I write to...

 I write to let out the feelings I swallow.

Writing is my way to set free my anger, gloom, happiness... Those feelings I keep for myself.

I know when I am sad or angry, I am not myself. My mind closes and everything turns to a hurricane in my head. 

So, instead of screaming, discussing, yelling at someone, breaking stuff, hitting... I write.

It calms me down.

At most, I write when I have a dilemma. I write what I think of my problem and, after reading what I wrote, I realize the best decision. 

Or, sometimes I write what I feel when I get angry. I let out all thoughts. The reason, the person, the resolution, the problem. 

Everything goes into paper, or laptop, or phone. Then, I read it and delete it. 

I write, then I am.

So, there is a story behind this blog.


This blog would never exist if it wasn't for my English class' teacher.

She proposed the class to each open a blog, and publish a list of subjects.

We have been commenting on each other's blog and explored each other's publishments.

This class exercise is excelent because I have gotten to know my classmates' personalities and their truth being; even though we barely speak during English class. 

We have been able to open ourselves and comment on each other's works honestly; which I think is the best activity you can do: we are getting to know each other, and yet avoid physical awkwardness when getting to know someone.

There are different concepts of Beauty

My Point of View of Education

"I don't love studying. I hate studying. 

                 I like learning. Learning is beautiful."

Natalie Portman

Personally, studying bores me. Just the fact of thinking of sitting in a chair, reading books and trying to memorize all steps of photosynthesis or practice implicit differentiation for calculus annoys me. 

But, at the end, I am thankful my parents can afford such a good education for me. At the end, I am proud of knowing how our body produces energy, or why is DNA the most important molecule. I am delightful to have read and, deeply understood Macbeth at English class.

Education is the power of the world. Without education, you wouldn't have your own opinion in world issues. Or we would believe everything others would say; we would be fooled. Education provides personality to population. 

This is why a communist country is not interested in the education of its people. If people were well educated, their government would be a failure. People would protest and the party would go to an end.  This is only an example to show how important education is for the development of a country.

"Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world"

Nelson Mandela

Imagine not knowing the geography of your country, the map of the world. You would live your entire life not knowing where you are walking. You wouldn't know the existence of other languages, cultures, and beautiful places around the world. You wouldn't understand why the sky is blue, or why we need to breath in order to survive. 

The best thing about education, is that you can never stop learning. Everyday you can learn something new! From math and sciences, to languages and personal experiences. 

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

Aristotle

My Treasure

I will share the list of book I have enjoyed the most, and of course, my favourites. Some of them read twice! I consider them a treasure because I have learned a lot of things with these...

BUT! Here are my favourites:

Maya's Notebook 

Isabel Allende

Is the story of a disastrous teenage girl, lost in the world of alcohol, drugs and prostitution; and how slowly is opened to a new life. Maya, is sent by her grandmother to Chile to scape from police, where she is to live with a friend of hers.

From this book, I have learned that, even if you have destroyed your life with bad choices, you can fix it and find success only if you are willing for change.

The Secret Life of Bees 

Sue Monk Kidd

This is definitely one of my favourite books! I read it when I was 14 years old, and the story line is very interesting, and I have read it three times and I'm still not tired of it.

13-year-old Lily decides to run away from home to find about her dead mother in South Carolina. Her nanny, Roseleen, helps her in her journey. In their travel, they meet a family of three afroamerican women. There, Lily had various experiences; but mostly, she learns about female power and to make others respect her.

Like Water For Chocolate 

 Laura Esquivel

I first read this novel for Spanish class when I still lived in Venezuela. It is about a girl named Tita, who   suffer her entire life to marry her loves, Pedro, but she can't marry him because of her family tradition: the youngest daughter must not marry, but take care of her mother until the day she dies. The book is written as various cooking recipes; so she expresses herself when she cooks.

Finally...

The Pillars of the Earth 

Ken Follet

I am currently reading this book, and yet not have had the time to finish it since I got it as a Christmas present last December because of school... It is a looooong long book, but worth reading! 

On the previous post, I said how important Charles Yale Harrison is to me, and how his novel Generals Die in Bed had helped me improve to a better living.

I will always owe Charles Yale Harrison.

