Culture presentations...

Last week was scheduled for the culture presentations me and my colleagues at the ITAT were working on.  We had to choose a topic from the Irish or American culture and write an 800 word essay on it, make a presentation and a handout. Someone also made a Facebook event for our presentations. The introduction to the event was a short story written by one of my colleagues (I am sorry I don’t know your name otherwise I would have given you credits). The intro is really awesome and it is definitely worth reading!

"Once upon a time the American Eagle accidently bumped into the Irish Leprechaun. The Irish Leprechaun was furious and shouted “You’re so full of yourself! Just because you’re huge, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay attention to the small things!” The American Eagle raised his eyebrows in surprise and responded “For a small fairy, you have a big mouth. Don’t you know how important I am, Tinkerbell?”.

Enraged, the Leprechaun shouted “You're going to regret saying that! Ireland is at least as important as America. I will call Fiona and she will teach you that Ireland has more to offer than the US!” “Oh yeah?”, asked the American Eagle. “I know Frank and he will impress you with facts about our awesome country!”

From this day on, Fiona and Frank summoned their SUK-superheroes and superheroines to inform the world the cultural aspects of both countries. Every year, their armies of superheroes gather to tell the world the most interesting stories about Ireland and the US.

Meet these heroes on Wednesday, 19th June and Thursday, 20th June on neutral territory in the ITAT headquarters.“

 I have been to twelve presentations, even though we were only asked to go to ten.  I listened to 9 American and 3 Irish presentations. Here is a short info about every presentation:

1)      Ireland vs. Austria - Whiskey Distilleries - Challenge accepted!

This was the first presentation I listened to. Two distilleries, Jameson Whiskey from Ireland and Waldviertler J.H. from Austria, were compared. Verena told us something more about their history and about the process of making whiskey.

2) American High school & its reputation in Austria

The second presentation I took a look at was from Katie. She was talking about the American and Austrian school system. I decided to listen to this presentation because I myself was going to an American high school for 6 months. Katie was talking about the general reputation of American high schools in Europe, extracurricular activities and peer class. She also compared the teacher-student relationship in Austria and the US. 

3) Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse: how a mouse conquered the world)

Max from my group was talking about Mickey Mouse. I loved his presentation. The idea to play "When you wish upon a star" as the intro to his presentation was simply brilliant. The song has like Mickey Mouse become an icon of The Walt Disney Company, used in the opening sequences of Disney anthology television series and in multiple versions of Walt Disney Pictures' opening logos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqvF85T4vCg) . You could really see on Max that he liked his topic and that he knew what he was 

talking about. 

4) Reality TV - Jersey shore and beyond

Manueala presented two reality shows to us. She brought the concept of a reality show, especially Jersey shore and Big Brother, closer to us. Manuela also played a short clip from Jersey shore. This gave us the possibility to once again see what kind of idiots these people are.

5) Fort Knox

Patricija talked about Fort Knox. Fort Know is used to refer to the United States Bullion Depository, a building near the military base, which is a vault housing a large percentage of the United States’ gold reserves. It was very interesting to listen how it is protected and how often guards and codes change. What I especially liked was when she talked about the conspiracy theories. Even though we heard a lot about fort know the majority of it still remains a secret.

6) Witchcraft in Ireland

Another Irish presentation that I chose to listen to was about witchcraft. I really find it interesting how people could believe that someone has magical powers or is worshiping the devil or whatever just because someone else told them so. The period of witch hunting can easily be labeled as one of the darkest periods of our history. Hundreds of thousands of innocent women were burned at the stake or hanged. Even more were tortured till admitting they are “witches”. I don’t want to get into the details here but witch hunting and the witch trials are really fascinating, at least for me. I learned more about it in school  while in the US by reading The crucible from Arthur Miller. A movie was made based on the book. I highly recommend watching the movie (the 1996 film). It really shows how a community was dealing with witchcraft back then.

7) Delta Blues

Lejla introduced us to Delta Blues. The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. She mentioned famous musicians and played us their songs. I really liked the last song she played with which she let us go home called „I am going home“.

8) The Integration of Islam in Ireland

Islam was the third choice of mine that was connected to the Irish culture. Alexander was talking about the growth of the Muslim communities in Ireland. He explained us how Catholic and Muslim children go together to school and how that works and told us something about the ICCI (Islamic cultural center of Ireland).

9) Oprah Winfrey: perhaps the most influential woman in America

One of our Spanish Erasmus students admires Oprah; therefore she decided to make a presentation about her. Oprah being one of the most influential women of today inspires hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. She is to be admired for everything she achieved in life considering where she comes from and what her childhood and teenage years were like.

10) Scientology: A Religion Made in America

Harald from Hungary tried to explain scientology to us. Most of us know it only as something Tom Cruise is fanatic about. But Harald told us more about the history of scientology and what they believe in. 

11)  Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 movies

Racial segregation is a big part of American history. Tiana wanted to show us what it was like by talking about two movies, The Help and the secret life of bees. These movies clearly show how hard it was for African American back in those days. Tiana made a great connection to the audience by asking us questions which I think is great.

12) TV shows depicting social issues

Christine informed us about social issues depicting from TV shows. She took 5 very well-known shows and explained on their example what she means. In the end we even got to see a short clip from one of her favorite shows - Breaking bad.

The five presentations I chose for my KGP are:

1) American High school & its reputation in Austria

2) Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse: how a mouse conquered the world)

3) Reality TV - Jersey shore and beyond

4) TV shows depicting social issues

5) Oprah Winfrey: perhaps the most influential woman in America

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Nelson Mandela

XOXO A.

