Spring Break Begins But Bucephalus Dies...

Today was the last day of western civilization before we leave school for spring break. Mr. Schick blessed us with a great leisurely day.We simply watched more of the movie Alexander The Great. We watched watched the scene where Alexander goes to India and encounters elephants. That was pretty intense. But the most intense part, was when Bucephalus died! It was tragic! And the director made the scene so dramatic because in the beginning, it was Bucephalus against an elephant. They were both up on the hind legs and it was so cool, but then some Indian solider shot Bucephalus in the next with and arrow. And then it was like everyone on the Indian army was ganging up on the horse. it was so tragic! Oh, and there was also Alexander who fell off of Bucephalus and got shot in the stomach and started to see red. I mean, I guess that was cool. But I was way more concerned about the horse. Even after class ended, I went to English and literally started to cry because Bucephalus died. I mean, the horse was supposedly better than a Pegasus! But now school is over and I can go home and think about that scene forever! Have a great spring break everyone, and Happy Easter!

Yesterday In Western Civilization

Yesterday I forgot to put my blog up and I just remembered today, so here I go. Yesterday, we continued on with the rest of the Alexander the Great presentations. We had discussed when he invaded India, his death, and then his ruling style. When Alexander the Great invaded India it was 327 BC. And guess what he wasn't expecting when he got there. Elephants! Crazy, right? During this battle, Alexander lost his horse, Bucephalus. It was tragic. But before he invaded India, his army didn't want to attack. They wanted to go home back to their families. But Alexander convinced them to go on. Even thought they went on, many died and they had to retreat because the Indian army was so strong. After we learned about India, it was my turn . Alex (haha! how funny is that) and I went and talked about his death. It was pretty funny because at one point we were just stuck on the topic of honey. After us, though, was Alexander's ruling style. We he invaded a country, he at first tried to make peace with them, which I would say is a pretty smart idea, but if those people attacked, he would kill all the men and then put the women and children in slavery. Next we found out about the Hellenistic Era, where Macedonia ruled for the next 200 to 300 years. That was pretty exciting. It was all pretty exciting! After we finished with the power points, we started the movie Alexander The Great. We watched the scene where Alexander tames Bucephalus! It was awesome!

Alexander The Great

Today in class, we started to learn about Alexander the Great. Each person in class had to do a power ppoint on a part of his life. So far we had got up to group 4. We had learned about his parents, King Phillip and Olympias. Alexander's realtionship with his father, not the best by the way, Alexander's horse, Bucephalus, and some other his great battles. Alexander actually seemed to be a prettyinteresting guy. My favorite thing to learn about him was his horse. King Phillip was sold a black horse by a merchant but saw that it could not be tamed. Alexander tamed the horse and got to keep it. He eventually rode into battle with Bucephalus every time. It's quite amazing!

New Project - The Death of Alexander

Today in class, we started a new project. We have to create power points on the exciting life of Alexander the Great. after counting off from 1 to 7, I was given six. In my group, it is Alex Shipley and I, the power team and that is practically already done the project. We had to do the death of Alexander. Even though this isn't the most exciting topic out of his life, it is cool finding interesting facts about him. Did you know that they had a theory that Aristotle was an accomplice in the death of Alexander? I bet you didn't. Anyway, after getting out assigned group, we worked on the project for the rest of the class. Mr. Schick even taught Alex and I a cool thing. How to make a link without having to have all of that"alphabet soup" with it. So far, my group is almost done. But I'm pretty sure we will be done before Friday, which is the day this is due. I hope this goes on for the third quarter.

