The United States Constitution..

In class today a women from the United States came to tell us about the United States Constitution. She moved to Norway recently, with her husband and her two sons, and now she travels around in Norway to teach the students about the Constitution in the US. She told us that every year 1 000 000 people from all over the world come to see the original document of the constitution. People often get surprised that the document only consists of 4 pages. It is divided into 4 articles, and it tells us about the structure of their federal government, the relationship between the federal government and the states, and how to change the constitution. Further on we discussed why the government exists, and why it's such a big and important part of the American society, and we agreed on the following points:
· The government controls the economy and the taxes.
· The people need to have rules and laws to follow.
· The government participates in making a balance in the society and between the different states.
 
The United States constitution starts with the following sentence: We, the people of the United States in order to form a perfect union. Further on it says something about their assignment that consists of establishing justice, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense and secure the blessing of liberty of themselves.
 
It was very interesting to learn about the constitution, because it tells us a lot about the US society in general. The women who came to hold this presentation was very engaging, and made most of the class participating in different discussions.

The Winner Takes All - Elections in Britain

Today we learned about the political system in Britain, and one of the topics we read about in our book was called ”the winner takes all”. Counting the votes in Britain are still done by hand, and while people are counting these votes, the candidates for the election are waiting in another room. This is some very nervous hours, because the system of representation in the UK is the “first-past-the-post” This means that only one candidate is elected, and that is the candidate with the most votes. If there are four candidates, one vote can decide who gets elected to parliament. The other candidates can go home and get on with their normal lives. This also mean that the people who have voted for one of the other candidates but the person that wins, have, in a sense, wasted their vote. Is this unfair? Many people think so, because of this system makes it very hard for middle-sized parties to have a voice in their country.

"Lions for Lambs"

Two weeks ago we saw a film called ”Lions for Lambs”, witch is a 2007 American drama film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. Two determined students at a West Coast University, Arian and Ernest, follows the inspiration of their idealistic professor, Dr. Malley, and attempt to do something important with their lives. The two of them make the decision to join the war in Afghanistan. Now, as Arian and Ernest are fighting for survival in the field, Dr. Malley attempts to reach a privileged but disaffected student, who is the very opposite of Arian and Ernest, his name is Todd. While Dr. Malley chats with Todd, a mission that Arian and Ernest is a part of goes terribly wrong. The two boys ends up in enemy territory, and the movie ends with both of them getting murdered by the enemy, Taliban. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. Senator Jasper Irving, is about to give a bombshell story to a TV journalist that may affect Arian and Ernest's fates. As arguments, memories and bullets fly, the three stories binds more tightly together, revealing how each of these Americans can have a big impact on each other and the world.

Professor Malley wants Todd to get involved, and I believe that he means that Todd needs to wake up, and do something with his life. He is a very talented boy, and Dr. Malley tries to make him understand that he has to use his talents. Todd is very critical towards how the political system works in America, but at the same time he does not want to get involved and do something about it. When Dr. Malley says to Todd that he needs to get more involved, it almost seems like he wants him to join the war, but that’s not what he means. I believe he wants Todd to get involved and, for example by joining a political organization, and getting the opportunity to make a difference in the society.

"Bill Clinton is involved in the Monica Lewinsky scandal"

Today in class we got one assignment each to write about in our blog, my task was; Bill Clinton is involved in Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Monica Lewinsky is an American woman who admitted to have an “improper relationship” with president Clinton when she worked at the White House in the periode from 1995-1996. The affair became known as the Lewinsky scandal.

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors moved Lewinsky from the White House to the Pentagon because they felt she was spending too much time around president Bill Clinton. Lewinsky confided in a co-worker named Linda Tripp about her relationship with the President. In 1997, Tripp began secretly recording their telephone conversations regarding the affair with Clinton. In January 1998 Tripp gave the tapes to the Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and these tapes made him to investegate the case further. Noteworthy for its revelation of Tripp's motivations was her reporting of their conversations to the literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. Tripp also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their affair, and not to dry clean what would later be infamously known as "the blue dress."

Clinton denied having had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, and on January 26, 1998 he said the “famous” sentance “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”, in a conference at the White House. Clinton also said, "there is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship"which he defended as truthful on August 17, 1998, but under pressure from Starr, who, as Clinton learned, had obtained from Lewinsky a blue dress with Clinton's semen on it. Clinton admitted that he lied to the American people and that he had inappropriate intimate contact with Lewinsky. Clinton claimed that because certain acts were performed on him, not by him, he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the Starr Commission, however, told that Clinton's claim of being totally passive was a lie.

