Week 7 Reading Diary, continued:Fox-Fire

Fox-fire is an episode from my second half of reading assignment for this week. It talks about a man saw a fox in a garden one day, but the weird thing about that fox was whenever blew its breath out, a ball of fire came out of its mouth. That was something interesting to me to read and I was imaging while I was reading the story how the fox did the balls of fire, and I was wondering why this fox is different than others foxes. also I was thinking if I can do story about an animal become a different animal each night like it changes to another animal each night and just his owner knows about him and then the owner decided to use this animal to get some money from doing shows to entertain people or something like that.

Fox-Fire

Story source: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).

Week 7 Reading Diary:Why Dog and Cat are Enemies

For week 7, I did my reading over the Chinese fairy tales unit. I really enjoyed reading this unit. One of the episodes that I liked is called “Why Dog and Cat are Enemies” and it is a very short and sweet story. It talks about a cat and a dog they were friends and decided to help their owners to get back the luck ring after they sold it, but the cat was so selfish and gets the reward to herself and kept the dog without anything. While I was reading through the story I was wondering if I can change the story to make the cat and dog friends until the end of the story and they can do more adventures together and be friends instead of enemies.

Great Friendship between Cat and Dog 

 Story source: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).

Tech Tip:Add an HTML Box to Your Sidebar

For this week I used one of the blogger tips.it is add an HTML box to your sidebar tip and this box can allow you to insert text and links into a sidebar box. I liked this tip because you can share some words of wisdom or personal motto.  

Week 6 Review

This is one of my favorite graphics. It is wonderful picture to  tell the idea about creativity because maybe everyone knows the same information about anything in life but not everyone can create a new thing from a normal and old one. 

Knowledge, Experience,and Creativity

Week 6 Storytelling:Don't Be Greedy

There were three friends. They loved each other so much. They were always saying that they could not live without each other because they were friends since first grade at school. Mike, Wu, and Ahmad were living in a very small village where there were not too many people living in that village. These three friends liked to meet in the same place every day and then they went out of the village to enjoy their days by playing some games and meeting their friends from the other village.

One day, the friends decided to go further than they usually did because they wanted to discover new places. While they were standing on a small hill and looking to the wide land in front of them, they saw an amazing green spot. It was looking so different than everything around it.

In the next day, after they finished school they went to see that place. They were thinking that they would spend like two hours seeing the place and have fun and they could be back to their homes before sunset. After walking for almost three hours, they found themselves in the middle of the way and  they maybe still  needed another three hours to get to their destination.

“Let’s go back; it is still too far away,” Wu said.

-    “No, we are not going back because we’re been walking for three hours to see that place and we want to see what is in there,” Mike said.

-  “Yes, and you have to come with us, Wu. We are not going without you,” Ahmad said.

-  “ But our parents will worry about us if we are not at home before eight o’clock,” Wu said

-     “Do not worry, Wu. We will be back at home early,” Ahmad said.

After walking for another three hours they arrived to that wonderful place where there were very many green trees and large mountains. They enjoyed the place and had fun, but they did not realize that the time was too late and it was so dark to go back to their houses. 

While they were walking to find a safe place to stay until the morning, they found a cave and when they entered it. It was so dark so Ahmad took out his phone and opened the flashlight app to see what was in there.The surprise was that they found a very big treasure and it had a lot of money, gold, and silver. They were shocked and surprised at the same time and they decided to divide it between them and everyone get his portion from the treasure.

Ahmad was not happy with his portion of the treasure so he told his friends that he was so hungry and could not wait until the morning to eat and  he wanted to go out to find some food to eat. While he was searching for  food, he saw poison mushrooms and a very bad idea came to his mind and he decided to make his friends eat these mushrooms. When they ate it, they would die and he could take the entire treasure to himself. While he was out of the cave his friends decided to kill him when he came back so they could divide his portion between both of them.

When Ahmad arrived     at the cave his friends killed him and they took the food to eat because they were so hungry and they did not realize that the  mushrooms were poison mushrooms so both of them died immediately after they ate the food. So we can conclude that because all the friends were so greedy and each one wanted the money for himself all of them died at the same time and no one took the money.

