My favorite character

After watching the musical, I felt like I like both the character Ti Moune and the actor best. In the play, Ti Moune showed how she loved Daniel and how strong she wanted be together with him. And the actor showed me that feeling by her action and emotion. The actor made me feel like she really fell in love with that boy and she was not just acting. For example, in the wedding, she lied on the ground and showed her hand to Daniel. From her voice and emotion, I could imagine that how sad she was to see the boy she loved marrying another woman. Her voice was shaking which made me feel that she was almost cry because of the sadness. As an actor, she did a great job, and as Ti Moune, she showed the feeling which made me understand the story better.

Once on this Island

This Friday night, I went to see the musical"Once on this island" which was produced by the Winter Musical. At first, I did not want to go as I heard it was a musical. I don't like musical because most the time I did not understand what it is talking about. When I saw the part of it during the morning meeting, I felt no idea about what it was about. It was just people standing together and singing together. At that time, I thought the musical must be very boring. However, after I went watching the musical, my mind was changed. 
The musical talked about an island which was separated  by the peasant and the rich. Our main character Ti Moune who was a peasant fell in love with Daniel who was born in the rich. She met Daniel in a car accident, and Daniel was dying. Ti Moune prayed for him to the God and finally saved him. After Daniel had been recovered, they fell in love with each other. From that the story seemed to be very romantic. However, it did not end up very well. At the end, although Ti Moune loved Daniel so much, but they can't be together because of the different social level they were. Besides that, Daniel also promised to married another girl when he was young. Finally, Ti Moune died because of the love. The story ended up sadly, as Daniel did not loved Ti Moune as much as she loved him. They can't be together as they were in different social level. This fairy tale reminded me of the feudalism which people were not treated equally. The more wealthy people were, the higher social level they had. 
While I was watching this musical, I was surprised that I could understand the story. Although Ms.Guarino had told us some plots about the story, the combination of acting and singing made the meaning of the story clear to me. I felt like I was in the story as my attention was taken away by the music. From the song, I could almost imagine the feeling of the character. When Ti Moune was trying to saving Daniel, the music soon became very serious and sad. This made me realized that, as they were in different society, she should not pray to save him and she'd better let him died. That also explained that why Ti Moune's papa and mama did not agreed Ti Moune to find Dainel at first. I can see that this music with produced with a lot of effort and strive from both the actors and the director. The actor did a great job such as Ti Monue, her voice and her action made me feel that she was really in love and made the story very realistic. This is the first time, I felt that I could understand a musical and enjoyed it. Everyone in the Winter musical had tried their best to provided this good show for us. It was a excellent show and I was really looking forward to the next one.

Writing center Visit

This is the second time, I visit the writing center. I went there yesterday, and I got advice from Ms.Swift. Actually, the advice that I got was not the one I expected though. At first, I was hoping that she could give me some opinion on my third body paragraph. As my third body paragraph is just a rough draft which I finished on Tuesday. It is unlike the first two body paragraph which I edited a lot and received several feedback. While I was writing it, I felt running out of words to explain my point, and I felt confusing because I thought I kept repeating the same point.
As I arrived at the writing center, there were already three people working on their assignment there. The result for that is I did not get a lot of help in fact. There is four students who need help from Ms.Swift, but there is only one teacher. Unfortunately, she could not help each of us very carefully and specifically. Overall, she told us how to structure and organized our essay. She mentioned in the introduction, we need to write something in common to lead up to our thesis, and then related to the book and movie which we are writing about. She said it was also the problem in my essay. As I only have two sentence in my introduction: "Both the novel and the film shows that, love has the power to change someone from rebellious and antisocial to caring and open-minded because of the love they felt from others. Love is like the hope, and it always saves and helps people." I used to think my introduction was very clear and specific. However, I was wrong. An Introduction need to have at least three to five sentence, but I only had two. In order to improve, I would better write a leading sentence which is in common idea. Then I could say, the book "Me and You" and the movie "The Last Song" showed that love had the power to change someone from ... to .... Beside that, my thesis "Love is like the hope, it always saves and helps people." could be introduced before that brief summary about the book and the movie. The leading sentence would be expended about my thesis which attracts reader.
All in all, I think my visit to the writing center is helpful, but not as I was looking forward though. Besides this time, I would probably need another time visiting there to revise my body paragraph. Next time, when Ms.Guarino asked us to go to the writing center, I should go earlier in the week. This time, because I haven't finish writing my essay, and I was being lazy, I went there  in the last days. To avoid that, I need to make a appointment with Ms.Swift earlier during the week next time, so that I could get more help and make my paper better. 