Dear Charles Yale Harrison,

      Thank you for your inspiring works of literature that has roamed the world. I know this is the last thing you would want to hear, but you must consider the ban of teaching literature in English classes in many states of America. However, I feel that it is a high importance to let you know how your writing had profound effect on people. My name is Carla Aspite, and I am a currently a Grade 12 student at Ridley College, Canada. I am originally from Venezuela and came to Canada to further my education when I was in grade 10. Coming into a new country with a different language seemed very daunting and I am very proud to say that without your work of literature I would not be as fluent in English as I am today. Your book Generals Die in Bed had thought me a variety of things, from history, appreciation of friendships, braveness and how to cope with fears, and most importantly to how to properly use the English language. From your novel I was able to gain an insight from you, explore other cultures and beliefs, gain a vast knowledge of historical events and further master the English language. Literature has a powerful way of capturing and interpreting what has happened and what is happening to us. Literature is the universal language for one to able to expand their minds and teach them new ways of seeing the world. Generals Die in Bed made me gain an insight into your views on the truth about humanity and your views are ones that I would forever treasure and hold of high importance. Now that your work is not going to be part of learning of many high school’s curriculums, people will fail to see the experiences you portrayed in that novel, which had influenced me positively. I am unhappy that future generations won’t learn about your experiences and the lessons you portray in Generals Die in Bed. The world will never experience the great feelings I had when reading your book, and it is sad that they will not realize how important it is to fight against our own fears. Those people will not have their eyes opened as you did to me. You made me realize what is thought to be only history, describing the horrors of war with such detail, and made it a real story. Now, every time I think of war, I look back to what I read in Generals Die in Bed. I not only appreciate you work for what I learned from it, but also as an ESL student, it helped me to improve my English and understand all grammar rules previously taught to me. I learned a vast list of new words into my knowledge and words regarding to war and military activities. Your work and name will never be forgotten in my life, and I thank you for all the adventures you wrote that changed my life.

      Sincerely,

      Carla Aspite

English Classes: productive or a waste of time?

Some people complain why is English the only mandatory course throught all grades in highschools. Personally, I think English is the only mandatory course because it is important for students to know how to speak and write in English, despite it is a first language. It is important to interpret the meanings of themes and topics in literacy. Also, English prepares the students to later be successful in work and university when writing assignments and reports.

From kindergarten, we study literary in prose to get better at using rhetorical skills and to be able to communicate in proper English. Literature is the most basic way to communicate ideas that cannot be out and said right away. Without literature, we would not have critiques on certain works that we have today. Literature is a form of entertainment, but also on the most serious note, literature can provide society the ideas that other works of English cannot.

Literature is important in English class because we have to learn how to use literature in its proper means and because we have to know how to analyze the proper literature so we know those proper means. We have to know how to analyze and understand literature because it is the way that most times critique on society, morals, lessons, and history are told and a light is shed on for us to be able to understand a world better or a life better to be able to learn from these experiences and encounters. It is no surprise that literature is the most common type of language or type of work studied because it gives us lessons on how to mask our ideas professionally and how to write our own works of literature.

As an ESL student, and coming an encounter with very hard literature to understand and analyze made the study of literature much harder. If studying literature in English is very hard, not to talk about studying literature in a second language. Being from an entirely different culture, our lessons in literature are definitely different, so therefore it was hard to understand the lessons in literature given in each of different scenarios. In my three years in Canada, I had successfully adapted and understood English, not only when talking to English speakers, or at English grammar classes; but when reading a book is when I had finally understood the proper ways of English grammar and language. 

I am a person who likes to read a lot. But, if it wasn't for English classes, I might have missed these amazing works of literature and, I appreciate I had not only read them, but study and understand them in deep. Books read in English classes just to mention a few:

-       Generals Die in Bed - Charles Yale Harrison

-       Lord of the Flies - William Golding

-       Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller

-       Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare

-       Macbeth - Shakespeare

-       The Reader - Michael Berg

-       The Woman in White - Wilkie Colins

But, above all these novels and plays my teachers have introduced to me, the one I will always be thankful to is Generals Die in Bed. 

On Grade 10, I read Generals Die in Bed. It made me understand more about WW1 and how soldiers used to live on the trenches. I learned that a desperate person may fight and do whatever it takes to get what needed, even though doing actions against morality. Also, only the people, who already have a ‘good fame’, as the generals in this book, were recognized for what they did, when they in reality barely went or not even go to the trenches. Generals would not die on fight, and will be highly recognized for something they didn’t do. Instead, the soldiers, whose were always fighting and suffering, died on the trenches and not many were very recognized on what they did for the country. Also, for better understanding of what was going on, pictures were shown as we read the book in class. How the trenches look like, injuries, machine guns, no-man's land, and others. Through the entire book, the characters complain about how much their feet hurt, and some have cuts and are even infected. At first I thought it was something small, and they were making a big deal about it; after seeing these I never complained again about a foot pain when I get new shoes:

Yes, this happened in real life to most, I believe all, of the soldiers. 

Not only I have learned about war, but I improved my English level. As I read, I would figure out how some expressions would work, or realize a word I had always heard but never understood its meaning could fit into a sentence, and finally add it to my everyday vocabulary. These months of continuos hard work through my English, of course, were not easy. I didn't get a good final mark at the end of the term either. Just try to go another country with a different language, and read and write essays about a book which you can hardly read and barely understand what is going on. But Charles Yale Harrison was as much as an English teacher for me as the one who was always helping me improve grammar and spelling in the classroom. Generals Die in Bed was definitely the turning point of my life in Canada.