Quarter 2 Reflections

Out of all of the books I have read this quarter, the best book I've read would have to be The Nazi Hunters for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is that The Nazi Hunters intrigues you (the reader) with really good cliffhangers that leave you questioning, "What's going to happen?"  "Did he/she get caught?".

The area that I most improved on in English Language Arts would be writing blogs. Last quarter, my blogs were more of a quantity then quality, meaning I didn't really put all of my true effort into them, and vise versa.

Something that I accomplished since New Years that I'm proud of would be my newest investigative journalism blog (Syrian Civil War) since I finished writing the blog in less then two hours (the fastest I've gone for completing a blog).

My progress currently for my 40 book challenge is 15 books right now. I would've been at 18 books by now but I had forgotten the names of those books since I never wrote it down.

The most challenging thing about the 2nd quarter would be Article of the Week. The reason why it was challenging was because it took me a long while to fully understand the central idea of each articles. What I did to solve this problem was to study for a lot of time each day (30-40 minutes) on Articles of the Week in order to fully understand it.

My blogs have been progressing a lot since August since blogging became a usual thing in this Language arts class, making it far easier to write blogs. I've also stopped using a lot of words (quantity) and instead replacing it with quality.

I've used strategies such as studying, memorizing with flash cards, researching to help benefit me with my writing, thinking, and reading.

I've learned that the world has a tremendous amount of problems such as war, poverty, homeless, extinction, the list just keeps going on. It's just insane to see how many problems we face everyday and sometimes we don't act/do anything about it.

My research skills have improved since the 1st Quarter now that I find research without depending on someone or something. Other than that, it's still the same

Syrian Civil War

Last summer, while on a trip with the Eisenhower Institute’s Inside the Middle East program. I stood at the Israeli edge of the Golan Heights and heard a bomb explode across the border in Syria. We had spent the day within several miles of the war-ravaged nation with all remaining quiet until that moment, and while none of us wanted to admit it, we had the smallest hope that we might catch a glimpse of the conflict. However, when the sound of the detonation roared across the hills, excitement was replaced by a sense of fear and grief. I had lived a year in Gettysburg, yet I had never felt so close to a battlefield.

— Annika Jensen (age 18)

Currently in the world, Syria has been fighting a civil war for about six years now. Syria currently has a population of 17.8 million (estimated). Syria was once one of the world’s leading tourist destinations in the Middle East with its culture and history such as it's Ancient City of Aleppo, Dead Cities, and its old cities of Damascus and Bosra. Due to the civil war happening right now, tourist numbers fell by a shocking number of 98%. With that amount of tourist decline, it has brought a tremendous amount of decline with money with about $6 billion in losses.

The Syrian Civil War started as a peaceful protest that civilians acted on demanding the Syrian Government to meet their demands such as lack of freedom and economical issues.

After 15 boys were arrested and tortured for writing graffiti supporting the “Arab Spring” (series of anti-government protests, demonstrations, and armed rebellions that occurred across the Middle East). One of the boys was brutally tortured and died from his punishments. After this event occurred, The Syrian Government and President Bashar al-Assad acted on the protests by killing hundreds of demonstrators and arresting and prisoning more. This brought defectors/traitors from the military to form the rebel group “Free Syrian Army” with the goal of overthrowing the  government. From this point, Syria has just began its civil war. The civil war brought many rebel groups to help overthrow the government such as ISIL/ISIS.

 As the war continues to grow, territory is being changed. As of August 2016, The government of Syria only holds 35% of Syria (66% of population) while ISIS controls 35% of Syria as well. 12% is controlled by other rebel groups and 18% is held by the Kurds (Islamic people living in parts of Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, Western Iran, and Eastern Syria.

The results of the Civil War has brought 450,000 deaths with 50,000 being children and 4.81 million Syrians fleeing the country and 6.3 million people are displaced internally (someone who is forced to flee his or her home but who remains within his or her country’s borders. They are often referred as refugees, although they do not fall within the current legal definition of a refugee).

At this rate, the war should end with a peace treaty between the Syrian Government and the rebel forces. The amount of casualties and people fleeing has created more problems for other countries as they could or could not have the refugees stay there. Therefore, a diplomatic peace treaty would be the right way to end this civil war as we once did in the United States (The Civil War between the North and South) and rebuild the country.

As of December 22, 2016 - Syria’s state-run media has announced government forces has taken full control of Aleppo, ending more than four years of rebel rule there.

Book Talk

The Nazi Hunters

By Neal Bascomb
Genre: Historical Nonfiction 

The Nazi Hunters is like about experiencing (little) of a case file that leads back in the May 19, 1944 with one of the Nazi's SS (Protection Squadron) Senior Storm Command Leader Adolf Eichmann, a man responsible for the order of killing millions of Jews in the concentration camps. Adolf succeed in avoiding the authorities to name him a war criminal resulting in a severe punishment. Adolf fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina moving place after place with another name being Ricardo Klement. However, his past finally caught up to him.

One of the main characters in the book is of course Adolf Eichmann. Adolf Eichmann was a man in his early thirties before he fled to Argentina. Had 4 sons named Ricardo Francisco Eichmann, Klaus Eichmann, Dieter Helmut Eichmann, and Horst Adolf Eichmann. Another main character is Sylvia Hermann. A girl who was once a girlfriend to one of Adolf's sons. The picture of her is only black and white so you could only tell she had a black hair color.

Adolf Eichmann was facing the struggle of leaving his home to avoid being caught by the authorities and being punished. He had to leave his family behind however he found a way to get them to travel to him.  The mood of this novel is disturbing due to knowing the fact that Adolf Eichmann killed millions of Jews without hesitation. The theme of this novel would be Justice due to the amount of funds and years of effort used to capture this war criminal to make him pay for what he has done.

I would rate this novel a 4/5 since it's intriguing to keep on reading since most chapters finish off at a cliffhanger. Another reason why is that the book makes the story actually feel like a case file with its dates, pictures, and background images.