Blog #4

                                                     Saying Too Much


Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, there lived a girl. Her name was Aloda and she was the princess of the secret country Hulaba. Hulaba was the most beautiful country anyone had ever seen and the people living there all shared the love for their country. Their country wasn't the biggest existing that time, but it for sure was the most beautiful one. Surrounded by ocean on all sides, palm trees, mountains, beaches and trees giving the most exotic fruit anyone could ever wish for. The only bad part of living in this great place was there were one rule, the one rule that never stopped bugging Aloda. When you were born on this island, you were never allowed to leave. This island was about to stay a secret from the rest of the world.

There's a legend that one of Alodas ancestors, Monodi, who ruled the island thousands of years ago, left. He built a boat, brought his servants, and sat off to the unknown. Time went, and time passed and finally they hit the main land. They were the first ones ever from Hulaba who had ever been outside the island. What they saw frighten them. There were wars, there were death and there were sadness. They made a pack, never let these people find our country, that includes never letting anyone leave or anyone arrive. Since the day they came back, the pack became a law.

One morning, sunny as always, Aloda woke up, ready to run away. She was sick of being stuck in the palace, sick of her bossy parents and most of all she wanted to escape. Escape from Waldi, her soon to be fiance. She was eighteen now, and just a week after her birthday her parents had found her a man suited to be her husband. Someone had to keep the family going, and her parents was about to make sure she would. She packed her bag, ran down through the secret tunnels that led to the one place just her family knew of. The escape port. The escape port was made in case the island ever was going to disappear, so they, the royal could escape and survive. She put the sails up, pushed the boat off the shore and sailed away without looking back.

Land was in sight, after many days she was there. She made it. This new place confused her. She saw things she had never seen before, she couldn't even figure out what they were. For the first time in her life she felt free. She explored this new place, met people and eventually fell in love. His name was Jermey, he was a doctor and was one of the first people she met in this land. He cared very much about her and they were even expecting a baby in just a couple of months. One night, when they were about to go to bed, she started thinking of her parents. Her family that would never meet her baby. Jermey comforted her and it all suddenly slipped out of her. About her country, her family, her journey and the pack. His reaction was like nothing she would ever expect. He smiled, ran out of their home and left her crying alone.

It all turned out that Jermey was an history scientist, and Aloda hadn't been more than just a science project.  It didn't take more than a week or so before Jermey and his crew was out of town. They were in her town. Another week passed and her country made the news, lost their rights and got a new name. Hawaii.

Blog #3 "The Snow storm"

"What are you doing?", CJ shouted while Johnny knocked in the window with his ski pole. "What's your plan, stay out here and freeze to death?" Johnny sounded annoyed, why had they even kept going when they could see that it had been clouding up, and the snow came down stronger then earlier. "We gotta stay here, at least just for tonight, and then we can go back tomorrow". Emma smiled, of course she did, the adventurer she was. Johnny liked that about her, no messing around, not making it complicated, just playing along, trying to make it through the night in this old, huge cabin, that had seemed to come out of nowhere in between the mountains. Sally didn't seem so convinced with the plan, probably didn't think they had the authority to be there, oh what the hell, better to break into someones cabin than die.

The four of them all climbed through the window, Johnny first, then the girls, and CJ as last man in. The first thing that hit them was the smell. The smell of rotten furniture, trapped air and they could tell at once that there hadn't been anybody in this cabin for several years. "You guys, there's not reception here either", "Of course there's not, we haven't had reception for the last four hours" Sally didn't like Johnny's response, why did he always have to be so cocky. "Let's see if we can try to get this electricity going" Emma interrupted, breaking the bad mood that was developing.

They started walking, out from the bedroom they had entered and out to the hallway. This place had way to to many superfluous rooms, how could anyone even need this much space for a cabin, CJ though while Emma lit a candle. Soon they all had their own, which gave just enough light to see a couple of feet in front of each of them. Johnny was leading the way, with Emma walking right behind him. They were both chatting about the most random stuff, CJ didn't even care, he just wanted to find a bed, sleep and get out of here as soon as possible. “You guys”, “What” Emma and Johnny replied in unison, while they turned towards Johnny. They all looked at each other, turning and staring at the empty spot, the spot in the back of the line where Sally was supposed to be. “What the ..” Johnny screamed, “She was right there a second a go”. All out of the quietness they heard a huge bang, like a door slammed, followed up by a scream that could not be from anybody else than Sally. As they all put there candles together, the light lit up more than they had wished to see. Blood marks of a body that had been pulled along the floor. Sallys blood.

