Even though the author, Shakespeare did not use many sentences to write on it, but it gives the readers a feeling about the difficulty author faces towards when he serves the fairy. Especially this sentence, "Swifter than the moon's sphere". Shakespeare uses only several sentences to draw a character who goes through many difficulties in order to finish his duty. And the free verse, for the poem, it does not only limiting using the comma and period to separate the sentence. In this poem, he used an exclamation point and colon to separate the sentences, which make the whole poem become easier to understand and more connections in the poem that make the poem look more compact, which let the readers have more interests to read it. The reason why I love this poem due to its content and bright style, when I find out that this poem is from Shakespeare, I do not think it is fun, on the other hand, I think it is boring and hard to read. However, after I finish reading this poem, I do not think it is hard to understand what does Shakespeare want to tell us. Also, the content is interesting, he describes a person who faces many problems and difficulties, then he describes the clothing of the fairy and what does he want to serve for the fairy. It is an interesting poem and I wish everyone in our class can read it, and after you read it, you will find out that Shakespeare does not only want to describe the screen of the fairy, but also he describes a love between the average people and the fairy, in the last sentence, I must go seek some dewdrops here, and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. In this sentence, I could image a screen that a young person is looking hard for the dewdrops in order to show the fairy how good he is, which is amazing that the sentence tells me, even though he just uses only several words, but the imagination is the best part in it.

The poem from jerry

My neighbor’s daughter has created a city that everyone else cannot see. On an island to which you cannot swim, ruled by a noble princess and her athletic consort.
All the buildings are glass so that lies are impossible. Beneath the city they have buried certain words,which can never be spoken again, chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots. When it rains you hear chimes, rabbits race through its suburbs. The name of the city is one you can almost pronounce

Poem

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Why did I choose it?
Because this poem is not too long and not hard for me to understand it. In the before I always thought that the poem is composed by many difficult words and complicated sentences. Moreover, the beginning sentence makes me feel interesting to read it, every end word in every sentences sounds the same, which let me feel curious about what happens in this poem, so I choose it.
What do I like about it?
This first thing is about the rhyme, every end word in the beginning sentences sound the same, which makes me feel curious. Second, when the author wrote this poem, he did not use only comma and period to end the story, moreover, he used colon and exclamation mark to make the the every sentences in the poem more related with each other.
What is it about?
It is about a young person who is looking for fairy and dewdrops, and he endures many difficulties in order to find dewdrops for the fairy.

Reflection of creative project

Opals are valuable for everyone, I also got some expensive gifts from Pobby and Dingan. Ashmol got the opal and sold it in order to get a funeral for his sister, Kellyanne. I got the expensive gift that could help me to understand every character deeply. In the class time, we always talked about the plot that happened in the story, but I always had some confusion ab0out if Ashmol did not decide to go to the mine? What will happen?  Lillian and I had the same idea about creating a new game that relates to the book but adds our own thinking into it. Even though we thought it would be hard, but we wanted to do it perfectly. 

In the creative project, Lillian and I separated the work into three parts, the first part is the outline, especially what would we do for the creative project and how could we use this game to make the audience get both fun and deep understanding to the story Pobby and Dingan. So for the outline part, we did almost one class, before we wanted to do a monopoly because we wanted everyone in our class can participate in the game. But then we figured out that it was hard to make connections between the game and the story. Moreover, it was hard to make a game that could invite all the classmates to play it. So we used another class period to re-design the game, then Lilian had an idea that we could re-write the story, like giving more choices that do not come from the book and more results for the audience to choose how to end the story. That sounds interesting but also it is very hard to accomplish because if we add more choices in the story, then the whole story may change due to one choice the audience made. So we discussed a lot for this new, challenging project. Even though we knew that it would consume many of our time to finish it, but we could give the audience a different feeling to the story. That sounds interesting. So from that time, we knew that the outline was the most important part of our project, if we finish the outline, then the whole project would be finished about almost 90%. Because I wrote a fictional story before, so I did more work on the design story, every choice needs to be connected with single answer, it may give me some challenge on writing and thinking part because when you write the first choice you make, then after few questions, you may figure out that you need to change your choice in order to match with your solution. So it is hard for me to design the whole outline, I did not let Lillian do the outline part with me together. Because I thought that if we did the outline together, we may write the outline separately. I needed to make the whole story to have the connection, two people both did the outline part, which would not be a smart choice. If Lillian did the outline part first, so I would not change anything on her outline because I understand everyone has their own thinking way, it was hard for others to write the outline that depends on your thinking way. So Lillian also understood my idea, when I wrote the outline part, she read the whole book again in order to give me more useful choice to create that fictional world. After I finished wiring the outline, Lillian began to read my outline in order to revise it better and because she read the book again, she may give me more idea about how does Ashmol do the choice. Ashmol is a hard character for me to guess his personality, when there’s a choice in front of me, I was hard to write the solution that Ashmol may decide when he met the problem. Fortunately, there’s Lillian, during her revising time, she improved many faults that I made in writing Ashmol’s personality, and she made the whole story more naturally. When she was revising the outline, I began to play Minecraft in order to create a mine that could give the audience a better vision about this creative project. Imaginary was a good thinking way but it was hard for the audience to understand our idea, so sometimes we needed to directly show the audience that what were we trying to convict. After I finished the mine, Lillian also finished the outline. Then we create a powerpoint in order to make us easier to play this game. 