Chapter 5 and Alexander The Great

Today in western civ, we began looking into chapter 5. This chapter deals with the great city of Athens losing the Peloponnesian War to Sparta and the vast kingdom of Macedonia taking over Greece. But the main point of the chapter that we are mainly looking at is Alexander the Great. And I will tell you this much, his name definitely suits him. In his late teens and early twenties, he has been given control of the great Macedonian society. And he definitely didn't act sheepishly with his newly gained power. He made his kingdom spread from Italy to present-day Afghanistan. That's amazing! And after he gained this new kingdom, he actually didn't want to use it for himself, he actually set out to find out about the people and tried to combine his Macedonian way of life with the Greek way. it was amazing! He even helped Athens go in and take over Persia! And you don't even want to know what happened to those people how didn't like Alexander. He showed that he was not one to mess with and had those who tried to over throw him, killed or tortured or even worse! He was definitely a great king! Unfortunately though, he died at a very young age and I bet you if he lived even longer, his kingdom would have spread and right now we could have probably been under the Macedonian rule!

Chapter 4 Test Plus The Beginning of Chapter 5

Today in class, we took our chapter 4 test. This test was actually pretty easy. I only had trouble with two of the dates on the back. But for the most part, I think I aced it! After I finished my test, Mr. Schick told me and the rest of the class to go on his blog and do the work. So I did, and here it is - 

Hellenistic - refers to the "international" period of Greek history, when much of the Mediterranean and southwestern Asia was under Greek rule; Greek word meaning "to behave like a Greek"; the period of Greek history between the death of the Macedonian king and Alexander the Great; 323 BC - the Hellenistic era begins; its a description of how the Macedonians ruled.

After the defeat of Xerxes in 480 BC, Sparta ceased fighting. Athens decided to form an alliance with the city-states and convinced the members to contribute money for the construction of triremes. In 445 BC, after the city-state of Anatolia  was free from Persian rule, Athens continued collecting money while the other cities were provoked by Athens' behavior. With this, Athens insisted that these other cities practice democracy, even though most of them were oligarchies. All the other cities, upset with Athens' demand, went to Sparta to put Athens in check. Athens willingly took the challenge. In the course of the war (431-404 BC), Athens decided to take Sparta out by sea, knowing that they couldn't be defeated on land. With that bad decision, Athens fell and Sparta defeated. The reason they lost was probably because of poor leadership. They were also in a conflict with Corinth. Also, when Athens went to sea to fight, they left all their land unprotected and that was a poor battle tactic. Athens also didn't have enough allies to even be safe enough to start a war. 

In 359 BC, Phillip II of Macedonia comes to power and moves to control Greece.

Not In Class Today

Today, I wasn't in western civ unfortunately. Instead, I went on a field trip. A field trip where you may ask? I went on a field trip to Batelle for women in science. It was kind of fun. I kind of started to fall asleep after the fourth person began talking. Then I started to get a head ache because the room was too hot. But all in all, it was fun. And hey, I got to miss almost all of my day.

Socrates Leads to Gay Marriage

Today in class, we really focused a lot of our attention, actually, all of our attention, towards Socrates. Socrates was what people in Greece referred to as an "ugly being." But actually, Socrates was one of the best philosophers of ancient Greece--and maybe even time! Socrates used logic and reason to understand the world around him. One of his most famous quotes shows that; "The unexamined life is not worth living." After Athens lost the war against Sparta, they searched for someone to blame for their failure instead of ruining the name of Athens. Guess who they went to blame? That's right, Socrates! Socrates was arrested for undermining the state's religion and poisoning the minds of the youth. Then, they put him on trial which took place in the local marketplace and the people as jurors. Instead of asking for forgiveness and pleading that he wouldn't speak out against the state again, Socrates decided to say that Athens was a big, lazy horse, and he was a stinging fly. He also said that he deserved free dinners for life for being so great and speaking his mind. But unfortunately, the court found him guilty and he was condemned to death by hemlock. He gladly took his death, while still speaking his mind, saying that the human mind should always be challenged.

