Easter (Christianity)

Easter in some languages usually mean "great day" or "great nights" Easter is the day that Christians celebrate Jesus resurrection. His resurrection happened 3 days after the crucifixion. This happened long ago between 26-36 AD. Easter is the end of lent, fasting prayer, & penance. The christians have a huge feast. It's celebrated on the first Sunday, after the full moon. It lasts from March 22nd to April 25th.It usually lasts for 40 days.
As centuries pass; the Easter bunny & Easter egg also became a part of this holiday. In old legends; people say that bunnies bring presents and gifts for little kids either in baskets or hides them so they can find it in the morning. Bunnies and eggs represent fertility as a symbol of new life. (rebirth)This usually happens in the spring because it's the season that plants start to grow and we recognize this as a new beginning with nature & wildlife. People dye the eggs red because it represents Jesus bloody sacrifice. Some dye them green as a symbol of new life after the dead winter. The eggs can also be dyed with pictures of flowers to show that they're bringing nature into their homes. During lent; catholics are forbidden to eat eggs for this reason. In other parts of Netherlands, they set Easter fires & watch it burn down.

The 10 Commandments

The 10 Commandments is also called a "Decalogue".The English name "Decalogue" came from a Greek word "dekalogos" which means "ten terms". God gave Moses The 10 Commandments in a form of 2 stones. Which was given to Moses by God on the Mount of Sinai. Mount Sinai is also known as Horeb. The phrase "10 Commandments" is mostly used to repesent passages in the Bible such as Exodus and Deuteronomy. They are recognized as a foundation in Judaism. The image above repesents the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew language. The Torah has hundreds of commandments in it inclueding the ones in the image above and/or the ones that are listed at the bottom of this page.
The Ten Commandments Are.....

1.)I am the Lord your God

2.)You shall have no other gods before me;You shall not make for yourself an idol

3.)You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God

4.)Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

5.)Honor your father and mother

6.)You shall not murder

7.)You shall not commit adultery

8.)You shall not steal

9.)You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

10.)You shall not covet your neighbor's wife;You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

The Story of Muhammad

Muhammed was the founder of Islam. He was born in 570 and was orphaned at a young age. His uncle Abu Talib raised him. His father died 6 months before he was born. His uncle was a merchant so Muhammed was a merchant also. Muhammed was also a shepard. At the age of 25 he married Khadiija and she was 40 at the time they wed. They had 6 kids and Khadiija died at 65 years. After she died Muhammed was lonely so he married a widowed woman at the age of 55. Then he married Aisha, one of Muhammeds best friends daughter. Aisha was six or seven at the time of the marriage. Muhammed continued to marry women. He mostly married widowed woman and he married them for protection. Allah(God) prohibited him to be married to more than 9 women at a time. Muhammed had a total of 13 wives in his lifetime. At the age of 4o, Muhammed went to a cave to meditate. Allah gave him his first message in that cave. After that Muhammed had few followers and was treated harshly. Muhammed and his followers moved to Medina. This became know as the Hiijra and is the beginning of the Islamic calender. In 622 Muhammed and his 10,000 followers conqured Mecca. While there, Muhammed fell ill and died. By the death of Muhammed the Arabian Peninsula has converted to Islam.

Our Trip-In Map Form

This is our trip using Google Maps. The link is below.



Google Map Link!!!!!:)

Red Sea

We went to the Red Sea in hopes of discovering some awesome fossils. Unfourtunately we didn't find anything but water because it is 1,400 miles long and 221 miles wide. As soon as we got there we went to see the Red Sea. Abraham told us that the Red Sea was formed by the movement of two plates. Then he said that in 1869, the Red Sea becomes a commercial shipping route. We walked along the shore and Abraham continued to talk. Most of what he said we really didn't care because we were tired of this long trip. I did catch one more thing he said. He said that the "Red Sea" name came from the Greek word Erythra Thalassa. We were so tired that we left after that and went to dinner and then to the hotel. The next day we left and went home. We were so glad.