Both Clinton and Lewinsky were called before a grand jury where Clinton testified via closed-circuit television ans Lewinsky in person. Given an opportunity to say some final words on the matter, Lewinsky told the jury, "I hate Linda Tripp."

The Nobel peace price for 2009 is rewarded to: Barack Obama!

Today in class we wrote a note to the president of the United States, Barack Obama. He is soon to visit Norway due to his reception of the Nobel peace prize. Here is me and Karoline's greeting.

Dear Mr. President.
Your position in the United States comes with a lot of money. We believe that you have done the right thing by donating the peace prize money to charity. We hope that you choose a charity fund that is associated with working for peace since the prize was given to you due to your actions toward gaining peace between the United States and the middle east.


We truly hope that you will take a visit to our high school, Sandvika VGS, on your trip to Norway for receiving the Nobel peace prize. The reason you should visit us, is because our school is one of the leading IT school in Norway. We have recently been chosen by Microsoft as one of 30 Pathfinder schools in the world. There are many great and interesting students at our school that has involved themselves in your election. The students here at Sandvika are eager to learn more about how the political system works in the United States.


Best regards, Camilla and Karoline

Downhill skiing in Norway :)

Downhill skiing is a popular sport in Norway, that most likely is as wildspread as it is because of the cold climate and the snowy winters. In the winter many Norwegian families travel to the mountains for the holidays to ski. We have some of the worlds best downhill skiers, like Kjetil Andre Aamot and Aksel Lund Svindal.

Many Norwegians also does snowboarding, ski jumping, telemark, twintip and cross-country skiing, but regular downhill skiing is one of our most wildspread sports. I also thing that downhill skiing is one of our funniest sports, and it offers a lot excitement and thrills. Skiing techniques are difficult to master, and many places in Norway offers ski-schools that teach you everything from the basics of turning and stopping safely to more advanced carving, racing and newer freestyle techniques.

The Day The Earth Stood Still!!

In class we saw a film called 9/11, that as you may understand is about the terrible day two plains crashed into the twin towers in New York. The movie was meant for making a documentary about the firemen at a fire station near the twin towers, and the brothers that made it began filming a long time before the terrible incident. The film particularly circles around one man who is new at the station, and have to go through many tests to learn how he should work as a fireman. In the beginning he complains that he never gets to experience a fire.
Almost 30 minutes into the documentary we reach the morning of September 11th. Some of the firemen go out to check a leaky gas main. One of the guys are filming the work when the first plain crashes into one of the twin towers. Further on the movie shows almost everything that happens from the second the men are driving to the towers to check on what happened. One of the men who was inside the building films everything, and his way we get to see how the firemen react on everything that happens, and what they do to help the people inside the building. You can hear people hitting the roof when they through themselves out of the building to take their own lives instead of dying inside the towers. We get to see how the firemen escape the building when it collapse, and how it all looked afterwards. It is a touching movie, because you get to see how all these innocent people loose their family and friends inside and outside the towers. You can see the fear in their eyes, and how they desperately tries to find their beloved once in the chaos.

The US is the most powerful country in the world, and to me it seems like they want the rest of the world to have the impression that they are impossible to destroy. Therefore I believe they have a lot of pride and dignity. When the attack on the twin towers happened on September 11th, 2001, the citizens in the United States felt vulnerable, maybe for the first time. Most Americans looked at this terror attack as an attack that was meant for the whole American nation, and that the thought behind it was to make fear among the people, and to hurt as many as possible. The group that stood behind the attack was the terrorist group Al Qaida. The attack led to what we call the war on terror, led by George W. Bush, that was the president of the US at the time it happened. He decided to go to war against Afghanistan, where Al Qaida had it’s head quarter. Later he, with most Americans behind him, decided to attack Iraq. The reason he did these things was because he wanned to get one step closer to fight against terror. Many people also think that many Americans supported his choice to go to war because of the thirst for revenge after 9/11.

