Google_Earth

So, as most of you know, I have applied and was selected to be a page for the House of Delegates in Richmond. It is a life changing experience which has helped me mature, and learn the ways of our State government.

There are two weeks left in the program before I go back to school, so I thought it would be a good idea to write down what I’ve been doing here. It would have been better to start at the beginning, but you know what they say, better late than never.

Basically, a page is a young adult between the ages of 13 and 14 who has to apply, and then be selected for the job. When you are selected, you need to go out and buy blazers, dress shirts, slacks, black socks, dress shoes, ties, and anything else you need to make yourself look professional. You need clothes for going to dinner and study hall, and for sleeping.

The question I get asked the most is “what do you do as a page?” I never have time to answer the question because there are so many things that you do as a page. First off, there are two teams of pages. You are on the floor for a week or in a job for a week then you switch. So it will go floor, job, floor, job, etc. The floor is the nickname for the place where all of the Delegates meet with the Speaker of the House and the Clerk and discuss, debate, pass, and kill bills. While on the floor you do different jobs for the Delegates as in getting the lunch, running errands or passing on co-patron bills. The best is when you get a lunch order because the Delegates tip you! You have different shifts on the floor like gallery doors, chamber doors, ropes, errand runner, and Jay’s Assistant. Jays Assistant is the best and everyone wants that job. When you have a time where you don’t have a job, you are on the page bench where there are little hidden screens in the Chamber where when a Delegate presses their page button, the name, seat number, and position of the Delegate appear on this hidden screen. Whoevers on the end of the bench will go to them to do whatever that Delegate needs done and the line will scoot down a seat.

When you arn’t on the floor, You are in a job. There are a variety of jobs such as Journal and Records which is where I work when I’m not on the floor. I work there with another page who lives in Roanoke. Other jobs are Stock Room ( where I also worked) which is where you are only doing errands and you basically just give LA’s (legislative Assistants) different materials such as pens, notepads, calendars, fans, Chairs, mail, sticky notes, paper clips, etc. Other jobs include: Govorner’s Office, Speakers office, Clerks Office, Indexing and Enrolling, Committies, Appropriations, Lead office, I.T, Page floater, Post Office, Copy Room, and others. They are all neccisary for the General Assembly to function properly.

June 23rd, 1812 Afternoon

Hello, my name is Mila Rusa, and this is my first time writing in journal, my birthday was just a few days ago and my mom bought me this journal, so I could write about whats going on, so if and when my father comes home I can share what happened while he was gone. My father was recently deployed a few months ago, but it seems like I haven’t seen him in years. He had to go and fight Napoleon, who is a man that is trying to take over my home town of Moscow!

Once my father heard of this he told me and my little sister, Natalia Rusa. We both got really sad and told him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. No later than 1 hour he was told that he had to leave and go to war in one day. My sister and I cried all day, and took turns sitting with him, and spending time with him.

June 24th, 1812 Evening

Today, my mom asked Natalia and I to stay in my room.  I asked her why and she told me to just go. A few minutes later Natalia and I heard somenone knocking on the door and then we heard Mama answer the door and ask in her soft casual voice how she could help the man. I jumped off my bed and ran to the warped window sill and peered out the window to try and see the man, but he had already entered the house. I heard Mama scream and holler as they dragged her out of the house by her hair. Natalia and I were scared, so we hid in my tiny, cramped closet. They were coming up the stairs in their big, muddy boots. They entered the room and started rummaging through my things. All of a sudden my foot slipped and I kicked the door. One man heard and he opened the door. He was a small, dirty man. The man looked like he had been starved for days.

June 25th, 1812 Sometime In The Middle Of The Day 

Natalia and I were separated, and brought to these dark rooms. Before they drove away on the horse, I asked if I could retrieve my diary. The skinny man went and got it. He threw it to me, in a lazy sort of way. When it hit my lap, I tried to rub the dirt off, but it didn’t all come off. I think I hear them coming, so that means they are coming to take my diary and put it in the little cabinet outside my room, or they are bringing me my lunch, which is just a slice of bread and a little bowl of soup.

June 25th,  1812 Evening

 I am struglling to write this, as I hide around this corner. When they came into the room the other day, I saw Natalia was tied up, blindfolded, and she had a cloth over her mouth to keep her from screaming. I looked at the man and he had a knife. I trembled, but when I came to my sences, I ran. I ran, and I ran, that is how I came to this corner. I think I lost them but…

June 25th, 1812 Later in the Evening

I think this is my last diary entry the mean men have tied me up, but they let me write one more, before I have “to go,” as they told my sister and I. They have brought my sister to me and we haven’t let go of each other, for fear we are going to be separated again. Uh, oh, they are unlocking the door and coming in, it is time to say goodbye to my sister, or maybe not, we are going to charge together, and not stop running until we find our mom and find a way out of this horrid place. I sit here and whisper to my sister as i hear them unlcoking the door: one, two, three, RUN!