Goodbye, Peace, Love and Hope
Ciera, Allison and Phuong.

Dead Sea

The Dead Sea sounded scary at first. We thought it meant there were a lot of accidents there involving death. The reason why it was called the Dead Sea is because there aren't many living organisms in the water. It is connected to the Indian ocean which makes it too salty to grow anything or live in. We all jumped in, not afraid because we heard there weren't any fishes in there even though it's 422 meters below sea level. To our surprise, we floated!!! The water was really dense with all the salt that nothing could live there. I had this crazy idea to "walk on the water" like Jesus. Well...I fail... :( Lol. I decided not to stay in the water for too long because it might do damage to my skin. We saw people rubbing the sea's mud on themselves; which we thought was really...weird and dirty. Abraham says they do that because they believe it had special healing or cosmetic use. I would expect to see some farms around so we went looking for a place to visit & chat with people. We had to ride the caravan for a couple miles to finally reach a restaurant; where we had a drink and sandwiches. Ciera asked them why they don't take advantage of the sea and grow crops to make money. They told us the water would kill all the crop and ruin the soil because there was way too much salt in it.

TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVER

We were in Iran again to see the Tigris and Euphrates River. I was pretty excited. We had just got off the plane and were heading to the hotel. This hotel was the best we went to. I was right next to the rivers and they were pretty. We checked in to the hotel and by the time we were unpacked it was 11:00 am. Since it was a little early, we decided to leave the hotel and start our tour. We usually wait a day but it was early. Abraham was resistant but gave in after a while. We left and headed out. When we got to the rivers lots of people were there feeding the fish or fishing. It was very hot and arid, which is its normal climate. Abraham started talking about the Tigris river first. He said that it is 1,157 miles long. He said that if we were to live there you should be prepared for flooding because there are many catastrophic flooding. We definitely do not want to live here anymore. It was hot and there was flooding, even with all the snow the U.S. is so much better. After that we moved on with the Euphrates River. I liked that one better. Abraham told us that it is 1,725 miles long. After he said that, I was amazed and would rather live near here but then Abraham told us that there still is flooding from the melting of the snow. He also said that the current is less than one mile per hour. Then we were tired because it was about 6:00pm and we were hungry so we went to eat and then we went to the hotel and went to sleep. The next day we planned to go to the Red Sea.

Peace, Love and Hope.

Allison, Phuong and Ciera

Jordan River

THE JORDAN RIVER

After walking for hours in the Syrian Desert we finally got where we had been waitting to get to... the JORDAN RIVER!!! We have been waitting for this for hours. Our guide led us to the river and he said that it was fine to get in the water. So we did. It was fun and while we were in the water he was telling us facts about the Jordan River. We didn't really care much but we still listened to what he had to say and he told us that: The Jordan River is 200 miles long North of Isreal. He said its the most important river and the worlds lowest river below sea level. The northern part of the valley is known as a Ghor and it inclueds the JordanRriver. (Which is why they also call the Jordan River the Ghor.) (Ghor in Arabic is Al Ghawr.) The Ghor is a canal known as the King Abdullah Canal. As it nears the Dead Sea its water saltyness increases. Agriculture in the Ghor dates back about 10,000 years ago.

Persian Gulf

Yay! We are finally here! We are in Saudi Arabia and on the coast of the Persian Gulf. I already like it here. We landed at about 6:00pm. It was still light out but we had to go check in to the hotel. We all unpacked and decided to stay in Saudi Arabia 3 extra days because it was so beautiful. By then it was about 7:00 and we decided to go to dinner. After that we found out that there was a festival so we went and that was cool. It was about 9pm when we left that and so we went to the hotel and went to sleep.

