CIY BELIEVE - HOLLAND, MI

2011-02-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

WHO: All students 5th - 8th Grade
WHAT: CIY Believe
WHEN: April 29th & 30th
WHERE: Holland, MI
HOW MUCH: $60
WHY: Because EVERYONE'S doing it!!

CONTACT NANETTE, ERIK, or MICHELLE for more info!!

The Way Back

2011-01-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

So my birthday is coming up and I wanted to know what movies would be at the theaters on my birthday. I came across several movies that had no interest to me, a couple that I would like to see because of my enormous geekiness (Tron, the Green Hornet), and some that I had never heard of before. But one imparticular caught my eye ... The Way Back.

This is an incredible true story, that was inspired by a book that one of the survivors wrote. Below is a synopsis from pluggedin.com and a trailer from youtube.com enjoy!

Decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Siberia is still a byword for a place of no return. The Siberian gulags were cold, hopeless work camps built to house the U.S.S.R.'s worst enemies—which, judging from The Way Back, seem to have encompassed pretty much everyone.

In the film adaptation of Slavomir Rawicz's 1956 book The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, Janusz is sent to Siberia for speaking poorly of Josef Stalin—and officials drum up a charge of espionage for good measure. Khabarov, an actor, made the mistake of playing an aristocrat in a movie—and is thrown into the gulag for making his character look too sympathetic. Valka is the rare inmate who actually was a criminal—a hardened, tattooed bully who works the camp's inner system like the lifelong thug he is. And then there's the mysterious man known only as Mr. Smith, an American who emigrated to Russia to escape the Great Depression.

Prisoners die slowly in Siberia, day by day, worn down by the cold and hunger and misery. They haven't been sentenced to death, but few expect to dodge it.

Escape? Yeah, whatever. "Siberia is your prison—all 5 million square miles of it," the gulag master tells new prisoners. "Nature is your jailer, and she is without mercy." Indeed, anyone with hopes of escaping will need to do more than evade guards and dogs. He must endure temperatures that sink to 40 (°F) below zero, evading wild animals and watchful villagers. If he by some miracle escapes Siberia (and hopes to get to a non-communist country), he must cross the harrowing Gobi desert and then pick his way through the Himalayas before reaching India.

So it speaks to the utter hopelessness of remaining prisoners that Janusz, Mr. Smith and a handful of others opt for the near-hopelessness of escape. In a howling snowstorm, they cut the barbed wire and make a desperate dash for freedom—such as it is—the first steps in what becomes a 4,000-mile odyssey.

Redefining Beautiful

2010-12-01T14:55:00.001-08:00

We will be discussing Chapter 10 this week ... so be ready girls!!

[En]Lighten

CIY BELIEVE - HOLLAND, MI

The Way Back

Redefining Beautiful