Tuesday 11 December 2012


Tasks about WWII at school

Today at school we got an opportunity to choose one of two tasks about WWII, and I chose the task about why the story behind why Norway has presented a large Norwegian tree each winter for over 60 years as a token of friendship and gratitude for Britain’s assistance during World War II.

The reason why Norway give the UK a Norwegian Christmas tree every year as a token of friendship, is because of the help which Britain provided for Norway during the WWII.
The Norwegian king migrated to Great Britain because it was the nearest safe country to Norway at that time. As you allready may know, the Germans failed to capture Great Britan, which is why UK remained independent and quite safe. 

A more detailed reason of why he moved is because of the Hitler's plan to capture Norwegian Royal family and the Norwegian government so that he could take over Norway and include. A German ship called Blücher and its crew were ment to accomplish this mission. But luckily enough, the Norwegians on "Oscarsborg", a Norwegian fortress with cannon and torpedo batteries, managed to sink Blücher, allowing the Royal family and the government to escape just in time before the Germans would manage to imprison them.
Another reason why a Norwegian Christmas tree is to be seen on Trafalgar Square, is perhaps less familiar than the one above.  Since the Germans lost "The Battle of Britain", UK remained an independent state, and also one of the safest in Europe when it comes to military training. Norwegian and Canadian soldiers, along with some other, were trained in Great Britain during the WWII.  

Source: I got this story from my history teacher in 9th grade. He didn't say this is the reason why we give a tree to UK for Christmas, he told only the part where the Norwegian sodiers got trained in the UK and the story about the Norwegian king migrating to Great Britain.   

Tuesday 20 November 2012



This year I would like to nominate the following student blog in category best student blog: 
Julia's blog: http://juliazofiaa.blogspot.no/

I would also like to nominate a blog in the category best teacher blog: 
http://annmic.wordpress.com/ - My English teacher's blog

Library/ Librarian blog: 
http://metaingrid.blogspot.no/ - School librarian's blog in Norwegian

Monday 19 November 2012



Alaska natives

Americans were not the first people to set foot on Alaskan soil, neither were the Russians.
The first people to ever settle in Alaska were Alaska’s indigenous people who settled there for more than thousand years ago. Many different tribes and cultures were established there at that time, and in the 19th century Americans and Europeans began trading with native people in Alaska. They traded food and clothes which the habitants have developed to protect themselves against the harsh climate in Alaska. Whale meat is an example of food that Alaskans traded with Americans and Europeans, but also with Russians and British later on.
Well, since there are quite a lot native Alaskan cultures and tribes out there, I suggest you to go to Wikipedia or some other site and find these tribes there. I can however tell you something about the Athabascan tribe.

There are many native Alaskan cultures today, where each culture contain one or more tribes.

The Athabascan or Athabaskan tribe is one of the largest in North America because a very large number of the Atabascan people live in Canada and Alaska, while the minority lives near the Mexican border and in USA’s west-coast. Athabascan is actually a language family which is spoken by the Athabascan tribe. It is divided in three mains groups: Northern Athabascan, Pacific Coast Athabascan and Southern Athabascan. These three language groups are also divided into many languages. Northern Athabascan is consists of 31 languages, Pacific Coast Athabascan consists of seven other languages, and the Southern Athabascan language group is divided into six languages. All these languages are not as similar as you may think. They can be compared to each other like the Indo-European languages which we have on planet Earth today.

Well, I hope this text helped you guys a little bit even though it isn’t that much information in it. As I mentioned before I found all the information I needed on Wikipedia, so if you guys find any mistakes or of you know more about Alaska natives, feel free to post a comment. J

Here are the links that I’ve used and that you can use if you want to know more about the Athabascan tribe or Alaska’s indigenous people.



Tuesday 6 November 2012

Group work - Presidential Election in the USA

Today is the president election day in the USA. This is an important day, not only in The US but also for the rest of the world. Because America is such a big and important country with a lot of power will the result influence all of us. Today the republican Mitt Romney and democrat Barrack Obama are fighting for the throne. Many people are sure that Barrack Obama is the one who will win the election this year too, as he did in 2008. Even though Mitt Romney is getting more and more votes.