 

the  treasure in the cave

Author’s note:

“Why spiders are always found in the corners of the ceiling “is a story about a father. He is so selfish and greedy. He worked hard with his family in their farm and after he saw that the crops were quite ripe, he decided that he wanted to profit by them alone, so he  sent his family to their house in the village and he stayed in the farm alone. One day his son wanted to know the robber in their farm and when he came out to catch the robber he found his father. That was so shameful because he was so greedy and he wanted to take all the money to himself. In my story I changed the characters from father and his son to  three friends.They decided to go to the forest to discover the place and play for a few hours and then come back to their houses but in the forest they found a treasure and each of them wanted to take the money to himself but that led them to their death. What I wanted to say from writing this story is that being a greedy person can lead to a very bad ending and maybe can lead to death.

Bibliography:West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

Week 6 Reading Diary:why spiders are always found in the corners of the ceiling

I did the reading over the first part of the reading assignment for this week and what grab my attention was the title of one of the stories and I founded it funny. It was “why spiders are always found in the corners of the ceiling “and I wanted to know what does this story has. After I read the story I found that it is about a father he is so selfish and greedy. He worked hard with his family in their farm and after he saw that the cops were quite ripe, he decided that he want to profit by them alone, so he  sent his family to their house in the village and he stayed in the farm alone. And I was wondering why this man is so selfish and he does not even love his family he just love money. In the end of the story the son wanted to know the robber in their farm and when he came out to catch the robber he found his father. He was so ashamed. I think this is good story to write about how spiders have always been found in dark and corners. And I think I will write a story about a greedy friend each one of them needs the money for himself and I will see how the end will be. I think always the greed leads to bad ends, but I will see how the events in the story will goes.

image information: great picture for greed 

West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

Thoughts about Comment

I read through all of the comments left on my posts thus far and I enjoyed reading all of them again. I am so happy to meet new people and read nice comments on my introduction.

I also appreciate every comment left on my weekly stories because that’s helped me a lot to improve my writing where I received different comments about writing the story as few paragraphs not just  one paragraph because that would make it easy to read and some people told me about the font. I think I worked in all these problems in the last story I did.

As for my own commenting so far, I think I did a really good job of leaving comments and I will still keep using strategies and the extra blog comments for bonus points to improve my writing and the way I should comment in other posts

Storytelling for Week 5: Two Workers

In a factory for the shoe industry there were two friends working there. Hassan was an energetic worker and he loved his work. Loving his work made the factory owner like him because of his dedication to work where every time the owner did a tour of the workers he was always seeing Hassan  bent on his work behind the machine without grumbling , fatigue or boredom.

 All that hard working made Hassan get more promotions and rewards over the years. But Osama, who was working on the same machine, was not so pleased for what Hassan reached because he was jealous of him so much. Osama was trying to permanently fabricate lies and create problems to put Hassan in big trouble, so the owner of the factory can fire him very quickly, but that did not work at all.  

One day, Osama came early to the factory and  he sabotaged one of the machines and he threw some papers and keys that belonged to Hassan on the ground next to the machine. Osama had stolen the papers and keys from Hassan’s office. After he finished everything and all the workers came to their work, Osama went to the owner of the factory and accused his friend Hassan of being the one who damaged the machine. He wanted to embarrass Hassan in front of all the workers and make the owner of the factory fire Hassan from his work. So he said:
- This morning I came to work on my machine as usual, but the machine did not work and  I know  who did that and  sabotaged the machine .
- Who? 
- Hassan.
- What? What are you talking about? Why  should I believe you?
- Because I saw him this morning when he was trying to sabotage the machine. 
- And do you have any evidence to prove what you are saying?
- Yes, sir, I do have a very important thing. I need to show it to you. 
- Yes, I really would like to know what you have for me.

Then Osama went for a few minutes and came back with the papers and keys as evidence to prove Hassan that was the person who sabotaged the machine.

The next day,  the owner of the factory checked the papers and he was sure that the papers and the keys  belonged to Hassan, so he asked Hassan to come to his office  to talk about what happened. 

When Hassan saw the papers he smiled and said,” These papers and keys are the ones that I told you about last week. These papers had been stolen from my office a few weeks ago and we are still looking for the person who stole them, but now I think everything is obvious in front of you, sir.” 

After  Osama admitted that he was the one who did that because he was so jealous of Hassan, he got fired from his work.

