Famous Last Words: Week 4

Wow, this week was especially tough for me.  I fell behind in getting my work done and ended up not being able to do any of my Reading Diaries or Storytelling for this week.  I'm so thankful for an understanding instructor and all of the extra credit options that are available to us all.  I had numerous personal life situations happen that interfered with my schoolwork, but with a husband and 6 children most people can probably understand why.  For most of the week, I felt like I was stressed out and ready to lose my mind.  Thankfully, I can look back on everything that happened and smile because I survived without being put in the looney bin!  Lol

Stressed Out

As for my other classes, I haven't found any similarities between them and this class, but I did find out that one of my children, 15 year old girl, is learning about Greek Mythology (the gods, goddesses & beasts) in one of her classes.  It is kind of nice to be able to compare what she is learning to the material in this class.  Each day, we talk about what she has learned that day and I let her read my blogs and see the story selections that we can chose from in my class.

This week for one of my extra credit assignments, I chose to include a YouTube video into a blog.  I've never really searched or looked around on YouTube much before doing this assignment, so I really enjoyed looking around at all the video options there.  Man...the video options on YouTube seem to be endless!!!!  I posted a video on eyeliner techniques on my blog!  I was fascinated with all of the makeup tutorials on there.  Since looking around on that site, I have used it for another one of my classes to help me understand Trigonometry better.  There are tons of videos on Trigonometry topics and they really did help me with two homework assignments that were due this weekend.  Needless to say, I will be watching a lot more YouTube videos from now on!!!  :-)

YouTube

Extra Reading Diary: Santal Folklore

The unit I chose for this blog was Santal Folktales​ and my favorite stories were The Raja's Dream and The Raja's Dream (cont.).

Golden Snake

I thought this was a great story.  It starts off with a somewhat sad storyline about a man who can't have children by his first wife, so he decides to marry a second woman because his first wife can't have children.  After his second wife has children by him, his first wife ends up bearing him child.  The man can't choose which son will inherit his fortune, so he kicks the first wife and her son out of the palace.  The father then has a dream about a golden, tiger, snake and monkey.  No one is able to interpret his dream, except for the son from his first wife.  He then sends all his sons on a journey to find these golden creatures.

The son from his first wife goes out on a journey to find these golden creatures while the two sons from the second wife just complain and sulk because they think there are no such creatures.  While on his journey, the son from the eldest wife meets several uncles and each one tells him to carry on and he shall find his animals.  He ends up finding a snake princess and marrying her.  After some trials and tribulations, he is given a magical ring and he heads back home.  With the help of his snake princess (who has magical powers) and the ring, he shows his father the golden animals and he is ultimately chosen as the successor to the throne.  The second wife and her children are then thrown out of the kingdom.

I love how the story ends with a happy ending with the son from the first wife being named the successor to the throne.  This son ended up with a wonderful princess bride who always believed in him and helped him every time he needed it.  The other sons were dismayed and never even attempted to look for the animals, so they were cast out.  The story has a moral to it as well.  The moral of the story was if you persevere through the trials and tribulation in your life and believe in yourself, you will be rewarded in the end.  This story also has another moral to it.  This moral is if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.  This saying also applies to the first wife's son.

Golden Tiger