Sugar Skulls come from Dia de Los Mertos, or "Day of the Dead." Day of the dead is a holiday that is celebrated in Central and southern Mexico where it is believed that dead children come back from the dead to spend a 24 hour time period with their families once a year on November 1st. On November 2nd is the day that older people come back form the dead to spend 24 hours with their families.  To prepare for the dead children and adults coming back from the dead on these two days, families prepare a little table filled with candy, food, water, sometimes cigarettes for adults, and more decorations. One of these finishing decorations included sugar skulls that families could purchase anywhere, or even make for themselves. I came up with my design for my mask because I went on google and looked at sugar skulls. Some were really scary so I decided to make mine with dark colors and very dramatic so that It would keep the halloweenish looking type of mask. For halloween my friend painted her face as a sugar skull and that also inspired my sugar skull. The process in which I made my mask was first I found someone who was willing to let me slob their face up! The perfect person was Jenn Wright! She was a really god sport about it. First, I lathered her face with vaseline so that her face wouldn't dry out from all the materials. First, I cut the strips to put on her face. Next, I got a tub of water, I dipped the strips in, put them on her face individually, and smoothed them out so that they would be nice and steady. I did about 3 layers of this so that I'd be sure to have a good tough mask. I had to put a straw in Jenn's mouth so she'd be able to breathe. After it dried, I started to paint the mask completely white as the base. After this, I sketched a rough draft of what I wanted on my mask. I copied it, but then ended up going into more detail once I drew it on the mask. After I was finished, I put the gloss on it so it'd be shiny and look really good.

            I feel like for the first few days of being assigned this benchmark my group members and I were stuck because we didn’t know what exactly to write about our topic, for everything on the internet felt repetitive and boring. We wanted to find a way to be creative, as well as inform people. We finally decided that it would be a good idea if we each picked a different way of broadcasting our topic, and put them all together in a website. The topic I chose was videos. I feel like my group members and I all got a little off topic leading us to do our topics, plus a little more work as well because we didn’t want to just do our assigned topics.

            For my video I made a video of me pretending to be at work at McDonald’s. I kept saying in the video how this is where you’re going to be if you drop out of high school still working at your minimum wage paying job that you had as a kid, into you adult years. I felt this would send the message to my peers and others that if you don’t graduate, you won’t be able to actually grow up and leave childish things behind, like your not well paying job at a fast food restaurant. As well as the video, I thought it would be cool if I added an add to promote why dropping out is negatively looked at so I did lots of editing and created an add that I’m pretty proud of, it’s actually on the cover of our website. Also, my group made a pledge not to drop out, which I thought was pretty inspiring.

            All in all I think that my group members and I all did an equal amount of work and it was a pretty good experience. I enjoyed the people I worked with and I wouldn’t change anything about my project!

• Share the first version of your refrán.
• What is your refrán supposed to communicate? 
  How the most important things are to love your family and to have love in your life.
• What are you especially happy about with your first draft?
  I am happy that the refrain isn't too long but it's long enough and  I feel like it shows the true purpose of our song.
• What would you like to improve about your refrán first draft?
  I would like to maybe go over all the spelling and tenses because I feel like we may have had some errors.
• What was difficult about writing your refrán? 
  It was difficult because I have never written a song in spanish before and it was a new challenge. 

Rebecca Fenton

Blue Stream

January 13, 2011

I was born and raised in Roxborough.

When I was younger I didn’t really think anything of the way I spoke and how I said words but now that I’m older I see that they really define who I am today and the way others see me. I go to other places and I am seen as, and often judged as being a “Roxborough girl.” Some of the words that I say get on people’s nerves such as, “ard” which is an abbreviation meaning “alright then.” Also, if someone’s getting on my nerves I’ll say something like “k” or “o.” This is what most of the people in my neighborhood say and I pick up this slang from them.  Some people don’t realize the effect that their words have on others.

When I’m not in my own neighborhood no onse really thinks this language is weird, they just are aware that I’m from Roxborough. Also, when I go into other neighborhoods their language seems weird to me. For example, when I go to south philly and hear their slang like, “kilt,” “hengk,” and they all call people clowns. I didn’t know what any of this meant when I went there and it still seems weird to me even though I know what they’re talking about now, just because this slang is not used in my neighborhood. When I go to these different neighborhoods I feel weird when they say words like this because I feel like an outsider. I bet people feel the same way when they come to my neighborhood and I say things like “o” and “k.” For example, someone from New Jersey came down to my neighborhood with his friend. I said these words and he asked me if I was trying to be rude to him which I definetly was not. It really made me think about the impact that my words have on people and how I may come off to others. I feel kind of bad now because people don’t know that I’m just kidding around with them and whatnot.

People in places such as North Philly use slang that is different to me also. For example, lots of kids at SLA use the term, “bad” to describe someone being very attractive. I’ve never heard this term around Roxborough before either. The first time I heard someone use this word it was directed towards my friend Kim Parker. “She so bad!!!” I heard the boy say. I thought to myself, what is he talking about? Kim isn’t bad, nor does he know her enough to judge her in that kind of way. I thought it was pretty weird. The next day I heard the same boy say that another girl was, “bad.” This is when I started to catch on that he meant these girls were pretty. It sounded/still sounds so stupid to me. I don’t understand why they can’t just say that they are attractive.

In English class we read a few essays on how people use language in life. In the essay, If Black English isn’t a Language then What is? There is a quote by James Baldwin. “…When to speak a certain language could be dangerous, even fatal.” I agree with this quote 100% because lots of people can get really offended by language that others speak. For example, when I go in places with different types of people with ethnic groups I be careful of what I say. Not because I’m racist at all or anything like that just because I live in an area where there are all white people and I’m so used to speaking freely not caring what I say since everyone is just the same as me. I make a lot of jokes and need to realize that people might get offended. In different areas you also need to show respect because you can’t just go into someone else’s “territory.” If I were to go into a neighborhood highly populated with black people and I said words with profanity they would be so offended. I would probably get beat up.

            If everyone were to watch things they say then I don’t think there would be as much fighting and war and whatnot. I think we should all start thinking about the way we come off to people. If you are in class and you talk like you don’t care, then teachers are obviously going to think that you don’t care and think that you’re a bad kid. That actually happened to me firsthand so I would know. I think that your language that you use tells a lot about who you are and how you feel about the way others think of you. If you are going to meet a boyfriends family or your bestfriends family you’re not going to use curse words or words such as “you suck.” You’re going to be proper and hope that they like you. This is because if you have good language then people respect you a lot more and think highly of you. This is why some people don’t realize the effect that their words have on others.