First post!

Please visit www.blogger.com and set up a blog.  While this is obviously a writing class, I encourage you to have fun tinkering with the colors, fonts, and background images etc. as if you were decorating your bedroom or creating a store front for your business.  Put some effort into conveying your personality, and try to give it a meaningful title other than "Steve's Blog."  For example, if you study Latin, why not something philosophical in Latin?  If you are a passionate Buddhist, why not something Zen-like with some Buddhist art?  Blogger is very personal and  you will receive extra points for style and presentation, and general readability. It is great to have your name in the title, but instead of "Steve's Blog" maybe "The Memory Palace of Steve" might have more creative ring to it.

When you have set it up, please make your first post where you briefly introduce who you are.  300 to 500 words not of biography but of "this is who I am."  I'm interested in your journey, your academic interests, personal quirks, and anything you want people to know about you but rarely have the opportunity to explain (because nobody asked).  For practice, I would also like you upload a picture in your first post.  This can be of anything - but it must mean something to you.  It can be a picture you took or a picture you are in, or a picture that represents a part of you.

This first blog post does not have to be considered an "essay" or a "assignment" and shouldn't take you hours.  This entire setting up and writing a first post, I think, should take less than one hour, so don't get overly focused on it.

As an example, I'll tell you a bit about me by sharing one of my "most memorable" photos that I took in 2005 when I decided to try and spend an entire year just travelling all over Asia.

The reason I like this picture more than most I've taken is that the colours and symmetry of the sheep drinking the water is meaningful.  And there's the man and boy watching over the seep as they drink this precious water, and it reminds me of how alien that desert world was waaaaay back in 2005 - on a camel for four days as a tourist in the Rajasthan.  What are the man and boy thinking?  What's it like to be a sheep in the desert?  Anyways, if you ever get a chance to go on a camel safari, do it.

Enjoy writing your first blog post.  Once you are done, please leave a comment below, complete with your Name and Blog Address and I'll add it to the right-side column.  Whenever you wish to read someone's blog you will find everyone's blog here, and as of now you are no longer writing JUST for one teacher on one piece of paper that will be lost, most likely ending up in a recycle bin.  What you post may or may not last here forever (as long as the internet exists), and perhaps you will write your college essay 12 months early (when you least expect it) or perhaps your future grandchildren will somehow end up here, wondering what their grandmother was like as a teenager.  For these reasons, I enjoy teaching writing through "blogging" and I hope you guys produce work you are proud of.

Have fun.

ADDITIONAL TASK for 11D: Write a paragraph with your opinion on one of the issues discussed in first class.  The topics included abortion, euthanasia, global warming, taxation, KMLA, BTS, etc.  If you need a brush up, here it is: https://create.kahoot.it/share/imho/7f25138e-c72f-4d89-8bd5-3790110e1994