Culture Days

 

 

Monday and Tuesday of this week were very special days, Culture Days. Everybody who studies English at my university had to choose a culture related topic covering Ireland’s culture or the culture of the US, depending on what teacher you have. Since my teacher is from Ireland I decided to write an essay about the Vikings in Ireland. When I was a kid I always LOVED to watch the cartoon Vicky the Viking and this is probably why the Vikings have always fascinated me. Anyway, during the Culture Days on Monday and Tuesday everyone had to present their essays and we all had to watch at least 10 presentations, 7 about Irish culture and 3 about US culture in my case. I ended up watching 4 presentations about American topics and almost all the Irish presentations, except for a few where I had exams or class.

One presentation about an American topic that I found really interesting was about America’s gun culture and why Americans are so obsessed with guns, by Samara Farag. When I was in Oklahoma and Texas in February I was for the first time confronted with guns and this is why I could relate to that topic so much. It is crazy how Americans, especially people in the Southern states of the US, are obsessed with their guns. It is said that there are more guns in Texas than people, which is kind of a scary thought. But anyway, for my KGP I can only choose Irish topics and of course I have also seen a few presentations about Ireland that I thought were very interesting. Since I watched so many presentations about Irish culture, I had a wide range of topics to choose from and it was a bit hard to figure which ones I liked best. There were so many interesting topics and at this point I want to say that everybody did a great job presenting. Allright, so here are the five topics that I chose to be tested on during the KGP:

1.       Is Irish a dying language? – by Nina Mikusch. I am very interested in languages (who would have thought that, being a language student…..;-) ) and this is why I chose that topic. It always fascinated me that most people in Ireland are not able to speak and understand the official language of their own country. Irish is a really cool language in my opinion and Nina told us some really interesting facts about the Irish language.

2.       The role of Oliver Cromwell in Great Britain and Ireland – by Verena Eisenköck. From last semester I knew that Oliver Cromwell is hated by the Irish for having done terrible things to them but to be honest I didn’t exactly remember what he had done to the country that the Irish hate him so much nowadays. I also didn’t know that many people from England think completely differently about him. Verena compared the two different sides and opinions in her essay which I really liked.

3.       Irish Women: from Household to Gender Equality – by Margarita Misihaev. The role of women in different societies is always something that I find very exciting. This is why I had to choose that topic, to find out how the role of women changed in Ireland from century to century.

4.       The Conspiracies about the Murder of Jean McConville – by Alexandra Pasca. To be totally honest, I have never heard about this woman before and therefore had no idea what happened to her. Alexandra’s presentation was so thrilling that I just had to find out more about Jean McConville and the circumstances of her death.

 

5.       David Norris’ contribution to LGBT rights in the Republic of Ireland – by Katharina Luttenberger. In my opinion it’s a shame that gays don’t have the same rights as heterosexual people in every society. This is a topic that needs to be talked about and I was very excited to find out how David Norris contributed to gay rights in Ireland. ;-)  

 

 

     

Friday, the 13th

Today is Friday, the 13^th, a day that is considered an unlucky day in Western superstition.

According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century. The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in Henry Sutherland Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini, who died on a Friday 13th.

“He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away.”

One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that 13 is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.

Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects.

The fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia (“Frigga” being the name of the Norse goddess for whom "Friday" is named in English and “triskaidekaphobia” meaning fear of the number thirteen).

With the aim of mapping the relation between health, behavior, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom, a study was conducted that compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years. The outcome of that study was:

"Friday the 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."

In Spanish-speaking countries and in Greece, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13^th is considered a day of bad luck. In Italian culture, Friday the 17th (and not the 13th) is considered a day of bad luck.