Maybe this terror attack on the US was meant to make a mark in the “perfect” history of America, or maybe Al Qaida wanned America to loose some of their power in the world. Either way most people in the world agree that this was an extreme way of showing what they where capable of. The whole world froze for some minuets, maybe even hours, when they saw what had happened in New York that day. Somehow it affected almost every country in the world, and Al Qaida got what I think they was looking for, attention and a frightened world. It is the most comprehensive terror attack in the US history, both in material damages as much as the loose of innocent lives.

Many people all over the world also reacted on how Bush handled the situation after the attack. He managed to take the lives of more civilian people in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people in Europe therefore ask themselves how much better Bush and his supporters was than Al Qaida. Countries all over Europe took distance from George bush and his decisions and reactions after the terrible incident in New Yourk September 11th.

To our Korean friends, a little post about the weather in Norway :)

Here is a little post about the weather in our country, Norway. As you may know, Norway is a country placed far north, and this affects our climat and weather. In addition to your country, Norway is a cold country. On a normal summer day, the temperature normally reaches 20-30 degrees, and in the winter it can be as cold as -20 degrees. This year, we had some really hot summer days though, one day the temperature actually reached 37 degrees Celsius.
In the summer, rain is a very common sight, especially considering the global warming that is going on nowadays. In the wintertime, snow is a normal sight for us. I love the beautiful, white winter in Norway, maybe because I love skiing and traveling to the mountains. The winter months are December, January and February. Most likely we have a lot of snow in February. And then the sun will start melting the snow in March.


In the middle of these two beautiful seasons, we have what we call the waiting seasons, autumn and spring. These are the most boring months, waiting for the snowy winter or the sunny summer is not fun at all. In the autumn it starts to get colder, with a lot of rain, and in the spring the snow starts melting and it’s wet all over Norway. I added a picture that shows a typical Norwegian winter, and how beautiful our country is.

Slavery, Expansion and the Civil War + the impact of the civil war

Today we had to work in groups of four. We had to read three pages in our English book about the sivil war and slavery in America at the time. After reading theese pages we wrote a summery of the text, and here it is:

Slavery

There was another group of people that suffered a terrible fate theese years, the slave that was kidnapped from Africa and transported to North America. Slavery was part of the Amercian society, but slavery gradually died out in the Noth because of growing trade, industry and selv-sufficiency in agriculture. The slavery grew in the south because of the devolpment of huge cotton and tobacco plantations, and the south and north developed in different diractions. However, they were both expanding west-wards, and this led to an increasing conflict between them.

Expansion and Civil War

The basic issue between the North and the South was which part of the country would control the new lands opening up in the west. The result was compromises with limited slavery to territories in 1850. In 1854, it was decided by law that slavery was allowed to expand westward. To keep this from happening, a new political party was formed; the Republican Party. Republican Abraham Lincoln fought for the slaves rights, and he became President in 1861.

When Abraham Lincoln became American president, civil war broke out between North and South. Eleven Southern states left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The North was the strongest part with a population of twenty two million (to the South's five and a half million) and most of the industry and railroads. The South's, on the other hand, fought next to home and they had better generals.

The civil war lasted for four long years. It ended in 1865 with victory won by the North. 600 000 Americans had lost their lives in the war.

The Impact of the civil war:

The South were occupied by Northern troops for a time, and efforts were made to provide blacks with skills, give them their civil rights, and protect them from their former owners. But after a time, the North grew tired of "babysitting" the South, so they pulled their troops out, and Southern states regained self-government. The southerns gradually took away the civil rights of the blacks and separated the races. It would take almost a hundred years for blacks to regain their legal and political rights.

The war ruined the South economiclly, politically and culturally. Even though it regained some of its former strength, it remained poor in relation to the rest of the country for the next century. While the North and West experienced a rapid industrial development, the South turned inwards. It remained an agricultural economy

The battle of Britain and the blitz

A few weeks ago we learned about the WW1 and Britain's role in the war. In groups of four we were to make a presentation to show for the rest of the class about the Battle of Britain. I wanned to post what I talked about in my blog, and that was why the battle of Britain happened, and how:

To invade Britain Hitler had to wipe out the Royal Air Force, which would otherwise attack German vessels as they crossed the Channel. Things looked bad for the RAF: they had 650 fighter aircraft, while the Germans had 1,300. Between July and September 1940 there was dogfight after dogfight , and the British planes proved superior to the Germans. The royal air force suffered heavy losses, but the Germans lost twice as many men and aircraft. This was the first major battle of the war the German force lost.

