The Blind Side

In English class on Tuesday, we watched a movie called "The Blind Side". It was first played in theatres in Norway the 12th of March. The story is based on a true happening, the life of Quinton Aaron. He was a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home. One family decides to take him into their family, and takes care of him. They support him, and gives him the recourses he needs to success as a football player.

We didn't finish the movie in class, because we did not have enough time. I really liked this movie! Because we didn't finish it, I don't know the meaning of the movie. I am very excited to see the end. We stopped it after Michael walked out on the family who had supported him. There had been a lady accusing the family of deciding what college he was going to attend in an indirectly way. So now I am wondering what will happen!? I can't wait until next week when we are going to watch the last part!

The UK election is right around the corner!

The last week I have been sick, and stayed home from school. So I have had enough time to watch the news! So for a change, the Norwegian news channels has started to show reportages about the UK election. Since the UK election will be relevant for our English exam this spring, I have been trying to get some information about it earlier this year, but not getting any luck. The Norwegian news shows just didn't show any interest for it, until now. Two weeks before the election.

Some of the topics that has been up in the media is how Gordon Brown revealed his real personality (some people might say), by forgetting to turn of his microphone after a conversation with one of his own voters. He did not speak nice about her, even though she just asked him about something that would be relevant for all the voters to know. The woman was shocked over what he said, and some people excused Gordon Brown by saying "he is just a normal person, and its too bad that that one time you speak bad behind someone's back, the whole nation is about to know it. Everyone makes mistakes, and its not like I've never said anything bad about some one". Something that is for sure, is the this only made Gordon Brown loose even more votes!

In an article on VG.no, I read about how Cameron is trying to get the last votes to win the election. Cameron and the conservative party, are on top of this election. The public opinion poll has so far showed the drastic change. So this morning Cameron announced plans about how he will rule the country the first days, if he wins the election. On one side, this provokes many people. At least Nick Clegg, saying : "Have you seen the papers this morning? David Cameron, with breathtaking arrogance, is already measuring up the curtains for No 10 before you have even voted, telling you what he's going to do with Britain when it's not for him to tell you what to do with this country, it's for you to tell us, the politicians, what kind of future you want."

An other article from dagbladet.no, it tells me about the question time, which they have as a part of their government. This was the last question time before the election. This time the prime minister suffers from David Cameron's attack. Cameron makes Brown apologize for not sending helicopters that worked, to the British forces in Afghanistan. He picks on him for something he said earlier, that the conservatives deceived business people. At the end of the question time, Brown looks rather melancholy.

Now its only three days away, and then we will know who's going to be the next prime minister. This election has taken a big surprising turn, and I am very excited to know who wins!

GLOGSTER

I made a glogster! You can find it here.

Question Time

February 24th the house of commons gathered for question time. It's when the Prime Minister is being questioned by the Government. Some of the topics that was brought to light during this Question Time was discussion about taxes. Will the prime minister increase or decrease them? I think this is an exciting topic. Someone in the discussion wondered if the taxation would be something like what Robin Hood did. That the rich people in the country will pay more taxes compared to people with not that much money.

At 12.33 pm the prime minister comes with a statement. He explains the child migration in the UK back in the days. How Britain deported many children to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The children were lied to, some were told their parents were dead. They even changed the children's date of birth so that it would be impossible for the parents to find them.

During the question time the Prime Minister behaved calm and secure. Compared to the other speakers he spoke with a clear voice, and he answered the question very well.

Changed senior project!

Some weeks ago I decided to write about the environment for my senior project. When I sat down to find facts and stuff to write about, I just couldn't come up with anything to write about. The last two weeks I have been thinking about what else I can write about, a theme that I actually can find good facts about. So now I finally decided to have my paper about Sarah Palin! I will look into how she have affected American politics before and after the 2009 presidential election.

Group work day

Last Tuesday in class we did something different from what we usually do. We divided the class in groups, with about 3-5 people in each of them. Our teacher had made a list of assignments for each group to complete. Some of the groups were connected together in a way that made them co-operate. For instance; one group found the facts, then the next group wrote notes for the rest of the class, then a third group used the notes to make a glogster.

In one way it worked. At least for me. I wrote about the American Government and how the power is divided in the three branches. So I learned a lot about that. But I have no idea what Anne Sofie wrote, unless I read her notes(which probably does not take that much time), but for the other groups who didn't write any notes, it will take some time to learn all the five pages of notes my group wrote. And when you write the notes yourself, you learn it way better. You have to concentrate to find out the exactly fact then write down our own sentence.

So all the other groups that didn't write anything, will have a lot more work to do before the test, because they didn't do the same work as for instance, I did. To do this in a different way we could have made the all the groups write notes. Then all the members in the groups could tell the rest of the group about their notes after writing them. Then everyone would know a little bit about all the material.

The Road

"Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave". This is good explanation of how the world have become in the novel "The Road". It is written by Cormac McCarthy, also the author of the book "No Country For Old Men". "The Road" is a story of a man and his son wandering towards the coast in The USA. It is a post-apocalyptic story, where almost all life on earth is gone. He tells the story without letting the reader know anything about what happened to the earth. On the road they try to avoid people. They can not know if the people are "the good guys" or "the bad guys". Several times through the story they meet these bad people. Their way of surviving this world, is to eat other people. As the story goes on, the fathers coughing get worse and in the end he dies, leaving the boy to himself. Luckily an other family finds him and they take care of him.

This book was written very well! It stands out compared to other books. There were no chapters, no commas, and included words I couldn't find in my dictionary. In some way that is an agent that implies that there are no breaks, not in the book, and nor in the story.

In November the adaption of this book was released in theaters in the US. In the trailer I can se that John Hillcoat has interpreted the book like it was a natural disaster, which I do not like. In the book you stand freely to make up your mind about what happened, but not in the movie. Anyways, I am looking forward to watching this movie! Hopefully we will be able to watch it with the class.

Here is a link to the trailer of the movie.

American Republicans

Today in class we watched a documentary about republicans in the southern states in the US . It was made during John McCain's campaign and the election in 2009. We were shocked over how upset people can be when their favorite candidate don't win. Rednecks were crying in front of the camera when President Obama won the election. Old men explained how they only saw the number 666 when they saw Obama, and how they thought he is a terrorist. Someone even compared him to Hitler, and how America was going down now that Obama is president. They truly believed that he would do the exactly same thing as Hitler did. I can not understand how people can claim something like that. They just appear to be really stupid people without any knowledge about our world history!

Senior Project

In my English class we are now starting our senior project. On Tuesday we had to decide on our project. Mrs. Michaelsen told me that it would be smart to chose a current topic, so I chose to write about the climate. I will compare how America and Norway as a country, work to decrease the polluting gasses and other ways to prevent our planet to get in big problems later. I will focus on two agencies, Environment Protection Agency and Miljøvernforbundet, which are agencies working for a better environment in each of the countries. I think the environment is a very important to take care of, so that will make the project interesting for me to write.

American Health System

The American health system is a new form that will try to not "squeeze" the people. The way it is now, both the doctors and the insurance companies are trying to get the most money out of the people. The American Government think that the insurance companies have most of the blame. My information tells me that the changes will be mostly on the insurance companies, universal coverage, no restriction, lower costs, and exchanges, will be the main changes.