The Bee and The Orange Tree Part 2: Analysis -by Lyra

One of the most notable elements of this fairy tale is the relationship between the male and female protagonists. Aimée displays heroic qualities that were unprecedented among female characters at the time. Passages centered around Aimé, are often stunted in favor of those featuring his female counterpart, who plays somewhat of a “Prince Charming” role in respect to Aimé.

The Bee and the Orange Tree Part 1:The Story – by Lyra

Each week, I plan on reviewing a different one of Madame D’Aulnoy’s fairy tales. I will provide a summary, a writing sample (to give an idea of the writing style) and an analysis for each tale. This week I will be presenting and discussing one of Madame D’Aulnoy’s most well-known fairytales, “L’Oranger et l’Abeille” (The Bee and the Orange Tree.) In addition, I will be sharing an insightful article by Anne E. Dugan that examines the relationship between nature, culture, and feminist theory as they appear in this fairy tale.

Educational difference – by Eric

This week I stopped reading books for a while and started to compile data and compare them to the education in US. There are seriously infinite things to talk about and compare. Starting from kindergarten, parents have different attitudes towards what kids should learn. The schedule is different and what subject and how they are taught differ in various ways too.

Progress

This week was actually remarkably productive. I finished the first part of my story, dealing with the experiences of a German-born Turk named Nehmet growing up in Berlin. The story talks about his coming to terms with his identity and the paradigm of looking “foreign” but feeling native. The next part of the story will deal with the exact opposite,

Assemblies and Story lines by Tristen

This week we got confirmation on a date for an assembly we want to have.  We hope that our mentor, Harve Nichols, and his two spoken word companions, will come perform alongside Habeeb and I on a Friday afternoon.  Now that we have a date, we will have to start fundraising.  In the next couple weeks we plan on fundraising at least $100 dollars.  We plan on selling food and drinks during lunch periods to anyone in the name of our project.  

The Event Class and the Event List Class – by Chester

In the program I am writing for Westtown’s Weekend Program, I am using Java as the main language for the backstage layer. Since its an object-oriented program, the program of course consists of a couple of objects. There are two main objects that are essential to the program. One is the class of Event. Each event instance is created whenever a new event, either standard or non-standard event is needed.

Predicting the amount of plastic waste in landfills – by Shuangcheng

How big is the problem? Create a model for the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills in the United States. Predict the production rate of plastic waste over time and predict the amount of plastic waste present in landfills 10 years from today.

Flickr – Dan Butts photostream

When I was thinking about this question in the Moody’s Math Challenge, Markov Chain initially came into my mind. Markov Chain was first introduced to me in my Linear Algebra at Westtown School class last year as an application of a matrix in the real world. According to the Linear Algebra textbook, the Markov Chains are used as mathematical models of a wide variety of situations in biology, business, chemistry, engineering, physics, and elsewhere.

Unspoken Word: Challenge Us – By Habeeb

Now that we’re situated with our club, our tumblr website, and the theme of our book; Tristen and I are both making moves toward fundraising. Raising money for the publication of our book will be the hardest part of the whole process. With publishing our book, this week some of our work will be put out for people to see. In a way the people who read our work gives them a sense of our writing, how we write, and what we write about.

Syria and the Security Council – by Nate

http://www.foxnews.com

This was a tumultuous week politically here in the United States, so the Syrian Conflict fell from the front page of most American newspapers, but the issue stayed at the forefront of International attention.  Finally this week, Russia stopped preventing a security council vote by withdrawing its veto.

Musical challenges

This week, I have been focussing my voice practice time to a certain piece that contains many difficult runs. These long strings of notes are not only difficult to master in terms of pitch, but they are also very long and require lots of breath control. It is important for every single note to be clearly heard but at the same time flow smoothly to the next note. A common technique to tackle this is to start out going through slowly and then quicken the pace slightly each time until it reaches the correct tempo. This has definitely helped, but there are many other factors in the way.