I personally think its kind of interesting, notice how in Saudi Arabia all the airports are around the outer edges of the land mass. As for the history I always thought that the Ottoman empire happened before world war one. the Kurds wanted their own country so they went south and is the only secular Muslim majority culture in the world. the funniest part to me was Undler sieham had the largest navel force even thought the land is quite barren.

Middle East

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FIUizoA7Dnc

Ode o the Rubaiyat

To all the gods on this dark and cursed night
may all your hearts take joy and make flight,
for when the morn does break this dark hue
the people will be praising and worshiping the thought of you.

As I sit in waiting on this hard seat
the only thought that could move my feet,
is the thought of the morning break
in hopes that the food in the cafe is no longer fake.

As all Hallowed Eve draws near
my thoughts turn to memories of fear,
and if it is my turn to me scared
I pray for those who use such a dreadful curse
for at the end of the night it is they who will need the hurse!

1001 Nights: Part Du

After reading the first of the Shaykh's stories, I decided to continue my reading with the second story.
The story tells of three brothers who all open individual businesses and start to be come profitable. One of the brothers decides to go on an adventure and after being gone a while returns to the main character. Since the main brother has been profitable in his business he helps the brother by giving him food and and money. In the mean time the third brother decides he also should go on an adventure. After a year of travel, the third brother returns to the main brother asking for help for he is now poor and penny less. Again the brother give money to the third brother and he also reopens a shop. After a while the brothers try to persuade the main brother in to going on an adventure with them and eventually he concedes and goes with them on the adventure. Before he leaves he buries 3,000 in money and takes 3,000 with him on the trip. While on the trip the main brother meet a woman on docks and she asks for help. Because she has no way to repay him she becomes his wife and thus she starts on the voyage with the brothers. During the trip the other brothers see the two of them together and become jealous. The brothers decide to kill their brother and steal all that is precious to him. The two brothers then throw the main brother and his wife over the side of a boat. The wife, saying she can use magic vows to kill the two brothers after rescuing the main brother from the river. She claims she will fly to the brothers, sink their ship, and kill them while they try to escape. He pleads with her not to do such terrible deeds to his own brothers but she ignores him and fly him home and drops him off on his roof. A few weeks later, the brothers appear in front of his shop gaged and bound. The brother kept them tied, as his wife had requested even though she flew off again never to be seen, for ten years and only then did he release them.
the story was quite strange to me but was a good read none the less.

1001 Nights and The First Shaykh’s Story.

Unfortunately, yet again I do not understand what the story is about. What I have summarized so far is there are two brothers traveling to another country and Shah kills his wife. In feeling guilty for what he did, he is feigned sick and is afraid to tell his brother what he did to his wife. Which is still interesting to me how he was able to draw and quarter the woman with one blow from his sword. Being drawn and quartered is a really painful process, if interested, try looking on the web because it would be a little too detailed for this blog. The story then gets a little interesting, the brothers wife comes out with 20 other women and then start having an orgy in the court yard while shah is watching from a balcony window. (Now I understand why 1001 Nights is a little sexy.. wow.) Seeing that his brothers wife was cheating on his brother with another man, Shah starts to feel better and eat, knowing that his life is not as messed up as everyone else. The part that starts to confuse me is when the brother says that it was OK to kill his own wife but then gets pissed when he finds out his own wife is cheating on him. Then they see a woman with the black man who laid with the wife and once the black man is asleep she talks to the brothers and takes their rings from then on, the rest of the story does not make any sense to me. Yes it was an interesting story but no, I do not understand it.

The First Shaykh’s Story.

The story tells of a girl changing the main characters son into a cow and the mother into a gazelle. From here the main character comes home sees the destruction and wants to kill the gazelle but she cry out and says no. The main character then moves on to kill the cow and the gazelle yells out yet again saying that you can not kill on the holiest of days. Then the main character calls for the heads man to do the killing but he refuses and that is the end of the story. Very strange story but none the less funny to read.

Othello part du

Act four has been a little confusing to me but what I understand so far is that Iago is planting the idea the Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio. After a confusing argument between Othello and Desdemona Iago goes to Desdemona's room to plant ideas in her head that her husband is being unjust to her. Roderigo on the other hand seem to understand what Iago is trying to do and he tries to explain that Iago is wrong. In the third section of act four you can feel that Othello has something up his sleeve when he tell Desdemona to go to bed and dismiss her hand made. The song that she sings towards the end of the scene is a little creepy to me but talking of the wind blowing and changing really fits the story about her and Othello.

The final act, act five, to me is a very bloody scene. It started out with Roderigo stabbing at Cassio and Cassio ending up stabbing Roderigo and Iago stabbing Cassio. Then Iago stabs and kills Roderigo. To top that all off, Cassio dies from his wounds. Needless to say, allot of death in just the opening alone. Part two of act five is a creepy to me. Othello tells of why he hates his wife and she tries to tell him that she is innocent of all accusations that he is making; in the end he does stab her and kills her. Then Iago stabs and kills Emilia, is captured while running away, wounded by Othello, and finally Othello kills himself.
The story of Othello was a good story to me but, Because it was by Shakespeare, I kind of has the feeling that everyone important in the story would die in the end. Yes, I do believe this is a book that I should own, but personally it will be a book that I will buy much later in life.

othello

The story of Othello still closely follows the same idea as the Decameron. Othello has the use "magic" also in it even though he never uses it as Brabanzio claims he did. The romantic side of the story is Desdemona does marry Othello on her own free will. Also, she is the one who ran off with the moor which is contrary to the belief of Brabanzio. When Brabanzio accuses Othello of stealing his daughter and forces Othello to go to court, to me that was a low blow. It was funny to me when Othello tell that Desdemona decided to go of her free with Othello and it backfires against Brabanzio.

I was in group two describing Desdemona and our five words are.
Independent, romatic, forgiving, good, and selfish.

The crusades

After reading the article on Saladin I began to wonder about the Crusades. while surfing the web I found and article that has the time line for the entire crusades. If you can not see it on this page, here is the link.
http://www.umich.edu/~marcons/Crusades/timeline/timeline3.html

The Decameron was a little hard for me to understand. After the conversation in class, I think it might be a little easyer to understand. I now understand that the Decameron is mostly a love story. The story it self to me feels like a Greek love story. I say this because of the long stay in the country with the "guest", to me that was a little weird. Also, because of the wedding and how Panfilo stayed hiddent to test his wife on if she truly still loved him.

College, what a trip...

Well this is my first year away from home and living in a dorm....WOO HOO!!! Things are defiantly different from the community college i was use to. but I think its going to be a good year and I look forward to everything that could and might happen while on campus