The next day we went to finally see the Persian Gulf. Abraham didn't want us to go in the water but we begged him to let us so he finally did. Then after about 5 minutes he told us to get out because he had a surprise for us. The surprise was a boat trip. So we got on and headed out. The sailor guy told us some interesting facts. He said that the Persian Gulf is about 615 miles long and 35 miles wide. He said that it is about 150 feet deep but in some places 300 feet. After all that he told us some more but I can't remember them. Then Abraham told us some more facts about the wildlife. He said that the Persian Gulf is notorious for crabs. He said that the temperature is high and high in salt content(40%). Then the sailor guy turned around and Phuong fell off. It was kind of hard not to laugh but Abraham and the Sailor guy ran to her rescue. After that incident Abraham started talking some more. He said that one side of the Persian Gulf is flat while the other is mountainous. We made it to the shore and we said thanks and headed to the hotel. Phuong had to change and then we were going to go to dinner. We ate and then went to the hotel. We stayed two more days and then left to go to see somewhere else.

Peace, Love and Hope

Phuong, Allison and Ciera

Sea of Marmara

Next stop......TURKEY! We took a boat to the sea of marmara to go fishing. We noticed the water looked a little dense & not too clean. Abraham told us that in 1999 more than 1500 tonnes of oil had spilled in here. It reaches 1355 meters deep. As the three of us were waiting for a fish to catch bait, we talked bout the sea. The Marmara is slighty bigger than the Black Sea. It is also connected to the Black Sea.We almost fell asleep when the fishing pole shook. Allison's line had caught a blue fish! Half a second later Ciera's line caught a macarel! We felt sorry for the fishes that we caught so we decided to let to swim free again. :) Our goal was to circle the whole sea before we left, but it was too big and we had a small boat. About 5pm I finally caught my first fish, Ciera almost fell out of the boat because of how small the size of my fish was compare to theirs. ;) lol.

Syrian Desert

SYRIAN DESERT OR SYRO-ARABIAN DESERT
After our trip from Mount Ararat our guide Abraham took us to the beautiful Syrian Desert that is also known as Syro-Arabian Desert. I dont know about my friends but I did not have a great time there because it was hot and sandy for miles and miles all you could see was sand. I asked our guide Abraham how much precipitation does the Syrian Desert get? And Abraham said that the desert only gets about 5 .85 inches. He also mentioned that its border on the east is the Euphrates. We learned that the desert has a combonation of steppe and true desert and it is located in the Northern Arabian Penninsula. Many oases exsist in the Syrian Deserts such as the Palmyra.
Landscape was formed by lava flows from the volcanic region of the Jebel Druze in Southern Syria.

Rub-Al-Khali Desert

We arrived at the Empty Quarter thinking we'd see animals or plants but it turns out that there was nothin but sand dunes even though there's 650,000 square kilometres of land. We called Abraham to come help us get out of this place. When he picked us up, we asked him why it was so quiet and there aren't any snakes or scorpian in this desert. "The Empty Quarter is different from other deserts because it doesn't rain here,but a problem we have is desertification." We found out that there were sand foxes & desert hares that adapt to the hot & dry conditions and they don't need too much water; instead they live off rodents & bugs. We were bored so we had an idea to get some sleds and slide down the sides of the sand dunes. "Weeeeeee!!" We had a blast! We went on top of a sand dune about 4 times higher then the average house! :D We noticed that the dunes all looked different because of the direction the wind was blowing and how strong the wind was. At the end of the day there, we were worn out from all the sledding. So we decided to move on to our next destination.

Plateau of Iran

We landed and It was like a breath of fresh air only because we was a little scary in Iraq with the war and because we were on a plane for longer than we expected. It was about noon when we arrived and since I didn't eat anything on the plane I was hungry but Phuong and Allison ate pretzels and little crackers so they weren't. We kinda went our separate ways and I went to get something to eat and they went to check into the hotel. After I was done eating I headed to the hotel. I got there at about 3:30 and had nothing to do so we all went to the local mall. I got a scarf and some cool clothes. Phuong and Allison got scarves. Then we went to the hotel and it was about 7:00 and we went back to the hotel and watched some television. It was kind of hard to watch it though because it was in a different language.


