THE LAST MONTH OF THE YEAR

Its Christmas here in town and people are getting excited,
When we celebrate at school everyone's invited.
They have put up a Christmas tree and served us gingerbread,
But the local baker came and gave us a huge cake instead.


Were at the lake ice skating wanting Christmas to come fast,
Everyone's waiting for Santa Claus to come at last.
The last month of the year is about the love we share together,
Children show it by playing in the winter weather.


With Christmas comes snow, we make fires in the stove;
The decorations are at place, were leaving no empty space.
The cold is reaching under our jackets when we are going out,
Therefore a lot of people celebrate Christmas further south.


When Christmas at the edge of end and Santa has been there at last,
People lay awake at night thinking about the past.
The Christmas come and go so fast but we always have expectations,
From now on out we can look forward to next year’s Christmas vacation.

Japanese English

Today we read about Manga and Anime and the development of the Japanese English. I really thought the content of the text was interesting and I felt that I learned more about how the Japanese people have managed to cope with the western sociaty and transformed themselves to be an equal. The japanese are still developing themselves and they are getting more and more independent from other countries. We read the texts in a group of four people and then we discussed it afterwards.

Instead of being dependent on Western countries like the United States they are now in front when speaking about technology and they are affecting the Western culture with their cartoons and games. I think its funny how Japan has turned the "boy of twelve" image around and taken over a huge part of the communication through media with their Manga and animated movies.
I believe this was a good way of getting through the texts, although it was hard to concentrate sometimes.

Joachim

Kite Runner: The Movie vs The Book

Recently we watched the movie Kite Runner in class. The film was based on the book we just finished reading, The Kite Runner, written by Khaleid Hosseini.
I have seen the movie before but, I thought it was nice to watch it once more after reading the book. The book was much better than I expected, but when we saw the movie I must say it was a dissapointment to me. I wasen't aware of how much of the content from the book that was left out from the film, and there were some parts that I felt should have been included which was vital points in the book.

After all I was pleased with the book, Khaled Hosseini writes well and exciting which caught my attention. Though I know its hard to include every aspect from the book into the movie, and even though they managed to make a film with the mainpoints, I believe they could have added more of the parts from for example Amir's search for redemption in Afghanistan.

Joachim

The Kite Runner

Hello!

In English class we have now started reading the famous book by the name "The Kite Runner" written by the Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini.

I have read about four chapters so far, and I think the book is pretty good. The novel is a bit slow in the start, but the story is interesting and I already think the story is starting to build up and get more exciting. The book reveals the story of two young boys growing up in the city of Kabul. Amir is the child of Baba, a rich buisnessman and Hassan is the son of the servent in the house and lives pretty poorly.

Amir and Hassan have been friends their whole life. Amir likes to read books and be for himself while Hassan likes sports and such. Hassan is always the one to protect Amir from bullies and you can tell already from the start that he has more curage than his best friend.

I've seen the movie before so I know a lot of the plot, but so far I like the book as well and I am looking forward to read more.

Joachim

Facebook users

I reasently found out that students who use facebook score a lot lower on their exames compeard to students who don`t.

We acctually spoke about this in the Norwegian class as well and I think the results are shocking! The article made me think twice about using facebook in class since it probably will affect my schoolwork a lot.

Joachim

Alan November

I think Alan November has a very interesting perspective towards learning. He speaks well about the topic and he made some points that I felt I could agree with and that I would like to see work out in my class.

Alan November spoke about learning from each other as students and not just students in our own class, but also from across countries and continents. He wanted to use modern technology, as Internet, to keep in touch with each other and make discussions online, so that we can get knowledge from students all over the world.

This is because we, for example in Norway, live totally different lives than people in the United States and he wanted to set focus on this and use this diffrence to create greater knowledge about each others culture, opinions and learning methodes.

Personally I feel that we could have an advantage by using the internet as a learning device and I felt that I could relate to the things that Alan mentioned about learning and so I agree with him.

I know that the global climate challenges have been a topic in English class before and that people probably know a lot about it already. But I think its both productive and fun to work with so I suggest we work with that in class.

^^Joachim^^

Some pictures...

Here are two pictures! One is from Asker, where I live, and the other is a poster from fight club pro that Fighter kickboxing club arranged.

about myself

Hello!
My name is Joachim and I'm from Norway and a student at Sandvika VGS. I have just turned seventeen and started my second year at Sandvika. I live in an area called Engelsrud in the town of Asker. On my spare time I work at Kiwi and I do kickboxing as workout. I like being with friends and relax as well.

Recently we started studying International English, a subject we can choose as extra in our second and third year.
My expectations for this year will be to learn english that will be more usefull when visiting for example countries that we are going to learn about in the class and that we will learn english that will be more centered thowards working life.