They ran, as fast as they could. All different directions. CJ ran, ran as fast as he possibly could. Opened one door after the other. His candle had blown out the minute he started running. He ended up in something he decided must have been the kitchen. “What kind of place is this” Johnny whispered to himself, while he ran down the hallway. “Down right, and then a left, that must be where the entrance is, so I can get out of here”, he thought, while he was trying to catch his breath. Then all of the sudden, he tripped. Head first he dived down a stair, that had showed up from nowhere. He bumped his head, scratched his back and it wasn't before he saw a pair of ardent eyes coming towards him and Sallys dead body laying next to him, he realized he was in a dank basement and would never see the day light again.

Emma ran, tried to open door after door, but they were all locked. She couldn't get out of the long, cold hallway she was trapped in. There, the last door, finally opened. It was the master bedroom. When she shot the door as quietly as she could, she heard a big bang, like the last time. This could only mean one thing. There were only two more left, and she was one of them. She hid under the bed, trying to catch her breath. Out of the quietness she heard footsteps. Heavy footsteps, like she had never heard before. And they were coming closer and closer. The doorknob twisted, the door opened and from where she lay she could see a mans lower body. His flash light lit up the room. This creation was unlike anything she had ever seen before. He came closer. He was holding an ax, blood was dripping from it. She hold her breath, trying to be unnoticeable, terrified. “This is it, this is the ending.” Her thoughts got interrupted by a loud noise, pots falling to the ground. The huge person, that had been just a couple of feet away from her, turned around, shut the door and walked away,

“Shit” CJ shouted almost too loud. He had heard it. The second bang, and he was sure he was next. But unlike the others, he was about to be prepared. It was when he reached for the kitchen knife, he touched the pots that were hanging on the wall and they all fell in the ground. The sound was loud, very loud. “I'm not going to be nineteen and die, there's no way I'm dieing here!” He said to himself as he took a firmly grip around the knife. He could hear it, hear it coming. Getting closer and closer. With the rising in sound also came the rising in light. It got lighter and lighter, until he got blinded by the light.

“There!” Emma thought when she finally managed to open one of the windows in the bedroom. She climbed out, jumped down in the snow and started crawling. The wind hit her in the face, the temperature most have dropped several degrees, but the only though that went through her mind was to get away from that cabin as fast as she could. She crawled, and as she got further away she turned, gave the cabin one last look. She saw the light. She saw CJ, and she saw the second where the beast swung his ax, and walked slowly away from the kitchen while the light slowly disappeared. Hear tears streamed down her face, while she kept crawling into the woods, into the dark, alone.

Blog 2

Okay, here's the thing. I have now been thinking of this blog for five days. Thinking about what to write, but I have come to the conclusion that I just can't do it. I have realized that I'm not funny and making an attempt to do this blog would honestly be a failure and embarrassing. So..that's all!

Blog 1

"This was some adventure, huh?"

My adventure is now. I'm in the middle of the biggest adventure in my life so far. This year, in a foreign country is MY adventure.

It's eight months since I stood in my kitchen, hugging my mom while the tears ran down my face like small rivers. It was the night before I was going on a long flight and an even longer stay in the US. That was the moment it all hit me, I was not going to see my family, friends, my home nor my country for over10 months. My bags were packed, and ready to go, and so were I. I had mentally prepared me for months, I had been looking forward to this since I was 12, and now the time had come. I was scared.

The sun hit me like a wave of summer at the airport in Chicago and my first thought was, "I can deal with this". My family picked me up the day after in Minneapolis and it couldn’t have been better. Got a map, keys and some money the first day and it was time to explore. A couple of days later it was time for cross country season and I sigened up.That was probably the smartest decision I've made this year. I met great people, got my closest friends, who included me, took me under their wings and made the typical scary-first-day-at-school not so scary. I must say, South is different in many ways. In the beginning it was the crowd, all the different people, who were all doing their own thing and all the rules, that freaked me out. But I learned it, accepted it and embraced it. I find it interesting how South manages to have all these different people from different backgrounds, cultural and religions all getting along. It's a great thing that I wish I had been exposed to earlier.

