Life of Pi- THE END?

This is my last, NINTH post on "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, the book I have chosen for our Canadian novel studies, and struggled with for about a month.
I have to admit, it has been such a long, boring, dreadful way. At first, when we were assigned with this project, all I could ever think of was complaints. "How the heck am I supposed to keep track of how many comments I've posted", "how am I supposed to tweet every week on something totally normal, who's even gonna read them", "why do we need to blog about our reading progress, what good does it do". Last but not least, and my biggest question "Why do we have to be so focused on media when we're supposed to be studying Canadian novel". I honestly still haven't figured out an answer to the last question. It was so overwhelming, so many little side projects to do. With other school works too, I thought it was impossible to get everything done. Looking back at it, I still think it is. Group communication was surprisingly difficult, which is why I feel so accomplished for actually communicating with our group members. We're not completely finished with our project, still having our pecha kucha due on Wednesday, and also the exam that I'm sure I didn't do well on (read the last post) just makes my head feel heavy all over again. Reading the book was such a pain- so many details,  terribly long, and the first half of the book was SO BORING. I did learn many things through this project, as mentioned in the previous posts, all the phantom skills, and the fact that reading a book that you are not interested in will not get you anywhere. If you read a book, and you think it's really boring, just put it down. And maybe come back to it a month or even a year later. Holding on to it and forcing yourself to read defeats the purpose of reading it. 
Anyways, hey, I got through it. We all got through it. Congrats to all Block A and Block B students, I have heard a lot of complaints from you people too, and now we're almost done :)

.. and now I have to go comment on people's blogs. BYE!

Life of Pi- The Exam

On Thursday, we finally wrote our final exam for the unit "Canadian novel studies". The worst possible thing happened when writing a test. Running out of time. It makes me feel so stressed out even just thinking about it. I have never written four compositions in an hour and twenty minutes before, so I didn't know how much time I would take up for each of them. Stupidly enough, I put all my effort and time for the first two compositions that I only had about 5 minutes left when it was time to write the last two. I was totally in a panic mode. I honestly don't even remember what I wrote, but I am quite upset that I didn't get to write everything I wanted to, and probably do as well as I would have if I had more time to think before just jotting down everything on my mind. It kind of really sucks.

The last two questions were "What did I learn through this project" and "How did it go". I learned a lot through this project, especially phantom skills such as learning to tweet, editing videos, interviewing people, and managing time. I have never understood twitter, the point of it and how to do it. Later on, I went on it at least every two days to tweet about the book, and our group's progress. It was cool to see someone retweet my tweet and following our twitter- even some people we don't know. Editing videos was actually easier than I thought it would be. Once I was done interviewing about 6 people, Tano and I were quite worried about the editing part. After struggling with it for about 30 minutes, we eventually started figuring everything out, and being amused at all the effects. Tano was able to finish up editing it with her "imovie" program and make it look amazing at the end. Time management was crucial for this project since it was many little parts of the project kind of being bombarded at you every week, plus reading the book. What I learned through this project, I will definitely be able to apply in different situation later on, and will be very useful and valuable. 

Our project was overall successful, though I wish I had been able to find and contact a legitimate organization for anti bullying. We still used our creativity and "phantom skills" to have other people involved in our project- which is important for raising awareness, and create a video. U Hill doesn't seem to have big problems with bullying, but we never know what every each one of 700 people are going through. That's why awareness is the key. You can be fooled by the generalized fact that at U Hill, everyone tends to get along, but to one person, or to 50 people, it may not be true. We just need to look out and always be eager to help people. 

AW MAN I WISH WROTE SOME OF THIS ON THE ACTUAL EXAM. SKFJHGLSKFJGSIJ;LfGFLKGJKGLJsfkjghfkj sad face. 

Check out our Anti Bullying Day video that we made! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpx3eajPvZE&feature=youtu.be

Life of Pi- In the Middle of the Ocean

I have FINALLY gotten to the part where Pi is stuck in the middle of the ocean. In the process of moving to Canada from India, the boat that Pi and his family were on, starts sinking due to the storm. Can you imagine how scary and devastating that would be?
Before the boat actually sinks, Pi is the only one who gets up, startled by the storm. Soon, when he realizes that him and his family might be in danger, he runs into the Japanese boat people. With a few exchanges of glance, they decided to throw Pi of the boat, on the another lifeboat that happened to have a tiger on it (from moving animals from Pi's zoo on the boat). Pi figures out later on that they weren't actually trying to save Pi's life, but more using him as a distraction and sacrificing him to the tiger so they could get on the boat. Later on, the boat ends up having a hyena, broken legged zebra, a chimpanzee, and the tiger on it. After a couple nights of no food, no water and witnessing the zebra and the chimpanzee get devoured by the hyena, Pi is exhausted. However, he still finds a strong will and the desire within himself to survive. We have to realize that Pi's only 16, and he had just lost his family, and everything that he has. Even if he does survive, he wouldn't have anything to go back to. However, he still thinks, plans and eats solely for survival. 
Being brutally honest, I would never ever be able to set my goal as "surviving" if I were in his situation. I could never have the courage or the will to. I find this kind of embarrassing, it's those who have strong wills that succeed later on. This is definitely something that I would learn from Pi, and a valuable message to everyone.