As a conclusion, we can always say that if someone wants bad things  to happen for others, the bad things will happen to him instead. And that was the moral from the original story.

two workers in a factory

Author’s Note:
The original story is a story of two brothers who were looking for their fortune. Each of them had ten loaves of bread. In the middle of their way they were hungry, so they ate the bread of one brother. After a short time of walking, the brother who still had the bread changed his mind and went in a different direction than his brother did leaving his brother without food. At the end of the story, the selfish brother got surprised how his brother became very rich and he wanted to become like his brother. He went to the same place where he left his brother, but unfortunately he did not become rich and a bear killed him. 
I think what I wanted from writing this story is  to keep the same moral of the story which is if someone wants bad things  to happen for others, the bad things will happen to him instead. I also changed the characters. On my story I have two friends instead of two brothers and they are working in the same factory. I tried to create an event that can lead us to the same moral in the original story. I used the third-person storytelling style where we can see the drama of the story unfolding day by day.

Bibliography:Georgian Folk Tales, by Marjory Wardrop (1894)

Week 5 Reading Diary, continued:Georgia

I did the reading over the second half part of the Georgia unit and here are some of my notes:

“The Strong  Man and the Dwarf “is a story about a strong man he is always trying to find a man to fight him, so he can tell everybody that he is strong person.  The interesting part in the story is when  a Dwarf came to him and told him that he wants to fight him. Also we can learn from this story how the strength always is in mind not in the huge body and big muscles. I think I will do a story between a bear and a fox and I will see how I can make that fox win  in the end even if it is smaller than the bear.

image information: Bear and fox

Georgian Folk Tales, by Marjory Wardrop (1894)

Week 3 Storytelling: Adam and Eve

How did God create this world ?How did God create all the people and animals on the earth? Every one of us asked these questions to himself when he was a child and wanted to know how this world created. Adam and Eve, the parents for all the humans in the earth, is a very famous story . And as the famous story tells us God built the earth in seven days and the whole world was ready to have the humans, animals, and all the tiny creatures in this world in those seven days.

And to fill  this world with all the living things, God decided to bring a man and a woman to the earth to feel the life in that quiet place. And he gave Adam and Eve  a mission. This mission was to create the other creatures by a machine.  It was called ” human machine” The second part of the mission was to give all the other creatures names where all the people after that would call them by this name. The time to finish the mission was just three days.

The human machine has a small red button,and when it pressed,it makes the machine work. It also has a touch screen where the user can browse the images inside. There is a tube connected to its side where all the created creatures can pass through to get out of the machine to life like a dead body without a soul. This machine was created by God. And God put it in front of them and told them the mission. 

After God told them what their mission was, they were shocked and did not know how to turn on the machine and how to start creating animals. The only thing was okay if they did not do it was to put a soul to these creatures because God going to do that instead of them.

Adam and Eve started to think the whole day how they would do animals, and after they thought deeply for almost a day they decided to do an animal that can do some sounds and beautiful sounds to make the earth more lively. They went to the machine and tried to figure out how it worked.  They found a small red button close to the screen and when they pressed it the screen turned on and then they started to think what they should do next. While they were discussing what to do, Adam touched the screen with his finger by mistake, and suddenly a couple of pictures appeared in front of them on the screen. These pictures were of some eyes, noses, mouths, bodies, hands, and legs.  After they knew that this screen works by touching it, they began to put these pictures together to find a good shape for the animal that they needed to create which is the “bird “as we call it today,but they failed to do the whole picture of the bird correctly. 

 The next day while they were thinking about the picture of the bird and how it should look like, Eve looked to Adam’s face and said, “Oh Adam, I think I know how to solve this problem." 

Adam replied, “How?”  

She said, "The pictures that we saw yesterday look like the parts of your face, so if we try to collect them together in the same way then we can get the picture of our first animal.”

 So Adam agreed with her and said,” Let’s try to do this.” 

And they went back to the machine and tried to do that puzzle. After the half of the second day passed they figured out how to do the face of the bird and that face was like the human face. They started to do the body by putting legs on it, and they put arms and hands to the bird instead of wings. At the end of the day, they got a very ugly bird which is not even a bird, but they were so happy with that because they wanted to finish their mission.

On the third and last day, Adam and Eve spent the whole day trying to get this bird out of the screen. And they  tried to give their creature a name, so God would be able to put a soul in that body and then they  knew that they were done. The day ended and they did not finish what God asked them to do and  God told them to go fill the earth with humans without creating anything else.

 We can conclude that no one can  create people and animals better than God because God always does the best for us and creates each one of us in a very good shape. God is always beside each of us when we need him.

image information: Adam and Eve

Author’s note: 

 Adam and Eve is a story that everybody knows. And everyone knows that Adam and Eve are the parents of all the humans on the earth. 