Love and Hope Reflection

After a long time spending time both in class and at home, my essay is about to done and it is getting better. Now, I have done written about how the character changes from both the book and the movie. I am going to write a comparison between them as they have really similar conditions. As long as we did a lot of paper "workshops" in class, we discussed how we can improve our essay. I learned that, a thesis should be argumentative and analytical. For example, my thesis is that "love is  like the hope, it always saves and helps people." This is my argument and my topic of my paragraph. It is argumentative but it's not specific as I did not explain it. So I mentioned how love had change some one from ... to ... in both the novel and the movie which helped to make my thesis clear and specific.
Besides that, my body paragraph used to be full of  the summary about the story and the movie. As I read that, I felt boring because I already knew what happen in it. After learning that how to improved the body paragraph, I used quotes instead of summarizing what happened in the story and I explained each of them. I deleted some summary which was not related to my topic, and I added more analysis about how the characters was change, what they used to be before they changed, and what are they after they changed. Analysis is the most difficult part for me. Sometimes, when I was explaining one quotes, I felt like I was kept repeating the same point, and had no idea about how to make it specific sometimes.  For example this quote: “[he] felt something [he]’d never felt before, [he] felt alive. And yet [he] knew that beyond the door the world was waiting for [him], and [he] would be able to take others like [he] was one of them”(Ammaniti 143). I spent a long time revising the analysis of this quotes. I explained what did alive mean in this quotes and why Lorenzo never felt that before and why he felt that now. but I think I could explained more but I really have no idea. If I explained more, I felt like I would keep repeating that how Lorenzo was changed from this to this because of Olivia. Analysis is my weakness and I need to spend more time working on it.  Also, a topic and ending sentence which shows the point of the paragraph is very important, so that it was clear and well organized. In the topic sentence, I showed that how love have changed people and give them hope such as "In the story “Me and You”, the time staying with Olivia caused Lorenzo to change from being selfish and antisocial to caring". As I learned from Ms.Guarino, something cause something happen could make the topic sentence more stronger, now I am able to write a good topic sentence. The ending sentence is similar and I made it related to my topic Love and Hope.
At last, I think I still need to finish my story first, as I haven't done the comparison paragraph and the conclusion. Then, I need to checked over my body paragraph to make it more analytical.

Best sentence of my essay

Love is like the hope, and it always saves and helps people.
This is my favorite sentence in my essay. It is part of my thesis which is introduced in all of my body paragraph. It is like a famous remark which is created by my self. As the thesis is the one which I spent most time in class and at home working on it with others, I felt most confident about this. It is a brief summary about my main point that love changed people in both the movie and the book. Beside those it also fit to my title Love and hope.