After we finished showing our creative project to the audience, we both felt happy and proud. But there are still something we did not do very well, especially in the outline part, we wanted to do a perfect job in the outline part, but there are still some leaks in it, like Leo’s question about where’s Kellyanne when Ashmol goes to the police station, we needed to think about every detail in the book in order to prevent the questions from the audience. And the time also is not enough, I think if I have two more days, I could create the whole story in the Minecraft, it would be more interesting to play in the class. However I still thought our project was very good, for the outline, I thought there’s no one in our class did more work on planning outline than us, and I thought every player in our class would say our project is interesting and not hard to understand.  

What will I do next

In the weekend, we finished almost about this project. We divided the project into two parts. The first part is design, the second part is finishing part. Now we are in the end of the first part. Because we created this new game that the players control the character's life, so in the past, we created the outline and many choices about the end of the story. In this weekend, we added more information about the plot and some scenes in the story in order to make it more realistic to the players, we want them to think they are. Ashmol when they are playing the game. If I describe the whole project is a dinosaur, now we finish about the skeleton of it, the next step we need to do is to add the appearance on it in order to make it better. So next step we will do is to put it into the PPT, on Monday and Tuesday, we will put it into PPT and revise the problems in it. And on Wednesday, in our group, we will try it one time in order to know how could make it more interesting.

Creative project

Yichen. Li and Lilian Xu
Monopoly about Pobby and DIngan.
In this creative project, me and Lillian will do an adventure game, it is different with other games because the participants decide the main character's life. We will make the game according to the book, but maybe we will add some choice when Ashmol is making the decisions. We will start the game when Ashmol lost Pobby and Dingan and the end will be the funeral. Also we would add more emotional plots in the story in order to show the grow of the Ashmol. However, there are something related. First, the goal of this adventure game is to win, in Pobby and Dingan, they also won, they won the trial. So in the first, we make our game's goal is to win the trial. And We create several steps, each step means something happens in the book. When we play the game, we won’t tell the the Ashmol's choice in the book, so we circle something important plots in the story, like when dad, Ashmol, and Kellyanne went to the mine, when dad was in jail, when dad was in court, when Ashmol found the opal, when they made funeral for Pobby and Dingan. These things connect the small plots into a big story. When we play on these specific steps, we will use note cards to explain why they are important. Second, in the adventure game, we enlarge the characteristic of Ashmol. Because he is the pain character, so we add some unique characteristics for him. When every time he meets a problem, his choice must be considered by the audience. Audience can decide the thing he does that or not. He just wants a happy family, in his mind, he’s so timid. But because of Kellyanne, he has to afford everything. And in the game, the family members will interact with Old Sid, Mr. Dan, and the residents in the Lighting Ridge, so every thing in the game would change by the audience decision. In the end, audience will know the grow of the Ashmol.
Even though this is a hard game to design, but we have the passion for doing it, I hope we could get a good result. And for the time I think until this Friday, me and Lillian will have a draft about this adventure game, then after one or two weeks we can finish it.

Thing with rare be precious

“The secret of an opal’s lies not in its substance but in its absences.” I felt so confused when I read this sentence first time. I thought that the charm of an opal is its appearance. Because of its colorful appearance and everyone is obsessed with glitter, so that’s why so many people go to mine in order to discover the opal and exchange for money. 

Like the Rex Williamson, Ashmol’s dad, he wanted to find more opals in order to become rich. He wanted everyone in the Lighting Ridge to be respected to him. Dad may not understand why opal’s appearance is less important than its absences.  The value of the opals is the dominant thing in his mind, the opal’s appearance decides how much it could be sold. However, for mom, she does not care about the opal forever. In her mind, her family and herself are the most important part of her life. When she argued with dad about Pobby and Dingan, if there’s no Ashmol, no one could know that Annie looked at her hometown and her ex-boyfriend in the midnight. When she knew that dad was in jail. She immediately went to the police, she did not think about how much money they would spend on this thing, she thought family is the top. So if mom did not care about the opal, she would not say that the opal’s substance or opal’s absences are the secret of the opal. Sometime I thought Kellyanne is same as mom’s personality, they did not care about the value of the opal, they put their friends and family on the top. So in the end I though Ashmol would say this sentence because he had an opal that was very colorful and it is as big as Pobby’s bellybutton, he knew it could sell a good price from its appearance. But because of Kellyanne, he finally exchanged this opal to a funeral. After the funeral, I thought Ashmol figured out that the opal is not the most important thing in his life, there are many different choices for him to earn money, then buy the ticket for his mom. Because he made the funeral, all the people in the Light Ridge came and they figured out that Rex is not a ratter. If he sold this opal, the only thing he could do is to buy a ticket for his mom, he could not make everyone figure out the truth. Even though he did not the opal for his mom, but that opal influent everyone in the Lighting Ridge. 

There are different meanings for the family members. For dad, opal means the wealth, he could get much money from the opal and enjoy the better lifestyle. For mom, opal does not have a clear meaning, in her eyes, a family is more important than opals. But for Ashmol, after the funeral, he would not say that opal is the most important thing. He had already sold one opal for a funeral. He found out that even though opal is valuable but can not buy the happiness and family. If there're more colors on the opal, they show how expensive this opal is. The reason why the absences are important because if Ashmol gave this opal to his dad, then they exchanged it for money, Kellyanne would not be happy, Old Sis would win the lawsuit and everyone in the Lighting Ridge would continue to think Williamson is the ratter. Because of the absences of the opal, they lost the wealth but get the happiness and safety. 

So because of the rare of the opals, that’s why it is so precious and attractive for everyone who lived in the Lighting Ridge, but for the people who had an opal before, they began to understand the charm of the opal is not the substance, but in its content. However, Ashmol understood it after he sold it. But for the whole family, there’s nothing more important than themselves, they learned love in this one month.