Extra Reading Diary: Alice In Wonderland, the Second Half

Because I enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland unit so much, I figured I would read the second half for my extra reading since I didn't get a chance at the beginning of the week!

Although I liked the first half of this reading better, I liked the second part a lot as well because it was ten times the madness! People in Wonderland seem to never make sense, and I kind of like that. One part, that I didn't like was the ending. You know how in elementary school the whole "wake up in a dream" thing is always a cop out to writing an actual ending? I felt a little bit like that about the end of this story, although I am sure that, being written in 1850, they called "dibs" on that. It was probably a novel ending back then...

I actually got a bit frustrated by the king by the end of the court session about who stole the tarts. At this point I am definitely feeling the same emotions as Alice probably is while standing in the court room. Another thing I really like is that it includes Alice's thoughts in the dialogue. For instance, the comment about jurors.

'I suppose they are the jurors.' She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, 'jury-men' would have done just as well.

I just think it's funny how it includes Alice's sentiments all throughout the context. I'm glad I was able to finish off this unit, and loved my trip down memory lane.

Image Creds:Pinterest 

Storytelling Week 11: Pigless in Wonderland

First of all, these clothes are ridiculously itchy. You would think that these people would realize that one, I'm not a baby human because I have a giant snout and fuzz all over my soft, pink body, and two, that I don't need clothes on because... I have fuzz all over my soft, pink body. The only problem is that I don't speak their language so I can't tell them any of this.

I've always lived in Wonderland, and I've never heard of any place more, that is, until this little blonde girl came from the outside. She just waltzed right into our house and struck up conversation with my caretakers. Although her audacity was surprising, I was thankful for her being there because it led to my escape.

How did I get there in the first place, you might ask? I grew up on a farm just past the Mad Hatter's house. I lived with my mom and a few other sows, along with three confused cows and a very snoody cock. We all pitched in with the work that needed to be done, and it happened to be my day to go out and collect hay for that night's dinner. I ventured a little too far that day and crossed paths with two senile old women, they presumed I was helpless and against my will took me back to their twisted cottage.

I'd been there for a full two weeks before that Alice girl showed up. As soon as she walked in, I knew it was my chance. So I screamed as loudly as possible to her for help, although she kept calling my pleas for help loud "grunts." I didn't care what she called them as long as she got me out of there eventually. Then the strangest thing happened.

BANG! The kitchen pot clanged against the back wall, and narrowly missed my right ear. I screamed even louder, but the woman holding me paid no attention. The cook kept throwing anything and everything our direction, sometimes making painful contact with an exposed hoof or belly. Finally, the woman stood up and launched me into the air towards the girl.

Alice caught me, but not without effort. I contorted my body every which way to try and get free, but nothing worked. She held tightly until I figured I should just go along with the ride. Thankfully Alice didn't stay long, and she carried me outside. Her eyesight was up to par and she was able to realize that I was, in fact, not a human baby.

"You're a pig!" she exclaimed. I grunted back.

"A pig has no place in a house like this with women of this nature," she softly said as she bent down and let me free. With a squeal of thanks, I ran off towards the farm. My family is NOT going to believe this.

Alice and the pig.

Image Creds: Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary A: Alice in Wonderland

This week I read the first half of the Alice in Wonderland unit! I much liked it, and much liked the way it was written. It was pleasant to all be one flowy story, and led to my reading through it with little to no effort. I found it more than enjoyable! I also thought it odd that there would be random words capitalized, but then again I do not see a reason why they shouldn't be. Overall, it was VERY entertaining, and I'd like to share my favorite quotes from the reading here:

'Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

This is from the Advice From A Caterpillar Part 1 whenever Alice first crosses paths with the silly creature.  I fell in love with this quote the same way Alice fell down the rabbit-hole. I am a huge believer in the idea that change doesn't usually happen at one time. For instance, who I am one year is merely the sum of who I became every day of the previous year. This is why I like Alice's quote! She doesn't know who she is because it has already changed for the day!

I also like the quote when she was talking to the cheshire cat in Pig and Pepper Part 3, and she was asking where she should go:

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

I just like this because it's true! I feel like sometimes I should be in Wonderland because I am mad!

Image via Etsy

Storytelling Week 10: Cat and Mouse

It had been a while since Mama and Papa Mouse had a baby mouse around. The first two... well... they were eaten. They were eaten by IT. 

Ever since the Cat learned of its dominion over the entire house, he had made it clear that no one else was welcome. He paid no mind to the established, cosy residence of the Mouse family. He had paid no mind that they had been living there long before his grubby paws crossed the threshold. He had paid no mind to the sound of their tears after he made the first two Mouse family babies his dinner. 

