I'm back!

Hello, folks! I just wanted to say that I'll be back working on my blog quite soon. I've been too busy working on our book project that I didn't have time to update my blog. 

But now we are completely finished with our book and we hope that we will sell many copies of it. It will be available in standard paper version as well as an eBook version. We don't know what the price will be yet, but I'm sure that we can find a fair one. It will not be expensive, in other words.

The book provides you with information on how you can improve your learning at school by using different websites and learning tools. You can also learn how you can improve your skills with technical devices by reading our book. I recommend to reading the book in order to get to know all this interesting stuff and how you can become a true professional when it comes to modern technology such as tablets and smartphones. Hope you’ll stay tuned! :)

Last week we started to write a book in during our English class.

English class week 2

Book Choise 

Our task today was to choose one of seven different books and read them until the end of the semester. The books we could choose about are The Hunger Games by Susan Collins, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Twice Toward Justice by Claudette Colvin, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  

My choice is The Hunger Games because I have heard the book is amazingly fun to read. There’s also a movie based on the book, and as you already may know, people often make movies based on good books, not the bad ones. 

Tasks about WWII at school

Today at school we got an opportunity to choose one of two tasks about WWII, and I chose the task about why the story behind why Norway has presented a large Norwegian tree each winter for over 60 years as a token of friendship and gratitude for Britain’s assistance during World War II.

The reason why Norway give the UK a Norwegian Christmas tree every year as a token of friendship, is because of the help which Britain provided for Norway during the WWII.
The Norwegian king migrated to Great Britain because it was the nearest safe country to Norway at that time. As you allready may know, the Germans failed to capture Great Britan, which is why UK remained independent and quite safe. 

A more detailed reason of why he moved is because of the Hitler's plan to capture Norwegian Royal family and the Norwegian government so that he could take over Norway and include. A German ship called Blücher and its crew were ment to accomplish this mission. But luckily enough, the Norwegians on "Oscarsborg", a Norwegian fortress with cannon and torpedo batteries, managed to sink Blücher, allowing the Royal family and the government to escape just in time before the Germans would manage to imprison them.

Another reason why a Norwegian Christmas tree is to be seen on Trafalgar Square, is perhaps less familiar than the one above.  Since the Germans lost "The Battle of Britain", UK remained an independent state, and also one of the safest in Europe when it comes to military training. Norwegian and Canadian soldiers, along with some other, were trained in Great Britain during the WWII.  

Source: I got this story from my history teacher in 9th grade. He didn't say this is the reason why we give a tree to UK for Christmas, he told only the part where the Norwegian sodiers got trained in the UK and the story about the Norwegian king migrating to Great Britain.   

This year I would like to nominate the following student blog in category best student blog: 
Julia's blog: http://juliazofiaa.blogspot.no/

I would also like to nominate a blog in the category best teacher blog: 
http://annmic.wordpress.com/ - My English teacher's blog

Library/ Librarian blog: 
http://metaingrid.blogspot.no/ - School librarian's blog in Norwegian

Alaska natives

Americans were not the first people to set foot on Alaskan soil, neither were the Russians.
The first people to ever settle in Alaska were Alaska’s indigenous people who settled there for more than thousand years ago. Many different tribes and cultures were established there at that time, and in the 19^th century Americans and Europeans began trading with native people in Alaska. They traded food and clothes which the habitants have developed to protect themselves against the harsh climate in Alaska. Whale meat is an example of food that Alaskans traded with Americans and Europeans, but also with Russians and British later on.
Well, since there are quite a lot native Alaskan cultures and tribes out there, I suggest you to go to Wikipedia or some other site and find these tribes there. I can however tell you something about the Athabascan tribe.

There are many native Alaskan cultures today, where each culture contain one or more tribes.

The Athabascan or Athabaskan tribe is one of the largest in North America because a very large number of the Atabascan people live in Canada and Alaska, while the minority lives near the Mexican border and in USA’s west-coast. Athabascan is actually a language family which is spoken by the Athabascan tribe. It is divided in three mains groups: Northern Athabascan, Pacific Coast Athabascan and Southern Athabascan. These three language groups are also divided into many languages. Northern Athabascan is consists of 31 languages, Pacific Coast Athabascan consists of seven other languages, and the Southern Athabascan language group is divided into six languages. All these languages are not as similar as you may think. They can be compared to each other like the Indo-European languages which we have on planet Earth today.