According to Voting and Registration Data - US Census 2008, the United States of America voter turnout was 58%. To compare with other countries, in Norway 76% of the people voted.  The best thing would be if 100% voted and used their right to vote. The politicians also use a lot of money during their campaign. Obama spent 852.9 m $ and Romney spent $752.3 million  on the election this year to get peoples votes.

Obama and Romney have quite different opinions. Obama wants girls to have abortion rights, he thinks it should be allowed to abort and girls should get the morning after pill on prescription if they want to. Romney used to support abortion, but is now against them. Furthermore Obama also supports gay marriage. In USA today gay marriage is only legal in some states, if Obama wins he will make a difference so that gay marriage is allowed all over the country. Romney is against gay marriage, as a Mormon he don’t think it’s right to let people of the same sex get married.

When it comes to taxes Obama wants everyone who can afford it and earns a lot of money to pay more tax so that the ones who are struggling can pay less. Obama wants wealthy people to pay at least 30% of their income while Romney wants to drop all the tax rates. He wants to lower the taxes.

They both want to improve the education system in America and Obama says that he wants the American schools to be the best. They also agree to a lot of things when it comes to decisions about war, the military and they both want to get more people jobs. Romney says that if he gets elected as president he will get 12million new jobs out on the marked.


Barrack Obama’s plans:

If Barrack Obama gets elected for president, his first plan is to help people who were hit by the storm Sandy to recover form it economically. This wouldn’t be a big problem, he says, because USA is a county that gets back on its feet very quickly after a natural disaster.

Obama has a long- term economic plan that involves investment in education, small businesses, clean energy and lower taxes especially for companies that brings jobs back to United States of America.
He wants to cut taxes by 3 600 USD for the typical American middle class family, allowing them to get a paying of 50 00 USD per year. Obama’s long- term economic plan also involves that USA has to use more of its own energy sources rather than buying energy from other countries. This means utilizing the American made energy to its maximum while the climate doesn’t get affected.

When President Obama was in charge, America has experienced 32 straight months of job growth, 5.4 million more private sector jobs, and nearly 479 000 manufacturing jobs since the year 2010. This is a clear sign that Barrack Obama will make a good US President.

President Obama was the one who ended the war in Iraq and returned US troops home from Afghanistan. Now his plan is to use half the savings from the war to pay back some of the debt and to invest in new building projects in the US. Another plan is to help young and hardworking immigrants who were brought here as children to get better healthcare and better paying, as well as less hard work.


Mitt Romney’s plans:

Mitt Romney’s plans when it comes to economy are quite similar to Obama’s plans. Mitt Romney also wants to lower the taxes, for instance. He wants to make a smaller, a simpler and a smarter government by cutting the taxes for the typical middle class families in USA and increasing the taxes for the rich people in the country.

However, Mitt Romney’s plans don’t involve withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan. His further plans are unknown.

Another negative thing about Romney as US president is that he refused to help immigrants who came to USA as children. 

Well, I don’t think I have to say more about Romney’s plans because I’m 100% democrat. I really hope that Obama wins the election even though I don’t live in the USA. I think he made a very good progress the last four years and that he would make a great American President.

We think everyone is entitled of their own opinion and who they support when it comes to the election. Obama is our favorite candidate and we hope to see him win and become the president of The United States once again.

Links where we got the information from: 





Tuesday 23 October 2012

Soko J-22 Orao - What an Amazing Aircraft!
Informal Text
I recommend you to read my formal text about the Soko J-22 Orao first because you'll understand this text much easier and with more context. My plan was to place formal text  on top of the blog and this one underneath it, but it didn't seem to work very well because I posted this text after the formal one, and that means that this one is now on top insted of the other one. If you guys know how to move newer posts down so that the older come on top of the blog, I will be very grateful. :-)

Now, if you thought that I chose to write about the J-22 Orao because it's Yugoslavian, then I have to admit that you're right. Besides that, I also like this plane's design because it's so simple but good (it's simple because the plane is from the 1970s). When I discovered that J-22 Orao is a Yugoslavian fighter jet for the very first time (a year ago or something), I was very surprised. Even though I  knew the country was very powerful at that time, I didn't know that aircraft were made there.

