Week 10, Famous Last Words

I have been doing well in this class mainly because of the extra credit opportunities, it makes it more flexible when I get to do my work and if was busy and missed an assignment, I can make up the points using extra credit. I am planning on finishing up this class by the end of next wee. Hopefully everything will go according to plan. Having to read others storybook and storytelling helps a lot in being able to improve my writing skills. For example I had a hard time figuring out how to include conversations in my storybook. When I read other people’s storybook it helped me understand how to include conversations in my stories efficiently. In addition, the resources provided by the instructor have been very helpful too.  I have been skipping a lot of reading diaries because I had midterms, I finally started on readings and I liked my new readings. I like how they are divided in for each week diary A and Diary B, because that makes it easier for me to keep track of my reading.  My other classes have been crazy. I already had about 3-4 exams in last two weeks. The amount of studies I had to finish for those classes were crazy. Thank goodness it is done. My main goal to finish this class early is because I know I wont be having enough time to finish up my studies and if I can get this class out of the way, I should do it, so it is less stress when the dead week comes around. My hardest class now is molecular. Even though it is hard I really enjoy studying for that class. I feel like I know more about our cells and body more when I study for it. 

Staying Busy

Week 10, Growth Mind Set

For my growth mindset challenge for this week, I am planning on finishing up my as much as I can for this class, so I wont be having to worry about it during dead week or finals week. I have to finish up to week 12-13 works to be done with this class. I am so glad that we are able to finish up works for this class as early as possible.  I am going to use this weekend to at least finish up week 11 and the weekdays to finish up week 12. I think main thing I have to focus is do all the extra credit and not to miss any assignments.  Few things I can’t finish up early is the blog commenting and project feed back. So I might end up starting week 14 reading Diaries, so I don’t have to wait on doing project feed back. One other thing I am planning on doing is to write 2-3 stories for storybook. This way I will be done with the entire storybook. 

me trying to get work done early

Week 11, Reading Diary B: The Twenty Two Goblins

The first story was about how a Brahmin named Hero sacrificed his son’s life to save his king. In addition, in the process of sacrificing his son, he also lost his wife’s, his and his daughter’s life. The goddess brought all of them into life and the king witnessed all this and appreciated Hero. The next story was about three men seeking one woman. One of them is wise, the other brave and the third man was clever. According to the king, the one who deserved the woman was the brave man. The next story was about how a woman’s husband and brother both beheaded themselves in front of a goddess and the goddess granted the woman right to put their heads together, so they will come back to life. However, the woman made a mistake and switched each other’s head. The goblin asked the king who was her husband and the king replied by saying that her husband is her brother’s body with her husband’s head on. The last story was about a king paying his debt for eating two mangos from a man named good.

Vikram and Betal stories

Week 11, Reading Diary A: Twenty Two Goblin

A monk been gifting the king precious jewels. When the king asked why the monk has been giving him precious jewels, the monk replied by saying he wanted a favor from the king. The kind hearted and brave king agreed. The monk asked the king to go fetch a goblin who rested in sissoo tree in the forest. The king agreed to do what the monk has asked of him. When the king fetched the goblin, he told the king that he is going to tell him a story. The first story the goblin told the king was about a prince falling in love with a beautiful maiden and how his friend who is very intelligent helps to get them together. At the end of each story the goblin makes the king answer his question. If the king knew the answer to the question and kept his mouth shut, then the king will have to face death. If the king answered the question, the goblin will fly back in to sissoo tree. The second story was about three Brahmins and how they all adored a woman who later fell in the hands of the death. When, the woman was incarnated, all the Brahmins fought for her hand in marriage. The Brahmin who slept with her ashes got to marry her. The third story was a quarrel between a thrust and a parrot arguing who is bad, women or men. I did not like how this story ended. It stated that men is more virtues than women!! 

Vikram and Betal stories

Week 9: Growth Mind Set

I have been doing better on sleeping on time. However, I had so much more load of work right now because Diwali Night is coming up and I have to choreograph a dance and perform in two dances. It is so much fun, however, I have to find a balance between studies and dance. That is going to be my challenge for this week. 

dANCE

Week 9: Review

I was going through the current week's announcement and what caught my eyes is the video " Rang Lo"- Vidya Vandana, Shankar Tucker. This video was about Holi. Even though I grew up in India, I had never celebrated Holi till I came to United States. My first holi was sophomore year of college. I had a lot of fun at this event. Holi is the festival of colors and I enjoyed it so much. They had colored water balloon, so many colors, water slides etc... This event was sponsored by Indian Student Association and was free to anyone who wanted to participate.
Click here to access the weekly announcement which contains the video below

Personal Photo- Taken by Abdulrhman Alaziz during Holi celebrations at OU 2014-2015

Week 9, Story telling; The Hidden Threasure

Once upon a time, there was a prince named Mahajanaka, son of king Aritthajanka. He was supposed to rule over Mithila; however before he was born his father was killed in a battle by the king Poljanaka. His poor mother, the queen of Mithila had to run away while she was carrying Mahajanaka to a neibhouring state called Kalachampa. A Brahmana took the queen under his wing and welcomed her to his home. His wife and he took care of the pregnant queen as their own sister.

