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The Worthington ALC Insider
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Volume
1, Issue 4 December 5, 2003 |
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Coming to America is Not
Easy By Ajulo Othow
In 1993, I came from Kenya to Seattle, Washington, where I
lived for four months. I had spent
two full years in two refugee camps in Kenya. War in my homeland of Sudan made life there unsafe. Before the trouble started in Sudan, my family was very
important. My father was a great man,
and my grandfather was a king. My
father was eventually killed because he was a Christian. That is why I went to the refuge camp in
Kenya. I was 14 years old when I left the Sudan. Most northern Sudanese people are Arabic
and are Muslims. In the south, the
people are mostly Black and Christian.
Christian people were not permitted to go to school, unless your
family converted to the Islamic faith.
Armed mobs of fanatical Muslims often persecuted, and sometimes
killed, the Christian people of Sudan. My father was one of the many Sudanese Christians killed
because of his faith. When that
happened, I decided to go to a refugee camp in Kenya. The refugee camp, a place called Walda, was run by the United Nations (UN). |
We lived in tents and were
provided with a small amount of food. There was no schooling available in my camp. I stayed there for one year. I later moved to another camp run by the
UN called Efo. I stayed there for
another year. I came to the United States after I was sponsored for
immigration by a Baptist Church in Seattle, Washington. They helped me adapt to life in the
America. I later moved to Sioux Falls where I had friends. I worked on the line at Morrell &
Co. It was hard work. I later came to Worthington to join other
friends. I began attending the Area Learning Center (ALC) in
2001. I will graduate this year. I hope to attend nursing school next
year. As you can see, my journey to America has been a difficult
one, but I am grateful that I made it here. |
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ALC
Insider December
5, 2003
Page 2 |
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EARTHQUAKE!! By Sirjio
BlueArm On Thursday November 20, 2003, a small rumble was felt in a rural part of South Dakota. An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.5 on the Richter Scale was found to have hit seventeen miles southeast of Wessington. As earthquakes go, that is a small one, but how often do you hear of earthquakes in this part of the country? This one was felt 30 miles away by people in Huron, South Dakota. This earthquake was recorded as having occurred at 7:09 Central Standard Time. Its depth was determined to be five kilometers, or three miles. It was considered to be a minor quake. ALC Dean of Students Paul Langseth refused to give students the day off on Friday following the quake. “I’m not closing school for a 3.5 quake,” said Langseth. “Some of these kids’ car stereos hit 4.3 on the Richter Scale and they’re driving them to school. I think they’re just looking for excuses.” However, several of the students stayed home anyway, claiming they needed the extra time to recuperate from this tragic event. Others reluctantly came to school. “I didn’t want to come,” said ALC student Dez Briski, “But Mr. Langseth forced me to.” Dez’s attorney, Weldon Swindoll of the law firm Dewey Cheetham & Howe, declined to comment on the matter, saying only that he was “investigating.” Commenting on
the situation with Ms. Briski, Dean of Students Langseth said, |
“She is smart enough to know attendance affects her grades. I gave her some choices, and she chose wisely.” Langseth further speculated on Briski’s reluctance to come to school. “I think she had a hair appointment set up, and she didn’t want to reschedule it.”
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ALC Insider December 5, 2003 Page 3 |
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HOT TOPIC Have you ever been to the Sioux Empire Mall? There are a lot of clothing stores. One store that I have been to that a lot of people don’t even consider is Hot Topic. There are a lot of nice clothes in there and a lot of the clothes aren’t that different from the clothes you wear. A couple days ago a friend and I were talking about how people treat people differently because of the clothes they wear or because they seem weird, or whatever, you know what I’m talking about, right?? Well if you have ever been inside Hot Topic, you would see that it’s not just a store for Gothic people or depressed people, it’s just a place where you can go to get things that you normally can’t buy in stores like The Gap and Abercrombie and Fitch. In Hot
Topic, they have things for everyone, but no one ever gives them a
chance. People just walk by and glare.
Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. Hot topic
has things such as Care Bears and Sponge Bob. You just have to look for it in the aisles. Sure they have
things that you might not like, but think, maybe there’s something somewhere
else that they don’t like that you do. In the store, sure they have things
like heavy metal CD’s and shirts of bands (continued à) |
Holiday
Knockouts By Zara Nasers On Friday the 28th, the day after Thanksgiving, there were crowds of people at the stores looking for those perfect holiday gifts. According to news reports, it was a particularly dangerous day at a Wal-Mart store in Florida. A shopper named Patricia VanLester went to the store to get a DVD player that was on sale for $29, but at 6:00 am when the sale started things changed. She was the first person in line but she was soon pushed down, knocked out and trampled over by other shoppers who wanted the DVD player. Paramedics were called and she was flown to a hospital in Daytona Beach where they discovered that after she was pushed down she had a seizure. According to the Worthington Police Department, no similar shopping tragedies occurred in Worthington. ******
Drawing by Jon Sieff you’ve probably never heard of before, but that may not be what you like even though it might be someone else’s favorite band. So before you
judge a store by what it looks like, take a look inside and you may find
something that you actually like, or you may not like, but at least you gave
it a try. |
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ALC Insider December 5, 2003 page 4 |
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ALC
Horoscopes By Liz DeLeon Aries (March
21-April 19) Give it up loser. You are not going to make it. Taurus (April
20-May 20) Today you will need money. Get up and work for it and quit asking your mom. Gemini (May 21-June
20) Don’t worry about the others. They are all losers, just like you. Cancer (June21-July
22) If you hear that you’re getting played on, it’s probably true. Too bad. Leo (July
23-Aug.22) Don’t think that you are better than everybody else. You’re just as ignorant as the rest. Virgo
(Aug.23-Sept.22) Today is a good day to go shopping – except you don’t have any money. Ha! Libra
(Sept.23-Oct.22) Good day to pick a fight. You’ll probably end up with a black eye. Scorpio
(Oct.23-Nov.21) You will have a bad temper today, and your boss will be on your case. Tell him to go…. Sagittarius Nov
22-Dec21) Today will be a
bad hair day for you. Stay home and
stay out of sight. – please. Capricorn (Dec.
22-Jan. 19) You’ll be attracted to a cancer –
and may come down with cancer as well. Aquarius Jan 20-
Feb 18 You probably can’t even read, so
I won’t bother finishing this. Pisces Feb 19
–March 20 If you’re still reading this, you
must be extremely bored. Get a life,
loser. |
ALC Mystery Person ·
I am 17 years
old ·
I am a senior
attending the ALC ·
This is my
first year at the ALC ·
I have a
brother attending same school ·
I am holding
two jobs ·
I survived two
accidents ·
I hope to
graduate this year Congratulations to Worthington High
School Art Teacher Gale Holinka for guessing the identity of Mr. Paul
Langseth, the ALC Mystery Person from issue one. E-mail you answers to this week’s
Mystery Person to ray.lowry@isd518.net. The first right answer wins a lump of
coal. Like Ms. Holinka, you may opt
to wait ten million years and receive your lump of coal in the form of a
diamond.
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The Insider December 5, 2003 Page 5 |
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Survivor Since the show had an average of 45 million
viewers who eagerly tuned in, CBS decided to do another Survivor show for the
Super Bowl kick off week. CBS had “all-stars”
plucked from the first seven Survivor shows.
Instead of 16 contestants they have 18. The show will also have more episodes, up from the usual 13 to
14. The pool prizes increase. The
jackpot is the same $1 million, but the contestant voted off first receives
$25,000. That’s 10 times more than
the loser’s prize in the other editions. Mark Burnett says,
“We were only casting for the most memorable characters we could find.”
However, two contestants he hoped to cast declined his offer. Survivor entertains by
keeping the contestants off balance.
Mark Burnett made this edition much harder than the other ones. He predicts that they’ll have more viewers
for the certain fact that people will tune in to see their favorite
characters. The only downside to the new Survivor, is that they have the same time slot as Friends. Mark is not going to take any chances with this -- Survivor will wrap up a week or so before the Friends Finale in Mid-May.
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Schools are similar, yet different By Chol Opiew When I began studying at the Area Learning Center (ALC), I looked for the monitor/assistant in my classroom. There wasn’t one. I attended school from grade two through five in the Pinyudo English Primary School in a refugee camp in Pinyudo, Ethiopia. A monitor/assistant for every class was elected by the students. This person’s responsibility was to report anything wrong that occurred in the classroom and assist the teacher. Classes were similar to those in the United States, except each classroom had a monitor/assistant. Southern Sudanese children have been affected by a 20-year long civil war. Any schooling that the children of southern Sudan have received has been in refugee camps in different countries. Sudan’s government and a rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), have been negotiating to end this war. No decision has been reached. More that two million people have died in this conflict, mainly through warfare, famine and disease. The war broke out in 1983 when rebels in the largely Christian south, took up arms against Arab Islamic government in the north. The ancestors of Arabic Sudanese came to the Sudan to trade many, many years ago. They brought the Islamic religion with them. Southern Sudanese are Black and native to the area. They are largely Christian. |
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