Our Core Concentration blog assignment for today was to name what we are most excited for in the coming winter holidays break. My answers are pretty typical, even though these are only the first few.

I'm most looking forward to Christmas. I'm not religious, but I like to think of it as a secular winter holiday that is more about family, joy, tradition, and gift-giving than it is about Jesus. We have a lot of traditions established on Christmas and around this time of year. I can't believe December has gone by so fast! It seems like just yesterday I was wishing for Thanksgiving vacation to be here. Now the school year is almost halfway over. I'm looking forward to the warmer weather after break, too, but I like the cold for now. I like staying in and getting warm with my family even if the cold is comforting sometimes. Just this morning it was 32 degrees outside and frost was all over my lawn. It makes me excited for Christmas, which is in only 5 days. We're about halfway done with decorating our tree and should finish putting up the ornaments tonight or tomorrow night. We don't have any special dinner traditions for Christmas, but my parents will probably go out to dinner tomorrow since they won't have to work (they're teachers) for three more weeks.

Another typical but true answer is that I'm looking forward to sleeping in instead of waking up before the crack of dawn to walk in the cold to a long bus ride to school. My Core teacher, Mrs. Frazier, mentioned to us today that tomorrow is our last day of waking up early before the three-week vacation. I'd rather relax and pace my work out over three weeks than risk being stressed out by the immediate schoolwork at hand. I'm pretty proud of what I've done this quarter, too, and I'm excited to be let off from always worrying and panicking about my grades. 

Either way, happy holidays! I hope, whoever is reading this, that your winter vacation is lovely. Make sure you celebrate and enjoy what Christmas is really about.

Our Core Concentration blog assignment for today was to write what we think the most important idea that Japan borrowed from earlier Asian civilizations China and/or Korea was.

First of all, I'd like to get something clear. Taking inspiration is not "stealing". Cultures do this all the time, and often, it's the basis for new discoveries and legendary cultural artifacts. That said, I also want to put out that all of the ideas that early Japan borrowed from China or Korea were important to its development as a civilization.

Personally, I believe that the most important and essential development that any civilization needs is a system of writing, so this is what I think the most important thing other Asian states contributed to Japan. Without a system of writing, history can only be preserved orally, which often ends with history being distorted and misconstrued. Until they began to venture out and explore other civilizations, Japan had no central system of writing. After they invited Chinese scholars over and sent officials out to the Asian mainland, Japan eventually adapted Chinese as its writing system. This was hard at first because the Chinese and Japanese languages are very different, but they eventually preserved their history through writing.

Nowadays the Chinese and Japanese alphabets aren't similar at all and Japanese uses a character system using symbols called kanji for words instead of letters. There are more than 700 characters in the Japanese alphabet. Seems hard to learn. Still, there are visible similarities between the writing systems even today.

I'm peacefully plowing crops in the fields when a sound like thunder rings out. 

Footsteps follow. I drop the hoe. It strikes the soft ground and I know it will leave a mark, but my confusion is rampant. In the foggy distance I see a head on quick horseback, and then another, and then another. They wear pointy metal caps and shiny red armor. Their faces are like mine, but not their expressions. They're at least a mile away, but I run for the hills.

"They're coming! They're coming!" I pant as I sprint toward the village. My feet create prints in the soggy brown soil. I almost slip on a half-dying green plant a few hundred yards from the main land. What will happen to our crops? Or worse... our people? 

Dread fills me. I hear shouts. I'm not sure whether they belong to our villagers or the ruthless barbarians of the north. My feet turn heavy. I'm out of breath. My feet are dirty and blistered. 

"Help!" someone cries out. I look behind me. The invaders are nowhere to be seen, and neither is the source of the shout. A piercing shriek from the same direction, to my left. In my peripheral vision, I see a small figure with black hair and no shoes dash past me. It's a little girl, but not the one who cried out. 

I feel terrible for not stopping to help, but I cannot stop running. They need me. But the invaders have come. My father predicted this day. That is, the day the northerners came. Some saw them as allies, but those were soon overridden with depictions of them as cruel warmongers. I'm afraid the latter is true now.

I stop running when I see our shanty huts and collapse on the ground. Something hard hits my head. A rock? No. Whatever I was thinking slips away from me. So does my life. I'm a victim of the Mongols now. And I'm the first of many.