Biography of Miep Gies

Miep Gies at the age of 22

Miep Gies was formally known as Hermine Santrouschitzand and she was born on February 15, 1909. She was born into a poor family that lived in Vienna, Austria.

Miep was born into a family with a father, mother, and baby sister. Even though her family loved her unconditionally, they could hardly afford to feed her, cloth her, and care  for her the way she needed. Her parents made a heart-wrenching decision to put her up for adoption so she could have a better life. At the young age of six, she was adopted into the Nieuwenhuis' family with a father, a mother, four brothers, and one sister. The family that adopted her were not well-off but they could give her the essentials needed to live and with as many children as they had, they still had room in their hearts to love one more child.

After she began to recover from her malnourishment when living in Vienna, she had to learn a whole new language when she moved to Holland. She had to work twice as had as other children her age to be able to keep up with the class, but nevertheless she did not gave up. She also loved to play outside and make new friends with children in the neighborhood.

Otto Frank

Anne Frank

Miep loved learning new things and helping anyone in need. Her passion of helping others is what lead her to protecting the Frank family and a few others into hiding for two years during the Holocaust. She did as many favors as she could to help anyone in need in those troubling times during WWll. Miep and her husband, Henk, were risking their well-being and possibly their lives to help loved ones, friends, and even strangers.

During WWll Miep had broken many laws and did many illegal tasks to help her Jewish friends so they wouldn't be taken away to be put in a work or death camp. During these troubling times, it was very hard for a small family to find enough food to eat but somehow found enough food to be able to feed ten people! She faced many challenges to keep their hiding a secret.

Miep and Henk on their
                       wedding day

Miep and Henk had put all their efforts into taking care of the people they had in hiding. They fed them, clothed them, hid them from the Nazis, and managed to through little parties for people on their birthdays. The Frank family, Van Daan family, and Dr. Dussel

went into hiding on July 5th, 1942 and were in hiding for over two years. Miep and Henk did their best to protect the families in hiding but their best wasn't good enough. On the fateful day, August 4th, 1944, The Nazis had discovered annex (attic) in which they were hiding. Once the Nazis had figured out their secret, they arrested the families and separated most of them by putting them in different wo

Miep and Otto Frank running
the their office

rk/death camps. The Nazis normally would have killed anyone that helped Jews but it just so happened that Miep and one of the soldiers both came from Vienna and because of this he

sympathized with her and let her and Henk live. Because this soldier allowed Miep to live, she was able to salvage Anne's diary and let her story be known to the world.

Before and during the war, Miep had worked for Otto Frank in a jam and sausage factory. She started off as a secretary and worked her way up to running the whole business. In the times which Miep worked, it was very uncommon for a women to run a business or have any say in business decisions.

Surviving Prom

Prom is something that girls look forward to just about their whole lives. It is the one night that girls can dress up and feel like a princess from one of their childhood fairytales.

To make this night truly magical, a lot of planning goes into prom that not everyone realizes. When people think of prom they typically think of big beautiful dresses, dancing, and having a good time with friends. What the majority of people don't know is that the president of the senior class not only has to plan prom but has to raise enough money throughout the four years of high school to be able to host this extravagant event.

This year, the class of 2013 will be hosting West Hills prom. A lot of weight is put on their shoulders to put on a dance that people will remember their whole lives. They have to pick a beautiful and unique venue, a DJ that plays tasteful music, and decorations to set the mood.

Shoes, make-up, and nails

It is the club that plans the main event but each individual senior has to plan what goes on before and after prom. Groups  of friends get together to plan when and where to get their hair, make-up, and nails done. They also have to work together to figure out what kind of limo to arrive in style in and what kind of luxurious hotel to relax in after a tiring night of dancing. Most people also plan something to do the day after prom; going to the beach, a theme park, or just relaxing. Prom is a big group effort that takes the whole senior class to put together and create a fun night.

With all the effort that goes into that one night, it may cause a few headaches and your wallet may feel a little bit lighter but when everything is said and done, it will be a lot of fun and a night that will last a lifetime.

Palm Cafe Menu

                    

Coraline Movie Review

Dakota Fanning standing next
 a miniature figurine of Coraline 

     Coraline is an animated film that was based on a book, written by Neil Gailman, and produced by Claire Jennings, Harry Linden, Bill Mechanic, Mary Sandell.Henry Selick, and Michael Zoumas in 2009. This movie is rated PG because it contains scary images, has suggestive humor, some inappropriate language, and has thematic elements. The stars of this movie are Dakota Fanning, who voices the main character Coraline, Teri Hatcher, who voices Coraline's mother, and John Hodgman, who voices Coraline's father. In this movie, the main character Coraline, is a little girl who is very adventurous and finds another world that she wishes she lived in but she soon finds out that their are many secrets in this "perfect" world.

Pink Palace

     At the beginning of the movie, we find out that a young girl by the name of Coraline has just moved into a new home with her parents and it is called "The Pink Palace". We find out fairly quickly that she feels alone because she has just moved away from all of her friends, she is an only child, and and her parents are to involved in their work that they don't really pay attention to her. Coraline ends up finding a secret door that leads to a whole other world. This world is the world that she imagines how her life should be. When she enters this new world, she finds herself in a better version of her home with her mother singing and cooking a wholesome meal in the kitchen. This is something that she had always wished her real mother had done. She found her father up in the spare room playing the piano. in the real world, this room is actually his office where he would normally be working on writing his books for work. In this other world, Coraline thinks that this is a perfect life and everything is great, but after a few visits, she comes to realize that it is quite the opposite. Her other parents are not really who she thinks they are, the beautiful garden in the backyard is actually evil, and her interesting neighbors are not really amazing and talented as she thought they were. After many obsticles and challenges, she finally returns home and realizes that her life isn't actually as bad as she thought it was.

