Narnia - C.S. Lewis

Right before Christmas we watched the movie Narnia. Although it’s a type of movie that I don't really favor, with the war and the long story, I thought it was pretty good.

The movie is originally based on a series of seven fantasy novels for children, written by Clive Staples Lewis in the period from 1949 to 1954.

Similar to the books, the film is also fantasy, and good fantasy is probably the main cause to why C.S.Lewis wrote these books which later were to be made into a movie. The story is about four siblings, two girls and two boys, who are sent to London during the Second World War where they are living in a huge house which they happily like to discover by playing hide and seek and explore every corner and hiding place in the house. This is where Lewis has brought some of his own childhood into the story of Narnia.

When C.S. Lewis was little, he and his brother liked to build houses of blankets and pretend that they were in another world. Lucy, one of the sisters from the movie, discovers the closet when she's about to hide from her brother during hide and seek. Inside the closet is where she finds the secret door to the fantasyland of Narnia, where the siblings later on are crowned to kings and queens after defeating the evil witch who tries to gain power over the fantasyland.

Clive was born in Belfast, Ireland 29th of November 1898. He wrote The Chronicles of Narnia in addition to "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Space Trilogy". He has sold over a 100 million copies all over the world and Narnia is I considered a classic among children’s books.

One of Clive's best friends through his education at Oxford university was the other great writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien or also known as J.R.R Tolkien. Tolkien helped Lewis become a christian and Clive helped John write even better fictional texts. Although the two friends had a good relationship they also had their disagreements. Tolkien for instance crtisized Clive for having too clear symbols of christ and the christian faith in his writing. In addition to being a book which pushed the limits of creativity it was to many fictional events and he meant it could be confusing.

Clive on the other hand thought his friends religious believes was extremely old school and to orthodox. I believe if you look away from all of their differences and disagreements, they were acctually a very good help for each other and I think they both benefited a lot from the friendship that ended after Lewis got married.

Even though I usually don't like movies with great kings, wars and heroic battles I consider this film a very good one. I like the story and the fact that the children are in the center of everything. It is undoubtedly a great Christmas movie.

Joachim

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^^