What makes a blog?

Ok, this is supposed to be the big example post for my classroom.  "See kids, here's a perfect example of exactly what I want you to do.  I am perfection; envy me."  . . . not exactly.
  In truth I'm as new to this blogging thing as all of my students.  I've read blogs, I know what one is, I can define what I would like to see, but I've never done it before.  This is just my deal, my experience, how I manifested my reading experience onto a web page.  Everyone is different, that's the great thing about it.
  

  So, to answer the question at hand...something about summer reading experience...my most potent reading experience came from reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind in Italy. 

  I went to Italy with my girlfriend during the no contact period, and boy was it great.  No teenagers (at least none that I was responsible for), and tons of food.  One day I counted that we stopped to eat 8 times.  That's a lot of antipasto.

   Now, I don't know how many of you actually read The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, but I recommend it highly.  It's a touching book that has a lot to say.  In it, there's an enormous famine.  I've never experienced anything like this, but William describes it in heartwrenching detail.  I got very emotional and very invested listening to William describe how his family and his country suffered, all over something so simple.  For William, every minute of every day was spent thinking about eating.  Hmmm...sounds familiar. 

  
   So did I feel guilty as a rich westerner, stuffing my face while reading about an African famine.  Yeah, I guess I did, but my real emotion wasn't so cliched.  Being in a culture (Italian), that treated food with such reverence and care, that had the entire day built around meals, made me really appreciate what it is to eat, to have nourishment.  As Catholics, we're supposed to thank God for our "daily bread," but how many of us are really sincere with that thanks?  Not me, certainly.  Food is one of those things that we all take for granted, yet it's THE thing, the most important thing in our lives.  We can be deprived of anything besides food. 
  I don't have a whole lot of real cogent political thought on this matter.  I'm not big into action or politics or "we should be doing this."  But it really makes you think: before we help anybody with anything...shouldn't we be helping people get their "daily bread?"  What could be more worthwhile?
  With that in mind, here's a here's a really cool website called "Free Rice."  You answer basic questions and for every question you answer right, the website donates 10 grains of  rice to people who need it.  Try the "grammar" or "vocabulary."  Make sure to change the level to "5."