:)

Smile - because you can

I am a “follower” on Obama's Facebook page. I like the pictures people that work for him are posting on there. As you can read in my earlier posts I really think that Obama is a good president. He is doing his best. Anyways, I am not here to talk about him but to share this photo with you. My heart melted when I saw this photo. Look at the face of this precious little kid. You know that feeling when you see something cute and just have to scream a little bit? Yeah, that was my reaction too after seeing this photo.   :D

Every day you spend without a smile, is a lost day.

XOXO A.

British vs. American

As a kid I thought that English is being spoken the same in the whole world. But soon, during one of my English classes, I learned that that is not true. English is not spoken the same in America, Great Britain, Australia or New Zealand. There are a lot of differences. So as I was researching those differences on the internet I came across this interesting picture. Take a look at it J

XOXO A.

America’s choice

Today is D-Day for America, it is Election Day! Today, millions of American citizen get to vote, either for Mitt Romney or for Barack Obama. They are choosing the future direction of their country.

Even though I am really interested in politics, it was not my intention to blog about this year’s election. I saw that a lot of my colleagues blogged about it so I didn’t want to bore you out of your mind with it too. But while browsing through the www.nytimes.com I came across a great article and felt the need to share my view on the election with you, the world.

The article was written by Joseph E. Stiglitz. Joseph Stiglitz, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a former chief economist of the World Bank, is University Professor at Columbia University. I am going to relate to his article in this post but won’t stick to everything he said so if you are interested in the whole article check it out:http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/stiglitz-some-are-more-unequal-than-others/

Let me start with a quote from Mr. Stiglitz that probably describes this election the best: “This election has rightly been characterized as one that will deeply affect the future direction of the country: Americans are being given a choice with potentially large consequences. One arena in which there are profound differences that has not been adequately debated is the future course of inequality.”  

Inequality has grown into a really big problem the USA has to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, inequality can be found everywhere around the world but lately it is maybe best shown in America due to the election and Mitt Romney, the republican candidate.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (his candidate for vice president) were very explicit when it comes to inequality, in their opinion it should be talked about only behind closed doors. In the public they are trying to portray themselves as compassionate conservatives, a duo that cares for the well-being of every single citizen in their country when in reality it could not be further from the truth. What they want to do is maybe best shown in Ryan’s budget numbers. His budget proposal cuts down the programs that serve those at the bottom and enriches those at the top. Basically, the poor will become poorer and the rich richer. Another example of how Romney & Ryan are “promoting” inequality is the health care program and education. Every advanced European country has recognized the right of everyone to access health care and that was also central to President Obama’s health care reform. Instead of supporting the health care system, from which millions of Americans will benefit, Romney & Ryan criticized it without presenting the public their idea of how the health care system should look like. What we can read between the lines is that, in their opinion, health care should only be for the rich ones, just like college. I don’t even want to start with Romney’s speech where he said that those who don’t have enough money shouldn’t go to college that college should only be for the rich Americans. Does this guy know what that would mean for the American economy and its people?

Over time America has become the country with the least equality of opportunity. What happened to the American dream?  The top 1% takes in about a fifth of the income, and controls more than a third of the wealth and the middle class is falling behind. Recession has made this whole process even worse; the wealth of a typical household is back to where it was in the 1990s. With his campaign Mitt Romney isn’t doing anything else but ruining the middle class. Many of the rich, like Romney himself, are avoiding taxes because of numerous loopholes that favor the rich, such as avoiding paying taxes by putting the money on various off-shore bank accounts around the world in for example Switzerland or on the Cayman Islands. Were the rich paying a fair share, would not only the middle class benefit from it but also the deficit of the USA would be smaller and the economy would grow.

I could go on about Romney and his “brilliant” ideas on how to govern the country during the next 4 years but then I would never end this post. His stance on abortion and women rights and his statements during the Europe tour are, in my opinion, just too much to handle for a normal person. What kind of idiot do you have to be to walk out of a building in London during the Olympic Games and state to the press that you just had a secret meeting with the MI6 chief!?

Let me just move onto Obama because talking about Romney doesn’t make sense anymore. Barack Obama may not have done as much as he should but we have to take in consideration the time he got elected and the inheritance of George W. Bush. He might have even underestimated the problems America was dealing with. When Obama became president of the USA it was the year 2009, the USA as well as the rest of the world, were dealing with the global economic crises (and still are) and that didn’t leave to much space for dealing with other problems. But with time passing by he got better and better in what he was doing. We must mention some of his achievements during these four years such as the Obama health care system, the withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq, the fight against terrorism (locating and killing Osama bin Laden), and his education policies. Honestly said he could have done far more, had he not faced such strong opposition in Congress. But I personally think that he will be able to do more if he wins this election which I am strongly cheering for. Now the burden of re-electing will be taken of his back and he will be able to dedicate himself more to the economic growth and the well-being of all Americans. And at the end of the day he is not perfect, no one is but he did far more than his predecessors and he deserves another chance to show the world what he is really capable of. YES WE CAN and GOBAMA J 

Now America, it is all up to you but remember your choice affects not only you but the rest of the world too. So who will you vote for?

                                                       Presidents are people too :)

P.S. Last week I was home and guess who visited Zagreb!? HILLARY CLINTON!! She was 20 meters away from me! I should have shouted “HILLARY!“ Maybe then we could have had a little chat on the election ;) I missed my chance, hopefully I will get another one :D 

                                         Hillary Clinton and the Croatian President Ivo Josipović

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."  Dr. Seuss

XOXO A.