China and the One Child Rule

From reading the letters from our Chinese correspondents, I have become more curious about the one child rule. Qu Meihui (Mandy), was one of the people that started my curiosity on the topic. She mentioned that she was an only child, and that her parents could not afford to have more children than one. I found this odd because, in America, we do not have to pay extra money to the government if we have more children. 
I have researched the topic and learned many different things about it. On CNN, I learned that couples can have two children if one of the parents is an only child.  Critics say this policy hurts the elderly in China because they typically rely on their children for support. Also, they say it constrains economic growth as the working-age population begins to decline.
According to Newsweek, the one-child policy has prevented over 400 million births. It started with the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949. At this time officials counted five hundred and forty two million residents in China, which is slightly larger than the U.S. whose population was numbered at one hundred and forty nine million. In 1979, three years after Mao's death, the government instituted the one-child rule to curb China's population, which had ballooned to 975 million.

Wounded Warriors Presentation

Katie Billingsley and I worked on our project together. We researched the Wounded Warriors Project and decided that we were passionate about the military. From here, we came up with the idea to raise money toward the Wounded Warriors Project. We wanted to have a benefit where we would raffle off themed baskets. We were going to have items donated from local business, and then create themed baskets. We were hoping to get some of Parkview's after school activities together to help make the baskets. I am looking forward to having this benefit in the future.
Here is the link to the power point presentation.

Global Perspectives

I had a great time at the Global Perspectives Conference. I went to the workshop about poverty and I saw the documentary. It was really interesting to learn about all of the poverty in the world, I feel like people do not think about it as much until the information is right in front of them. I don't remember what the names of the speakers were, but they gave us a lot of information. One of the things I found interesting was the fact about the four development traps keeping people in poverty. The four traps are  the natural resource trap, land locked trap, conflict trap, and bad governments trap. On average, conflicts cost countries 64 billion dollars a year. I learned that more than a billion people were in extreme poverty, making less than $1.25 a day, out of which, more than a million of these people are children.
This workshop made me think of a lot of the presentations we heard in class. A lot of the people in our class did presentations on world hunger, and child hunger. These things go hand-in-hand because when someone is making less than $1.25 a day cannot afford to feed themselves or their families. The "call to action" is to eliminate poverty world-wide by the year 2030. 
I think this is very important that poverty is eliminated because then governments can spend their money elsewhere. There will be less need for welfare and other things like that because people would be able to afford them without government assistance. 

China Exchange

• What surprised me most was the population control laws. One girl told me that her and her sister would hide in the walls of her grandparents home when the police would come to check who was all living in the house.
• A majority of the people asked for me to tell them embarrassing stories about Brock and I, and about my family.
• At first, they compared my life to American films and then realized that it is actually nothing like it is portrayed to be.
• The letters made me feel good about myself because it was interesting to see how fascinated these people were with our life.
• I do not have any questions.
• I would like to see what they do outside of school work, so that we Americans can see that they do have fun.
• This letter and autobiography exchange was such a great idea. This is something I have always wanted to do.

Project Proposal: Service Learning

Katie Billingsley and I are working together on our project. I originally wanted to do something with Accounting, and her with the Military, so we decided to come together to create a Benefit for Wounded Soldiers. All of the proceeds from our benefit will go to Ozarks Prosthetic's and Orthodontics to help wounded soldiers pay for their prosthetic's. We're not sure about everything that will go on, but it is going to be April 5th in the Parkview High School Cafeteria.

Reading Response 6: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I read this book a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely loved it. It is a five hundred page picture book, about a young child named Hugo. He is twelve years old and lives in a train station that he runs the clocks for. He is a scrappy, smart kid that adults are constantly chasing after. The reason behind all of this is because he is an orphan. His uncle, who originally lived in the train station and ran the clocks, was supposed to be taking care of Hugo when his father died, but he disappeared. To keep this a secret, so that he would not have to go to an orphanage, Hugo ran the clocks in the station and tried to avoid the Station Inspector as much as he could.

The old man, Georges Melies, soon catches him stealing toys from him. To pay off the toys that he stole, Georges makes Hugo work for the toy booth. Georges' granddaughter is named Isabelle and she tries to help Hugo out as much as she can. The two kids eventually make a huge discovery that Georges was a famous film maker/actor in the early film industry. He was phenomenal and had some of the best films in the early 1900s. 

Georges tried so hard to keep this in his past, but it is a great thing that Hugo and Isabelle helped bring to Georges attention that people admire him. Hugo and Isabelle brought this to his attention because Hugo had an automaton which was a prop from one of Georges' films that he was trying to fix. Of course, at the time, he did not know it was Georges' but he believed it would bring a message that his father left behind for him when he passed. 

Whenever he went to show Georges that he had the automaton, the Station Inspector caught him and locked him up. The Inspector was trying to get Hugo sent to an orphanage, when suddenly Georges came and said that Hugo was his child, so that Hugo could live with him. 

"No. The only thing I'll say is that I need to protect my husband. And the best way for me to do that is just to forget about all this..." - Georges Melies' wife

"You were the only bright spot in a very dark world. I made my wife promise she would never talk about my movies ago." - Georges Melies

I, myself, can not relate to this book in any way; however, I really enjoyed this book. It is a very unusual book filled with fantasy. Usually, I cannot get into a book, and I end up falling asleep while I'm reading it; however, that was no the case with this book. I read "Hugo" in one day, and I didn't put it down once. I definitely recommend it for everyone.

My Passion?

If you did not have to worry about money, what would you do with your time?

• If money were not an issue, I would travel all over the world. I would probably stay away from the cold places, but I would definitely go to every beach on the planet. Specific places on my list would be: Dubai, Jamaica, The Virgin Islands, Fiji, France, Belize, New York City, Hawaii, etc

What kind of work would you want to do?

• Well, if money weren't an issue, I wouldn't need to worry about working. I would spend my time traveling as if I were on an extremely long vacation. I guess my "work" would be photography, since I would be taking a ton of pictures. 

What cause would you serve?

• While I am traveling through all of these places I would help the homeless, and starving people all over the world. I would give them shelter, clothing, and food. Age, race, and gender would not play any role in whether or not I helped someone. I would help any and everyone that needed it. This is a never ending cause in the world, and I want to do everything I can to stop it.