weekend

I think I always write about my weekends… my week days I guess aren’t exciting enough to write about. Oh well, life goes on then you die anyways.  So anyways my weekend… yup you guessed it, it was another eventful one. Well I’m moving, I can say that in the open now. So on Saturday, my parents took my brother, my other brother, and I to the new house to look around again. We looked around and talked about what will have to be done to get it to where we want it to be, because there was a Jamaican family that lived there before. So we have to do a lot of changes on the house. For instance we have to paint. The paint job in the house is not even good. There were different colors in every room with stripes everywhere. It wouldn’t have been that bad if they made the stripes straight and there weren’t any drip marks everywhere. And since they were practically kicked out of the house they didn’t clean it or anything and they left random junk everywhere, but enough about the house. It was a fun day there. 

Then later on Saturday, we watched Lord of the Rings. I have never seen Lord of the Rings before. When I was younger my parents let my watch it. However, I got really scared when I watched it. So I hid my head a lot when I watched it. So when I watched it fully a lot of parts looked familiar. But it was still good. I got to watch all three movies on Saturday. It was a real good day that day. On the final movie my parents ordered pizza. It was my dad’s birthday so he got to pick what he wanted for dinner, and he picked pizza. We got the pizza from Pizza Hut. It was really, really, really, really yummy. My dad wanted the meat lovers, Hawaiian, and chicken pizzas. They all were really yummy. My favorite pizza would have to be the meat lovers. However, I didn’t like the sausage that was on the pizza. I am defiantly not a fan of sausage. I don’t like how it has a rubber texture. But I do not know. I mean I used to like sausage, but just not anymore. I do not like the texture about it. You know some foods you just can’t stand because of the texture. Well that is how it is for me with sausage.

I love weekends. They are always full of joy and happiness. Well… at least it is for me. I normally don’t have to do any homework buy this week I do. I hate when that happens. Oh I am babbling about. I guess I am just excited for Christmas. Christmas is in exactly one week. That makes me very happy. I may sound like a little kid. But at this time of year, that is exactly what I am. A little kid.  

Breakfast with Santa & the Forgotten Carols

Over the weekend, I went to see the Forgotten Carols and I went to volunteer for breakfast for Santa. It was a fun weekend because my sister came home for this special event. She is usually away in Logan attending Utah State University, so this was a unique time.

                On Friday was when we went to the Forgotten Carols.  It was shown at Cottonwood High School. It was a long drive to get there but in the end, it was worth it. The play is about a nurse, Connie Lou, who works a lot and is a workaholic. Then her boss thinks she works too much and has her go to a patient’s house to help him out. The play goes on to tell some Christmas stories that the old man, Jon, has to share. As he tells these holiday stories, Connie Lou’s outlook on Christmas changes for the better, she realizes the true meaning of it.

                My favorite part of this play was all of the stories and songs. For each story, there was a carol to go with it. My favorite carol would have to be the Inn Keeper’s. His carol is about how he should have let Mary and Joseph into the Inn for the night instead of sending them away. This song was very well written. I liked it so much; I even have the song on my iPod so I can listen to it when I feel like it.

                After the late night Friday, we got up early and went to volunteer for Breakfast with Santa at Thanksgiving Point. We had an extra seat in our van so my dad said that I could invite a friend to come with us, I decided to invite Brenna Sorenson. She is one of my best friends and was an easy choice to choose her. My dad and I went to pick up Brenna while everyone else finished getting ready. When we got there, she was not coming out, so I called her. The operator on the phone said that it was not able to go through. So I went and knocked on her window. I was afraid that I would scare her when I did this. But she was not even up yet, her alarm didn’t go off. So she woke up when I knocked on her window. She realized that we were within for her and she hurried and got ready. Then we went and picked up our family and we were off to Breakfast with Santa. When we got there Brenna, my brother Garry, and I were stationed at a table where we would help kids make snowman out of candy. The little kids were so cute. They were so excited when we said that they could eat the extra candy corn. They would get the biggest smile on their face. It was cute. After everyone left, we were told that we could go ahead and eat.  After we ate, we loaded back into the van and went home.

                This weekend was so much fun, from the Forgotten Carols to Breakfast with Santa. All of this made my weekend so much fun. I just love my family and friends.

sugar trade

I love sugar don’t you? Sugar is a magnificent invention. It was first recorded back in 1317 in England. England loved sugar so much that they wanted to make a lot of money off of it and keep it all for themselves. The quantity of sugar increased due to the high slavery population. The sugar trade was driven by consumer demand, slavery, and profits. These three concepts are very significant involving the sugar trade.

Consumer demand was important because people treasured sugar so much they wanted more and more of it and couldn't get a sufficient amount of it. In document 3, the author illustrates how much people loved sugar by showing little kids licking the barrel in order to get every last bit of sugar they could. This is called addiction. They loved it so much they started putting sugar in everything. In document 4, the author says that sugar was used as a sweetener. They put sugar in coffee, tea and just about everything you could imagine to make it sweeter. They wanted the things they ate to taste better, so they put sugar in it. Over the years sugar became really popular. The population of Britain began to increase causing more sugar to be brought into the country. In document 5, the table says that the higher the population, the more sugar is imported, the more sugar consumed by each person.

Seeing as consumer demand was so high, they needed additional people to help make the sugar. So slavery was brought into the picture, although they were expensive to buy. There was a great price to pay. In document 9, the author says that you can buy adult male slaves in 1748 for 14 pounds. You had to be a merchant in order to afford that much money to be spent of a slave. In document 10, the table says that when there is an increase in the slave population there is an increase of sugar being made. Since slaves made the sugar it only makes sense that this happened. For example in Jamaica 1703, the there was the slave population of 45,000 and 4,782 tons of sugar produced. Then in 1730 there was an increase in the slave population and how much sugar was made. In document 11, the author lists certain things that English merchants traded for slaves. They would trade bullets, iron bars, copper boars, woolen goods, and so many more. Slaves were such in high demand that merchants were trading everything that they had to get slaves to make sugar to make money.

Since everyone sought to make money off of sugar, profits are another thing that drove the sugar trade. If you wanted to make money then you had to foremost get the plantation in order and all set up. In order for you to do that, you have to have the money, so all of the plantation owners had a lot of money. In document 7 the author says that they inherited their money and was an absentee owner. In document 8 the author illustrates how it would have looked like to make the sugar. You had to boil them and the workers weren't treated like humans. If they were treated fairly then they wouldn't have been able to make as much money off of the sugar, because they would have to pay the workers causing them to lose money.

As you can see there are three main points that drove the sugar trade. One of the points is consumer demand. There were numerous people who sought sugar, so sugar was in high demand. Slavery was the second point. If there were no slaves then there wouldn't have been as much sugar being made. The third, and final point, is profits. Everyone wanted to make money. Making and harvesting sugar was the perfect way to do that. So to answer the question of what drove the sugar trade, the answer is profits, consumer demand, and slavery.