Maria, another girl on my group, talked about the Blitz:

After the lost of the battle of Britain, Hitler was very frustrated and in August 1940 he sent German bombers to attack the big cities in England. Hitler believed that by targeting civilians he could force the British to surrender. Hitler started his daily bombing campaign, but after just a few weeks he started the bombing raids at night to increase the “fear factor” and also make people weaker and not letting them sleep at night. In May 1941 the Blitz was finally over when Hitler moved his air force east to the Soviet Union. 43 000 civilians had been killed, and thousands of others had become homeless.The word “Blitz” came from the German word Blitzkrieg or “lightning war” in English.

Queen Elizabeth 1

The homework for today was to write a summary about the first settlement to Queen Elizabeth 1:

The very first Britons were hunters and gatherers who left no written records. We know of the earliest Celtic inhabitants through archeology and the written records of the first literate people to settle in Britain, the Romans. Britain was a Roman province for several hundred years, until 401 AD. By the 6th century England's present territory was divided into a patchwork of small kingdoms with a Celtic rim to the west and north, and the time that came after this was affected by, among other things, Vikings that invaded the coast. The turning point came in 866, when the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred of Wessex defeated a great Viking army. The Anglo-Saxon kings managed to unite all of England by 905.

Between the 9th century and the 1500 a lot of historical things happened, but I will short it down to two paragraphs, and jump straight to the time when Elisabeth 1 came to the throne. She was the daughter of king Edward V1, who died only fifteen years old, after two years at the throne. Her reign, the Elizabethan age, became flowering of arts and literature, this was the era of for example William Shakespeare. She was a very intelligent women, she maintained peace at home and strength abroad, but one fight she could not avoid was with Spain. The king of Spain found he could neither marry her, as she declined that, nor change her policies, as she ignored his threats. In 1588 he sent a fleet of 130 ships to invade England, but England defeated the Spanish Armanda. The win over Spain marked the beginning of England's great power and was the start of what would eventually become the British Empire.

The documentary about Siegfried Sassoon (sum up):

The world war 1 poets were brought up in a romantic era. They had the image of wars being fought with dignity. But things weren't like expected when the soldiers came to fight the war. Millions of young men were sent out to the trenches and died in the battlefield. The soldiers weren't prepared for the new guns and machinery that they had prepared for the WWI, plus; the war was fought on foreign ground in France.

Sigfried Sassoon wrote poems and articles in the Times that were critical against the war. He wrote that at the beginning, the war was about protecting the country, but at the end, it was about conquering and aggression.

The government put him in a mental hospital because of his opinions. The reason they chose a mental hospital instead of a jail was that they simply couldn't lock up a well known Marshall from the war in jail for no specific reason. That would have caused massive riots and antagonism among the people.

Does it matter?

DOES it matter?--losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.



1.Losing your legs, losing your sight and losing your dreams is the three effects of the war on a soldier this poem touch on.

2.The poem reflects on the attitude that great wars were fought by working-class men on both sides and that the people they were fighting for, were often more the enemy than the people they were fighting against. This is shown in the repeating sentence: “people will always be kind” as long as you fought for you country. The poem says that the people who didn't fight in the war themselves goes on living their lives, while the soldiers have lost big parts of their lives in the war, like their dreams, legs or their sight.

3.Our theory on why this poem has become so popular now is: it was a big honer to fight in a war for your country before, and most young boys had a dream about becoming a soldier, but now more people understand what it contains to be a soldier in a real war, and how it changes a lot of people to face death and loose so much of their life as brutal as in a war.

About me..

My name is Camilla, I live in Norway and I am a student at Sandvika high school. One of the subjects I chose to have this year was English social studies. Last year I studied a subject called international Enligsh, where we learnd about English as a multicultural language. This year we will learn more about British and American history. All of the students in my class got the assignment to make a blog, where we can post our homework and other things related to this subject.

My hometown in Norway is Lommedalen, in Bærum. Bærum is about 30 minutes from Oslo, the capital of Norway. Lommedalen is a small place, with a lot of great nature and nice people. More and more people have moved there the last years, it has become a very popular place to live. I have to take the bus for about half an hour every day to get to school, but that's OK because almost all of my friends live nearby or in Lommedalen as well.