Mama and Papa Mouse had enough of IT. Once they discovered they were pregnant for the third time, they were determined that this baby would survive. They concealed its birth by holding it close to their bodies when they traveled, making the baby almost undetectable to IT.

Doing this ensured that Baby Mouse grew up healthy and strong. He kept growing and growing, so much that it made it difficult to conceal him as the family traveled. One day, he lagged slightly behind and Cat spotted him! Outraged that something had slipped right under his nose, determined was he to make this Baby Mouse turn out like the last two!

Cat went to work on rigging up traps and coming up with various schemes on how to catch Baby Mouse. First, he decided to set out some cheese underneath a propped up stack of books. Whenever Baby Mouse came near, he would tug away the prop and the books would fall on top of Baby Mouse. He waited patiently for his foe to come near.

Baby Mouse was and extremely brilliant. He noticed the peculiar placement of the books and the cheese. Wanting the cheese badly, but wanting his life more, he decided to make a lasso-of-sorts and grab the cheese away from the books. Before cat knew it, the cheese had disappeared as he heard a few contented squeaks from Baby Mouse's direction. 

Cat kept making traps similar to these, and Baby Mouse kept fooling him. Until one day, when Cat came up with a foolproof plan. He decided to make a slide going straight from the Mouse residence to the drain in the bottom of the sink. Baby Mouse knew it was a trap before he stepped onto the slide, but he also had a plan.

Going down the drain he slowed himself so that the landing into the sewage system would hurt less. There, he wandered until he found a giant Mouse neighborhood! His parents had told him of its existence, and he knew it was time for them to band together and defeat IT. 

In the middle of the night they coated their paws with the remnants of a rubber cement can that had floated its way down the river of sewage. Using its adhesive properties, the band of mice climbed their way up the drain into the battlefield. Huddling up behind the coffee maker, they waited until dawn to execute their... plan.

The next morning Cat came out to remove the slide from the drain on the sink, and right when he bent down to unfasten it, the mice bombarded him. Cuts and slices from teeth all over took Cat down in an instant. Right as he was drawing his final breaths, Baby Mouse came up and told him that he knew about all of the attempts on his life. He told him family would stick together and help family, and it was time for the terror to end once and for all! Cat breathed his last as his vision of Baby Mouse blurred through his slowly closing eyes, the words swimming in his dizzy mind.

Perhaps one of the most famous cat and mouse couples around! 

Image Cred: Animated TV

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Author's Note: This story is loosely based on one from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson in 1929. In the original story, titled The Jealous Uncle, there is an Uncle who kills his nephews for no reason. After he had killed two, his wife tried to conceal the third-born by pretending he was a girl. Eventually, the uncle found out and tried every way he could to kill the boy, but the boy was too smart. Outwitting the uncle, he eventually gave in and was put in a box to drift out to sea. The boy landed in a far away, receptive land and built up strength. He later went back and defeated his uncle for treating him and his parents so poorly. This story is kind of similar in that I have a rivalry between two characters, one on a power trip and one that is humble and seemingly unable to defeat the other. It was the first thing that came to mind for a story, and whenever you've been trying to come up with an idea for almost an hour, you go with the first thing that comes to mind!

Reading Diary A: Native American Heroes

One of the things I like about the Native American Heroes unit is that the myths and tales tell a story about something relatable or something known to me. For instance, in The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great Eagle Part 1 and Part 2, tells a story about how the bald eagle used to be a giant man-hunting bird, but the main character of the story, Jonayaíyin, kills the mother and the father. Then he hits the baby eagles on the top of the head to stunt their growth so they could no longer attack man, this makes them the size they are today!

By far the weirdest stories in this unit were The Jealous Uncle Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. This story is about an Uncle who kills his nephews as soon as they are a few years old. His wife hated that he did this, so the next boy that was born she lied and said he was a girl. Eventually, his uncle found out and tried to kill him, but the boy always outsmarted the uncle and eventually got revenge. There was one quote from the boy that struck me:

"I can forgive him the killing of my brothers, the attempts on my life, but I will revenge his treatment of my parents."

This kind of shows his mortality, that he has a breaking point. I find the boy extremely strong to be able to forgive his wicked, prideful uncle for murdering his brothers and even trying to kill him. I think that most people would agree that it's usually worse to watch the people you love be wronged than to be wronged yourself. Everyone has at least a little selflessness in them! Great unit, I'd recommend it for sure!

 Image Credit: Southern Blogspot

Storytelling Week 9: That's a Sappy Story!

