Short and Long Term Goals.

Short Term Goal: My short term goal, will be to just try and make someone's day a little better. Whether it be with a smile, or saying good morning to someone. Just try to make their day, a little happier. Or put them in a good mood if they're feeling down.

Long Term Goal: My long term goal, will be to help homeless and/or abused children. In any way I can. Not necessarily open up like shelters or anything, but maybe like volunteer at different shelters, and donate things I don't use. Just things like that.

Inner Peace

What is 'inner peace?' To me, inner peace is just like, being happy with yourself. It's the happiness that you feel inside of you. It's all the little things, even the big things that make YOU happy. It's feeling calm, and at peace with yourself. It's being able to be in stressful situations, but still being able to handle them with calmness, and not getting mad or stressed out. It's being able to deal with things in a calm and understanding way. Inner peace is a state of being mentally and spiritually at peace with enough knowledge and understanding to keep oneself strong in the face of discord or stress. Inner peace is just being able to be happy no matter what, being able to accept things how they are, and still be okay with it all. Just, being at peace with yourself.

Opinion Piece

                News is shown everywhere on television, on the radio, on the internet, in the newspaper, there’s even applications so you can get the news on your phone. So I would say that people are definitely informed about what’s going on around them, but is everything they are hearing actual facts, or have the stories been changed a little?

                Hearing the news is pretty much inevitable, you are going to hear it whether you are looking to hear it or not. But people seldom take the time to see if what they are learning is true. The news information gets changed from channel to channel, radio station to radio station, website to website, nothing is consistent. So there is really no telling in what is true and what is false unless you take the time and actually do your research.

                So will this add to creating a peaceful world, or take away from it. Not knowing the truth about information will take away from the peace factor, because well we don’t know what to believe or what not to believe. News is just like background music to our lives, we hear it all the time, it’s just part of our everyday, but eventually I think people are just going to stop paying attention to what they hear. So it definitely takes away from trying to create a peaceful world.

On Sunday May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed, and I saw on some news channels on the bottom of the screen it said, “Obama bin Laden has been killed” and I even on some radio stations I heard them say, “Obama” instead of “Osama.” Now even though we all know it was Osama and not Obama that was killed, I doubt that many people caught that. But it’s just because, like I said, it’s just background noise to everything else that’s going on around us.

                In order to make peace we need to be informed, we need to know what’s going on in the world, and we need to know the truth, all the facts so that we can make it a better place for everyone to live. And if we don’t know what happening, well there’s no way we can make things better, because we won’t know what needs to be fixed or what needs to be worked on.  

                To make the world a peaceful place, we need to know everything we possibly can to achieve that peace goal. And we need to take time to check out our resources make sure we know the truth about what’s going on. The world isn’t going to get any better unless we do something about it.

Don't Stand for Homophobic Bullying.

I liked the little movie clip thing. I thought it was cute. Personally, i think we could all learn something from it. Bullying people people because they don't like the same things you like, or because they're gay isn't right. People shouldn't be bullied for being who they really are. A few of my best friends are gay, and i absolutely love them. And if I saw someone being mean to them because of it, it'd make me really sad. And I'd definitely do whatever I could to like stand up for them. And the way that they like, solved the problem was peaceful, like it wasn't violent or anything, which is good. Using violence to stop violence, just causes more violence, obviously.

Libya

In Libya right now, protests are going on to try and get rid of their leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi. He doesn't like the fact that his people are trying to throw him out. I mean, who would like that, right? But anyway. The protests have gotten like extremely violent. It turns out that some of the people who used to be on Qaddafi's side, have actually turned against him, and that set him off even more. The United States has actually gone to Libya to try to help, but Qaddafi won't have it. He feels that foreigners or outside help has no business interfering with North African affairs. The protests in Libya started because Libya's neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia, had protests and they got their leaders out, so Libya started theirs, but theirs didn't end up quite as well as Egypt and Tunisia's did.  
I think that this whole thing has gone a little too far. I don't think it had to get so violent over there. If I was Qaddafi, I'd just like, step down. Obviously his people don't like or want him as a leader, so why lead a place where everyone doesn't like you? That just doesn't make sense, to me at least.

Memo

Date:  February 13, 2011

To: English 1311 Class

From: Meagan Montoya

RE: Creativity for Peace

Many nations exist in turmoil and in very un-peaceful ways with other nations. There’s war and fighting going on between nations that probably isn’t necessary, at all. There are quite a few different organizations that try to maintain peace within the different nations, who work very hard to try and get the nations to get along with one another, but it’s not easy and it takes a lot of work. Though there are many, there can never be enough of those organizations to help all the nations get along.  Many people believe that the best and most approachable way to peace, is through girls. Girls are the true leaders of the world.

Israel and Palestine are two of those different nations who don’t get along very well. An organization called, Creativity for Peace, focuses on breaking the religious and cultural boundaries between these two nations, through girls. Creativity for Peace is a camp for Israeli and Palestinian girls. Most of the girls at Creativity for Peace come from backgrounds such as, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Druze, and other religions. They also include Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, including Jewish Israelis. The camp works on achieving a time where the people of different nations coexist peacefully. The camp focuses on generating the next generation of female leaders who will help maintain peace throughout Israel and Palestine. Creativity for Peace has had eight successful summers of camp, with 162 adolescent girls attending.

Creativity for Peace works with girls about understanding the different nations and their cultures, and it works on the girl’s leadership skills so that they make take on roles in their communities, families, and even their countries so that they may advance and continue to keep the peace between the nations, so that they may continue to live in peaceful coexistence. At the camp, the girls room with girls from different nations, so that they can learn about how they live so that they can get rid of the judgments they may have of the other girls. The camp works with the girls so that they can develop trust and compassion within one another, within the girls from nations other than their own. They try to change the relationship that they have with the other girls, and to help strengthen Jewish and Arab coexistence within their own communities.

Creativity for Peace is a non-profit organization, and is supported by donations from individuals and private foundations. In order to help keep the peace within these nations, Creativity for Peace must remain open, so that they can continue to work with the girls from different nations. Donations are necessary, and very helpful towards working to keep the camp open. Contact with Creativity for Peace is essential if people are willing to contribute. Creativity for Peace’s website has a lot of their information, about how the camp works, what they do, how they work with the girls is all on the website; how and where to send donations is also on their website.

Movie

I thought the movie was good. And I agree with everything they said, about educating girls, or anyone for that matter. Education is really important, whether you’re a boy or a girl. The fact that that guy went and promised the girls that he’d build them a school, and then to actually go and help build the school, was really cool. It showed that he cared a lot about the girls getting an education and everything. Seeing that there were really no schools, and that to do their schoolwork, they like had to write in the sand, was like, wow kind of.  Just because, when you think of like schools here and everything, they all have enough paper, even computers to do all their work, and to see that they wrote in the dirt was eye opening, that like not everywhere do people have enough money, or the technology and stuff to like have all the stuff that we’re able to afford, and that we may take for granted sometimes. But since that man, like went and helped them out, build them a school, and gave likes school supplies and everything shows that there’s still some good people out there, willing to do stuff for other people.

Peace

When I hear the word 'Peace,' happiness comes to mind. Peace, to me means no fighting, everyone gets along, everyone's happy. Peace would be no more wars, everyone's friends with everyone, everything's good with everyone. The definition of peace is, a society or a relationshiop that is operating harmoniously, the absensce of any war or conflict. Peace is everyone working together to make the world a better place. Everyone working on the little things, like being nice to someone, or becoming friends with someone that you normally wouldn't be friends, doing little things, so that in the end, the world is a better place.