h-a-l-l-o-w-e-e-n

Halloween is right around the corner and I am excited. I love going out and seeing all of the wild and creative costumes. I went to a Halloween costume party on Saturday of last weekend and there were some pretty crazy costumes. My date had a caveman costume on with a stupid club he persisted on hitting everyone with, there was a pirate couple, and my favorite was the cloudy with a chance of rain couple. The pirate couple had sword fights all night in the middle of the barn that would break out and they would sword fight with the other pirates. The cloudy with a chance of rain was very creative. The guy had a white shirt on with fluff from like the inside of a pillow and his date had on all black. When someone would ask what one of them was he would say cloudy and his girl would reply with a chance of rain and spray them with water. I am excited for everyone to dress up and go out this weekend. The festivities started tonight and its only going to get better.

Worse treatment or higher prices?

In 2006 Business Week released a cover story revealing the labor law problems still present in China. The article was titled “Secrets, Lies, and Sweat Shops” and told about the procedures used to keep the children in factories with excessive labor combined with low pay. Even though there were laws put in place to prevent all of these factors from appearing, there were people whose job was to inform factories of how to bypass the audits which were put in place to ensure the laws were followed. Some of the techniques that allowed the audits to be passed were to let the people against the policies have the day off, make all of the underage workers leave the premises, and to have back of labor and wage documents in order to have “proper” documents. If there was a surprise audit, the employees were to evacuate all under-age workers through back doors and have them clear the building, while the workers left inside were rehearsed to answer questions with specific answers, and the document books were swapped. It is very sad to me that we are here in America with strict labor laws and minimum wage, while little kids in China are slaving over hot machines to make things for little money with extreme hours just so that we can pay less for things.

Labor Laws

China is a large, over populated country that has very large factories that supply many things throughout the world. Recently, the child labor and over time, also including page wage, has been neglected to be taken care of and turned into a large problem. Children younger than allowed are working in factories, and not only that but they are force to work bad hours and sometimes even over time. The page wage is so low that the people need the hours to get enough money. Not only are children put into these conditions, all people are being forced to word horrible awkward or long hours and working 40+ weeks every week.
There were new laws set up last year enforcing rules on the child labor, the wage rate, and the overtime, but did it really help? Factories like Wal-Mart and Nike have factories in China where they have audits every so often that seem to be showing large improvements. Recent studies show that the factories have many times two sets of records, including hours, personal information of employees, and the pay rate they are receiving. Also, when an audit comes into the factory, there a rules set up to have under aged employees evacuate the back and a set of answers to questions possibly asked that the workers are taught to recite. So what now? How are companies supposed to crack down on the issues?

19

This week my nineteenth birthday was on Wednesday. With a nine A.M. quiz I was not exactly in the spirit that I usually was. It was weird not waking up to breakfast or faces in my room waking me up, but I was never really a big birthday person anyways. I woke up and get ready like every other morning, the only thing different was the weather, which turned beautiful. Somehow the weather had cleared up and not rained and also jumped at least thirty degrees and it was wonderful. I was able to walk to my first class in a tee-shirt and jeans, which is an entire three-sixty from my jackets and coats that I have been bundling up in.
My mom and dad both sent me messages on my birthday, and it was just weird not to see them or really even talk to them. Also, not to be in school or hanging out with my good friends was a big change for me. It honestly was like any other day, but I kind of liked it. I was able to just chill out and relax instead of a busy, fast paced day. I am going to go home tonight, so I’m sure my family and friends will make up for the difference in days then!

Laundry

I have done my own laundry since I was seven years old. I didn’t do it all, don’t get me wrong, but I knew how and would do laundry every once in a while. In my past almost twelve years of doing laundry, I’ve never realized how much I took advantage of it. Having my own washer and dryer was amazing! Also, not having to put in money every time was most definitely a perk. I typically would come out with more than I started by throwing in others pants with mine and coming out with their change. Coming to college has defiantly made me miss the little things in life that just made everything a little easier.

Brittany and I have looked into loopholes for this problem. We have friends that are older and have houses, so when we need our laundry done, we simply ask if they need any laundry done, throw theirs in with ours and use their washer and dryer. We don’t want to seem like we are using them, but they lived in the dorms their freshman year and they completely understand. This way, we can put in our laundry with no quarters and take our time. Because one hour isn’t even enough to do one load with the washer taking 31 minutes and the dryer taking an entire hour itself. Its working out for now, we will see how the rest of the year goes :)

Mauna Loa

In USA Today, an article was posted sometime in 2007 about the volcano Mauna Loa. The volcano was described as the world’s largest volcano that caused over $200 million in damages recently. The weight that the lava from the eruption, is causing several underwater earthquakes, with 6 in the past 130 years that rate around 6 or higher on the Richter scale, which is very high. The several little earthquakes that have been occurring, have in turn created surrounding volcanoes to erupt, causing even more damage.

Mike, Leidemann "Settling volcano results in unsettling jolts." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.

My mom came by on Wednesday, yesterday, to visit and take my roommate and I out to dinner. My roommate had practice so it ended up just being my mom, sister, brother and I, but it was still fun. I carried my baby brother, who is almost nine months old, around while they were in the building and I wish you would have seen the looks I was receiving. I needed a sign to put on him saying little brother I think. : ) then, when we went out I go the exact same looks. We went to pizza hut, where we got stuffed crust pizza my favorite, but the baby was dead asleep in the booth next to me. The man who waited on us asked if he was mine and all I could do was laugh. I am over eighteen years older than my younger brother, a little different I know. I can’t wait until he is older and I can spoil him to death, just like I do my little sisters who are eleven and seven. I love my family and no matter how funny we may look I love our age differences.

o my

I think that the most important question on the peer review would have been the one about the theses. I was struggling a lot on how to write those, because they set up the rest of my paper so I wanted them to be perfect. My peer reviews were not too helpful in anyway so I am having other people look over it, hopefully giving me more feedback to make my paper that much better. I want to do better on this paper than I did on my last, but I feel like this one is a lot more difficult.
On our memoir, it was a story about me and I had all of the details right in my head. There was no context, no book to relate it to, and no research to be done. This one is more of a stretch for me because it takes a lot more preparation in order to perfect it for the grade I want. I devoted multiple hours to write my rough draft, and I feel like I have another good amount of hours still to perfect it.

visitors

This weekend we, my roommate and I, have three guys coming to Muncie to visit us from our high school. I am really excited that they are driving all the way here from IU to spend time with us, because I have not seen anyone I went to school with, other than those who I run into here at Ball State. These boys are funny, funny kids and I’m currently awaiting their arrival! We have been talking throughout text messages and facebook all week about how excited we are for them to come and I feel like this week has taken forever. I have really been feeling a little homesick because of my house, so hopefully this will do the trick.
My dad has been fixing up our house in order to sell, so I currently feel homeless with all of my things in storage that are not in my tiny box, or dorm room some call it. I have never seen my house look so empty and clean, my dad told me he was going to move back in because it if finally the way he wants it thirteen years later. I was the only one living in my house for the last two years, so now that it is gone I am home sick, but have no real home to go to. I’m not too concerned about it though, my parents both have different houses, so ill just split myself between the two houses and have two homes : )