Presentations

In today's class, all students made a presentation about the solution of ISIS as group. Because I was late, so I just listened three groups' presentations, but I still learned a lot from them.

Firstly, I found that all of them used many researches in their presentations. I knew we needed to find some researches that we needed, but I didn't know how to connect them with my own solution before.  For example, In Jordan's presentation they said we should remove their capital. I knew ISIS had much capital by robbing and kidnapping, and they also made money for selling oil. But in presentation they showed me many details from researches that how ISIS got money by oil, so we could think the specific solution of removing money by this information.

I thought most of my classmates did a good job in their presentation. For the first one though I thought it was idealistic and not very possible to make it come true, actually it was a very detailed solution, and it also provided the best interests of Syrian refugees. I liked this solution so much. And the third one had many excellent ideas, I thought it was the best in all three that I heard. Because it included the solution of core problem - removed the leader. ISIS was like a country, and their leader was the person who initiated and directed terrorist operations.

I thought people should help Syria and other countries near here develop the economy and stabilize the employment. So some people would not join ISIS for improving life.  And we also needed to support the secularization of Muslin, established the regime of secularists, and provided high education for them. The most important thing that wiped ISIS was changing people's extreme and wrong religious ideas.

Group Project

Last class Mr. Schick told us we needed to make a ISIS project instead of a test on next Tuesday (but I thought It was better to have a test). It was about the solution of ISIS that we have already talked about for a few classes. Finally we decided to encourage all countries to fight with ISIS, and we also thought some detailed plans, like control the entry and exit of people in Syria, and winked out the terrorists of ISIS that pretended as a refugee live in another country. Now we should think the way that could decrease the mortality of Syrians (because we wanted to fight with ISIS in Syria directly so it must would injure some civilians accidentally) and improve the efficiency of finding terrorists. It was really difficult to come up with a plan that was almost perfect.

At the Beginning of Class

At the beginning of today's class, it was very noisy in classroom, just because Mr. Schick did not be here at that time. Almost everyone talked to each other loudly, they even left their seats and went to play with other students. It seemed that it still was the break time. I stayed in my seat quietly, prepared for religion test and waited for Mr. Schick. I just kept myself quiet, but did not remain others not to speak so loud.
Then, because we were too noisy that has influenced neighbor class, Mr. Mc opened the door that between his classroom and ours, warned us that it was class time, and we should sit down in our seats and be quiet. After that Mr. Schick also came to the class, he talked with us about that seriously, and then left again for a while for his desk.
Because we have just been warned, everyone looked much quieter than before. There still were some people talking though others told them to stop.
In China, most of students would be quiet in class time though teacher were not here. We were taught to do that when we were very young. If we talked to each other loudly like what we did in break time, teachers would be really angry because we would influence other students to listen to teachers. It was a disrespect of them and also was a waste of the time.

Solution of ISIS

In today's class we talked about the solution of ISIS with our classmates. I didn't want to make a war with them, because it would make the situation in Syria worse which had a bad influence on their people. People are innocent, but the innocent people always endured the most sufferings in the war. And I thought making a peace were always better than making a battle. However, both of Andy and Owen wanted to fight with ISIS. They were so flagitious and they made many things that could never be forgiven, such as killed queers, kidnapped people, or burned people at the stake. The ideology of them was extreme so that we could not negotiate with them. Therefore, they thought the only way to resolve the problem was to fight with them directly. People all around the world needed to work together to make a peace.

Syrian refugees

In today's class, we talked about our last classwork first, and then watched a video.
This video was about a girl who is Syrian refugee. The life of her was changed sharply by the war, and she turned into pessimistic and gloomy from happy and vivacious. In video, the difference between her two birthdays (before and after the war) made me feel so sad: only her mom sang the birthday song for her instead of many people, and she could not help crying.
I thought the girl, and the children who are like her are so poor, and we needed to help them. All of us had our family, our friends, had our own good life before, but now they lost them and experienced so many dreadful things. The difference between us  just is living in different places, I thought maybe one day the things happened to them also would happen to us. If it would be true, I could not imagine if no one help me, it would be hopeless. Therefore, I thought we should help them, help people who are in trouble.
I thought the government could take in some refugees, only some, but some for many countries (not all because the culture, language or condition of some countries were not good for Syrians to live). But I knew that some countries or states refused to do that because of Paris attack. This also could be understood, we could not disprove that taking in refugees would increase the risk of attack. All in all, I still hoped there would be more and more people helped Syrian refugees, and more and more countries would like to offer them a safe place to live.