Love and Hope Edit

Jerry Wu
Ms. Guarino
English II
Feb.17.2016
Love and Hope
Do you believe that love can change people? As we all know, Love is important to everyone, because it is like the hope which always saves and helps people. But, how does love save people and help them? Love lightens people's hope, and formed a new perspective on their life. In the novel Me and You, the two main characters, Lorenzo and Olivia started to have hope after they felt the love and caring from each other. Similar to Lorenzo and Olivia, Ronnie in the movie The Last Song became open-minded and found her way after she fell in love.  All of these three character were used to be very rebellious and antisocial. However, love has the power to change someone from rebellious and antisocial to caring and open-minded because of the love they felt from others.
In the story Me and You, the time staying with Olivia caused Lorenzo to change from being selfish and antisocial to caring. Before that, he did not know how to make good relationship. He had no real friends, and he pretended to be like those bad kids in his school. His mom felt satisfied about him for having “friends” in school. Because of that, Lorenzo lied to his mom that he went on a ski week with friends. In fact, he was hiding in the basement for the whole ski week. While Lorenzo was hiding, he met his half sister accidentally. At first, they disliked each others and had several arguments. However, when Lorenzo saw that Olivia was suffering, he felt sorry about her and he wanted to help her. It was the first time Lorenzo cared about other people. While Lorenzo was helping Olivia, “[he] felt something [he]’d never felt before, [he] felt alive. And yet [he] knew that beyond the door the world was waiting for [him], and [he] would be able to take others like [he] was one of them”(Ammaniti 143). “Alive” means that Lorenzo was no more that boy who was under a mask, hiding in his fake world and making unreal friends. He realized that if he care about others, others would care about him. Now he felt reborn that he found the way how he could fit in his school and how he could make real friends. Because of Olivia, Lorenzo had the hope to make friend in the future.
Love always gives people hope. Not only Lorenzo was changed, Olivia also had hope as she felt the love and caring from Lorenzo. She used to be rebellious because of the divorce of her parents. She thought dad did not like her and she did not felt the love from him. She became rebellious and she had a lot of troubles during her life: she ran away from schools, she failed all the test. Every time, dad got her out of the trouble by using the money instead of love. As the result for that Olivia felt hopeless:"thank you once again but from now on even if you feel the urge to help me out, repress it. You are the master of repression and silence"(Ammaniti  80). She gave up the hope that dad would care more about her, and she became more rebellious. She even took drugs. However, withdrawing from drugs is painful, while Olivia was suffered. Lorenzo gave her place to live and helped her find some medicine. She used to be hopeless because nobody care about her and nobody help her. Now, the love from Lorenzo made Olivia became more open-minded. She made a promised with Lorenzo that she would never took drugs again. She started to have hope about her future as she mentioned that, “[she] had a sort of boyfriend who lives in Bali. [She] wanted to be her woman for real. If he wants [her]”(Ammaniti 144). The love from Lorenzo was like the hope for Olivia, that she became open-minded and wanted to find her way.
The movie "The Last Song" also talked about a girl Ronnie who also had divorced family. In the movie, she fell in love with a boy Will, and the love between each other stopped her from being rebellious and hatred for her father. As Ronnie's parent divorced, dad left her and they never contacted each other any more. Ronnie used to have a lot of talent on music, however she is not doing any music since the day dad left. "Brain even bought a electric piano, she won't go near it. Grades were in the toilet, it's a miracle she graduated from high school. And she doesn't have one friend without a pieced of something"(The Last Song). It seems like Ronnie was being rebellious and hiding herself as dad had left. She supposed to be a successful girl because of her music talent. However, as dad had left, she hided herself and became antisocial; She did bad at school; she hided her music talent and stopped doing music; she even refused to attend the famous musical school: Juilliard School. During the summer, as she was sent to the island which her dad lived, she met a boy named Will and she fell in love with him. The relationship between each other helper Ronnie to become open-minded. When she first came to the island, she did not want to talked to others, she was easy to get mad, and she wanted to go home. After she met Will, her life became more interesting. They took care of the turtle egg together, and they worked together. Smile started to appear on Ronnie's face. As Ronnie became more open-minded, her relationship with her dad also got better, and she restarted doing music. She changed from hatred to caring. "[She] was on the way to buy the dress, and...[she] gives the money away"(The Last Song). From that I saw that Ronnie became helpful and she even used the money which was important to her to help others. She used to be selfish and did not care about others feeling. She is easy to get mad and argue with other. Now, she was completely different as she had changed because of the love. The relationship, between Ronnie and Will proved that love is like the hope and it has the power to change people. 
All of those three characters's experience showed that love had the ability to change someone. They were similar, which they all changed from rebellious to open-minded. Both Lorenzo and Ronnie used to be anti-social because of their parents. However, after they meet someone and started to love, they soon became sociable  and start to care about others. Not only between Lorenzo and Ronnie, there are also some similarities between Ronnie and Olivia. As they both have a divorced family, they were both being rebellious and easy to become angry. Both of them failed tests, and had no friends in school. Both of them was hatred to her father because they did not feel love from him. After Olivia meet Lorenzo and Ronnie met Will, they started to became open-minded. Olivia wanted to find her way and she wanted to married with her boyfriend. Ronnie rebuilt the relationship with her father as she started to understand him and care about him. However, sadly, both of them did not have a good ending. Olivia died after ten years because of the drugs and the medicine she took. As soon as Ronnie fixed the relationship with her father, she found out her father had cancer and would be died soon. Both the novel "Me and You" and the movie "The Last Song" showed the process about how love has changed people though they end sadly.

