I am so excited for Winter vacation. But I still have to go to school for two more days. right now they can't be going any slower. Today we have the winter dance so we don't have to wear uniforms, which is nice. Tomorrow in French class we are having a French dessert tasting. That should be a lot of fun. also in Core we are watching Mulan, since we just finished learning about Japan. 
     Over Winter Vacation I hope to do a lot. First off we have Christmas.I love to get presents ,but I love giving them even more.  The day after Christmas I plan on going to my friends cabin with her and her family up in Shaver. We should have a lot of fun. When I get back, I will go up to my Grandparents house out of town. There we will celebrate my birthday and sadly go to my great-grandfathers funeral. Even though we have to to go to his funeral, we will have a lot of fun. I can't wait for school to be over!

      When Japan first started out many countries had already succussed in a lot of things. Like China and Korea. in the beginning, all that Japan had to call their own was art and a spoken language. They really needed a written language. So the used one very similar to China's. The chinese didn't mind at all 
     The Japanese still spoke their own language, but they use China's language. The Japanese wrote a lot. Most people wrote beautiful poems. People of the court would even throw parties in which they took turns writing and reading each others poems. Back then most of their poems were five lines long and usually were about nature.  But not all of them wrote poetry. One of the first recorded novels called The Tale of Genji was written by a Japanese woman who wrote about life in the court. 

My name is Joe, I live in China, I am a poor farmer. In this afternoon in the year 1212,  I like to pull weeds out of my fields. The other day I was quietly working on improving my crops when I heard a something that sounded like thunder. I looked up into the sky but it was crystal clear. I turn around ,and I see were the sound is coming from. In the distance I can see the  dreaded Mongols heading right toward us, and I see then banging on their huge drums. 
     I am paralyze with fear. The first thing that I thought of was my family. I went into the village and grabbed my family and we ran as fast and as far as we could. We found a small cave about a mile away from the village. We are shacking with fear. Everyone knows that the Mongols kill everything in sight. They kill all girl,boy, man, woman even dogs. We wait for hours and hours. We can hear the screams of others My family and I start getting hungry, but none of us dare go out side. We stay there for about a day,and until we don't hear anything else. We have survived an attack from the Mongols. We can see the mess they made dead bodies everywhere. We pack up whats left of our stuff and leave t move to the next town.