Wish of the Day

I wish I could read people's minds

I wish I could fly

I wish I were able to speak every language of the world

I wish I could do magic

But right now, I just wish I had a private jet which could take me wherever I would like.
...The Maldives would be nice.

Living in Norway in this season of the year is just a bit depressing... The non-stop grey, cold and wet weather makes you want to escape to somewhere warm and exotic. Well, my mind will probably be the only thing escaping to another place now. Unfortunately.

Sweet Monday

On a regular Monday when probably most of you drag yourselves out of bed at 6 o'clock to be at a lesson two hours later, I am still having sweet dreams in my bed. Fair isn't it? On Mondays I don't start school until 12, and lucky as I am, I allow myself to sleep four extra hours! Oh, got to love Mondays! This entry is the first of seven entries I will write this week. This is task number 2; Blog for a week. Stay tuned!

Sudden End to Maiden Voyage - Hundreds Died

April 14th, 1912.
The British passenger ship "Titanic" went on its first trip on April 14th. The ship owned by the White Star Line got an unexpected and sudden end to its maiden voyage.

The ship Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic - caused by the water flooded through the bow, and 2.5 hours later the ship broke into two pieces, and sank. Titanic was the biggest and most luxurious ship that had ever been built. It was 269 meters long and had a weight of 53,000 tonnes. Generally, it was believed that the ship was unsinkable. The ship was travelling at 21 knots when the iceberg was discovered by the captain. According to him, it was already too late to stop at that time.

Injuries and deaths
The total amount of people on board, included both passengers and crew, were 2200. There were only lifeboats for half of them. A British passenger liner called "The Carpathia" reached the accident 4 o'clock in the morning on April 15th, just a couple of hours the ship had sunk. The liner managed to rescue 705 people, most consisting of children and women. However, the remaining number of people on board fell in the water and froze to death. The temperature in the water was -2 °C.

1.517 people died in the disaster of Titanic.

Gcina Mhlophe

Nokugcina Elsie Mhlophe was born in 1959 in Hammarsdale, South Africa. She is a woman with a lot of things going on- fighting for freedom, acting, poetry and writing are only some of her interests. In Africa, storytelling is an important traditionnal activity. Mhlophe tells her stories in four of South Africa's languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa. Through charismatic performances, keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read she does her most important work.

After meetings with legendary poets of African folklore and encouragement by others, Mhlophe began to think of story-telling as a serious career.

Gcina Mholphe has travelled around in Africa and other parts of the world to give storytelling workshops. A lot of her work has been translated into German, French, Japanese, Italian and Swahili. Currently, Mhlophe is resident in Johannesburg, and she is staying focused on making books available to poor South African rural communities. This she does by buliding libraries and fill them with locally and culturally relevant books.

Teacher Astrid; Instead of writing an interview, i chose to write a short text about her. Simply to get more flow in the laguage.

The US Embassy

Thursday October 8th a woman from California came to visit our school. She held a presentation where she spoke about the US Embassy, Barack Obama and the possibilities of studying in the USA. In this entry I will write some of the things she was telling us about.

Barack Obama is the first Afro-American, black president of the USA. The vote statistics told us that the plural of Obama’s votes came from women, blacks, youths, people with lower/no education, first time voters, and Jews. Obama has been very active so far this year. He has visited a lot of different countries, been in meetings with foreign leaders, and so on.

The key issues for 2009 US Presidential Election were economy, health care and the war in Iraq. Other issues, indeed a bit less important, were terrorism and illegeal immigration. Their budget for 2010 is at 3.6 trillion dollars.


The USA has always involved themselves in internationnal conflicts, as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recent news: The nobel committee have decided to hand over the Nobel Peace Price of 2009 to President Obama. They're giving him the price because of his visions and work for a world without nuclear weapons. There are a lot of different opinions on this action, and many people think that one should be given the peace price for the difference one actually does make in the world, and not only for one’s visions.

...

This picture caught my eyes today.

ME

My name is Karoline, and I turned 16 years in the beginning of November. I live in a town called Sarpsborg, more specific in the little place called Grålum, where I’ve lived my entire life. In difference from all the others my age I don’t listen to music ”all the time”. Therefore I don’t have any special favorite band or artist. There are so many of them, so alike each other and yet so different from each other, so I find it hard to separate good from bad. Indeed, when it comes to different types of music, I can be more specific about I like and don’t like. Rap and techno has never appealed to me in a good way, so I prefer more slow songs. I also like really old songs, probably because I rarely follow the hit lists with the popular music these days.
My favorite film is with no doubt the action thriller “Taken”. They have revealed that a sequel for the film is already in progress, so I’m looking forward to see it!
Writing or speaking about my future is something I often dislike. My future seems so far away right now, but it scares me that it actually isn’t. I haven’t at the moment decided every detail for my future. Sure I have some dreams and thoughts of it, but nothing is certain. All of a sudden they may change, and I may have other plans. I envy the ones who know exactly what they want to do, but I’ll hopefully figure it out soon. In the meantime all I intend to do is to stay in school and do my best.