Week 4

My week began with the Winter X-games. I missed Thurday and Friday's events but got a recap of Friday's on Saturday morning. I love watching the X-games. For those of you who don't know what it is, X stand for extreme, and in the winter, they have skiing, snowboarding, and lots of different events over a four day period. I think its amazing what the athletes are capable of and I really wish I could ski or snowboard. Maybe someday I'll get to try. But what I love most is that all the athletes (for the most part) support each other and cheer each other on. I think its wonderful that there is competition but still sportsmanship which isn't always seen in most competitive sports nowadays.

Of course, I'm also excited for the Winter Olympics. I'm not a big sports fan by any means, but I always watch the Olympics. Its exciting to see so many people from around the world come together. It's nice to pick a country and root for them (I don't always cheer on the US). I'll get to watch about 4 days worth before Panama so at least I'll get to see some of the action before I leave.

For my History class, I had a primary source document. I found a book with tons of primary source documents and, as my way doing things, I pick the first thing I read. It was a message from Prsident Hayes to congress in 1880. This date throughly confused me because I had little knowledge of the history of the canal and had to find a source that I could cite in my paper and help me put events into order. I found a timeline from the Panama Canal Museum so I hope that source is okay to cite.

For JINS, we read a book by Galeano. I had a slight panic with this situation. I ordered a week ago from Monday and was told it would arrive in a day or two. Of course it didn't and I slightly panicked a week later when it still hadn't shown up and we were to discuss it the next day. Thanks to Jackie who had another copy, I was able to read it. The book finally arrived on Wednesday. Many people seem to feel like it was very redundant but to me it seems like he's trying to tell the reader something. If the same awful events occur over and over, what can be done to stop the cycle. I also like the story telling aspect of his writing because it makes the event more "real". Instead of a dry retell of an event as just facts and forgeting the emotion involved, I think it makes history more real if you know what I mean. Its not just facts to remember but events that affected people's lives. But I do agree that I don't like his jumping around in history. I like to learn about events in order.

Finally as I have mentioned before, my bio project is working with a shaman. He unfortunatly he had a stroke a few weeks ago and treated himself. I'm hoping he's alright and we will still be able to preserve a bit of his knowledge in our research.