June 29th, 1812 Noon

Natalia, mom, and I are now safe at home. Natalia and I found mom, and the three of us found our way out, we had a little trouble opening the door, but we eventually got out, and we have vowed to never some back. This is the end of my diary and now I must wrap it up in a cloth and put it with my mother’s old diaries. Oh! My dad has returned, he didn’t get to fight for the whole war, because hit his head, when fell after a cannon ball fell right behind him, and he got knocked down.

The building Le centre Georges Pompidou is a building that is built from the inside out. What I mean by this is that the stuff that is usually on the inside is on the outside, and the stuff that usually on the outside is on the inside. It looks totally amazing if you go to France you should defiantly visit this place. It was built by George Pompidou. They put all of the pipes outside because they would have more space inside. Inside it contains a library, restaurant and cafe. It also often holds art shows. It held art of Picasso, Braque, Max Ernst, Magritte, Chagall, Matisse, Delaunay, Kandinsky and Klee.  It averages 16,776 people per day in 2006. Over all in 2006 they had 5,133,506 people visit.

http://www.parisdigest.com/monument/centrepompidou.htm

http://www.pariserve.tm.fr/English/paris/LesHalles/pompidou.htm

Notre Dame is one of the most famous Cathedrals ever. It is a very large Gothic cathedral that is one of France’s most famous architecture. It is a very famous spot on the globe for books and movies. Such as “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Since it is so popular, it is one of the largest tourist attractions in France. As you can see in the picture it is a very populated tourist attraction. One of the largest cathedrals ever!

The Google Earth Tour is where we chose five important places in “Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.” After this, our class made place marks on Google Earth that have a picture and some information about the place. I liked this book because it was very interesting that Greg helped all those people by just building them a school. That says a ton about giving a place education.

This year, we did this project while reading the book. I think that this was the first time doing this activity like this. My favorite part about this project was the tour on Google Earth.I liked this part because we got to sort of see what the village looked like. Although the villages might look different, I looked up Mount K2, which has the second highest mountain in the world, behind Mount Everest. I also liked it because my got to find the places that we had decided to look up.

I thought this was cool to work with Google Earth because we don’t usually do that. It was fun to make place marks and put in pictures.

It was easier than I thought it was going to be too because all you do is put in your picture and re-write your paragraph. My favorite thing was typing in the place you want to go and it’ll take you there.

This was cool because Google Earth is really fun to be on and interesting too because there are so many places in the world. Google Earth is fun to explore and learn things about other places around the world.

             Recently for Geography class we have been doing things on Google Earth. This past week of the 14th, Valentines Day, Ms. Pohanka was sick, but she left us something cool to do on Google Earth, she told us to make a list of five places that are significant to Three Cups of Tea, and once we were done picking, we had to write a paragraph, and once we were done writing a paragraph about each place, we had to find a picture of each one of them, once we were done with that, we had to go to Google Earth. That is when the fun began.

             We had to type the places in the search bar and find them, when we were done with that, we had to click the little yellow push-pin in the top left corner, which made a little yellow push-pin appear of the screen, then we had to move it to the spot that we wanted to place mark, and copy and pasted our paragraphs into the spot that was for the description of the spot the push-pin was in.

             I tought that was fun, except the pictures were really confusing, you had to like do <img src=”the link went here”>, but after a while of doing this and helping other people, I memorized it. I bet I wont forget how to link a picture on a Place Mark on Google Earth for a while. Everybody thought it was hard, but they all agree they wont forget how to put a picture on Gooogle Earth for a while either.

I enjoyed the Middle East project because we learned about the Geography and the Current Events. My favorite country in the Middle East is Egypt because they have a protest going on about their President and they have inspired many other country’s to protest like Yemen, Algeria, Iran, and Bahrain. I learned many things that I never knew when Dr. Kangas came. I think his speech was very intresting.

I had no feelings for combining English and Geography together because I did not love the book. I felt like it was fun using Google Earth to find things but the book is not one that I liked. I would not want to combine two subjects again.  I felt like we had a lot to do with Three Cups of Tea, almost too much because we would spend two out of four main periods working on one book and I didn’t like the book.

I did and didn’t like the Middle East unit. I feel like we were always in the computer lab. I can’t wait for our next topic.

The Middle East project that we did in Geography with the wonderful Ms. Pohanka and the equally wonderful English teacher Mrs. Hawkins was so cool. While we where reading Three Cups of Tea in English, our Geography class was learning about the Middle East, at the same time the unrest in Egypt was steering. Every night when I got home from school I would turn on the CBS Nightly News with Katie Curice and watch for updates on the situation.

I really like how Ms. Pohanka intertwined a really situation in the world that was happening with the Middle East, withich was the place we were studying. My absolute favorite part about all of this was that we got to read Three Cups of Tea I have been wanting to read it since I saw it at Borders a few years ago, if I had read it has a independent reading book I properly would have put it down one day and never piked it back up again.

The Egypt Situation has past…we think. othere countrys are starting to falow the lead of the Egyptian People and starte their own upriseing, this can cause majoir economic damge to the worlds ecomony, and to the U.S. ecomany as well. Since the U. S. is a majoir sourse of oil for us,  this can cause proplems for for the U.S. since we are coming out of a resition righ now.