The 2013 Oscars

Truth be told, I hadn't thought much about what I was going to write my blog post on today, I even forgot it was due until just now. I was trying to figure out what to write it on when it hit me. I am currently sitting on my couch watching the Oscars, one of my favorite things to watch, so why not write about them.

The Oscars shine a brilliant light on all the fantastic films of the past year and gives recognition to everyone who helped make them. Seth Macfarlene, creator of Family Guy and director of Ted, is hosting this year's Oscars. He started out with lots of jokes and some slightly offensive songs. After that star after star came out to introduce nominee's and winners.

So far, they have given out only a couple awards. Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor. Brave won best feature length animated movie. Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi, won best cinematography. Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina, won best costume designer. Amour won best foreign language film. Paperman, by John Kahrs, won best short animated film and Inocente won best short documentary. The winner of best full length documentary went Searching for Sugarman.

In between a couple of nominations, there have been short skits and performances. To show great music from the past decade, Jennifer Hudson performed a song from Dream Girls, the Les Mis cast came out and sang snippets from their film, and All That Jazz was performed.

With much more excitement to come, the Oscars are just heating up and everyone should tune in!

30 Hour Famine

 Around one million people go hungry everyday. Around one billion children die every year due to hunger. Hunger is a huge issue and anyone can do little things to help.

Last weekend, I participated in a 30 hour famine with my church's youth group for the organization World Vision. From Friday, Feb. 1st 6pm to Sunday Feb. 3rd 12am, we didn't eat anything. We did this in order to raise awareness and sympathy for the millions of people, many being children, who go without food on a daily basis.

It was extremely hard to not eat for that long. It made us cranky, tired, confused, and our stomachs hurt. We live in a society where, unless we are below the poverty line, we can almost always get food. Even during the famine, we knew we could simply break our fast by walking into the kitchen and grabbing something to eat. We also knew, that after 30 hours, we could eat again. Many people and children, don't know when the next time they are going to eat will be.

We met up at our church at 5pm that Friday, and had our last feast together, we then stopped eating at 6pm and went home. The next day, we arrived back at our church at 3pm and stayed the night there. We had guest speakers who work to rid the world of hunger come and talk to us about their jobs. We played simulation games to see how hard it is for people to live, and most of all, we talked about what we felt.

Finally, at 12am Sunday morning, we broke our fast.

We raised money by going around our neighborhoods, and asking our relatives to donate $30 to World Vision. In total, I raised around $380 and my church raised over $1200. All this money will be dedicated to feeding hungry children.

People go without food for many different reasons, but it doesn't matter, because they are still hungry. By doing this famine I was able to truly understand what it was like to be hungry, but not to the extenet that many people feel everyday. Yet, there are lots of things we can do to help. Visit World Vision's website and donate $30, that can feed a starving child for a week. Little things can become big things, which can change the world.