Spring Break

Spring break for me wasn't any too adventurous! I just went home. Home for me is Auburn, Nebraska. It is a little town in the southeastern corner of Nebraska. I lived in Auburn my whole life, so it holds a lot of good memories for me. I loved growing up with the small town atmosphere and the friendly people. It's so interesting how people enjoy such different things in the places they live. In my future, I want more than anything to raise my family in a town similar to Auburn, but other people who grew up in Auburn plan to never come back and just get out and go to a big city! I couldn't imagine going to a school where I don't even know half the people that I walk by in the halls, and I don't want my kids to go to a school like that either. So even though Auburn was a small town with not a whole lot of fun things to do, I loved it, and I love coming home to it! Over spring break I worked at a private preschool that I used to work at when I was in high school. It was so great to see all the kids again and to get back into the preschool setting! I also spent a lot of time planning my church's Vacation Bible School for this summer. My family also went to Lincoln a couple of days, one for a girl's day of shopping, and another for my little sister's basketball tournament. I was looking forward to spring break because I thought I would just be able to sit and relax and do nothing! But that wasn't the case at all, I was stuck being busy the whole time, which made break go really fast! But all in all it was a great break! The only thing I would have changed would be the weather! I could have handled some nice tropical weather!

Aid to Africa

This who issue on aid to Africa is a really hard issue for me. I hate seeing some places in Africa living how they do, so my first instinct is to say, go ahead and give them what they need. We, and other countries have the money and resources to help them out. But then there's the problem of them only becoming dependent on us and not doing what they need to do to survive. I'm not sure if it is a learning issue or if they just don't want to do it. I've thought of how we could do this and stop giving aid to them, but not just abandoning them. I think all the countries who have been giving to Africa for so many years now should get together and give them one more huge chunk of money. Then we should send people from our countries over the Africa to be as teachers to them on how to use this money and how to make this money accumulate and then leading to them prospering. I think if we tell them it is the last time any of us are going to give them money and then give them the lessons on how to make things work, they will have better chance of living on their own. If we had some of our intelligent financial people over in Africa for a few years, and then we went back and checked up on them every year after that it would make a big difference because they'd know we are watching them and we are not going to give in again and continue giving them aid. If we were to let them know that it is now up to them we could see some big improvements I think. But as I said, this is really hard for me to decide because I hate seeing people in poverty and suffering, but I don't think we can have Africa only be dependent on everyone else forever.

HDI

To calculate HDI, they look in to how long and healthy the average life is in the country, how educated the country is, and whether or not the country has a decent standard of living. I notice that higher HDIs tend to be more developed countries. I know that the website states that you cannot tell if a country is developed by whether it has a high or low HDI, but I still think that it has an impact on it. To go along with that, the poorer populations tend to be on the low HDI side. This is because they can't afford to have good health care to help people live longer, they don't have as many people entered into the school systems, and most families are very poor with a low standard of living. Another pattern I've noticed is that Southwest Asia and North Africa tend to have a lot of countries on the medium HDI list. I think that the Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked so low on the HDI list because they are a poor area. As I mentioned above, they can't afford to have superior health care. They can't afford to have vaccines and medications to fight of things like malaria. Also, you have to pay to go to schools in a lot of places in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Many families have a lot of children and can't afford to send all of them to school. Sometimes a family of 10 can only send 2 of their children to school because that's all they can handle. Lastly, is the standard of living. Most people in Africa live in little huts, and in Rwanda, many people live on less than a dollar a day. For these reasons, and more, is why most of Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked on the low end of the HDI.

National Geographic Photo

This is Vanu Levus Island in Fiji. I chose this picture because to me, is the definition of peace. Every day we hear about so many horrible things going on in our world. We hear about murders and poverty and war and other awful things. When I think about how good I have it compared to some people in the world it breaks my heart. I wish that everyone in the world could experience peace. I wish no one had to go weeks without eating. Although, in reality, that can't happen. But I like to look at this picture and see that there is peace at some place in the world. Even if it is just for a brief second, somewhere as beautiful as Vanu Levus Island is a place where you can find comfort in knowing that the sun still rises and sets and there is still going to be a tomorrow. That is why I chose this photograph. It is a great reminder that God created this earth and he still takes care of us each and every day.

Travel Ban on Cuba

There have been 100 million deaths that can be linked to either decisions made my a Communist government or directly by the Communist government. Does this sound like something that we as Christians should support? While Castro is still alive we should not lift the travel ban and trade embargo on Cuba. The article said that money spent on tourism would just be like putting oxygen into the dying Castro regime. Travel to Cuba would send millions of dollars into the Castro regime, just giving him fuel to thrive on. The article also talks about how if Cuban exiles were able to return to the island whenever they wanted, it would abuse their refugee privilege. Lifting the travel ban would be unsafe because the president would only be able to step in and do something about it if there were an "armed conflict or armed danger" arises. I think that if the travel ban is lifted it will send out a message to everyone in the world that we support the Castro regime, therefore saying that we support communism.

Mexian Drug War

I chose to look at the war on drugs in Mexico for my current event. We talked briefly about it in class and I was curious to find out more about it. I found that http://xrl.us/befp7c was a good website to give me just a general idea of what it is all about. We talked in class how people are getting killed every day and how there are cops who are always checking people's cars and putting their own lives in danger for this war. There have been 7,211 drug related deaths realted to this drug war since January of 2007. The website had a really great map that said how many people have died in what cities and things like that. Chihuahua has the most deaths, ranking in with 1,678. Next on the list of Sinaloa which has a total of 962 deaths. This war if taking place all throughout Mexico. It trails all the way down to the very southernmost tip. This war is based largely on the U.S.A.'s large demand of drugs. Many of these drugs are sent to our country from Mexico so they are fighting over that and the groups sending the drugs up. This war is a bad deal and it looks like it is going to take a long time before it is all settled.

International Fast Food

This is a map from worldmapper.org. I looked at a lot of the different maps and they were all so interesting. This one that I chose to write about it on International Fast Food. The map is of one major fast food outlet. I had a feeling that the United States would be pretty big on this map. Fast food restaurants are a way of life in the United States. So many days I just go and run to Subway or run to Runza to get away from Janzow food. I don't think twice about it. But then I look at places like Africa and they really have no fast food. It's intersting to see how what we eat and how we eat influences or is influenced by our culture. The United States is such a fast paced culture. We don't have time anymore to sit down and have a nice dinner every night. A reason for this is because women are working so much more, they aren't able to just stay home and cook something fancy every day. So it is a lot easier to order something fast and bring it home. The website says that by 2004 there were 30,496 of these restaurants worldwide. And of that number, 45% of them were in the United States. That's an outrageous percentage! The next highest ranking were in Japan, Canada, Germany, Andorra, New Zealand, Austria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Kyrgystan. These places too are more developed countries. It says that the world average for these outlets are 5 per million people. In the U.S.A. there are 47 per million people. As we can see, Africa is very tiny on this map. The number of outlets in Africa is 150. Most of these are in South Africa where you can see it is a little bit bigger. At the bottom of the map, they have a quote from McDonalds. It reads, "One World. One Taste." That is saying that there is only one world, but McDonalds and other fast food restaurants have become so big internationally that you can find these fast food restaurants all over the place.