Religions -

Judaism

Number of adherents: 14-18 million (ninth)
Call them: Jews
Geographic location: Israel
Founder: Abraham
Holy book: Talmud
Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)
Beliefs: ethical monotheism - God is one, and concerned with the actions of humankind
one God, not allow to have any others
kind of like a person
Ten commandments
13 Principles of Faith
having a lot of rules

Classwork

1. Christian 31.4% Muslim 23.2% Hindu 15% Buddhist 7.1% Jewish 0.2%

2. Judaism: He's the founding father of Covenant, and a special relationship between Jewish people and God in Judaism. He was called "our father Abraham".
Christianity: Apostle Paul taught Abraham's faith in God made him the prototype of all believers. And the Roman Catholic Church calls Abraham "our father in Faith" in the Eucharistic prayer of the Roman Canon.
Islam: The Islamic prophet Muhammad claimed Abraham. And Muslims regard Abraham as a prophet and patriarch, the archetype of the perfect Muslim, and the revered reformer of the Kaaba in Mecca. Islamic traditions consider him the first Pioneer of Islam.

3. An indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins." The Catholic Church sold them and said to people that they would get the remission from God if they bought them. Martin Luther objected to indulgences because he thought only God could clear people from sins, and the indulgence only was a shameful way of collecting money for church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

4. Haji is a greater Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, which takes place in the last month of the year and which all Muslims are expected to make at least once during their lifetime if they can afford to do so. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

5. The Rigveda: The test is the oldest Indic text, it's a collection of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses, organized into ten books. It includes hymns of praise to many deities.
The Samaveda: It contains 1,549 standzas and 1,875 verses. It consist of hymns that common with the Rigveda.
The Yajurveda: It contains 1,875 verses and it's a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire.
The Atharvaveda: It is a collection of 730 hymns with about 6,000 mantras, divided into 20 books. And it's a text belonging to the Atharvan and Angoras poets.

Religions

Buddhism

Number of adherents: 500 million to 1.5 billion (estimates very quite a bit)
some people are both Christian and Buddhist.
Call them: Buddhists
Geographic location: Southeast Asia, China, Nepal, japan
there are 1.2 million Buddhists in the United States
concentrate on food and think about what you doing
Founder: Siddhartha Gautama
Denominations: Tibetan, Zen, Theravada, Amidist
Beliefs:
Four Noble Truth
1. There is suffering
2. Attachment to desire is the origin of suffering
3. There is a cessation of suffering
4. The eightfold path will lead to the cessation of suffering
The Eightfold Path
right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right dedication

Five Major Religions - a study guide

Christianity

Number of adherents: around 2.2 billion (largest in the world)
Call them: Christians
Geographic location: Europe (almost all European countries), the Americas, Southern Africa.
Denominations: (most) Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church(Russia), Protestants (Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, many more) - same guy and same religion
Founder: Christ (it's Abrahamic in origin)
Holy book: The Bible, especially The New Testament (the difference between Christian and Judaism)
Beliefs: Jesus is both human and divine - the Son of God; he led a virtuous life, he was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected; he ascended into heaven where he reigns with God the Father.
Spend time with poor people, women
Mary is a virgin and give birth to Jesus because he is the Son of God (prove that Jesus is special)
Clergy: the Pope is head of the church, priests are local authorities.