Teri Hatcher standing next
to the miniature figurine
of Coraline's mother

     Throughout this movie there were many different elements that the stage crew and director had to work with. This was not filmed like a regular movie where there are actors that are filmed and thats the end. This movie did not have actors or actresses but figurines playing the roles of the characters. This made it very difficult to film because each scene in the movie was taken frame by frame and put together to make it seem like things in the movie were actually moving. The set and characters all had to be proportionate to one another so that the movie seemed somewhat like real life. The clothes were very difficult to make because they had to fit each character the right way and there were many different characters that all had numerous wardrobe changes. This meant that the crew had to make hundreds of different costumes for all the characters. Also, there were many different facial expressions for each person and each expression had to be designed by specialists. This also took many hours and hundreds of different faces for all of the characters.

John Hodgman standing standing
 next to the miniature figurine
 of Coraline's father

     I can see that a lot of hard work and dedication went into this movie and I really enjoyed seeing how it all came together in the end.  The characters, voices overs, and scenes were fantastic. the filming and acting were good, the only thing a didn't really like about the movie was the story line. I did not like that a poor little girl who is sad and alone at home enters a world that she only dreamed about and then has all of her dreams destroyed. It broke my hear to see that this sweet girl was neglected by her parents and she had moved away from all of her friends. When she found the other world, I was finally excite that Coraline was happy and could enjoy her life. Then it turned out that the world she thought was perfect ended up all being a lie. She wasn't happy in real life and she wasn't happy in the other world either. I feel very disturbed that this young girl has so many issue's and i don't really understand the meaning behind this movie.

Lost Then Found

Switched at Birth

     Switched at Birth is a drama TV series that first premiered on June 6, 2011. It returned back to ABC Family with its second season on September 3, 2012. This show is about two girls who were accidently switched at birth in the hospital. The girls grew up in two completely different worlds.

Cast

Brief Overview

     The main characters are Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano from Gilmore Girls) and Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc). Bay grew up in a wealthy family with two parents and an older brother. While Bay was living the high life, Daphne was growing up with a single mother and her grandma who struggled to make ends meet in a lower class neighborhood. Daphne also had a hard time growing up because she lost her hearing at the young age of 3 due to a bad case of meningitis. When the two families finally discovered that their children were switched at birth, the Kennish family welcomed the Vasquez’s into their home so that they could all get to know each other and try to make up for lost time.

Katie Leclerc

Recap of Last Season

            The last episode of season 1 left off where Bay found out that her boyfriend, Emmett Bledsoe (Sean Berdy from Sandlot 2) cheated on her with her brothers girlfriend, Simone (Maiara Walsh).

            Bay’s biological father, Angelo Sorento (Gilles Marini) just received word that he may be deported back to Italy because he is currently an illegal immigrant in America.

Premier of 2nd Season

            This stimulating show makes an astounding come back with new drama, relationship shockers, and makes me want to continue watching the rest of the upcoming shows!

           

This episode starts off with Bay returning from her trip to the Galapagos Islands. The surprising thing about her return home was that she brought back a new boyfriend, Alex. Her family was taken aback when they found out about him because Bay had just recently broken up with Emmett.  When Emmett found out about Alex he was devastated because he still wants to be with Bay. Throughout the episode he tries to prove himself worthy and win Bay’s respect back. Cheating is not an easy thing to forgive and Emmett is trying his best do the right thing. I think that he is doing the right thing to try and do his best to apologize to Bay but I completely understand why Bay wouldn’t want to forgive him.

Vanessa Marano

            While Bay and Emmett were working on their relationship problems, Daphne was desperately searching for a job at a restaurant. She was having trouble finding one because no one wanted to hire her after they found out that she is deaf. As much as she hated asking for help, she reluctantly went to her biological mother, Kathryn Kennish (Lea Thompson from Back to the Future and Caroline in the City) to see if somehow she could get her a job. Kathryn happened to know someone and was able to get Daphne a job as a cook at a restaurant. She tried her very best to prove to the chef that she is worthy of cooking in his kitchen but ended up preparing the wrong vegetable and bumped into another cook and made a mess all over the floor. The chef overreacted and demoted her to dish washer. This has made it ten times harder to prove to the chef what she can actually do and what her talents in the kitchen are.

            Daphne tries to get as many hours as she can at work so that she will not have to be at home with all of the madness that is going on. Her dad/ Bay’s biological father, Angelo, went to court and was denied citizenship in the U.S. and was told that he had to be deported to Italy. The girls’ mother, Regina Vasquez (Constance Marie from George Lopez) thought the only way to keep Angelo in America was to marry him; so they did. Regina and Angelo tied the knot and got married so that he could stay and be involved in the girls’ lives. This was hard on Daphne because when she was young, Angelo left her and her mother and had never been involved in her life when she was growing up and she never forgave him. Now since her mother and Angelo are married, he is moving into her home and she is having a hard time coping with this new change. I believe that Daphne should forgive him for what he did in the past and start a new chapter in her life with him.

 

            Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this premier and it left me wanting to watch more.  I can’t wait to find out what happens next! I recommend watching this show if you don’t already. I give two thumbs up to the writer of the show, Lizzy Weiss.

My First Post

This is my first post on my blog ever!