 In this story I decided to change the whole story while keeping Adam and Eve the main characters in the story. I also added some technology to those days to see if the technology devices and humans can create something better than the ability of God to do that or not.

I chose this story because it is a traditional story  and writing a story like this could be a challenging for me, so my goal was to try to mix between these days and the first days in life. My idea is that in these days we are seeing the rapid progress of technology and how that technology is developing every day very quickly. And we can feel it through the presence of mobile devices and computers for example or through the medical field where the doctors will become able to do surgeries to put a whole head of one body on a different body. It is just like creating a new person. Despite all this development that we are witnessing, we still do not have the power of God of creating people in a very beautiful image.

Bibliography: Story source: King James Bible (1611): Genesis 1-2.

Week 5 Reading Diary: The two brothers

I did the reading over the first part of the Georgian Folktales unit.: 

I chose this story “The two brothers “because i loved the moral of the story in the end. I always like to talk about this kind of the stories. I read a lot of stories talking about two brothers one of them bad person and the other one is  good and I was wondering why some brothers are so different than each other.

 I think what I want to do in my story that I will keep the characters the same and I will change in the plot of the story without changing in the moral of the story because I know when people need bad things to happen for others the bad things will happen to them instead. in the original story the bad brother killed by a bear and in my story i will  make the bad brother  try to kill his brother.

image information: Big bear

Story source: Georgian Folk Tales, by Marjory Wardrop (1894).

Tech Tip: Weather Widget

For this week I also used the blogger tips. I changed the look of my blogger blog and I added the weather to my sidebar where I had to go the weather underground sticker website and input my location so it can appear in the box. Next I went to my blog, Clicked on Design in the upper right-hand corner. Choose Layout. Add a Gadget, and choose HTML as the type of Gadget. After that I went back to the Weather Sticker page, copy the code, and then paste it into the Blogger Gadget box and clicked Save. So now I have the weather appearing in my blog.

Week 4: Famous Last Words

In this blog post I want to talk about this week:

This week I was so busy. I had three tests and I had work also, so I did not get the chance to finish both portions of my reading. I just ended up with the half-reading option. it was so interesting to read about Arabian Nights unit and read a story talks about Scheherazade and how smart she was to let the king keep listening to her stories for a thousand and one nights. In this story Scheherazade saved her life and others lives from killing.  I wanted to write a story that can answer all of my questions that I had when I was reading the story. I was wondering how the king discovered his wife betrayed and I wanted to start my story answering that question like creating a story to show us how he knew that his wife was cheating on him .

image information: This is Scheherazade

in addition, this week i met a new people in this class and I read their stories.  it was so great to read  what they wrote for this week.  I learned from them how they write the stories. Each one had different style in writing, but it so interesting when I read stories like that with too much detail in it because that let me imagine the whole scene and enjoy the story.

  Also, I start to know how to use the punctuation marks correctly in my writing because knowing how to use them when writing in English can change a lot in the meaning and the understanding of the sentence. I am still not professional in using them, but I am working to do my best to learn how to write correctly because i know that will help me in my other classes where I have to write essays.

 I hope this week goes well and I can do both portions of my reading about interesting stories that written in different style so I can know more styles of writing.

Week 4 Review

My favorite announcement for the fourth week was the blog post that provides information about the  Caucasian Legends by Abraam Goulbat. This book can be found online which is that so good for me. And it is also seems a very interesting book that I would like to read soon.

Svaneti region, Georgia

Week 4 Reading Diary: Arabian Nights

Here are some of my notes over the first half of the Arabian nights unit:

 This is a story happened in Persia. and the story starts when a king discovered that his wife was unfaithful and he decides to marry a fresh woman everyday and then kill her in the same wedding night before she the opportunity to betray.

 One of these bride was so smart,Scheherazade, and in the day that she was should be killed, she started telling the king stories without like stopping. she was always start a new story when she finished the first one until she has completed the thousand and one nights at telling stories.

 I just was wondering why the story didn't start telling us how the king discovered his wife betrayed. and why when people have a some power they start to kill people or hurt people for no reason. and i am also not sure if the end of the story was the true end . i think in writing my story this time i will start from how the king discover that his wife unfaithful and is that could be an enough excuse for him to kill others.

Image information: this a picture of  Scheherazade

Story source: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

Week 2 Storytelling:The Flood

Noah was born ten generations after Adam, and he had loved God so much and believed in him. After that God was sad because of the sins of the descendants of Adam and  saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, so he decided to erase from the face of the earth all non-repentant sinners.

