Recently, I found a website that gave me a lot of interesting facts about Romeo and Juliet. Some of the facts on here were very surprising and I enjoyed reading them, so I figured you might as well.
For starters, did you know that Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeare's first play about love?! That's a pretty good first try if you ask me. Also, the original title for Romeo and Juliet was "The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet". It's a good thing that he changed it, what a mouthful! An interesting fact about Shakespeare is that he is the second most quoted writer in the English language, after the various writers of the Bible! Shakespeare married a woman named Anne Hathaway and they had three children together. Before you start to wonder, no, she is not related to the modern day actor with the same name. Shakespeare lived to be 52, and died three days before his 53rd birthday.
Here is the website that I found all the interesting facts on,
I have started reading The Maze Runner by James Dashner. So far, it is hard to judge because I am literally still on the first chapter. So far Thomas is very confused about the whole situation. He wakes up in this moving box and is transported to this unknown world and he doesn't remember who he or his family is, but he knows that something is off. He knows he didn't used to live in this place. He asks around for what he is doing here but everyone else is very casual, while Thomas here is freaking out because he doesn't have a clue what's going on. He gets very aggrivated when they start being rude to him as well.
I am very interested in what's going to happen in this book because all the movie trailers and reviews seem very good! I have heard that there is a lot of conflict in this book, which I have mixed feelings about. I love reading about conflict because it adds a lot to a story! But with that, I fear that there might be too much conflict in this book because of the previous blogs I have read. I guess I'll have to read more to find out!
Grace and I are reading Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza. This memoir takes place during the Rwandan Holocaust. This Holocaust is between two Rwandan tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis. There are a lot more Hutus in Rwanda, and they feel superior to the Tutsis. There are no differences between the two tribes, except for the fact that the Tutsi's tend to be taller and have broader noses. One day, the Hutu government feels threatened by the Tutsis and declares that all Tutsis are seeking to kill the Hutus and regain power. As a result of this, many Extremist Hutus band together and start killing innocent Tutsis. Neighbors would turn against neighbors, just because they were Tutsi. The government also declared that the Tutsi population must be destroyed at all costs. Even Tutsi babies and the elderly were brutally murdered by this genocide.
This memoir taught me that anything is possible with faith in God. Immaculee was always very religious and prayed frequently. When she and 7 other women hid in a bathroom for three months, only about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. She would pray from sun rise to midnight. She would pray her father's rosary that he gave her before she went away, and pray for everyone to be okay after the genocide. There were many instances when the killers were in the room right beside her, and she would pray to God to blind them with His love, and not to let them see the bathroom door. It worked. It always worked. Towards the end of the genocide, she didn't want her killers to die a painful death like she used to want, she prayed for God to forgive them for their sins, and for them to see what mistakes they've made before they die so they can go to Heaven. After the three months in the bathroom, the French soldiers protected many Tutsis in their camp. After approximately a month of protection, the French were transporting Tutsis to a church, where they could take a more permanent refuge. The French were told by their captain to drop them off about a mile away from the church, which was a problem because there were still hundreds of killers in that distance. Immaculee and a few of the other refugees walked confidently in the direction of the church with killers at their heels. Immaculee prayed for God to blind the killers one last time, that was all she needed. She didn't even pray to live anymore, she just prayed for her new friends to be okay and for the killers to see the errors that they had made before it was too late. The killers eventually walked away from her group and she was able to get to the church to send back help for the others.
Immaculee with her father's rosary.
This video shows how Immaculee had faith in God and that helped her forgive her killers.
Our realization can be seen in another genocide survivors story as well. Jason Nshimye was 15 when the Rwandan genocide started and he, like many others thought that the killers would not murder in a church. He was wrong and barely escaped, but not before he saw his whole family die. He lived in a brush for many weeks with another young girl. Her whole family had also been killed. Another wrong assumption he made was that the killers wouldn't murder young children. One day when Jason was walking with a group of small kids they ran into a soldier. He assumed that they would be ok but the soldier told them to lay down so he could shoot them. He had to watch the other kids be shot and he knew he would be too. But god saved him, when the soldier pulled the trigger nothing happened. The gun was out of bullets. Remembering those times were very hard for him but he knows that it was his faith in god that saved him. ' "Even speaking about it today," he says, "it's hard to explain the tragedy. It was horrible." Rather than forget, he chooses to forgive. He credits his unwavering faith. "During this time," he says, "I was terrified and horrified, but I kept my hope in the everlasting God. He looked down upon me." '
