note 4and 5

5 senses chart (unfinished)

Hearing

1.        As she listened to the camionettes passing on the road, to the croaking frogs, the rasping crickets, and the hooting birds in the woods, she knew that nothing in the world could compare with the sweet softness of pure brook water. P21

2.        A torrential rain fell. P23

3.        Silence, too. P26

4.        Drumbeats sounded from the hills. P26

5.        They met instead outside of huts to talk, to complain, to drink rum and shout of their grievances to each other. P27

6.        Then came a resounding crash, so shattering that she knew a giant star had fallen to smash their tiny village. P27
7.     She strained, listening to the fading sound of its engine. P14

Smell

1.         Mud huts dissolved and sank beneath the thickening currents. P41
2.     The air was wet---even the air in the cabin. P43
3.     A smell of death invaded the cabin through his festering sores. P44
4.     
5.     Needles of water drilling down into the earth softened it into mud. P42

Touch

1.        They put the young man on the pallet and carried him up the hill, where they placed him on a mat in the sheltered stone house… P41

2.        …she lay on the sandy bottom, letting water rush to thicken her hair and cool her head. The water massaged her neck, her body, her tired feet.  P21

3.        She has the smoothest skin, the peasant girl. Black. Silk at the calves, stain on her thighs, changing to velvet blackness as it spread up her shoulder, her neck, her face. P21

4.        Stomping knee-deep through mud P24

5.        She let the falling water woo her. P25
6.     ...touching the peasant girl gently on her head as he passed. P14

Sight

1.        A man in black who perched inside the window, his clothes as dark as the night behind him… P46

2.        His shirt was torn to shreds. He had lost his old hat, and his hair stood up white and thick on his head. A gray beard had grown on his chin. P52

3.        The hill is covered by the richest land, which run like a river for miles. P53

4.        They looked at the woods, where standing trees supported those that had fallen, and knew that within that tangle of the trees lay their future. They saw the water rushing off, seeking outlets to the sea, and they laughed and shouted their victory. P48

5.        He looked from her to stare around the mud hut. P40

Taste

1.        Others went out to take care of the needs--- some as simple as filling empty bellies with rainwater. P43

2.         But during these hard times when peasants were reduced to eating only millet or cornbread cereal, even vegetables of poor quality were better than none at all. P15
3.     The old woman drank some. The peasant girl drank the rest. 
4.     The seeds the peasants planted become seeds they were forced to eat. P22
5.     In minutes the peasants' possession had disappeared beneath the rising water. P41

Reflection on oral

This oral presentation is different from the traditional idea of a presentation. This is a changeable work since students are not allowed to use any other ways to project other than speaking it out. Before I really start to try a practice, I thought this 12-15 minutes must be really long and suffering because I need to keep talking. However, after I really tried once I realize this is not a really long presentation if students are confident and clear about what they are going to say.

When writing the oral presentation, I realize that not only the performing part, but also the thinking part is important as well. I thought a lot about each character that I performed before acting. I also tried to understand what makes Caroline’s mom become such a controlling parent, and I also thought about the girl’s character which she is extremely rebellious because of puberty. So I put my early thoughts into my oral presentation in order to clarify my reason to combine Children of the Sea and Caroline’s wedding together.

As Ms.Guarino said: the more practice, the better you can do. I didn’t realize that I am going do my final version of oral presentation until yesterday, and I started on my notes since this morning. Since I didn’t manage my time properly, I didn’t get much time to practice, which makes me really nervous when doing the final one. I had 5 pages of notes, and when I reach the end of my third page, I used about 8 minutes during practicing. But I only used 7 minutes when doing the final. Since I was too anxious, I spoke really fast and my voice was trembling. I made lots of grammar mistakes and had no logical when talking. If I get a chance to redo it, I will definitely do more practice and be well prepared for it.