One day God said to Noah, "I have decided to kill all the humans because the land has been filled with their evil. I will send a great flood to destroy everything living under the sky. But you should start to build a great ark to be a shelter for you and your family.” After that Noah and his family worked a hundred years in building the ark. But Noah did not limit his work in building the ark. He also preached to the people around him saying,'' Repent for your sins, and turn to the worship of God."

Only eight people believed in God and they were: Noah, his wife, and his three sons and their wives, but the other people did not believe in God. Some of them ignored everything that Noah told them and others mocked him. They thought he was subnormal because he was building an ark in a place where there was no water. And the people started to say to each other about Noah something like,” Look at this person who builds an ark here in the wilderness! He must be demented. Flood here in the desert! It's impossible!  God is just, and God will not kill people. God created them! Noah, you are demented.” And of course Noah ignored the cynicism and that insults,  and he continued to build the ark, and he asked them to repent, saying,” Why do you refuse to believe in the word of God? And why do you want to die?!”

 The day came when Noah and his family completed the construction of the ark and everything was ready and complete. But one thing was remained: that Noah and his family enter the ark at the specific time. Again, Noah was trying to convince people by saying," Enter the ark while there is time! The door is open.  if anyone will enter the door now, he will be saved. The flood will come soon."  Although the sky was clear and there were no clouds, Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives entered into the ark to avoid the waters of the flood. And beasts, birds and everything that moved on the ground, in two entered the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah to bring with him to the ark.

 The day of God's wrath came. God was patient with these people for a long time, but now God closed the door of the ark. And when God closed the door, no one was able to open it. God had sent the flood to the ground as he promised. The sky started to be darkened, and the wind started blowing. God brought clouds,lightning flashed, thunder boomed. Then the earthquakes hit, and the descendants of Adam shuddered and feared a great fear. It was easy for them to keep talking about God and Noah when everything was quiet. But now their mouths stopped speaking. The rain poured, and the water poured from the springs of the earth, and overflowed rivers and oceans, and the flood happened. The floods came to towns and villages and  the people started screaming to Noah, saying, '' Noah, Noah, please open the door and help us. Save us now, and we believe in what you said. You’ve been  right. '' But this was late and God closed the door of the ark. And the sky continued to rain forty days and forty nights. The flood was increasing and waters even flooded the mountains.  And the ark was the only thing over the water.

 Finally all flesh, birds, beasts, and monsters died that moved upon the earth. God killed all creatures on the face of the earth because God does not ever break his promise.

image information : Noah's Ark 

Author’s note:

The Flood is an episode from the book of Genesis in the Bible, and the author started in this episode talking about the animals that entered the ark with Noah and then telling us about how the sky windows  were opened and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights and the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.

 So I used this information to come up with my story by adding some conversation between Noah and the people on the earth.
 The purpose was to show how hard it was for Noah to make people believe what he was saying and also let them believe in God. I felt like if I added some conversations that would make us think more about Noah's struggle and how people paid a terrible price for not believing in what Noah told them about God's plan.

I chose this story because I had a goal before I started writing it, and my goal was that I wanted to add something to the story, like challenge myself and see if I can change a story that we are already know  to a new one. Editing a story it already exists is much harder than creating my own story and from my own imagination.

Bibliography:

Noah and the Ark: The Flood (Genesis): this story source: Story source: The King James Bible (1611), Genesis 5-6

Week 3 Reading Diary,continued:Adam and Eve

Second Half of the Story:
In the third day, god built the garden and it was so amazing it has a lot of trees and lakes. In the north side of the garden there was a very clean and nice sea of water and the south side there were a lot of trees has a very delicious fruits, but god did not let Adam and eve to be close to any of these borders because if they were close to the north then they will be close to the lake and can wash themselves and repent of their sins. And god prevents them from sitting in the south side because when the wind blew from the north so they can smell the delicious smell of the trees of the garden and god said to Adam and Eve to stay in the middle of garden and do not leave it, but they did go out of the garden afterwards.