The next day we went to the Plateau of Iran. We had to get a tour guide to get info and to find our way there. Then went to the main office and hired a guide. His name was Abraham and he was so cool and nice. Then he led the way to the Plateau of Iran or the Persian plateau. On the way there he told us some info. He said it was formed from the movement of the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate. He also said that they extend 1,500 km. We walked and ended up at the Plateau at about 12:00 and ate a traditional Iranian meal. It consists of rice and a soup with pomegranate. Then we had some meat, I think it was lamb. I personally didn't like. We started taking pictures of them and Abraham told us that the highest peak is Damavand and is 18,406 feet. After we finished taking pictures and got all the info we left and went back to the hotel. I was so tired. By the time we got to hotel it was 7:00 and we went to sleep. That was the end of the Plateau of Iran.

Peace, Love and Hope
Allison, Phuong and Ciera.

Mount Ararat

MOUNT ARARAT

After we left from the Taurus Mountains the guide Abraham had tooken us to Mount Ararat and while we were there we also learned many intersting facts about this wonderful place. We also had fun climbing it exept that I was out of breath so we had to go back. I felt bad for spoiling the whole trip but at least we learned many other facts that we didnt know about Mount Ararat.

-We learned that Mount Ararat is a snow-capped dormant volcanic cone in Turkey.

-We also learned that it has 2 peaks. (Greater Ararat and Armenien Plateau)
-Mount Ararat is located in the Igdir Province.

-The Ararat Plain runs along the northwest to the western side.

-Mount Ararat holds great Biblical signifinces.

-For years people believed that Noah's Ark had settle on the Taurus Mountain.

-The discription in the Bible was ''Mountains of Ararat''.

We all wondered if Noah's Ark really is or was located on the Taurus Mountians. We all thought that this mountain (Mount Ararat) was AMAZING and very mysterious because nobody really knows about whatever happend to Noah's Ark.

Taurus Mountains

THE TAURUS MOUNTAINS

When Phuong, Ciera, and I went to the Taurus Mountains. We had a guide that took us there and he gave us a booklet that had facts about the Taurus Mountains. We learned many things about these mountains. Like we learned that the Taurus Mountains are located on the Mediterranean Coast line in Turkey. Taurus or Toros is the name that was given to the mountains or high peaks that are located on the edge of the Anatolian Plateau. These moutains are mountain complex in Southern Turkey. There are 2 ski resorts that are located on the range.

This mountain range extends along the curve of Lake Egridir it was a cool, fun trip. We had a great time.

ZAGROS MOUNTAINS!!!!!

Next, we all went to the Zagros Montains. We went to the part in Northern Iraq. They were so cool. First when we got off the plane we went to check into our hotel. By then it was about 8:30 pm and we were tired. Well at least I was I unpacked my bags then layed down on the bed and went to sleep. The next day we got up, got our hiking stuff and then headed out. We got there and the tour guide starting telling us some fun facts about the Zagros Mountains. He said that they were formed by the movement of the tectonic plates and that they are as high as 15,000 feet. The highest peak is Zard Kuh. As we walk along this man who has lived in the Zagros Mountain for 5 years told us some facts too. He said that they are 1,500 kilometers long. He joins us on the hike and as we start up the mountain, he starts to talk more about Zagros Mountains. He said that he has done some research and that in the salt domes around them, there are deposits of oil. When he said that I thought we could go get some oil and sell it and become rich. LOL:). We stop halfway because of the high alltitude and the guide didn't want us to get sick. We went back down and when we got there the guy that we met said goodbye. We walked back to our hotel and I was starving and so were Allison and Phuong. Since we all were starving, including the guide, we decided that we should go get something to eat and invite the guide. The guide was pleseantly suprised. We ate and the food was delicious. We went back to the hotel and it was about noon. I took a nap and when I awoke it was about 2:30. We all decided to go see some more sites. By the time we got to the hotel it was about 8:30 and I decided to call my grandpa. Then it was about 9:30. I was so tired so I went to sleep. Then next day we packed to get ready to go to the Plateu of Iran. Yay:)!!!




