Haiti Update

Things aren't going so great in Haiti. Gangs are terrorizing people, Only few survivors are being found, Mental prisoners and Convicts are running free around Port-au-Prince and people are looting. Police armed with shotguns and assault rifles even open fired on looters killing on man in his 30's by a fatal shot to the head.

On the brighter side at least survivors are being found and everyone is trying to help. Countries from all over the earth are sending as much help as they can spare. The photo shows an australian news man holding the 18 month year old baby girl he put his camera down to rescue. He found her lying next to her dead parent's bodies and claims she had a look on her face that made it seem as though she was seeing the world for the first time.

People are doing all they can to help Haiti. But again Haiti isn't going to have all this aid forever. What Haiti needs is a way for Haiti to get back on it's feet, or for Haiti to finally start walking. Haiti has always been a poor country. It's about as deep into the shadows of places like USA and China as it can get.

Chaos in Haiti

Yesterday chaos erupted in Haiti as an earthquake hit measuring 7.0 on the richter scale. The death toll remains unknown but most sources on the internet say 100,000 people were killed. I don't know how many buildings were destroyed I don't think anyone knows the actual amount considering there was so much damage are done I think the amounts are countless. The image shows a before the earthquake and an after the earthquake scene of the Port-au-Prince, Haiti's National Palace. I'm going to guess this was probably the sturdiest building in all of Haiti considering the other building images I've seen. Even though the National Palace barely even looks like the same building. The top image looks like it could be the White House( And that's unspeakably good considering how poor Haiti is) however the place in the bottom picture could be a fugitive's hideout. I wonder how Haiti will be able to survive. First the hurricane now this. The US military relief is already headed to Haiti stocked with supplies. But will Haiti be able to live off people's aid forever? I'm not so sure.

My Break

For my break I went all over Cambodia and to Bangkok. I started in Cambodia. We met my grandparents in Siam Reap. There we went to visit the famous Angkor Wat. I didn't really like it. There are just some things that you have to be at least 30 years old to appreciate. One temple was Ok because I jumped around in the ruins. I discovered a lot of places dangerous and off limits. That didn't really stop me. I went in them anyway and here I am typing this. Other than than Angkor Wat it was just R&R and look at dead bodies. We visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum probably better known as S-21. Cambodia was involved in the world's 2nd largest genocide and S-21 had plenty of photos of prisoners and torturers. The weird thing was at least 70% of the photos of torturers were CHILDREN!!! That's because the attackers ,The Khmer Rouge, realized that the children's minds were still fresh and could be corrupted.

In Bangkok I saw the movie Avatar. It was really good. Some movies, I feel like they drag on forever even if they're only an hour and 15 minutes. Avatar was twice as long and I didn't feel like it dragged on at all. I was always thrilled throughout the entire experience. $400 million was spent on making the movie and my dad says he read that in places around the world people were standing up and clapping at the end of the movie. That scene where Jake first saw the giant hawk thing cost $4 million alone. The bad thing is there really isn't a way a sequel can be created. I mean everyone knows what can really go wrong from now on. But it's been done with movies before. I think it's the greatest movie of 2009 and maybe even 2010.

Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody

This book is good. There were quite a few words in this book I didn't understand but I worked my way around them. Also you have to be a pretty mature reader to read this book. By that I mean you have to be able to withstand atleast a little bit of profanity and keep in mind this book is written for people 3 years older than a 6th grader. Although this is a great book to read it's a little unclear. To understand this you have to completely forget that this is a parody of another book. Then when you read this all will seem normal but towards the end it turns out everything you've read was actually a movie. If you don't understand what I mean thats Ok it's not very easy to understand until you actually read it.

In this book Barry, Lon and Ermine are trying to stop the Barry Trotter movie soon to be released by Wagner Brothers. They have to stop the movie because otherwise people will stop reading the books and Barry will end up like his friend Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, broke.

This book is good but like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I think I would understand it more if I was a little older. So I rate this book 4 stars.

Motor Accidents

I didn't sign up to blog my break but I thought maybe today was something people would want to hear about. My family is spending the break in Cambodia and Bangkok, right now we're in Siem Reap, Cambodia with my grandparents who are spending the entire break with us. So this morning my parents left the hotel at 7am and told us until about 1pm. Until then my sister and I had the day with our grandparents.
Last night we had tried what was called a Dr.Fish Massage. This wasn't really a massage but it was done by fish. You stuck your feet in a pool filled with little fish and the fish ate the dead skin to make room for your new skin, if enough dead skin was removed your feet would feel as soft as cushions. Anyway today we thought we'd let our grandparents try, all the fish swam to my grandpa so no one else had very much dead skin removed. At the beginning my grandpa was laughing like crazy, because a school of fish eating your feet tickles, and you couldn't see his feet. After the Dr.Fish Massages my grandpa's feet were SOFTER than cushions.
Fish biting your feet was nice but an ice cream tower and a local stuntman in front of you was way better. The stuntman was even doing flips through a hoop, but any old hoop would be boring. This hoop had razor sharp knives that glinted in the sunlight facing inwards. It was really scary and he wasn't even professional. This guy had just been practicing for a while and was trying to earn some money!
This was all great but this is where the day turned down. Me, my sister and my grandparents were riding home in a sort of more advanced rickshaw. Instead of a bike or person pulling this rickshaw it was a driver on a motorbike. This wasn't something new because they're all over the place and they've been around for a while. So no one was expecting anything when we crashed head on into a motorbike. Surprisingly I'm the only one who was injured, everyone else was only shocked while I received a bang on the upper part of my jaw and a bruise around the minor gash on my arm that was numb for a few hours after. We were all kinda traumatized though since the cart wasn't on it's side, thought it was just barely, we decided to just hop out and walk away. We looked back at the small wreckage about 15 seconds later and it already had a police officer with a can of white spray paint tracing the outline of the vehicles.
When we went out later to lunch with the entire family, my parents had returned, I realized that there was at least 2 police officers on every street. So I thought these accidents must happen often. So why doesn't anybody do something about it? Whoever is in charge sent the police officers to the streets so they can make sure every one's OK, why doesn't this person try and find a way so that the police officers don't have to be there? Many things can be done to prevent this from happening again. Lower the speed limit, add more speed bumps, have the leader of this place make a PSA about this and add more complexity to the drivers license test. Heck, I bet half of the guys driving the rickshaws don't even have drivers licences.
This day certainly didn't turn out the way I expected it to be and my arm still hurts even as I'm typing this. Someone should do something about this, just not me. I''m driving to
Phnom Penh tomorrow... Definitely not in a rickshaw.

10 Word Definitions Represented by Pictures: Vocab 5

Muttered

Mimicking

Incredulous

Fettered

Swoon

Abruptly

Methodically

Prophet

Inflammatory

Exhaustion

5 Word Definitions Represented by Pictures Vocab:4

Subtle (Ninja)

Ambivalent (Business Man Shrug)

Placid (Pebble)

Wrath (Angry Face)

Immaculately ( Super Organized Room)