Well, I hope this text helped you guys a little bit even though it isn’t that much information in it. As I mentioned before I found all the information I needed on Wikipedia, so if you guys find any mistakes or of you know more about Alaska natives, feel free to post a comment. J

Here are the links that I’ve used and that you can use if you want to know more about the Athabascan tribe or Alaska’s indigenous people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabascan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Natives

Group work - Presidential Election in the USA

Today is the president election day in the USA. This is an important day, not only in The US but also for the rest of the world. Because America is such a big and important country with a lot of power will the result influence all of us. Today the republican Mitt Romney and democrat Barrack Obama are fighting for the throne. Many people are sure that Barrack Obama is the one who will win the election this year too, as he did in 2008. Even though Mitt Romney is getting more and more votes.

According to Voting and Registration Data - US Census 2008, the United States of America voter turnout was 58%. To compare with other countries, in Norway 76% of the people voted.  The best thing would be if 100% voted and used their right to vote. The politicians also use a lot of money during their campaign. Obama spent 852.9 m $ and Romney spent $752.3 million  on the election this year to get peoples votes.

Obama and Romney have quite different opinions. Obama wants girls to have abortion rights, he thinks it should be allowed to abort and girls should get the morning after pill on prescription if they want to. Romney used to support abortion, but is now against them. Furthermore Obama also supports gay marriage. In USA today gay marriage is only legal in some states, if Obama wins he will make a difference so that gay marriage is allowed all over the country. Romney is against gay marriage, as a Mormon he don’t think it’s right to let people of the same sex get married.

When it comes to taxes Obama wants everyone who can afford it and earns a lot of money to pay more tax so that the ones who are struggling can pay less. Obama wants wealthy people to pay at least 30% of their income while Romney wants to drop all the tax rates. He wants to lower the taxes.

They both want to improve the education system in America and Obama says that he wants the American schools to be the best. They also agree to a lot of things when it comes to decisions about war, the military and they both want to get more people jobs. Romney says that if he gets elected as president he will get 12million new jobs out on the marked.

Barrack Obama’s plans:

If Barrack Obama gets elected for president, his first plan is to help people who were hit by the storm Sandy to recover form it economically. This wouldn’t be a big problem, he says, because USA is a county that gets back on its feet very quickly after a natural disaster.

Obama has a long- term economic plan that involves investment in education, small businesses, clean energy and lower taxes especially for companies that brings jobs back to United States of America.

He wants to cut taxes by 3 600 USD for the typical American middle class family, allowing them to get a paying of 50 00 USD per year. Obama’s long- term economic plan also involves that USA has to use more of its own energy sources rather than buying energy from other countries. This means utilizing the American made energy to its maximum while the climate doesn’t get affected.

When President Obama was in charge, America has experienced 32 straight months of job growth, 5.4 million more private sector jobs, and nearly 479 000 manufacturing jobs since the year 2010. This is a clear sign that Barrack Obama will make a good US President.

President Obama was the one who ended the war in Iraq and returned US troops home from Afghanistan. Now his plan is to use half the savings from the war to pay back some of the debt and to invest in new building projects in the US. Another plan is to help young and hardworking immigrants who were brought here as children to get better healthcare and better paying, as well as less hard work.

Mitt Romney’s plans:

Mitt Romney’s plans when it comes to economy are quite similar to Obama’s plans. Mitt Romney also wants to lower the taxes, for instance. He wants to make a smaller, a simpler and a smarter government by cutting the taxes for the typical middle class families in USA and increasing the taxes for the rich people in the country.

However, Mitt Romney’s plans don’t involve withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan. His further plans are unknown.

Another negative thing about Romney as US president is that he refused to help immigrants who came to USA as children. 

Well, I don’t think I have to say more about Romney’s plans because I’m 100% democrat. I really hope that Obama wins the election even though I don’t live in the USA. I think he made a very good progress the last four years and that he would make a great American President.

We think everyone is entitled of their own opinion and who they support when it comes to the election. Obama is our favorite candidate and we hope to see him win and become the president of The United States once again.

Links where we got the information from: 

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance

http://www.whoromneyis.com/PoliticallyRelated/Obama/StandsForObama.html

http://www.mittromney.com/jobs

http://www.barackobama.com/plans/

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/opinion/politics/2012/11/05/1682773/

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/opinion/politics/2012/11/05/1682775/

NOTE: This post is NOT only made by me, but also two other girls in my class. This means that 33,3% of the credit goes to me and the other 66,6% goes to them.