Peace, Love and Hope,




Phuong, Allison and Ciera

Negev Desert

Ciera, Allison & I decided we wanted to go to the Negev Desert this summer, so we did research on it and found out it was located southern Israel. When we arrived in Irael, it was so hot. It felt like the tempature could reach up to 114 degrees. We were't surprised to see a lot of jews and Bedouins villages there because one of their main religion is Islam. We met Abraham his welcoming family that seemed really happy to invite us to stay with them for a while. We had Challah bread which is a jewish bread. It looked...different; unlike the common bread we have in the U.S. but it was braided & tasted crunchy but light & fluffy on the inside with an egg taste. After lunch Abraham drove us in his caravan about 6 miles into the desert to see a bit of it before it gets too late for dinner. He told us that this desert was 13,000 km² taking up 55% of the country's land area! In the caravan Allison & Ciera were complaining about the hot temp. but Abrahan & I just laughed. At dinner we had Meatball soup with carrots & celery with more bread. We had almost the same schedule for about 2 more days. It was kind of fun at first, but now its time to go to our next location! :)

South Korea!!!!

If I could go anywhere in Asia, I would go to Seoul,South Korea. I find their language interesting and fun to learn.My favorite dramas to watch are the Korean kind with Korean actors/actress. The cities seem really beautiful and exciting. It is known to be one of the safest city in the world. I would go to see their temple which were built a long time ago and see what its like. I'd love to learn the myths and belief; such as storys about budist people having more than one life.I would enjoying trying the new food & taste. I think that learning new things from other countries is fun. :) I probably will go to the art museums to see if they make art differently from us here in the U.S. I know that I would go to one of their fish markets because usually at an open air market in asia, they are really loud. Unlike the U.S. they would shout back and forth to each other saying which fish/piece of meat they want to buy. They have those old style of selling seafood & stuff near the country side. Although they still have those markets, they also have grocery stores like us. I would go there and learn how to use their money. I would also go to one of the schools to observe how it is different from Callanan. I want to know if they still have to wear uniforms and have special ways of being disaplined.

CIERA'S DREAM PLACE TO VISIT IN ASIA

My dream place to visit in Asia would be The Philippines because my grandpa went there when he was in the Navy and I would like to expierience what he did too. I would like to visit there beaches and the Chocolate Mountains. The legend is that two giants were fighting with stones and sand. At the end of the fight they became friends and left their mess behind. Others believe that they are just coral formations. I believe both. I hope that when I grow up that I can go and visit the Philippines with my grandpa.

All About Us

Hi. My name is Ciera, I am 13 and in the 7th grade at Callanan Middle School. My favorite type of food is Chinese food especially Sesame Chicken. Yummo!!! My favorite colors are pink and green. I speak one language; English. Math or Social Studies would probably be my favorite subjects in school. I play the violin and in my spare time I read, journal, play violin, shop or play card games. I have 2 dogs and 1 cat. My favorite book would be "Martyn Pig" by Kevin Brooks because it just is soooooo good. I would like to either become a teacher/writer/doctor when I grow, mostly because I want to make a difference in somebodies life. Well, I thank that is all about me. Yay:)

Hey, My name is Phuong and I'm also in the 7th grade. My favorite color is sky blue.I was born in Vietnam. I can speak,read and write vietnamese. My favorite food is vietnamese food.In my free time I like to get online and chat with friends or go shopping/ movies. My favorite subject in school is probably math. In the summer I like to play volleyball and tennis.When i get older, i want to become a pharmacist to create a cure for cancer! :)

HOLA, (hello) my name is Allison. I'm 13 yrs old and I'm also in 7th grade. I go to Callanan Middle School. (I'm on the orange team.) My favorite type of food is Mexican food. I'm also bilingual. I speak English and Spanish.