A Journey to the Past

On Monday, my family (excluding my mom) and I went to the MOSH (Museum Of Science and History) for the World War 2 Holocaust exhibit. Before we went there, my sister and I had no idea where we could be going. The only thing that we knew was that, the destination was near water. That hint didn’t help us much though, this is because we live in Florida. Here, you can barely take 5 steps without hitting a body of water. (Warning: Do NOT take this literally, you can take 5 steps.) Now, it turns out that the body of water is what’s known as, “Friendship Fountain” it would’ve taken me years to guess that!

Once we got there, one really cool thing that happened was that we got in for free. We only got in for free because of the Holocaust exhibit. The first thing that we did, before the Holocaust exhibit, was sea life. While we were there, we got to touch sea urchins. One of the sea urchins that we touched was known as a “pencil urchin.” That specific urchin felt really hard and stiff, luckily the “spines” weren’t spikey, they were rather dull. The other urchin that I touched was a little more spikey that the pencil urchin, it didn’t hurt but I feel like I cheated. The way that I “cheated” was that I used my calloused “guitar-fingers” just in case it was going to hurt.

There were two parts of the Holocaust exhibit, one was upstairs, on the second floor, and the other was on the first floor. Obviously, the first one that we went to was on the first floor. That one was telling the story of others through paintings. So, the room had paintings hanging on all of the walls and they also had a television going with a program that had people talking about their own personal experiences in the camps that the Nazis had put them in. One really sad thing that happened to someone was, they had gotten into the camp, and then their parents disappeared. Well, they noticed their parents missing and asked a Nazi, “Where are my parents?” and the Nazi pointed at some smoke coming out of a chimney and said, “You see that smoke? That’s where your parents are.” which makes me really mad that they would do something like that.

Another sad thing that happened to someone was, they got out of the camp, and they met someone who didn’t believe that the Holocaust had actually happened. Well, the person who had gotten out got really upset because they had to live through all of that. They had to deal with starvation and malnutrition just to hear someone say, “That never really happened!” This infuriates me because there is proof everywhere about all of this happening.  What I don’t get is how someone can learn all about this, and never know that this tragedy happened. What’s really sad is the fact that they weren’t even careful about who they said it to, they walked right up to a survivor and said that. You kind of have to be a special kind  of stupid.

The next part of the Holocaust exhibit was a timeline. The timeline was basically a bunch boards leading across the room explaining what happened beginning at the end of World War 1. THere was also a movie that you could watch that had the same information, minus a few details here and there. Well, since my family and I had already watched the movie, we decided to just read.

Along the way I learned a lot about the history of World War 2. One thing that I learned was that the Nazis would secretly sterilize black children. This was all part of their plan to create the perfect super race. (Speaking of a super race, that is the basis that the comic book hero Captain America is based upon.) The procedure made it so that the people would never be able to reproduce/ have kids. Another thing that I learned was that they would kill you if you were disabled and they would kill them regardless of if you were Jewish or not.

In conclusion, World War 2 was terrible, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t remember it. This is something that we need to know, because that way we can prevent anything like it to ever happen again. Be sure to subscribe to keep up with  the fast-paced, Homeschooled Hero! See ya next time!

Until next time, your friendly neighborhood Homeschooler…

One of the pictures that we saw in the first room.

         Entitled, “Three Sisters.” another painting we saw in the first room.

My Great Fishing Adventure

9/7/16

Today I am writing about my fishing experience on Tuesday, September  6th 2016. That day I was expecting to do my school work so that I could get a little done and go fishing with my uncle, when he called to tell us he was on his way. Once we got that call we immediately got ready to go and decided to finish school once we got back.

About 10 minutes later we were on our way to their fishing spot. About 30 minutes later we were at the fishing spot. The first thing that we did was learn how to put the bait on the hook on the fishing pole. Once we learned how to bait the pole, we learned how to cast the line to catch fish. We spent a little bit of time not catching anything but seaweed. It was kind of disappointing but I had faith that eventually we would catch something good.

I had really hoped that I would be the one to pull something out of the water, but it was my sister who ended up reeling one in. She pulled out a crab shell while I was expecting a fish. This wasn’t the shell that she pulled out but one very similar to it washed up on shore. That wasn’t the only thing that she pulled out, she also got a fish. The fish was big and heavy, unfortunately we didn’t. When she pulled the fish out water, my dad rushed to get it out of the water but the fish managed to get back into the water, with the hook still in it. My sister was very upset not only that she didn’t keep the fish but because the fish has live with a hook in it’s face.

Those were the only things that we pulled out of the water so we decided to pack it up. When we were going home we decided to take the ferry across the St. Johns river. We raced across the water in a couple of minutes. My dad and uncle told me that if we had chosen to drive around the river it would’ve taken about 45 minutes. I thought that was awesome.

Once we got home we took showers and did our school work. When we were doing our work my dad gave us an assignment. He told us to write an essay and post it on our blogs including a picture of the crab shell and what crab it is from and how we found out what it was and we would get a bonus. So we both decided to do the bonus because, why not?! The crab that the shell came from is known as an Atlantic horseshoe crab which is in the link above. I found this picture by just simply Googling “Big crab shells” and looking at the picture, and comparing the Google image and my own personal image and came to the conclusion that it was the same.

Until next time, your friendly neighborhood Homeschooler…