Honestly, the movie The Power of One was good, but not as good as Hotel Rwanda. I learned more about Africa from Hotel Rwanda because it showed the conflict throughout the entire movie. Although, I did learn about the horrors of apartheid and the ignorance of those in charge of the country at the time the movie was made. In Hotel Rwanda, Paul was in a constant struggle to save those in need, while in The Power of One, the plot switches from P.K. Fighting apartheid to his personal life. Some of the movie was not quite related to the main topic, probably because it only represented it's main conflict at certain points. But, the movie was somewhat hard to watch. The violent and disgusting parts were the hardest to watch, while the first boxing scene was inspiring to see because it was amazing how much one person can accomplish in an amount of time spanning a few years, but the final fight at the end of the movie, and the scene at the church where P.K.'s girlfriend is killed were really violent. Some of the gross parts include when the people at P.K.'s first school urinated on him. On the other side, in Hotel Rwanda the hardest parts to watch were the bodies in the road, and the murders of innocent people occurring in the middle of broad daylight. Both movies were touching, but I liked Hotel Rwanda better.

One of my family traditions for Christmas is going to my aunt's house for Christmas Eve. We exchange gifts and eat dinner and dessert, with my aunt's famous pudding-brownie pie. This Christmas Eve, I brought my guitar and played a few songs for the family. My favorite gift that I received this year was the “More Cowbell” shirt that I've wanted for a long time and, and are wearing even as I type this. Another tradition we have is to play some Wii games for a while before we leave. This year, we played the new Super Mario Brothers game. On other holidays like Easter, we roast lamb and crack dyed eggs. My aunt, for some reason, used to eat the roasted eyeballs of the lamb we roast, which is a Greek Orthodox tradition. It's really disgusting, but also kind of funny. Then, we like to give each other chocolates and other candy. For Thanksgiving, we get together and have a giant dinner with cranberry Jell-O, stuffing, corn, and mouth-watering turkey. We all eat together, with the exception of the little kids at the kiddie table. This year, I finally got bumped up with the adults. Why there was a delay in moving me, I don't know. My family has a habit of watching and talking about football for at least half of the party. The party usually ends around 11 o'clock, and everyone is dead tired. After the Christmas party, my sister and I always go right to bed because we are so tired. We woke up the next morning to find three huge boxes, which we later found to contain a drum set. We were ecstatic! After setting it up, my sister grabbed the included drumsticks and started to bang on the drum set as hard as she could. I was surprised at how good she was for her first time.

This new year, my girlfriend and my sister's friends came over. We showed them our drum set, and we ate dinner together. I gave my girlfriend some earrings, and she gave me seasons one and two of The Office. We had Pizza Hut for dinner, meat lover's style. I added loads of Tabasco sauce on my slices, and everyone thought that I was crazy for adding at least a teaspoon of hot sauce. We talked about what we got for Christmas and what we wanted to do next year. Unfortunately, my girlfriend had to leave at around five. We stayed up until midnight and listened as people in my neighborhood set off fireworks. After that, my sister's friends noisily played pop music in her room while I tried to get to sleep. It took me about two hours to finally fall asleep. Sadly, the morning after, everyone somehow got sick, with the exception of myself. I had to take care of everyone, and I was busy most of the day. Later, my grandma brought us some chicken soup to lift their spirits, and the next day all but my sister were feeling better. On Sunday, we went to the Detroit Institute of Arts for my cultural event. We saw a lot of really interesting things, including a contraption known as a “Rube Goldberg”. Basically, it is a machine that does something very simple, but using complicated mechanics and physics to accomplish it. For example, dominoes knock each other over and hit a catapult, which fires a ball at a toy car, and so on in a way that is much more complicated than needed. There was a thirty-five minute video of a Rube Goldberg in action, entitled “The Way Things Go”.