Love Is Colorblind

When we think about the typical american family, we picture a family of four. Father, Mother and two kids. The mother and father is probably both working or the mother is a stay-at-home mother. The kids run around in the backyard all day long, playing with each other. Their house is also surrounded with a white-picket-fence. This is the type of family picture we all have or at least have had at one point.

In today's world, this is not necessarily the case. We can see hundreds of different types of families. Just to mention a few, we can think of two mothers or two fathers. Some might have two fathers and one mother or the other way around. In today's world, anything is possible.

Another family possibility is a mixed family.A family where mother and father have different skin colors. We can say that a mixed family is becoming more and more normal. For some families, it can be the most unnatural process in the world. The thought and idea of the couple having different skin colors can be the cause of family issues. The world is filled with humans with opinions and thoughts. Sometimes those opinions can be hurtful and cause trouble. Plenty of families struggle with the thought of a family member dating someone with another skin colors. The problems may occur because of racism or old history with painful memories.

Searching for opinions on the internet, I can only find supportive messages. That might be because it is the younger generation who is mostly on the internet and they tend to be more supportive. My opinion on the matter is the thought that love is love, no matter the skin color. I think as a human race we should look past the thoughts and ideas that we are separate just because we have different skin tones. Love is colorblind.

A Friendly School Visit

This week our students that has chosen French as their third language, have visitors from France. I do not have French since I have German, however I do have traveling life so I am some what involved with this visit. Last week me and my friend, Camilla, volunteered our self to have a welcome presentation.

We started the presentation with asking the French students what they know about Norway and Norwegians. We got some interesting answers. One of them even said Norwegians loved football but was not very good at it. She honestly nailed it with that one.

We moved on to talk about out government, prime minister and Royal Family. In the presentation, we also showed them different types of food. They were correct when they said we eat plenty of fish for dinner during the week and we also eat potato a lot.

We showed them pictures of 17th of may. Told them about usual traditions we do during that day and holidays. We explained the usual family-life in Norwegian families. About how we are closer to our parents and grandparents, instead of the whole family including cousins and aunts/uncles.

The best part of the presentation was when I talked about 17th of may. I love that day and it is important to me. I was excited to share them something I am excited about and loves. I told them about our Bunads and the children parades. One of the French teachers also asked me some questions about my Bundad. She wondered if we ever used them for more then just 17th of may.

I honestly do love the fact that we have students from another country visiting our school, I was in America summer 2015 as a exchange student and it gave me so much to learn in a different country!

Making a Wish-List

For the longest time, I have been a person who has not challenged herself enough. After my trip to America this summer, I really felt like I grew as a person and became more independent.  Several times during the summer I had to rely on myself to make decisions and complete actions. Yes, I did have my host-parents with the all summer, but they were to take care of me not babysit me. Honestly, a big part of me wanted to go on this trip to challenge myself individually. I would have to challenge myself when it came to being social with family and friends I made. I had to have complete track over myself on the trip over the ocean and the entire month I spent in America. Like I said, my host parents were not my baby-sitters during this summer.

After the summer ended and life got back to normal, I missed the feeling of being at a new place and the excitement that came with it. I decided to make a Wish-List for experiences and journeys I would like to do during my youth. For now, that list is not very long, however I always try to think of something that sounds thrilling. I often hear someone talk about an experience and think if it might be something for me.

Even though I want to go through experiences, I do not want to do them alone. There is a saying that half the experience is the people you experiences it with and I believe that a 100 percent. Several trips and moments are made by the people you are with, so going through all of these experiences on my Wish-List would have to require someone I like, trust and can have a good time with. Otherwise the experience would be a waste.

The only thing stopping me now is time, money and school. Lets hope that dreams come true.

MINORITIES

It happens often that Hispanic and Latino becomes a common name for the ethnic groups of people who lives in South-America or race. In a daily situation Americans probably do not even think about the importance of using these terms correctly. What they do not realize is the important difference between the two terms Latino and Hispanic. 

There is a significant difference between a Latino and Hispanic. Hispanic is mostly refereed to the language Spanish. If the person or the persons ancestry come from a country were they speak Spanish, it is highly likely they identify as Hispanic. While the term Latino refers to geography. Especially to Latin America that includes countries in South-America, Central America and The Caribbean. As you can see, they both cover two highly different areas. 

In the US the term Hispanic was adopted during the time Richard Nixon was leading the country. The term ''Hispanic'' is often used in states such as Florida and Texas where most of the Hispanic immigrants come to and settle down. The term itself comes from a Latin word for Spain ''Hispania'', later on the word became ''Espania''. Hispanic is also one of the fastest growing ethnic minority in the U.S to this day. It has over 37 million speakers and a growing percent of 52,9. 