Everybody has their own experiences and thoughts about Friday, the 13^th. I'm not very supersticious but still glad that nothing terrible has ever happened to me on that day so far. I hope it’s gonna stay this way and I also hope that you guys all survived today, Friday the 13^th of June, 2014. ;-)

This is my motto for Friday, the 13th:

 

and with that said I wish you all a

 

 

 

 

Top 10 Beaches

It's been so hot outside for the past days and all I've been thinking about was laying on a beach far far away and enjoy the sun. National Geographic has named the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world. I found some really stunning and breathtaking pictures that I wanted to share with you. So, sit back and dream!!! ;-)




           1) Anse Source d’Argent, Seychelles

 
 
 
 


2) Maledives

                                   3) Bora Bora, Tahiti













      4) The Hamptons, New York













                            5) Lanikai Beach, Hawaii  














     6) Nantucket Island, Massachusetts














                 7) Fraser Island, Australia










       8) St. Bart's

                             9) Langkawi, Malaysia












     


       10) Kauna'oa Bay, Hawaii






 

The Story of Stuff

When I was in High School, shopping habits and the production of goods was one big topic that we talked about in English class. Our teacher made us watch “The Story of Stuff”, which is a short animated movie created by Annie Leonard in 2007. The video became a big hit, especially in US schools. It tells us everything we need to know about the things we buy and how that affects our planet. Of course shopping is part of our everyday-lives but this video should be a wake-up-call for everyone to maybe change their shopping habits just a tiny bit.

According to Annie Leonard, every American produces about 4.5 pounds of garbage every day. For every pound of household junk, the manufacturers produce another 70 pounds. The US industry admits to releasing over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals every year. Dioxin, being one of them, is at least as dangerous as radioactivity.

Americans make up 5% of the world’s population, but they use up to 30% of the world’s resources. That is, because only 1% of the products bought in America are still in use after six months. Advertising and television create new fashions every week, so people of course want to have new things all the time. The US, among other countries, is a consumer-based economy. That means that if people stopped shopping, factories will close and the money will stop flowing, resulting in a recession.  

Many schools in the US use this video to teach the children more about saving the environment. However, it has also been attacked by many Americans and the state of Montana has even forbidden teachers to show it in schools because parents complained that there is not one positive thing about capitalism in the whole video. It is true that the video is quite negative but it is interesting to find out how our consumption habits affect the planet. Some of the facts that Annie Leonard states in her video are very alarming and in my opinion everybody should watch this video and maybe think twice before buying something that you actually don’t really need…

 

Here are some more facts from “The Story of Stuff”:

·         In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resources have been consumed.

·         Forty percent of waterways in the US have become undrinkable

·         In the US there are less the 4% of their original forests left

·         If everybody consumed at US rates, we would need 3 to 5 planets

·         The average American now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago

·         We see more advertisements in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime

In case somebody got curious now and wants to watch the video, here is is:

The Irish National Flag

The Irish National Flag

 

I’ve always wondered what the colors in the Irish flag mean. Here’s what I found out:

The national flag of Ireland is a tricolor of green, white and orange. According to the Irish government, green represents the Gaelic tradition of Ireland, orange represents the followers of William of Orange in Ireland and white stands for peace between them. The flag as a whole symbolizes the inclusion and hoped-for union of the people of different traditions in Ireland. It is expressed in the Constitution as “the entitlement of every person born in Ireland to be part of the independent Irish nation, regardless of ethnic origin, religion or political conviction”.

 

The Irish tricolor was raised for the first time above the General Post Office in Dublin in 1916 (Easter Rising). Later it was adopted by the Irish Republic during the time of the Irish War of Independence and it was given constitutional status under the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. Before this flag was in use, a green flag with a gold harp was Ireland’s main symbol of nationalism.

 

 

There is some debate concerning the “true” colors of the flag. Some people claim that the flag is gold as opposed to orange because of the gold harp on the original flag. This confusion dates back to the 1916-22 period when some home-made tricolors were in fact green, white and gold.

Tornados and Hurricanes.....

Exactly one year ago, on May 20, 2013, a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, which is a town located just about 10 miles south of Oklahoma City. The tornado was 1.3 miles wide at its peak with peak winds of estimated 210mph (340km/h). 24 people were killed and 377 were injured. The damage that the tornado did was calculated to be approximately 2 billion dollars.