Then the next episode of the unit which called “entering the cave of treasury “ Adam was not understanding the meaning of 5 days and half and he wanted god to explain it to him. Then god in his mercy for Adam explains to him that was 5,000 and 500 years. So Adam trembled and fell down but god lifted him up.  Adam and Eve entered the cave of treasures and saw what in it, Adam did not like it and he was like he do not want to enter the cave again, but he bowed to god’s order and stayed in the cave and start to pray to god in his own language and wept and smote heavily upon his breast until he fall down. Then Eve started to ask god to let him alive because she was thinking that Adam was died. God did not let them die and Adam ask god if he can let all the beasts do not devour him and eve. After god heard what Adam was saying, he let all the beasts did obeisance to Adam. Adam and Eve decided to not drink water because that will increase their punishment. And when they went back to the cave there was so darkness and they were not able to see each other.

The next day god explain to Adam why there was that darkness, so Adam stayed in the cave just praying and weeping until the morning dawned upon him and saw the light returned to him. And the serpent was the most exalted of all beasts but Adam saw how it changed and became slippery. After Adam saw the serpent he asked god if he can take him and eve to another place where no serpent because it will hurt them. And the last episode talked about the altar that Adam and eve  built and how they stood under it and entreating god to forgive them and their sin and to look to them with eye of mercy.

image information:God the father

Story source: The Forgotten Books of Eden, edited by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. (1926)

Week 3 Reading Diary: Adam and Eve

After I read the first half of the unit I think I have some notes:

God had built everything in seven days; heavens and earth were finished in seven days. Then, the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed and god wanted to not keep Adam alone and decided to bring him a woman. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Then Adam and Eva lived in the garden and eat from the tree that the god told them not to eat from.so that made the god got angry and when he came to ask them Adam decided to escape and Eve said that the serpent told her that she can eat from the tree.

image information : Creation of  Eve 

 God said to the women, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

And unto Adam he said, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. Then the unit talked about how Adam was look like when he came to the earth. So this extraordinary qualities with which Adam was blessed, physical and spiritual as well, aroused the envy of the angels. They attempted to consume him with fire; In particular, Satan was jealous of the first man, and his evil thoughts finally led to his fall. The physical formation of woman is far more complicated than that of man, as it must be for the function of child-bearing, and likewise the intelligence of woman matures more quickly than the intelligence of man. Many of the physical and psychical differences between the two sexes must be attributed to the fact that man was formed from the ground and woman from bone. After that the unit talked about the Paradise and the seven portals where the souls of the departed must go through these portals before they arrive in the heaven 'Arabot. There were especially six commandments which every human being is expected to heed: man should not worship idols; nor blaspheme God; nor commit murder, nor incest, nor theft and robbery; and all generations have the duty of instituting measures of law and order. Then in the end of this half was talking about the punishment.

Story source: The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909).

Week 2 Topics

Topic one: Mermaid Mythology

I think this topic is so interesting for me because I was always wanted to know about the mermaids and how they came. Are they true or just characters from a story, people used to tell over the years.

Research so far: I did some researches in Wikipedia and gods-and- monsters.com and they said that The earliest known mermaid legends come from Syria around 1000 B.C. where the Syrian goddess Atargatis dove into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the powers there would not allow her give up her great beauty, so only her bottom half became a fish and she kept her top half in human form. 

Mermaid Mythology

Topic two: the mythology of Pisces:

This is something I would like to read about because there are different versions of this legend. One of these versions came from Greek mythology and the other is from Syrian mythology.

Research so far: After looking at some of the websites I think I found two of them talking about the Pisces: gods-and- monsters.com and www.crystalinks.com. According to one version in Greek mythology, this constellation represents fish into which Aphrodite and Eros transformed in order to escape the monstrous Typhoon. The two fishes are often depicted tied together with a cord, to make sure they do not lose one another.

image information: this is the Pisces

Topic three: Myth of King Midas and the Gold

I want to read about the Greek mythology, so I can see what legend they were having. This story of King Midas is a myth about the tragedy of avarice and narrates what happens when true happiness is not recognized. Midas was a man who wished that everything he touched would turn into gold. However, he had not thought that this wish was not actually a blessing, but a curse. His greed invites us to think and realize the consequences that may lead us to become slaves of our own desires. The phrase the Midas touch comes from this myth and is used to say that somebody has a good fortune.

Research so far: the research that I did so far, that I saw a few websites talking about this Greek myth. One of them is greeka.com and the other is greekmyths-greekmythology.com. These two websites have information about this myth.

Topic four: The Myth of Halcyon – The Halcyon Days

   Another Greek myth would be interesting and I do not know about it before. I want to know about the Greek mythology because I think they have a lot of interesting things.

Research so far: I did research In Wikipedia and greekmyths-greekmythology.com and I still do not have too much detail about the story.