While the Hispanic is mostly used along the Eastern seaboard, Latino is mainly used west of the Mississippi where it has taken over from the word ''Chicano'' which is almost a modern way of saying ''Mexico.'' The government started to use the word ''Latino'' for having a word to identify and segregate the mixed white with black and native blood. ''Latino'' is also shortened from Spanish latino americano. The term is translated to ''Latin American'' and it had the meaning to identify the people from Central and South-America and the Spanish Speaking Caribbean Islands.

As of today, the Asian population is the fastest growing minority in America, but Hispanic is right behind and is still a dominating minority. It is estimated that the Hispanic minority will grow past the Asian minority. By the time we reach 2050 it will already have surpassed. 

THE SELECTION SERIES

As a teenage girl who loves to read books about mystical creatures, broken society's and love between a girl and a vampire, I must say I was skeptical to start reading the selection series. A series that was based on drama and romance.
I was convinced that I would only read a few chapters and then put the book down, because it was too much of the good or is that not what they say? However, I was wrong. During a week, I was able to read the three books following this series, plus its first squeal book and its short novellas. All in all, that means 7 books in 5 days. Let's just say, I got hooked and did not do anything else that week..

The first book in the three-book-series, is naturally named The Selection. In the book we follow a girl named America Singer who lives in a future Illea. She was named after the old country America, which is now a monarchy country named Illea. As a way of getting Prince Maxon a chance to find his future queen, the King and Queen hosts a selection. This is also where the book gets its title.
All the girls in the fractions is allowed to enter the competition, but only thirty-five girls gets chosen. America, who only entered because her secret love, Aspen, does not want her to miss any opportunities, ends up getting chosen out to be a part of the thirty-five lucky girls. We follow the drama between America falling for Maxon while Aspen still has her heart. Her struggle is followed by several political issues in the country Illea and the peoples hate for their king and queen only grows.

The Selection is a book series based on drama where you will not be able to put the book down. While reading the book, I felt like having a heart attack most of the time. The plot twists will create feelings like never before. The series is well written and you cannot help with falling in love with the charming Price Maxon. This is a book series i deeply recommend for you to read. Even if you are a person who only likes to read books about mystical creatures, broken society's and love between a girl and a vampire *wink, wink* it will be a hit.

Studying Abroad? Maybe..

For the longest time, I have wanted to live abroad. I want to live in an English speaking country - I prefer America, just because I am fascinated with their country - and grow as a person during that time. 

One of my problems is that I have no idea on what I want to do over there. I am not person who is going to have a long education and study for years and years. The core of my problems start with me not knowing what to study. I just know that I want to study abroad, or at least live there. 

I personally have plenty of pros and cons for moving to another country. Right now, the pro list is longer then the con list, but I only see that as a positive thing. 

Now, I was in America this summer. I basically ''studied abroad'' during this summer since I went to school and learned English. However, my goal is to experience what millions of young Americans experience when they go to school. I have always wanted to do an exchange year during my 12th year but when the time came around, I was still in Norway because I did not have the money. 

Hopefully I will get to achieve my dream one day. 

I ''dunno''

Like the title says, I do not know what to write. I want to be able to sit down and write essays, articles or analyze texts for this blog because the blog is school related and that is its purpose. HOWEVER, that is not happening because #1: I have no ideas for what to write. #2: I do not have time to write and #3: I do not have motivation to write them. I am not a writer. I am more of a person who likes the practical sides of the subjects we have at school. That being said, I still do not like holding presentations and speaking in front of people because it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. There is just so much more you can do, when learning a subject that is not just theory or written tests that you study for, just to forget it later.

I have never been able to learn a subject by just reading texts or write paragraphs after paragraphs. On that note, I have to say that I am so glad that the school system are changing. We are getting to use different learning methods besides just sitting behind a desk, listening to a teacher talk for a few hours and then leave. We get to be creative and learn though actions we do. It becomes so much more memorable and interesting when I get to work with a partner because it feels like you get another insight from a different angle. Collaborating with a fellow student on a project or paper can be so rewarding for the both of you.

Last year, we had an assignment to discuss a movie and turn it in as a paper. The questions we where to answer was hard and I could not answer them all myself. Luckily my friends had the same problems so we all sat down and went through the questions we where struggling with and gave each other insight on what we thought could be a possible answer. Even though my grade for the assignment was not the best, I still learned to see the questions from different angles since we all had different perspectives.

Anyways, I am just happy my teachers today are more interested in teaching in a more fun way then before. By the way.. This was me just rambling, haha.

AMERICA 2015: part 2

Hello again. Right now it is raining and it is grey outside. On days like this, where I am sitting in class and it is pouring down outside, do I miss America more then ever. Something that never failed in California was the heat. We actually had a a few days in California, where it was clouded weather, but clouded weather does not mean low temperature. I guess the lowest temperature we had during the day was down in 67 Fahrenheit and the highest was 106 Fahrenheit. It felt like i was melting that day.