Oral Presentation draft

Me, Nancy, and Johnny are in the same group acting the play, which is the combination of the Children of the Sea and Caroline’s wedding. Through our play, as the scenario producer, I want to show conflict between parents and children. Especially in the book Caroline and her mom grow up in different culture and got different level of education which makes their gap and conflict fiercer. When making up the senior, I choose these two chapters from the book is because both of them contains conflict, and conflict is what makes a good play. With conflict, the whole play would have an up and down plot. Another reason is that these two chapters are really close to student’s life: the Children of the Sea is about relation between lovers and parents, and Caroline’s wedding is about cultural differences and generation gap. Many of children experienced that our parents may rest their own dream upon us and hope we could obey all rules they set. But some time they forget that we are all individual. From our play, audiences can find out that life is a loop. Parents’ acts not only affect their children, the acts will also be virtually passed down to their grandchildren on day. To end this vicious cycle, one of the parent or the children has to compromise. In the play, Caroline’s mom recalls her old days when her father separated her and her lover, then force her to merry another man. She realize she is now being the same kind of person as her father used to be. So Caroline’s mom sacrifices, understands her daughter and starts to accept Caroline’s fiancé . We expect this play could not only show conflict between immigrant parent and child, but also the cycle of fate. 

Acting out is a really hard process. We need to prepare for the props, the staging, the lights, and the background music. However, these are all supplements. The main essence of a play is still the acting. My Character is Caroline’s mom in Caroline’s wedding. At the same time, I am also playing the role of the girl in Children of the sea. To show the difference, I not only changed my costume, but actually I didn’t because the time limitation, I also considered about the two characters’ personalities and thought about what I want to show to the audiences through these two characters. Caroline’s mom is a really traditional Haitian woman who faithfully believe that Haitian women should marry a Haitian men. She also believes that women in a family should serve for her husband and her husband should be the man of the family. Growing up in Haiti is not the only reason for her to be such a traditional Haitian woman: she is also affect by her own marriage and her parents. In the flash back part, which is Caroline’s mom’s day dream, it will tell audiences that what CM’s life used to be like in Haiti. Her parents forced her to marry a guy who she never had a relationship before. This act of her parents affects her view of marriage, which become a reason why she is so radical on the problem of Eric is not a Haitian. Also, she lost her first lover, her husband, and her parents. There is no other family member of her who lives in America misses Haiti as much as she does. Her lonely and traditional heritage idea makes her really want to put her own believe on Caroline. To show the difference between old CM and young CM, I used different posture to distinguish them. For old CM, I was a little bit slouch and stoop, used a relatively low voice to speak. Since she is already old, I want to show her tiredness and dissatisfied through scuff and make sound by the friction between the bowl and the spoon. The emotion CM has in the first and the last scene is very different. In the first scene, CM wants to express her anger and dissatisfied to her daughter, her daughter’s fiancé, and their wedding. She knows there is nothing can be changed, but she just can’t stop grumble. After she and her daughter quarreled, she was tired and aimless. In the last scene, Caroline and CM’s conflict has resolved, so CM is happy and released. In contrast, the girl in Children of the Sea, who is young CM, is only 17 years old. She is immature and full of expect to romantic love. She is at adolescence, which makes her extremely rebellious. For everything her parents tells her, CM is only going to do the opposite. The harder her parents try to separate the girl and the boy, the deeper she loves him. The boy is her first boyfriend, which explains why she is so brave and impulsive. When the boy gets on the boat to Miami, her and the whole country were poor. To show this feature, I was going wore a ripped dress, tied a scarf over my head and bare foot. But the back stage was really dark that I couldn’t remember where I putted my scarf. Even though she is poor, the girl is healthy and positive. I tried show it by standing straight, walk normally, and have dramatic action when speaking. I am still regret about my part of the girl. Because I didn’t have many lines in that scene and I was anxious, I forgot some of my lines and had no posture to do. I didn’t show my braveness for love at all. In fact I was more like a quiet maid who serves for the boy.