This particular aircraft osn't the most advanced and the best aircraft out there, but it is pretty good to be Yugoslavian. You probably know about the car Yugo which was very popular in the US in 1970s and 1980s. It was considered the worst car ever built by the Americans and the rest of the western world, but believe me, the car isn't as bad as everybody think it is. My grandpa has one of these. He has a 1992 Yugo Koral 55 which is still running like a brand new car (almost). I haven't experienced any problems when I sat in the car, so I guess you can say that it is still in a tip-top shape after all these years. But enough about this car, let's get back to the Soko J-22 Orao.

You all know that J-22 Orao was both a Romanian and Yugoslavian project if you have read my formal text about this aircraft, but there is one thing I forgot to mention. I forgot to mention that there is a Yugoslav version of this plane, which is the Soko J-22 Orao, and a Romanian version which is a IAR-93 Vultur made by Avioane Craiova. I will not talk about this plane because it's off topic and its name is so long and so difficult to learn. :-)

Well, that's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed reading this informal text about the amazing Soko J-22 Orao. It was mosly my opinions about the aircraft becaues this is an informal text and a part of my homework. This is after all a school blog, you know. If you want to know the difference between formal and informal text, you can find it somewhere on the internet because I really don't know how to explain it in a good way. Cheers!


This little red fella is a Yugo (model unknown). It is very similar to the one that my grandpa has, but I think this one on the picture has a bit darker red colour than my grandpa's. I also think this one is a Koral 45 or 55 because of the side skirts and the red stripe on the front and the back bumper.


Why is the text above informal?
If you know the difference between a formal an an informal text, you should be able to tell that this is an informal text. At first, this text has a lot of my own opinions and is written in first person. This is perhaps the main reason that makes it informal. Another reason is that this text has words that are quite common in the society. These words are "don't", "doesn't" and "that's" instead of "do not", "does not" and "that is". Well, that's pretty much everything that makes this text informal and not formal.




Soko J-22 Orao
Formal Text

The Soko J-22 Orao (orao is Serbian for eagle) is a Yugoslavian subsonic jet fighter currently used by the Serbian Air Force. The aircraft is powered by two jet engines and it is a close support, ground attack aircraft which comes in two versions; a single seat main attack version and a two seat version for advanced flying or weapon training. Another version of this particular aircraft is the Serbian Air Force's acrobat aircraft .

Soko J-22 Orao was developed as a part of the Yugoslavian and Romanian project “YuRom”. With the Romanian Doctor-Engineer Teodor Zanfirescu and the Yugoslav Colonel Vidoje Knezevic as the program leaders, the project seemed to develop very well, and the replacement for the lightly armed Soko J-21 Jastreb - the J-22 Orao - was successfully fulfilled.


On 22nd of November, a Yugoslav test pilot named Marjan Jelen managed to break the sound barrier with the Soko J-22 Orao in a shallow dive above Batajnica airport, making this jet fighter the first ever Yugoslav aircraft to break the sound barrier. 


Even though Marjan Jelen successfully achieved the goal of breaking the sound barrier with this fighter aircraft, it was considered a subsonic aircraft because it was not capable of exceeding mach 1 in level flights.

At present the Serbian Air Force consists of sixteen J-22 Orao fighters, seven NJ-22 trainer aircraft, eight IJ-22 reconnaissance aircraft and two INJ-22 reconnaissance- trainer aircraft, among many other Russian and Yugoslavian fighter- jets. 

Image shows a Yugoslav Soko J-22 Orao jet fighter.

What makes the text above a formal text?
The text above is a formal text because it contains a lot of information and is written in third person. Another thing that makes this text formal is its complex structure. It is also 100% based on information and doesn't contain neither my or anyone else's opinions, and words such as
" I "and "you" or "doesn't" and "don't".

Monday 15 October 2012

This weeks homework:
Write about what you did last English lesson

This may sound a little bit strange, but in this post I will write about what I did in my English class last Tuesday. This is after all a school blog, and that means that the posts published here are mainly about what I do during my English class.

Last Tuesday we worked in groups of two or three. Our task was to make a presentation about a topic that my class mate who I was working with and I liked. We couldn’t figure out what our common interest was so we decided to make a presentation about a short story. The short story that I have chosen was “Man From the South” by Roald Dahl and Victor’s, my class mate’s story was “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes. 