The time went by, I had got more friends, experienced a whole lot, been traveling and having the time of my life. The time went by so fast and now it’s spring. Only two more months until my stay here is done and time to go back to Norway. It seems like I’m leaving my home to go home. This place has made me see, experience and meet people I wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for this exchange year. It will be hard to leave it, but the memories and people will stay with me forever.

I'm going to make the best of the rest of my adventure, since it's still happening!

Blog #10

1. Our documentary is going okay..We have got all the filming done, started editing and it looks pretty good. The fact that it has to be done on Monday kinda freaks me out. Since Julias group also uses the same editing room as we do, the have reserved it for the days we wanted..So we basically only have Thursday after school and Sunday..I really wish we could have Friday and Saturday...hmm so this will be interesting! I hope it will turn out good! Cross your fingers and wish us luck, we'll need it!

2. "They'll Say, "She Must Be from Another Country" " By: Imtiaz Dharker

With this reading  it sounds like this girl is quite different from all the other people where she lives. The people sounds really conservatives and seems like they think that everything she does that is different is wrong. To me they seem quite parochial, and this girl really differs from them. When they say "She must be from another county" I feel it's like an insult. She just doesn't follow the societies norms. I can kinda relate some to this girl. Cause I'm foreign the norms differs from places, counties, countries etc. Some everyday sayings or acting are really different from here and home. But it's all about adjustments.Try to adjust to the culture, learn from it, take up some good norms and not take up the norms and traditions that are not as great. It's all about taking the best from both worlds, right?

Blog #9

1. Finally our filming is all done! We went to Jazz 88 station, got three interviews done, and filmed a bit around in the studios. We also got an interview done with the daily producer/director, the woman that is the boss of everybody! People seemed to be a bit scared of her, but turned out that she was really nice, and fun that we got her on camera! On Friday we're going to start edit and we're also editing on Sunday. So we will hopefully be ready for the ruff draft! I'm excited to start editing and see how it all turns out! Just two more weeks left..so we better get this done! :) Otherwise everything is going good, Zoe and I are good friends, fun to work together!

2. "Defending Freedom and Freedom of Speech" by Luis Aguilar

When I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was "How would it be like to live in Cuba without the right of freedom of speech and not be able to express your opinions?" I can't even imagine what that would be like. Here in the western world we are used to have the freedom to express our thoughts, opinions, minds in every way we want to. That is one freedom I really hope will be a right for everyone one day, the sooner the better. One of the quote in this reading was "I thoroughly disagree with what you say, bit I shall defend to the death your right to say it." -VOLTAIRE I think this is a really good sentence that express how it should be. In this reading they also mention that even though we here in America have the right and freedom to express ourselves, most of us are too afraid of what others may think and how society will look on you to say what we mean. This is truly sad when the ones who has the freedom doesn't use it as much as we probably should.

Blog#8

1. Zoe and I had rented the camera, picked it up and we were ready to go get some interviews done today. Unfortunately some confusions came up and we couldn't do it today. But that's how it is sometimes. So the plan now is to get all the filming done Monday and Tuesday next week and then try to edit as much as we can that week and the next following week. I think this will be good, but we still got a lot of filming left!!

2. Reading Assignment  "A Gift of Love" by Martin Luther King Jr.

The people King remembers in the first paragraph have the fact that they are black and suppressed in common. They are all in one way or another treated badly by other humans, people who think they are superior to them and people who treat them bad since they have a different skin color. When I read this, it reminds me of how sorry I feel for what black colored people have had to go through over the years and still struggle with today. I can't imagine being treated that way just because you are born with a different skin color. We are who we are, and it's sad that other people don't respect each other. The fact is that we are all the same. We all want to be loved, we all have our own lives, thought, families. It should not be a privilege but a right and a matter of course that all humans should be treated equally and with respect.