Week 10 Reading Diary B: Finishing Narayan's Mahabharata

-Krishna sees Kunti in Hastinapura and tells her about her sons. Duryodhana refuses Krishna's plea for peace.
-Krishna speaks to Karna and tries to convince him to leave Duryodhana. Karna doesn't, but promises Kunti that he will only attack Arjuna in the battle.
-The war begins on the field of Kurukshetra.
-Arjuna shoots Bhishma in the back and Bhishma dies. Karna now wants to fight because of this.
-Drona dies because he is tricked. They make him think that his son is dead.
-Karna and Arjuna fight. Karna's chariot wheel gets stuck and he begs for mercy. Arjuna kills him.
-Bhishma is cremated on the shores of the Ganges. Many, many deaths at the end of the story.
-Arjuna's son is the king of Hastinapura at the end of the story.

Arjuna and Bhishma

Week 10 Reading Diary A: The Thirteenth Year of Exile

-Dhritarashtra has people spying on the Pandavas. He wants to humiliate them, but this ends up backfiring.
-The Pandavas find a lake and want to drink from it. Nakula finds it first and a voice tells him he must answer questions first. He ignores it, drinks the water, and dies. Yudhishthira is the only brother to answer the questions. It was a test from his father, and all the brothers are brought back to life.
-The brothers receive the gift of being unrecognized for their 13th year of exile. They use this gift to be in the court of King Virata.
-Draupadi is raped by the brother of the queen. She gets Bhima to avenge her. He kills Kichaka. The king and queen want to send Draupadi away.
-Karna lost a fight with Arjuna.
-The Pandavas try to make peace
-Bhishma calls Karna conceited and boastful. This makes Karna very angry.

Bhima avenging Draupadi

Week 9 Reading Diary B: Continuing the Mahabharata

-Duryodhana finds out that the Pandavas are not dead. Bhishma and Vidura want him to make peace, but Karna says that they are traitors. He wants war.
-Dhritarashtra gives the Pandavas part of the kindgom. They name the city Indraprastha.
-Arjuna goes into exile for 12 years.
-Yudhishthira is now the king of Indraprastha. The coronation occurs.
-Maya built the assembly hall at Indraprastha and the hall has many illusions. The Pandavas and Draupadi make fun of Duryodhana when he is fooled.
-Shakuni tells Duryodhana to get revenge by playing against the Pandavas in a game of dice. They go to Hastinapura.
-Yudhishthira loses everything he owns in the game. Then he loses his brothers and himself.
-The Pandavas head back to their city.

Dice

Week 9 Reading Diary A: Beginning Narayan's Mahabharata

-Shantanu is the king of Hastinapura. He falls in love with a woman and marries her. The woman tells him to never question her actions. She drowns all of their babies in the river. The king protests when their 8th child is born. The wife says she is the river Ganga and is returning the children to heaven. She takes the eighth child with her and returns to heaven.

-The king then falls in love with Satyavati. They marry and have 2 children. Chitrangada becomes the king, but dies soon after

-A king holds a swayamvara for his daughters to find a husband. His daughters were Amba, Ambika, Ambalika. Bhishma takes all three for Vichitravirya.

-Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari who covers her eyes so she can share her husband's blindness.

-Pandu is married to Kunti and Madri. Pandu can't have children because he is cursed. He shot a deer (who was a celestial being in disguise) and the deer cursed him so he would die if he had sex.

-Pandu's wife, Kunti, has a mantra to obtain sons from the gods. She got this from Durvasa. She previously had a son with Surya (the sun god). Her child was named Karna and she put him in a basket to float down the river. He was rescued.

-Kunti has sons from many gods. They go live in Hastinapura.

-Dhritarashtra wanted Yudhishthira to be his heir. He was jealous that the people liked Yudhishthira more than him. A house was built that could catch on fire easily. The Pandavas are sent there but they are warned by Vidura. They escape the house through a tunnel and live their life in hiding.

-One of Kunti's sons wins Draupadi as their wife. Kunti makes her sons share everything they acquire, so they shared Draupadi as their wife.

Pandu and Kunti

Commenting Review Week

I have found that most of the comments I have received are very useful. I feel very connected with the other students through commenting. I also feel less intimidated giving my opinions about other students' posts because they don't know me! I have really enjoyed comments that have given me ideas to improve my stories. The comments where people suggest other ways I could have written my story or changed something up have been very beneficial for me.
The comments that I have received so far on my project have been very helpful. It is nice seeing how others perceive my writing and tell me ways that I can improve it. I feel that this will help me better my writing and will help me with a greater finished product at the end of the semester.
When writing shorter comments, I try to focus on the good parts of the story. I try to point out one thing that could be better or be different. In the longer comments, I try to be really analytic about the story and try to help the writer with things they can improve.
Commenting is very beneficial for this class and I am glad that we do it. Sometimes I find it difficult because I hate to tell people what they can improve on. I feel like I come off as being rude when I do this. Commenting really does help us improve the quality of our posts and our projects in this class.

Dogs and teamwork

I love this image and just thought that it was really funny!

Writing Review Week

When this semester started, I was most nervous about writing stories. I am not a writer and I am not very creative, so the thought of writing my own stories scared me. I really liked the first writing assignment of the semester. When picking a familiar nursery rhyme, this made the assignment less intimidating. It actually is not so hard to write stories. There are many ways that you can change the story to make it your own. The one I like the most that I have done lately is changing the point of view that the story it told from. This makes it easy to be creative. I got the idea of changing the point of view from reading someone else's story in their blog. I find it very helpful to look at the stories that other classmates are writing. This helps me to think of ways to change up my storytelling.
The feedback that I get it usually very helpful. People are very nice with their comments, but they provide helpful feedback, as well.
For the rest of this semester, I hope that I can continue to improve my writing. I think that helpful feedback from others and creativity in changing up my stories will help me achieve this goal.

Jack and Jill falling down a hill

I chose this image to put in my post because this post really helped me to not be afraid of the storytelling assignment. It made me realize that it is not as hard as I was expecting it to be.

Reading Review Week

I enjoyed reading The Ramayana. It loved reading the stories about Rama and the others. These were definitely interesting stories. My favorite readings are the stories in the Un-textbook. These are easier for me to read since they are shorter stories. These are easier to pay attention to. My favorite section of the Un-Textbook so far is the Khasi Folktales. This section has many cute, short stories like What Caused the Shadows on the Moon and How the Cat Came to Live with the Man. I really enjoyed these stories.
For my note-taking, I really like to talk about the details that happened in the story. I see now that others do things differently. I like that some people use bullet points when doing their reading diaries. I might start to do this in the future. It helps things be more organized.
These reading diaries are very helpful if you need to look back at stories from earlier in the semester. It makes it very easy to recall details from the story that have been forgotten. These are very beneficial.

Rama breaking the bow

I chose this image because I remember reading this story and I liked it very much!