Love and Hope

Both the novel and the film shows that, love has the power to change someone from rebellious and antisocial to caring and open-minded because of the love they felt from others. Love is like the hope, and it always saves and helps people.

In the story “Me and You”, Lorenzo used to be very selfish and antisocial. He did not have good relationship with others. So that he lied to his mother that he was out for the ski week with friends, but in fact, he was hiding in the basement. However, while Lorenzo was hiding, he met his half sister accidentally. At first, they disliked each others and had several arguments. For Lorenzo, Olivia was like an invader to his secret basement. She suddenly appeared without telling any one, and she needed help. As the time they spent with each others, Lorenzo started to care about Olivia because Olivia was sick and she was in bad condition. With the caring from Lorenzo, Olivia became open-minded. She even promised to Lorenzo that she would never take drugs anymore. She wanted to find her way and live better, because she felt love from other people which gave her the hope. Their relationship became better. 

As well as Olivia became open-minded, Lorenzo also had changed. He realized that if he cared about others, others would care about him. He became emotional and helpful after he met Olivia. He took care of Olivia and found medicine for her. In the past, he did not care about others. After he was changed, he felt alive. “When I danced I felt something I’d never felt before, I felt alive. And yet I knew that beyond the door the world was waiting for me, and I would be able to take to others like I was one of them.” (Me and You) From that, I saw that Lorenzo he changed from the boy under the mask. He knew how to make friends, and he knew how to deal with relationship. He did not need to hide himself and pretend to be like others anymore. That was why Lorenzo felt alive. 

Summary of the last song

The Last Song

     The story talked about a divorced family. Steve Miller, Ronnie's dad broke up with Ronnie's mom because he was so busy working with his musician job. He moved to North Carolina after he had been divorced with Ronnie's mom. After that, Ronnie hated dad a lot. Ronnie used to have a lot of talent on piano. However, after dad had left her family, she started to ignore instrument and had not contacted with her father since he left. She was rebellious that she refused anything that her dad would like her to do. She even refused to attend the famous musical school: Juilliard School. The relationship between Ronnie and dad kept bad until one summer.
     During the summer, Mom sent Ronnie and her  younger brother Jonah to the place which dad was living. She wanted Ronnie and Jonah to stayed with dad and rebuild their relationship by this chance. When Ronnie had just arrived, she was being miserable and defiant. She did not like this place because of her hatred of her dad. Then she met Will. At first Ronnie did not like him though he was very handsome, because he crashed her shake on her accidentally during a volleyball match. However, after few days their relationship became better as Will helped Ronnie to protect the turtle nest. After staying with Will for a while, Ronnie found out Will was a better person than she thought before, and her feeling about him was developed. They fell in love and Ronnie was changed after she met Will.
    Later, Ronnie heard about her father burned down the church, but in fact it was Will friend doing that. At that time, Ronnie's father was in bad condition because of illness, Ronnie stayed to looked after him. Her feeling about her father was changed, and she wanted rebuilt the relationship with him. So she wrote a song to him, but her dad was dead just as she finished it. During the Funeral, Ronnie wanted to prove that how good her father was, she shared the song.

The last song

Main character: Ronnie Miller
Characters makes connection with: Will Blakelee
Change? Reconnected with her father, changed from that rebellious girl.

Choice of the film

The last song
it is about a rebellious girl is sent to a Southern beach town for the summer to stay with her father. She did not have a good relationship with her father before, but during the time she fell in love with a boy, and she changed and reconnected with her father.

The fault in our stars
Two teenagers who have cancer help each other and support each other. They fell in love, and give each other hope to stay alive. They read books together and they went on trip to find the book's author. their life was rewrite because of each other.

Up
A story about an old man who wanted to make his dead wife's dream come true and went up an adventure. During the adventure he accidently met a boy who wanted help old person. Then they started the adventure together. At last, they made a good relationship.