This whole conversation of Socrates lead to a great debate at the end of class. Mr. Schick tried to get us to act like Socrates and make us speak our mind on how we feel about gay and lesbian marriages. In the beginning, we started off saying that we don't care because it doesn't affect us and they have the right but then things got interesting. Drew actually turned it around and actually made us think and defend our statements. He said that it was okay for gay couples to get married and all of that but thing was that it was awkward to see them engaging in the open and it made you feel awkward. I didn't say anything myself because I believe that gay couples should have the right to get married because it's not fair how they aren't aloud to marry because they are attracted to the same sex. Marriage isn't for male and female connection, it's a symbol and action of undying love. But that is just my opinion. Others can disagree. So it actually was a very heated class today.

18th Birthday

Today, we started off class a little different. It was weird. Mr. Schick was SO anxious to tell us something. Being awesome students, we asked him what was on his mind. He told us that today his daughter turned 18 (congrats by the way). And he thought it was so convenient that his daughter, just yesterday, got her last issue of Seventeen magazine. Every one that that was pretty funny and ironic. After talking about the adult life Mr. Schick's daughter would be entering, we continued taking notes on the video. For the most part, we skipped over boring stuff, but we mainly talked about Socrates, a great Greek philosopher. We also talked about the war Pericles, ruler of Athens, created with Sparta and how that war began the plague. Finishing up class, we ended up talking talking about how some school in Kansas or something had to teach about God's creation of Earth in science class. I thought that was weird and possibly illegal since there is the whole thing with separation of church and state. Who knows?

Just Talking

For the majority of class today, we basically just talked. We really talked about what we had done last class while Mr. Schick was out. The class told him about the notes we had got from the video and he elaborated on them so more for us. After going through that, we went back to the video and took some more notes. We found out more about the theater and how people reacted. It was great. After a while of note taking, we ended class talking about president's and different scandals and all of that great stuff. Yeah!

Doing The Video

Today in western civilization it was a little different. First off, Mr. Schick wasn't here. He was off with the seniors for their retreat. But I know he would much rather be in the company of his favorite freshmen. Anyway, since Mr. Schick was gone, we had a substitute, the renowned Mr. Shupe. What was great about having Mr. Shupe is that he is my intro to drawing teacher and I had just had him the mod before western civilization. For class, Mr. Schick intrusted me with being the person who would put the DVD in and start it where we left off. I am simply honored that Mr. Schick picked me for this job. After a couple minutes of figuring out how to work the dang thing, I finally got it started and the class and I began taking notes. We found out some new information. Like how Themistocles used the trireme to win the second war against Persia but then later was banished from Athens by the vote of the people. It was a pretty interesting class.

The Persian-Run

Today in class we continued taking notes on the Greece video. In the video we learned that the vast Persian Empire planned an attack on their neighboring city-state, Athens. What is so amazing about this event is that when the Persians docked their ships on a shore near the city Marathon, a man who saw this attack about to happen ran 140 miles and to tell Athens that they were being attacked and then ran the rest of the way down to Sparta ask for their help to fight against the Persians. Regretfully, the Spartans refused to help because of their conflict between Athens. The outcome looked grim for Athens but believe it or not, Athens protected their city, fought bravely, and won! That is an amazing outcome! If they hadn't won that battle, the Persians would have taken over and change their government from a democracy to a tyranny. Go Athens for pulling through!

More Greece & Kate's Birthday

Today we had a one hour delay for school. So that meant that we would start our fabulous Monday with Western Civilization one hour later than it actually should be. But no biggie. All we did in class was watch more of the Greece video. A new thing we learned was that after Pisistratis fell and his son Hippias took over as a more fierce and cruel tyrant, Greece's savior was our beloved Cleithenes. He helped the people take back power in their city and ruled fairly with his new governmental system of democracy. For the rest of the class, we continued taking notes until we had a like 10 minute discussion about how America isn't really a democracy. So all in all, we had a good class today. What really upset me today though, was the fact that Mr. Schick forgot that it was Kate's birthday and didn't make her wear the birthday hat. I was really looking forward to that. Oh well!