When I was in Oklahoma City in February, I drove through Moore one day and even after 9 months you could still see how badly hit Moore was by the tornado. Some streets were still completely empty, where the houses hadn’t been rebuilt yet, but for the most part you could see houses that are just being rebuilt now. Trees were still laying everywhere; it was actually scary driving through a town where almost nothing was left nine months earlier after a tornado destroyed everything.

My boyfriend was living in Oklahoma City at that time, where thankfully not much damage was done even though OKC is only about 10 minutes away from Moore. He volunteered to help clean up the mess that the tornado caused and he said it looked like a complete battlefield. Some areas of the town were completely fine, like nothing ever happened, but most parts of Moore looked like a war has been going on with not much left of town. Many people lost completely everything!

I am so glad that I wasn’t in Oklahoma to experience that tornado, but I do have experience with bad storms like that. I lived in New York when hurricane Sandy hit in October, 2012. Hurricane Sandy became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record (as measured by diameter, with winds spanning 1,100 miles) and it killed 286 people in seven countries. Damage was estimated to be about 68 billion dollars; only hurricane Katrina caused even more damage in 2005.

We knew almost a week before the hurricane hit that there’s gonna be a really bad storm, which was a scary thought but also good because people were able to prepare. Hurricane Sandy hit New York on a Monday evening and on Friday most grocery stores were already empty, cause people bought everything, not knowing how bad it’s really gonna be and when they will be able to get groceries again. Everybody filled up their cars with gas; there were gigantic lines of cars at every gas station, people sometimes waiting for hours to be able to fill up their cars. My host dad bought a generator for a crazy amount of money, so that we could have at least some electricity after power went off. This turned out to be a really good idea, because we didn’t have power for two entire weeks. For three days after the hurricane hit, we weren’t able to leave the area we lived in, because trees were blocking the roads everywhere. New York City was a mess too. My  host dad couldn’t go to work for more than two weeks, because the train tracks along the Hudson River were flooded as well as the whole subway system in the city. The kids didn’t have school for about two weeks, which they obviously loved, but it was exhausting for us adults, having them around 24/7…. ;)

The area where I lived didn’t get hit nearly as bad as other areas but it was still crazy to deal with not having power and not being able to get out of the house for such a long time. The most normal things like turning on the light or blow-drying your hair weren’t always possible because that only worked when my host dad turned on the generator. And because New York ran out of gas soon and the generator worked with gas, we could only turn it on for a couple hours every day. So, walking around with our flashlights became our new thing… ;)

Anyway, the good thing was, of course, that nobody got hurt and the house didn’t get damaged but I definitely never wanna experience that again… 

 

Corrected version of PC1 writing task

The ultimate Styrian food experience

 

If you love chocolate as much as I do, you should definitely check out the Zotter factory. Not only can you see how chocolate is made at this factory, but you will also be able to try hundreds of different types of chocolate in every variation that you could possibly imagine.                                                            

At the beginning of the tour through the factory, everybody who is interested can watch a short movie on how chocolate is produced and what ingredients are used in the production. Being a chocolate addict, I thought that the film was quite interesting and well worth watching, because it teaches you things about your favorite kind of candy that you might not have known before.     

Later on in the tour, you can walk through different parts of the factory and try many of the Zotter products. I have to admit that this is the part that I took somewhat too seriously, because in the end I felt a little unwell from my chocolate overdose. I would definitely recommend that you only try little pieces here and there instead of stuffing yourself, because if you really like a certain kind of chocolate you are welcome to buy it at the little store before you leave the Zotter building. I know it’s sometimes hard to control yourself when it comes to eating chocolate, but do your best in order to fully enjoy the experience. So, if you have a sweet tooth and can’t resist chocolate, then this is definitely the place to go when you visit Graz. Entrance fees are not too high and the drive from Graz is not too long either, so go and enjoy.