Yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis came to FAU in Boca Raton to honor a man with some really phenomenal achievements in his life.
103-year-old Ben Ferencz from Delray Beach received the Florida Medal of Freedom. The Governor was at FAU to personally present the medal to Ferencz, who is the last living Nuremberg War Trials prosecutor. Ferencz told the crowd the horrors he saw during World War II were indescribable and he says the Nazis wrote the blackest page in human history. We took some time to discuss and examine photographic evidence of the horrors Russia is committing in Ukraine, especially in the cities of Mariupol and Bucha. We also discussed how the appointment of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson yesterday to the US Supreme Court has altered history.

We reviewed some exercises about reflexive verbs and then we started to study Mexico, the country that she will have as her final project.

Absent. Jaydn did not answer multiple calls and texts via Teams for our first period history class today.

Ho Chi Minh led the movement for Vietnamese independence from colonizing France. He founded the Indochinese Communist Party of Vietnam (Viet Minh). Ho served as the president of North Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969. As a young man, Ho traveled the world, including stays in the United States, before settling in France during World War I. After WWI, Ho appealed directly to Woodrow Wilson for recognition of Vietnamese independence, but was rebuffed. He led a movement in Vietnam to fight for independence from France and created the Viet Minh party. In 1946 Ho defeated Francede in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. France withdrew from Vietnam, leaving it divided into the communist north and the anticommunist south, supported by the U.S. Ho Chi Minh served as the first president of North Vietnam. When the U.S. refused to recognize communist North Vietnam, the Vietnam War began. For nearly 20 years, Ho's forces fought the armies of S. Vietnam and the U.S. before driving the Americans out and defeating the south. Vietnam became the unified independent country of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

I introduced Jaydn to the formulas for surface areas and volumes of spheres. I explained how to express the results as improper fractions multiplied by pi. I also demonstrated how to find the surface area given the volume. There was no assignment.

French Indochina consisted of a large share of the Indochina peninsula in southeast Asia. It was a French colony for nearly 70 years, but French involvement in Vietnam pre-dated the establishment of the colony, which included Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Of the three, the greatest impact of French colonization was experienced in Vietnam, particularly in the southern region of Cochinchina. Across the region, the French colonial administration had significant economic, political, and social consequences. In the case of Vietnam, it also had linguistic consequences as it prompted the adoption of a Latin-based writing system for the Vietnamese language.

Although nationalist movements sprung up in the years prior to World War II, the Japanese occupation and Coup of 1945 greatly expedited their growth. It also emboldened Ho Chi Minh to declare an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam at the end of the war, only to be destroyed by the French and cause the outbreak for the First Indochina War. The conflict ground to a bloody stalemate, but the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu pushed the French to seek peace. The resulting Geneva Accords marked the end of French Indochina in 1954. However, many loose ends remained and wars would continue to ravage the region for decades to come, particularly in Cambodia. Today, the region is characterized by rapid economic growth and development.

Jaydn completed part I of The Great Alone. Jaydn wrote a short essay where she discussed the theme of family in Part I of the novel. She compared the families of Leni and Matthew and discussed the eccentricities of these families and how they are demonstrated in the novel. She concluded the essay by discussing her thoughts on the statement the author is making regarding family.

Today, Cuba is governed by Miguel Díaz-Canel. He is the first president to not be a Castro family member since Osvaldo Dorticós in 1976 and the first leader of the government who is not a Castro since José Miró Cardona in 1959. He succeeded Raúl Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba on April 19, 2021, marking the end of Castro leadership in Cuba. On April 18, 2018, Díaz-Canel was selected as the only candidate to succeed Castro as president. He was little-known to the public before becoming president. He is the first president born after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the first since 1976 not to be a member of the Castro family. In his first multinational political trip since becoming president, Díaz-Canel traveled in November 2018 to visit all of Cuba's Eurasian allies. Diplomatic meetings were held in Russia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos. Brief stopovers in the United Kingdom and France also included meetings with British parliamentarians and French leaders. In March 2019, Díaz-Canel and his wife hosted Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall in Havana as the first British royals to visit the island. Very little is known about his personal life.

Jaydn read and analyzed one chapter from The Great Alone. She discussed the theme of fear and its effect on the protagonists. She cited text and found specific diction that the author used to build and convey this theme. She then made predictions of its future effect on the characters. Jaydn then reviewed SAT vocabulary being studied.

Today she did a review of reflexive verbs and we started to watch a movie from Argentina, in which we are going to learn about the government, culture, Latin American expressions, and new vocabulary.