Islam

Number of adherents: 1.5 billion (the second largest)
Call them: Muslims
Geographic location: Middle East, north Africa
Denominations: Sunnis (75-90% at least 3 quarters) Shiites (10-20%)
Founder: Muhammad (570-632)
Holy book: Qur'an
Beliefs: monotheistic, Abrahamic
Five Pillars (testimony, prayer, alms-giving, fasting, pilgrimage)
Muslims see their purpose in life as serving and submitting to Allah (God), and observing Islamic law

Hinduism

Number of adherents: 1.1 billion (the third largest)
Call them: Hindus
Geographic location: India, Nepal
Denominations: the vedas - eternal truths revealed to ancient sages, composed in verse form (meant to be sung and easily memorized)
Founder: no distinct founder (too old) - it's a series of intellectual or philosophical points of view, rather than a rigid, strict set of beliefs - probably the oldest religion, although Hinduism is less a religion than a way of life, or a faith.
example: "As a person puts on new clothes and discards old and torn clothes, similarly an embodied soul enters new material bodies, leaving the old body."
In other words... reincarnation

The test grade

Today the test papers we did yesterday were handed to us. I got 90 points in this test (it should be 93 actually). The first one I did wrong in test was "This area is beginning to transform into a high-tech, knowledge-based society." I thought it was Japan, but in fact it was India because it was just the  beginning of the transforming. The second one was "19% of then women here use birth control, compared to 61% worldwide." I thought this one should be India because the women here were asked to bear many children in order to have more than one boy, but it was Africa! And the last one was a little special, because Mr. Schick did it wrong. "One in ten children here dies before age 5", the answer of this question should be India not Africa. Therefore he added 3 points for students who actually did it right, and finally my grade turned into 93.

Nova video test

Today we took a test about the Nova video. It only had thirty multiple choices, but I was still  not sure about some, such as which country has rising dead rate and which area is home to the largest metropolitan area in the world. India and Africa had something in common which was easy to confuse. Some other questions were really detailed. We were allowed to use our blog on test this time, but unluckily some notes were only on my notebook.
The nova video was too hard to understand. I watched a part of video about Africa again yesterday night. Though we could find the transcript on YouTube, it was not correct! I wanted to watch the whole video again at first, but it was too terrible so I gave up.
I will must write down as many as possible notes next time when we watch videos in class.

Complement

1) India will have over 1.6 billion by 2050, and pass China soon.
2) Japan has never had declining birth rate so far so fast so deep.
3) The TFR of Japan is 1.3, which will shrink  a half of the population that is 126 million.
4) In 70s, 25 is the last chance to get married for women in Japan, but now they often delay the marriage until the last time they can have their first children. They try to do different things with their lives.
5) Tomoko was a television journalist which was one of Japan first female anchors at the age of 29. She was looking for a good lifetime career. She became an editor in chief when she was 37. She felt scared to have a baby because she thought it would drop out of race, but finally she gave birth a daughter when she was 41.
6) One of the reasons that most of women in Japan go to work is that in 89,90 economy was in a recession, they had to work to keep the family in middle class. And raised a successful child was a expensive task for education.
7) Japanese people preferred to work for a long time so they have to find people to take care of their child for more than 13 hours. Therefore the birth rate declined.
8) Children in Japan always work in city and leave their parents alone because they have their own life and cannot afford to take care of them.
9) In Japan family is responsible to take care of elders not the government, and family always means women.
10) Japanese people live long and the disability rate among elders drop steadily.
11) In Japan there is no enough young people to support retiring, so the population will decline and the consumers also will decline. Because the government doesn't have good profit business and no enough people to pay taxes, they cannot have good welfare.
12) America workforce increased because of the immigration.
13) An American child will consume and pollute more over a lifetime than 30 Indian children.
14) Now more and more countries encourage couples to have more children because of global aging.

Test review class

Today in class we watched three short videos. These videos were about animals, the first one were sheep, the second one were cows, and the third one were bears. These videos made me feel terrible, especially for the sheep, because they twisted their bodies. Then, Mr. Schick told us we would have a test about Nova World in Balance on Wednesday, and we used rest of the whole class to review it. I thought I might not get a good grade on this test because I only had some of the notes about this video. It was hard for me to watch English video without any subtitles. Even though I could understand what they were talking, I could not write them down while I was listening. I needed to watch it again and find subtitles maybe. For notes we reviewed today, they were about the aging population and birth rate in Japan; the TFR, children mortality, unbalance gender ratio, gender discrimination and domestic violence in India.