Extra Credit

A 6^th grade girl named Abby Carson live in a flat farm land with her mom and dad who own land that stenches up to 67 acres. Abby does not even like where she lives because it is so flat and not mountainous. All she thinks is about rock climbing and she doesn’t even think about her academic classes. She has low grades in her academic – even lower than an average grade. One morning in February after a gym class of climbing on the rock wall and imagining it is a huge mountain, Abby got sent to her school guidance counselor to talk about Abby's grades. Mrs. Carmody said she was going repeat 6^th grade and that was for Abby’s own good. Later that day she went to go confront her parents about the bad news. They were angry; they made her do her homework immediately. The next day, Abby went to her teacher to see if they could help her. They said Abby had to be a solid b student from now on until the end of the year. She also had to do an extra credit assignment. That was to do a project pen pal who had a different way of living. She choose her pen pal to be from Kabul, Afghanistan because had huge mountains. Sadeed Bayat is a boy that lives in a town near Kabul, Afghanistan where the mountains are. Sadeed is one of the best English writer and reader. The 2^nd week of March, Sadeeds school got a letter from an American girls named Abby Carson. His father and his school decided to meet in a reunion to discuss about which student would write back to the girl. They said Sadeed, but he was a boy. It is not right in his culture for a boy to have a connection with a girl. So they decided Sadeed's sister, Amira Bayat, to correspond to the girl. But Sadeed had to do the writing because he knew how to writing English better than his sister. As Amira and Sadeed talk to Abby through letters learning about each other lands and lives, they didn’t notice people started to get upset. Abby put up the afghan flag which was part of her project. A student looked at the flag and started to wonder about it. The student search it up and found things that were very disturbing and made the student feel uncomfortable. Later on, the teacher took down the flag because of that complain. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, Sadeed went to go to read the letter that Abby wrote to them in the streets alone. A man came up to Sadeed and saw the envelope with 3 stamps of the American flag. This upset the man and took the envelope away from Sadeed. Unfortunately, he ripped the letter because most Afghans don’t like the Americans. So Sadeed ran away with the ripped pieces to tell the school. So they decided not to write anymore letter to upset anybody else. At the end of the year, Abby gave her project pen pal presentation. Later on, Abby got a final letter from Sadeed explaining why the letters had to stop flowing back and forth. After those letters Abby and Sadeed understood how lucky they were live in the place they live in.