We just finished annotating Ceremony and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It took a while, but I made an effort to do 20 pages each day over spring break and that made it a lot more manageable. I was in Phoenix during spring break and it was actually kind of cool to be in the same region the book takes place in and it kind of helped with some of the imagery in the novel. I ended up really liking Ceremony. Some parts seemed lengthy and were kind of boring, but the parts that described the American's colonization and treatment of the Native Americans was really interesting. In American history classes in 9th grade and in middle school we are told the American side of the colonization, but hearing a different point of view in this novel was eye-opening. I had never thought of how complicated assimilation must be. Its always has been described to me as being pretty black and white where you either assimilate or fight against it and keep your native values while some new values slip into the native culture. Reading the book I could see how outside influence can really divid a native culture appart because of different views on assimilation.
The AP exam is also approaching quickly. We have worked on our writing some and I assume that we will do a lot more AP practice leading up to the exam. The biggest problem I have is determining the meaning quickly when reading a passage. When we analyze it and discuss it, I can get a strong grasp of the meaning, we don't have a lot of time on the AP exam. We also just started reading Fifth Business, but I'm not very far into it so I don't really have much to say about it.
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