Blogg for Engelsk på skolen!!1!

Hello first-graders!

2009-05-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

I am now about to graduate from Sandvika VGS and I must say I have had 3 very good years. You guys should be happy that you will be attending this school for several reasons. What I like best with this school are the teachers and the people, there are so many interesting and nice people. The first 2-3 weeks are a little special because everything is so new and different, and you may feel lonely and stuff, but don’t worry; you will find friends in no time. The one thing that you will find really different from other schools is the freedom that you have. You are very independent during the classes, and most of the work is being done on your own computer. In other words: feel free to use facebook, msn and play games, but you SHOULD pay attention if the teacher is talking. I remember playing games all the time in the beginning, and my grades turned out to be pretty bad. I decided to study abroad for a year, and therefore I was a student at Mankato High School instead of Sandvika last year. If you read this letter you HAVE TO grab that opportunity. Without a doubt the most fun year of my life, you learn so much. Anyways, I enjoyed my 3^rd year more than my 1^st year at this school. The main reason is that you can choose your own classes and you don’t need Spanish, German and French, which is awesome. Another cool thing about the 3^rd year is of course the fact that we are “RUSS”. You should also try not to eat at McDonalds every single day.

You should be very happy that you are a part of Sandvika VGS, it’s a great school with a good environment and the teachers and students get along very well. Enjoy your time here, I sure did!

The Nothing-to-do Generation

2009-04-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

I did know that the teen-situation in England has been a problem for a long time, what I didn’t know, is how bad it really is. I’ve been to England about 5 times. Such places as Manchester, Birmingham and of course; London. I did recognize the youth and how they behaved, but reading this article grosses me out. I get a feeling that the teenagers in England doesn’t care about their families, and think they are cool when they do drugs and stuff. This may be how it is in other countries as well, but if we take a look at the statistics we observe some pretty scary numbers. It says that 38% of British 15-year-olds had tried cannabis. 15 years of age, that’s a shame. Norwegians have a different relationship to these kinds of drugs, illegal drugs.
I believe we need to look at the reasons for why the British teenagers are so brutal. Not only are they doing drugs, but their behavior is unacceptable and rude. Elderly people are frightened just by taking a walk. A lot of British youngsters live with their mothers, and it is hard for them to focus on the children’s school activity and spare time, especially if the mom has more than one son or daughter. Since they are not involved in any after-school activities they simply “got nothing to do”, and this is where it all begins. They can’t come up with anything to do, and therefore they start being sketchy as the time goes on.
Without knowing for sure I would guess that the government is probably spending a lot of money trying to fix this. It IS a huge problem that affects the future generation as much as the youth today, and I think everybody agrees with me when I say: Teenagers in England need to change. We can only hope that they fix the situation themselves and start being more responsible.

DONE

2009-04-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

I am finally done with my senior project! I worked with it for 3 hours last night, and at least 8 hours today, no joke! I am soooo tired now, so I'm going to bed, I am pretty satisfied by the way it turned out, and i am SO glad im done!

Easter and Homework

2009-04-13T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hey!

The 10 day long vacation has been wonderful. I have been skiing almost every day, and I have been to some nice sunny places in Norway, like Lillehammer and Lom. I have also worked quite a bit on my “russebuss” because it’s far from done yet, and the time is running away from us.

Yesterday I did some thinking about what I was going to write about for my senior project (yes I know I am late) and I came up with a couple of interesting topics. At first I wanted to write about King Henry VIII, but I found out he wasn’t as interesting to write about as Martin Luther King, Jr. So, I will write a text about the famous civil rights fighter. I think there is a lot to write about, and he has done some important things for the black race in the US.

Challenge

2009-03-31T01:37:00.000-07:00

What difference has blogging made to your life at school and home e.g. how has it changed how you learn, the challenges of blogging and how teachers might make the process easier?

I think blogging makes the school day more fun. I say this based on several reasons. First of all I would say that blogging is a good way to learn about new technology and opportunities that are easily accessible on the World Wide Web. I am glad that our teacher started this trend in class, because it really makes me more interested to do assignments now that I have my own place to put my own documents. It is also a very neat setup, so that you can find all you need from previous works without struggling. It hasn’t really affected my life very much, but as I mentioned; the fun of it knocks out different teaching-methods easily. I think the blogging makes it easier for our teacher as well, because she’s got all our blog-addresses and she can comment on our work right there. I usually blog at school, and not that much at home, I think I would blog way more if I was traveling or something, so that I could keep my friends updated.

To sum up: I believe the blogging part of this class makes it easier and more fun to both the students and the teachers.

Link to challenge here:

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/2009/03/27/the-student-blogging-challenge-celebration/#comment-3646

Speech by David Cameron

2009-03-31T00:51:00.000-07:00

David cameron is talking about how the union involving Scotland and England have new good ideas for how the future will be. There are very few people there, and just a couple of hundred people have seen his speech on youtube, so I think he sucks. His speech is long and boring to listen to for me, because I’m not that interested in British politics, but his main point is not to separate from England. David Cameron gives examples and reasons why Scotland and England should maintain a union; he also explains the benefits of the union.

Some of Cameron’s main arguments are how much the little offshore nation has accomplished since the early days, the power the countries have standing together, and a richer economy together, great health service. He is not easy on the criticism to the English government, and his main point in the speech is: “As a union, we have to stand strong together”.