A long time ago there was a people group called the Sapitun tribe. They lived deep within the forest in the eastern part of modern-day Texas. They were large in number and even larger in pride.

The hunters of the group would go out every morning with their hand-crafted arrows and tusk-mounted spears to catch that night's meal. At the time, there was a famine in the land and food was the most precious commodity- something every warrior was reminded of when they heard the deep cries of their children as bellies would rumble incessantly. 

The most respected of the hunting group was a man called Tibaro, and he led his pack of warriors deeper than they had ever gone before into the forest. Every once in a while, they would catch a bird or a spare hare, but nothing substantial enough to feed their people.

Tibaro was in the lead, and he spotted a thicket of brush off in the distance from which smoke was rising up into the atmosphere. That's strange, there are no people for miles around here. But his curiosity led him to go inside.

Immediately upon entering his head started spinning as the thick smoke filled his lungs. After a few minutes of being paralyzed by the fumes, he heard a booming voice.

"Tibaro, you have led your people well. But this famine is strong and will not end for many more moons. I have a proposition for you," the voice offered.

"Anything to spare my people," the desperate tone showed through Tibaro's voice.

"I can make sure your people are provided for every day for the rest of their lives as long as you and your warriors agree to protect my forest every day for the rest of your lives," the booming voice got louder as it spoke.

Thinking that protecting the forest is something to which his warrior tribe was already accustomed, he agreed immediately. 

"Good. Tonight at moonlight you will see the forest change in a way you have never seen," said the voice, "there will be new fruit and places for animals to come feast."

Tibaro led his group back to their home sites, going to sleep soundly knowing that when he woke up that there would be new fruits that would have appeared.

That night, however, as soon as moonlight struck, Tibaro and all of his warriors were transformed into countless varieties of trees, sprouting fruits and berries this forest had never seen. When the women and children arose the next morning they were delighted to discover this transformation!

They looked at the biggest, thickest of the new trees and discovered a thick, amber substance that leaked from around the bark. These are the tears of Tibaro as he realized he would be protecting the forest by providing it from his branches. This is where tree sap originated.

Tibaro's tears, also known as tree sap.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Author's Note: I wrote this story based on the Tejas Legends Unit  from the book When the Storm God Rides: Tejas and Other Indian Legends from the early 20th century. This particular story is not based on any one story from the unit, rather, I chose to follow the same style of all of the story. Each legend tells the story behind a different nature phenomenon, such as woodpecker's tails and the colors of certain flowers. I chose to use the same theme, but twist it to tell a story about where tree sap comes from!

Reading Diary A: Everything is Bigger in Tejas

Tejas Legends it is for the week! I've developed this nasty habit of skipping my first reading diary for the past few weeks, so hopefully this won't be forever. I felt obligated, and also interested, to read the Tejas legends because I am from that very state!

To give an overview, the stories (at least in the first half) give the Tejas background to all kinds of legends, such as why woodpecker's peck wood and why they have short tails. There is a story that accompanies each, so it is fun to read the creative background.

My favorite story was The Cloud That Was Lost. It is about how clouds get tired from carrying heavy rain, so they enjoy resting in the mountains at night. One cloud, though, went too far one day and had to bed down in a grassy area for the night. The flowers in the area saw that this cloud was pink and wanted its color, so they drank the cloud up that night! This is how the Phlox flower got its color!

I loved this story because I think it is just an adorable tale. I could easily see this being made into a really cute short film with a fluffy pink cloud and petite white flowers drinking it all up!

I also liked Grandmother River's Tricks. In this story, Grandmother River protects the river fish from the harmful gar fish by tricking the gar outside the edges of her banks. I liked it because it reminded me of Grandmother Willow's protection in Pocahontas!

Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas!

Image Creds: DisneyWiki

Commenting Review Week:

The commenting portion of the course is probably the one with which I have had the most trouble! I think part of it is wanting to be sensitive to the people writing. They have spent time and effort creating a story, and I don't like trying to find a way to criticize, even if it is constructive! That being said, I do truly see the value in doing so. I like when I get comments back that tell me a way I can change my writing, even if it is something as small as fixing a quote or a comma.

The biggest problem I've found with this set-up is, and this is me being 100% honest and transparent, nobody goes back and fixes the suggestions if it isn't required, myself included. For the storybook, these suggestions are helpful, because it is an evolving piece that builds on itself. But for the storytelling posts, I never went back to fix them because I didn't really need to. I get that those comments were for practicing so we could give constructive feedback for the storybook, but I think it might be worth an extra credit assignment (maybe one point a week?) to go review the comments on the storytelling posts and fix the suggestions from the other students in the class. Maybe this is my way of putting a big scarlet "A" on my forehead because I am calling myself out at the slacker student, but I am trying to be helpful. I have no incentive to fix my writing if it isn't the storybook! Phew, that feels good to get off my chest.

