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It's so interesting to think about how our world can look so different if you just change the view a little bit. Google Earth is helpful because it helps you to recognize places around the world even at a different angle or different perspective. I've been using Google Earth lately to help me with my map quizzes and it just helps so much to see the different places in a different view. I thought this view of the islands between Asia and Australia was cool. If you just looked at it without knowing that it was at a different perspective I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't even know where it was. With the features that Google Earth has, it is a learning process to figure out where things are and understand that it isn't always on a flat surface with north at the top and south at the bottom. It's cool to look at the world in a new way.
This was such a great movie! I would recommend this to anything! I've never seen a movie before made how this one was. The flashbacks and everything made it seem more personal to me. The plot is more or less, Jamal, who is from the slums, is on the show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He is doing very well, getting all of the questions correct. After the first night of him being on the show they take him and accuse him of cheating because how could a boy from the slums know all of this information? But as they are questioning him, it goes to flashbacks in his life where he has experienced different situations leading him to know the answer to the seemingly impossible questions. By seeing his life journey they see that he is not cheating at all, but just being lucky that he's getting the questions that he knows the answer to. It was so hard seeing in the movie how the little children were treated. They were take by men who were only searching for ways to make money. These men had them practice singing and doing certain skills. Then they would do cruel things, like squirt some sort of acid or something in the kids' eyes and make them blind. They did this so that they could have them stand out on the street corner and sing to make money for the men. Their thinking was that if they were blind children, they would in turn make more money. Ultimately people wonder what is a boy with no desire for riches doing on this game show? We find out that it is to send notice to Latika, his lover from his childhood. He never stopped loving her and tried to find her many times in their life. He knew though, that she watched the show and she wanted her to see him and then they could live happily ever after. Luckily, like all good movies, it does end this way. He uses his phone a friend call and calls his brother. But his brother had given his phone to Latika, so when she answers they profess their love to each other. And they live happily ever after. And to make things even better, he ends up answering the final question correctly and wins twenty million rupees. As far as who this makes me think about geography, it just makes me very thankful for me to be where I am. Mumbai seemed like a decent city, but there were just so many poor people. It was unbelievable. I've never had a chance to go somewhere and help people in need like that who are being treated poorly to make money. I would like to go someday to somewhere like that and help them out because my life has been so blessed I can't even really comprehend what it's like unless I was really there.
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!
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.
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.
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his 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.
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.
