Peter's Myth Blog

There are several stories in the Native American hero tales series, but the story of red woman and the twins was by far the most gruesome and intriguing. I was literally stunned like a rock when I read this beginning line of the story: "A certain wicked woman named Red-Woman came to the tipi and killed his wife and cut her open and found boy twins. She threw one behind the tipi curtain, and the other she threw into a spring. She then put a stick inside the woman and stuck one end in the ground to give her the appearance of a live person and burned her upper lip, giving her the appearance as though laughing." Honestly... This is crazy. I mean beyond crazy. I've read about many, many bad and evil characters across world epics, but this one (red woman) beats out all of them by margin. It was so graphic and horrible that I had difficult time reading and imagining the crime scene in my head. I felt bad and sad when I read that the boy knew his name as "Thrown-behi

Among many Native American folk tales, these Hero tales really caught my attention. The beginning of the story really shocked me because it violated my stereotypical perception of "peaceful" Native Americans: "In a village lived a man, known to his neighbors as 'Unnatural Uncle.' When his nephews became a few years old, he would kill them. Two had already suffered death at his hands." It shocked me that an uncle could mercilessly kill his nephews when they were still babies. I've learned in classes that Native American culture values family and kinship, but this uncle really was an outlier. It's interesting that the cruel Unnatural Uncle wouldn't kill the girls. It was also interesting to read about the unusual upbringing of the boy whose life was saved by disguising as a girl. Then there is the suspense and anger. The boy, although he had been acting well like a girl, but was eventually discovered when his body was exposed to Unnatural Unc

I like this fun and interesting story of reptiles. It is a folk tale commonly narrated in the Philippine island of Pangasinanes. It's interesting how two completely reptiles, iguana and turtle, could be close friends. It begins with a very interesting plot. Old man, who is a human, captured turtle because he wanted turtle to marry his daughter. The imagination of the Filipino people is truly amazing. I also like this sudden turn-around of the plot: "Now, the iguana very much wanted a wife, and he was delighted at this chance. So he asked the turtle to be allowed to take his place. The turtle consented. So the iguana released the turtle and was tied up in his place. Then the turtle made off as fast as he could." It's really cool to have two characters who have different personalities and personal interests such as wife and marriage. I could literally imagine so vividly in my head of this scene: "When the old man woke up, he heard someone saying over and o

I'm certainly not happy with my progress so far. To be honest, I'm in a serious crisis. I have been lagging behind this class since like Week 3 and it had been continuing until last week. That was almost a month worth of missing several assignments and lagging behind in class. I really need to catch up and earn more points by finishing regular assignments on time and doing more extra credit assignments, starting with this Week 8. Otherwise, I'm on ground for failure. Nevertheless, I'm very proud of my truly unique and creative stories. I look them back, read, and re-read the stories I have created, and I'm happy and satisfied every time I read my unique, creative, and authentic stories. I had a good weekly routine up until about Week 2, but I have been lacking from having a good weekly routine. I'm bringing it back to get more assignments done. The kind of assignment that I enjoy the most in this class is story assignments. I'm an extraordinarily cr

I actually like the comments and feedback I've been receiving from fellow students in this class. They tend to be very thoughtful, considerate, and substantial. The comments and feedback that I've been receiving from my fellow classmates have been improving the quality of my writing in several ways. My classmates have been using smart feedback strategies such as WWW or TAG/Pretend, which prompt them to attentively read my stories and be considerate and thoughtful when leaving comments. The kind of comments that I personally find most useful is comments that followed the WWW strategy. Specifically, 'I wonder' and 'what if' parts of their comments have made me ponder again about my stories and add more details and fix small flaws in the stories. To be completely honest, I think the quality of comments and feedback that I leave for other students tend to be lesser quality than comments and feedback I receive from other students. I have thoroughly read t

It's been weeks of reading and writing in this class. I like this class, but there are several readings and writings I need to do. The assignments are really interesting and honestly most stories are pretty fascinating. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied and happy with my blog. My website (Project) has been lagging behind a little bit, but I've done very good revisions on my Portfolio stories. The biggest accomplishment I think I've done in this class is the several creative stories that I've written for story assignments. They become the basis for my portfolio project, and I think they are all interesting and pretty creative. My favorite reading by far is the story of God and Creation of Adam and Eve. It was interesting to read about the story of God's creation and struggle that creatures had with temptation from the serpent.  Reading notes definitely help me keep track of the contents of reading and supplement important information when I'm writing

Once upon a time in Cagayan region of the Philippines, there were three animal friends. The three animal friends were monkey, dog, and carabao. The monkey was the smartest animal of the three friends because he had the biggest brain resembled that of humans. The three animal friends disliked the humans because humans regarded them as mere food source and didn't treat them as equal creatures. Thinking they could be as smart and clever as humans, the animals decided to learn how to speak a language. The monkey came up with a common language for three animals, so the animal friends started to communicate one another like humans. Besides speaking like humans, they wanted to behave like humans because they were always jealous that humans could store food for later use and cook for better taste. One day, monkey sneaked in the middle of the night and stole a frying pan from a human household. Monkey bragged the frying pan to the friends, "Guess what I got. The frying pan!

I like the simple yet very interesting format of this narrative story. The story begins with three animal friends, monkey, dog, and carabao going out to the country to hunt. I thought it's really interesting that these animals, who are animals themselves, fried the meat to eat like humans: "After the monkey and the dog had departed, the carabao began to fry the meat." The imagination of the author is purely stunning: Animals that act like humans. They have greed and fight like animals: "Seeing this chance to fill his stomach, the Buñgisñgis went up to the carabao and said, 'Well, friend, I see that you have prepared food for me.'" Buñgisñgis won the fight and took the food that carabao was preparing to eat. This part of the story is very interesting because this is what humans do: "The Buñgisñgis saw them cooking, but he did not dare attack all three of them at once, for in union there is strength." Even the gangsters, when they ar