What I do like about this, though, is that I feel praised for the work I do get done! In my other classes, for instance, the only acknowledgement I get from my work is a grade. I get no feedback from the professor or from other students. Here, I have people telling me "good job" and "well done" at least once a week! Even though those comments are required, they make a difference. I think it is important in life to feel like the things you invest your time into (for this class it is reading/writing) are valued and noticed! This idea reminds me of another Mother Teresa quote:

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I think this class allows me to feel like the things I do have a place- even if it is on a smaller scale.

As far as pictures go, I was at a loss on which ones to include, so I decided to scroll through my camera roll from the weekend and put the best ones on here!

Given the snow in Norman this past weekend, I walk outside at midnight on Saturday night to discover my best guy friends barricaded our front door with a truckload of fresh pow-pow. I couldn't stop laughing- pranks are my favorite!

Image Credit: Self-photographed February 28, 2015.

 I'm on a jeep kick. This is my dream car. Two-door white Jeep Wrangler with top off, wench on the front, and manual steering. The beach is optional, but I wouldn't complain.

(Image Creds: Pursuit of Preppiness)

 My best friend sent this to me on Friday. Please, Lord, let me be like this when I'm sixty. Preferably, like the fine-lookin' lady on the left.

(Image Creds: Chronicles of a Trophy Wife)

Writing Review Week: Write or Wrong.

Bringing fresh eyes to my work really gives me a different perspective about my writing style. One of my weaknesses in writing is dialogue. I don't feel like I know how to develop dialogue really well, or when I can skimp on the formal writing rules to make it flow more easily. One of my strengths is the voice I use in writing, keeping the diction fresh and enjoyable. I'm not perfect at this, but I try!

This has definitely challenged me in both the structure of my writing, such as grammar and writing development, as well as creativity. How do you read one story and completely rewrite it to completely change the story, yet still keep it the same? Coming up with an idea on how to rewrite a story from my reading is the hardest part for me. I like when ideas come quickly- such as the avocado story, but others do not come nearly as quick- such as the story about Ody.

I think the best thing for my writing is honestly just reading more. The more I read of original works and works of other the people, the bigger sample size I have, per say. With that, I can take ideas, formats, etc. from others' writing and make it my own!

My favorite picture so far, as I'm writing this at least, is the one of Santorini, Greece. I have a hunch that this has something to do with the fact that I just looked up $120 round-trip tickets to go from Athens to Santorini (which is a Grecian island) during my trip Summer 2015. For grins and giggles, I'll include a few more of Santorini, as I am hoping to instill intense FOMO (fear of missing out) in all who read this post!

(BlogLovin')

(99TravelTips)

Amoudi Bay

(Travel + Leisure)

Reading Review Week: Remi"missing" the Best Stories!

I love how this class is structured; I really do. At times I get frustrated because it has something due every single day, but really all that does is force me to be disciplined. Everything about this class is exactly opposite from any of my other classes: the teacher actually cares; I am allowed to be creative; there is no "right" answer; I get to tailor the course to my interests; I am on my own time. It's been a very 'stretching' experience, but a very rewarding one.

Looking back to my reading diaries, I honestly just laugh out loud. It is like reading a note from a friend in 7th grade, but slightly less dramatic. I remember writing each of the posts and they took me back through the readings, highlighting my favorite parts. Nostalgia. I also noticed a trend in my writing. The first half of my posts included a favorite quote or two from the stories I read, and some of the last few posts just provided a short review of what I had read. I like when I include quotes, because it allows me to remember my favorite parts of the original text. I think from now on, I'm going to try and include my favorite quotes from the reading for my diaries.

I didn't typically use my diaries in conjunction with my storytelling posts, but I truly do think that would be helpful. It would allow me to know the individual story that I am rewriting on a more thorough level. I still stand by my loving the units that flow from story to story, though, because to me it just seems more like a book! 

Overall, I've enjoyed the class so far. It's challenged me to become a more creative writer, as well as become more tech savvy! (Which I really needed!)

My favorite pic from my readings was the one of Mother Teresa. In fact, I almost posted it again on the reading for this past week just because she was on my mind! She is a woman whose life is worth studying. One of my favorite Mother Teresa quotes is this:

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

 Image Cred: Wikimedia Commons