Here is a random speech i found on youtube, it was posted 3 days ago, and its quite interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYhputybNI

Northern Ireland

2009-03-24T03:04:00.001-07:00

Cecilie had a presentation for us today. She talked about Northern Ireland, and a little bit of the conflict that's going on over there. She started off with giving us a brief explanation of how the conflict started and what the big discussion is. As far as I remember she said something like this:

The conflict in Northern Ireland involves the IRA(Irish Republican Army) and the British. It started in 1923, when the British invaded Northern Ireland because they meant that Ireland should be a part of Great Britain. The IRA’s original goal when this happened was to get all of the British establishments out of Ireland and get up an independent Irish government. This conflict is still very much alive, and it affects the Irish government in a pretty serious way.

She also told us about Northern Ireland in general, I personally think it sounded like a pretty interesting country. The country is a part of the UK and is located in the north east. They have a devolved government within the UK. What that means is that

the statutory granting of powers from the central government of a state to government at a sub national level, such as a regional, local, or state level. It differs from federalism in that the powers devolved may be temporary and ultimately reside in central government

Me!

2009-03-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

This is me people :)

A respond to the challenge from Carina Jurs

The Falkland War

2009-02-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

1. European settlers and explorers were the people who lived on the Falkland Islands. They were not inhabited before the European nations started their colonization.
2. It was important for the UK to maintain control over the Islands because they wanted to protect their territory and not let Argentina reoccupy the islands after they had already managed to take control. Nationalism and patriotism were key factors as well. They already had British settlers on the islands which they wanted to “protect” and keep the islands under British rule.
3. Because it’s located right next to their country, and they did not want the British people that close to them.
4. General Menéndez ignoring orders from Buenos Aires to gather all the remaining forces and go into a suicidal counter-attack, surrendered unconditionally to Major General Moore, bringing the conflict to an end.
5. About 800 people died in the war
6. The Falklands campaign was considered a great victory for the United Kingdom. The Tory government of Margaret Thatcher was reelected the following year by a landslide. Even though the national economy was by then starting to recover from the recession, this change in the public opinion became known as the Falklands factor.

Welcome to the best place in the entire world.

2009-01-27T02:18:00.000-08:00

Hello my fellow bloggers, I am going to tell you about the place I live. I live in eastern norway in a "village" known as Pocket Valley. This is a place where everybody knows everybody, kind of like the state Minnesota in the US. We have an absolutely EXTREME ski-resort with a huge terrain park. You should also check out rema 1000 which is located in the very center of this neat little village. We don't have mountain dew in our village, which isn't pimp. But we do have solo! Here are some things you should check out if you ever come to Norway:

1. Our fjords

2. Our girls

3. Our boys

4. Our mountains

5. And my friend Philip

Into the Wild

2009-01-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

The book ”into the wild” is about a young man named McCandless who decides to do something really weird with his life. Right after he graduates from college he leaves for Alaska to walk around in the wild, with nothing with him at all. He burned his wallet and gave away lots of money to charity before he left for his adventure. His reason for this journey is that he wanted to die, but not a normal boring death. He left his mom, dad and sister at home, and they never heard from him after he left. The book describes how McCandles struggles for over 3 months in the tough Alaskan wilderness. He eats berries to stay alive, but he ends up dying because he eats some poisonous potato roots. Jon Krakauer is a very good writer, and he got my attention for most of the time, I thought the book was cool but not too exciting; it should have had some more interesting twists and surprises. I would recommend this book to people who likes a story that could have happened in any person’s life, and that’s what is so good about this book.

15 min presentation not prepared!

2008-12-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

Today in my Norwegian class, we were supposed to hold a pretty long presentation about a chosen topic. We did this in groups of 3 or more, and my group held a 15 minute long presentation about the famous author: Roald Dahl. It was me, Philip and Caspar. We agreed late last night that we were going to talk about this guy, instead of Jostein Gaarder, and none of us regret it now. We figured out pretty quick that he was much more fun to read about, and that his books are quite interesting and special. Our teacher videotaped us while we had our presentation, probably so he could evaluate us more fairly, and see how we connected to both him and the audience. I thought it was pretty fun, much because we didn’t have any notes or papers in front of us that we could look at; we basically improvised and carried on talking when one of us stopped. The main topic for this presentation was: Norwegian literature after the war. Some people were talking about cartoons, others politicians and so on. At the end of the hour, Ansdreas Veiersted who is our teacher, made a short quiz for us, the quiz was about literature of course, but it was pretty cool, and a nice way to end the first semester of school for that class. Philip, Caspar and me didn’t do very well on it, but we didn’t really care that much. I have been sick for about 4 days now, so my voice is really messed up, and my nose is driving me crazy. I don’t really feel like going to school because of this, but I have to because of my attendance. I just hope I will get better before I leave for the US.

The Valley of Elah

2008-10-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

This movie shows how the war can change a young soldier, and his family’s life. It gives us a view of what can happen when a body is found chopped up into several pieces, and the police don't have a lot of clues, or evidence. This movie is about a soldier that was brutally murdered and the killer is on the loose, and how his family deals with it. Valley of Elah shows us how a life of an American soldier varies from when he’s serving, after he served and from the family’s point of view, the father in particular. We can easily see that his son changed pretty quickly when he went to Iraq to try to help establishing a democracy there. The short video clips the father gets makes him think that it was something weird in this case, and he was right. The friendship between the soldiers is very strong, but it includes drugs, alcohol and some messed up minds.