One day Mahajanaka was playing with his friends and they all got in to a fight. Mahajanaka being the strongest child beat everyone up. They all decided to go tell their father about Mahajanaka. Then they realized that Mahajanaka does not have a father and made fun of him. He went home crying to his mom asking who his father is. Finally, the queen had to tell her son his identity and who his father is. Queen never told her son about his identity because she was scared that the enemies would come find them and kill the heir to the throne – Mahajanaka. After Mahajanka found out who he really is, he dreamt about taking back Mithila from Poljanaka. He started preparing for that day when he will take over Mithila.

When Mahajanaka came of age, he approached his mother and asked if she has any money to fund his trip.  When she asked why he wants the money, he replied by saying

“Mother, I think it is time for me to achieve my goal. I want to over throw Poljanaka and get back out kingdom. For that, I will need money to start a business and with the profit of the business, I want to fund an army to fight against Poljanaka.”

Hearing this, his mother was so proud. She offered him the money she had and he took off on a journey to start a business. While he was on the ocean, he encountered a storm and the ocean washed him out to Mithila’s shores.  When he was at Mithila, he learned that the king had died and whoever marries his daughter will become the king.

The princess had many proposals before, however she turned all of them down. However, when Mahajanaka entered, she was pleased with him.

The princess had agreed to marry Mahajanaka. Little did Mahajanaka knew that to marry the princess he had to pass three tests. With his intelligence, braveness and patience, he won all the challenged and married the princess. Thus, he became the king of Mithila.  

The hidden Treasure

Bibliography 

Amar Chita Katha: The Hidden Treasure 

Author's note

I didnt change anything about the story. Only thing I have done was cut out a lot of part and didn't explain the challenges. I might come back to this story and elaborate it a bit more. 

Week 9: Reading Diary A

For this week's Reading Diary, I chose Amar Chitra Katha. The books I read are The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond and The Hidden Treasure. Since, these books are like comic books and has such a a beautiful illustration, it was fun to read. The Blue Umbrella had two stories in them, The blue umbrella and the angry river. Both stories, contained stories of young girls who lived in village.  I enjoyed reading the hidden treasure. It is a story about a prince, who's parents were over thrown from the kingdom and with his intelligence, strength and braveness, he regained the kingdom. This week's story telling, I am going to write about The Hidden Treasure.

One of the comic book I read

Week 8; Curation

For this week, I have found couple of web sites that will help me get better at writing.

First web site that i found very interesting is a website called custom writing help  click here to access the page.

second website is called home work center. click here to access the web page

finally, the last page I thought would help me is sylvan learning, click here to access the webpage 

writing help

Week 8: Famous last words

This week, we didn’t really have any readings. Which was somewhat nice because it was a good break from all the readings we have been doing so far. I have not done my storybook project yet, which is probably going to affect my grade a little bit. However, I am planning to finish it by tomorrow. So, I will be only loosing two points and I can make it up by doing more extra credit. This week has been crazy because I had so much home works due and midterm exams coming up. I have been reading other people’s storybook this week and it really inspires me to write a better storybook and go beyond my ability to make mine better. Reading other people’s storybook, It also gives me more ideas to make mine better. So far, I am having to drop one of my class. It is one of my hard class, and I don’t think I will be having time to focus on that class too since I am working a lot more than I was in the beginning of semester. I used to work 20 hours a week, now I am doing about 29 hours a week and occasionally taking up a baby sitting job. Since midterms are this week, it is really stressful. Other than that, all my classes are going alright. Only class that requires a lot of writing is this class. I had a good break of not doing the reading diaries, now I am actually looking forward to reading more stories and doing the reading diaries. That was one of my favorite part in this class, other than working on my project, storybook. 

Add caption

Week 8: Growth Mind Set

For this week's growth mind set challenge, I decided to do something different. I am still going to keep up with my wake up early schedule. However , it is very hard to wake up early because I am having to stay up late to finish my home works and other commitments. So I have decided to finish my works ahead of time, so I wont be having to worry about dead line and not sleep well.

Wake up early, and get things done

Week 8: Review

I found this on current week's announcement and I thought it was funny and creative. This is my this week's favorite announcement. A story can be written from this strip of comic. The picture is catchy. It is of a keyboard keys when given literal meaning. 

Key Board Drama