Mrs. K's Blog

Wake up early on the morning of testing

Eat a good breakfast, don’t be late

Your mind is blank-you wish you were resting

Will  you do well?  It’s all up to fate

You are sitting in the classroom

Your  pencils  must be #2

Time is limited, and  you must zoom

The test begins-the minutes are few

Have no fear

How will you do?

No pressure here

It’s all up to you

Muslims in Minnesota
by Eliza

“That’s nice,” said the woman. “Friends. Would have been nice if Adam and Eve was like you two, one white, one brown. We’d all be beige by now. Less chance to hate.”
“I don’t know,” said Jennifer. “My dad says people always find ways to hate.”
- Michael Winerip, Adam Canfield of the Slash

This morning we skyped with kids in a school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The kids were Muslim, the first Muslims I, personally, have ever met. I didn’t really know what to expect; I had no idea what they would look like, how they would talk – for all I knew they could have walked in with horns on their heads. It turns out, they were quite similar to us. The only differences you could see right from the beginning, were that the girls wore head coverings and the kids generally had darker skin than ours.
The purpose of the skype was to give us information about Muslims and their religion. Mostly, we learned that our religions are pretty similar. We can’t eat pork, we believe in most of the same prophets, and pray multiple times a day. The big differences were really just how we dressed and prayed, and how we don’t believe in Jesus and Muhammad as prophets.
There are people in this world that may refuse to sit near Muslims or Jews. Why? In what way are Muslims, or even Jews like ourselves, so different from Christians? Our world is full of misunderstanding. If someone is just a little bit different, they are then made fun of. There is so much hate in the world. Some is rational and some is irrational. Rational hate would be us Americans hating the people who were behind 9/11. Irrational hate would be us hating every Muslim we see, just because they are Muslim. What is the reason behind it? It’s the same as saying you never want to speak to a German again because of the Holocaust. That person could be totally against Hitler. Never judge a book by its cover; those who do may miss the best read of their life.