For this second post about my trip this summer, I thought I could tell you about how school worked. Now, I was lucky because the family I stayed with only lived 7 minutes away from the school. So every morning and afternoon, they picked us up and dropped us off at school.

School started at 8.30 am and we either had 40x4 minutes of classes or 40x5 minutes classes during the day. This usually depended on what activity we had after school. When it came to our classes, we where divided into our classes, based on a language test we took online 60 days before we went on this trip. The classes was then divided into the levels the students where on. I, was on level 5, which is also the highest level for EF education. School this summer was only divided into level 3, 4 and 5 but each level had several classes.

EF have developed their own education system and have their own books from exclusive authors that is based on what we are learning about in different at the different destinations. They divide their students into different levels, that way each student can learn as much as possible.

For our classes we switched teaches. One day we had teacher #1, the next day teacher #2 and then teacher #3 the day after that. Each teacher had assignments that we did in class. We had gotten the EF language book and our passport book to use during school, where we could do tasks and fill out what goals we had achieved.

My head-teacher for this summer was the kindest and sweetest person ever. Her name was Angela and her daughter, Reesa, also came to help her this summer. EF handpicks their teachers and they do a great job at finding good teachers that works well with exchange students. I truly learned a lot this summer and I was able to expand my vocabulary a whole lot. Even though, we had school from monday to friday and it was educational, I still learned the most when I was with my family.

AMERICA 2015: part 1, the start

Hello dear world. I am having some issues with thinking of things to write on this blog and I really do not have any ideas. I thought maybe i could tell you about my summer 2015? But I was wondering whether I should tell you stories about my trip or should I explain my experiences with the American culture or just tell you how much i enjoyed myself? I figured, I could different do blogposts over time to tell you about my summer. So here is the first one. 

Since my summer in the states lasted for a month, I experienced quite a lot in that amount of time. When my ''sister'' from Italy and me, first met our parents for the month, we were both so nervous and excited about what the future held for us. I, personally, wanted to come to America to actually get to experience typical American-day-to-day-life and spend time with my family for the month and I am sure my sister from Italy wanted that as well. Our parents were just as excited as we were and they were holding up posters and balloons for us when we went to meet them for the first time. Already there could I see the American culture and hospitality. They opened up their house to us with open arms, and were interested in us. They asked questions about our countries and our families. Typical Americans to talk to a stranger as if they were old friends. 

I got my first real taste of America on our second day in the United States. It was 4th of July and the American BBQs, fireworks and parades were all out in the open. I kind of had one of my dreams come true that day. I had always wanted to celebrate 4th of July with a BBQ and to make it even better, we had a block BBQ with the closest neighbors. Everyone brought different types of food and we all ate from it all. After it started to get dark, the boys started to fire up fireworks while some of the girls sat and watched while others talked. I got to talking with our neighbors and I was so excited to talk to these girls and tell them about my country and hear them talk about America. It was so much fun, and when the night came, I really did not want the day to end. Unfortunately, it had do and I was super tired from the time difference and the long day. I hope, that someday, I get to do something similar like this again. I am determined to celebrate 4th of July again with friends and family. Truth be told, I miss my summer in America.  

THE POWER OF WILL

I have struggled with finding a topic to write about for my second post on this blog. I am in no way a writer of some kind. However, I have to write s blogpost every week for my English class. I figured I would talk about important stuff like politics or world hunger, but first of all, politics bore me to death. Second of all, world hunger is such a big topic, that I do not know where to start and it is connected to politics. Instead I decided to talk about the power off will. This weekend, Norway hosted something called, Brikebeinerrittet. Basically its a bunch of crazy people who bikes themselves through 92 kilometers. I do not know how they do it!! Anyways, no matter what I do envy the people who finished 9.2 miles, still whit a smile on their face. That is not something I would do. The reason why I am writing about this, is because I need some inspiration and I have chosen those people to be my inspiration for not only this blogpost but also life in general. I hope I get something out of it.

Q / A

Q: Do you think non-standard English will be talked about as standard English in a 100 years?

A: To simply answer your question, no.  I do not think non-standard English will be talk about like we talked about standard English in a 100 years. Why? My reasoning for this answer is; In the world we live in today, we use standard English in all the important settings. We do not see politicians or lawyers use non-standard English in their professional settings. The society we live in, has simply chosen to be more laid back with our speech when we talk to friends or family compared to when we have important conversations with a more serious setting. It also seems like people are fine with the way things are. I do not see non-standard English being talked about as standard English, unless something completely changes the way we choose to divide the two types of communicating.