If you want to know what the short story “Thank You, M’am” is about, you can simply click the link: http://www.americanliterature.com/Hughes/SS/ThankYouMam.html

If you want  to know what Roald Dahl’s story “Man From the South” is about, you can either check out my post on my blog about the story and its unexpected ending, or you can click this link to read the whole short story: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/south.html

Even if our plan for the lesson was to finish the presentation before the end of the class, we didn’t quite manage to do it because Victor had to take a test which the rest of my class and me had in week 40.
Well, that was more or less everything we did that Tuesday and hopefully we will finish our oral presentation about the two short stories this Tuesday (tomorrow). 

Wednesday 10 October 2012



Roald Dahl's "Man From the South"

The unexpected ending in Roald Dahl's short story called "Man From the South"

As some of you may already know, this short story is about an old man with a Spanish or Italian accent who is offering a young Amrican sailor a bet. He told the young American boy that if he manages to light his lighter ten times in a row the old man would give him his brand new Cadillac. If the boy loses the bet, however, the old man would chop off his pinky on his left hand. After some discussion the boy accepted the bet. The boy, his girl, thte old man and the narrator of the story, which probably is an English man, all og to the old man’s room to have a drink and to bet there because there is no wind there, the old man said. After they had a drink, a Martini I think, the old man bound the American sailor’s left arm to the table so that his little finger on his left hand was ready to be chopped off if he failed to strike his lighter ten times in a row. The boy managed to light his lighter eight times before a woman, the old man’s wife came into their room and took the chopping knife away from Carlos’ hand. The unexpected ending in this story is that this woman comes into the room just after the 8th stike. I, and probably many other, thought that the boy either would get his pinky chopped off or win the Cadillac. But this didn’t happen I was very surprised to see that a woman came into the room and stopped the old Carlos. And when she put her hand on the table to take her car keys, I was even more surprised to see that she only had one finger and a thumb on her left hand.

I think «Man From the South» is a quite interesting short story and is among the best stories that I have read. Roald Dahl truly was one of the best British writers of all time. Personally I don’t think he was one of the best British writers, I think HE was the best of them all. Actually I don’t know  that many British writers and that’s the reason why I think Roald Dahl is the best of them all.  

Monday 3 September 2012

English Dictionaries

Free Online English Dictionaries 

Hello and welcome to my blog! I have found several different online dictionaries and I would like to share my  thoughts about them with you. Some of these dictionaries here are monolingual, while other are bilingual.
In monolingual English dictionaries we can only find word explanations, while in bilingual dictionaries we can both word translations and word definitions. Bilingual means "two- languaged". In this text I will talk about a few bilingual and monolingual dictionarieas that can be found on the internet. That's right, online dictionaries. 

Cambridge Online Distionaryhttp://dictionary.cambridge.org/
Cambridge Online Dictionary is the most popular dictionary on the internet. It is both monolingual and bilingual and it has word definitions for British English, American English, Learner's English, Business English, Essential British English and Essential American English. This dictionary has also three different combinations of tranlation. The language combinations are English - Turkish, English - Spanish and Spanish - English.

TheFreeDIctionary (by Farlex): http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
This is a monolingual dictionary that has everything you need! The English monolingual dictionary has the standard word definition dictionary, a medical dictionary where you can get explanations to word such as acne and paradox, it has a legal dictionary and a financial dictionary. Besides all this, TheFreeDictionary also has an dictionary where you can get your acronyms and idioms answered. The reason why I like this particular dictionary so much is because when you want to search, you can choose to search a word that starts with "eng" or ends with "lish", for example. Another thing that I find very interesting with this dictionary is that when you search for a country, you get very short but precise information about the specific country.

Merriam - Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Merriam - Webster is a very good dictionary as well as the two above. It is both bilingual and monolingual and has also a thesaurus - a synonym dictionary. There is only one opportunity when it comes to language translation, and that is from Spanish to English dictionary. Even though Spnish is one of the most spoken languages on Earth, I think there should be more opportunities to choose between. Like French to English, for instance. Otherwise this is a very good online dictionary with a medical dictionary and an encyclopedia as well.

In my opinion, the Cambridge Online Dictionary is the winner here. I like it because it is so simple, but still gives a full explanation to many words. Another reason why I like the Cambridge Online Dictionary is because of its design. I would recomend this dictionary to everyone who like simple dictionaries, but for you people who like something more advanced, I would recomend TheFreeDictionary because it has almost EVERYTHING an online dictionary should have. Cheers!












Tuesday 28 August 2012

Living in Norway

Hello, folks! Welcome to my school blog! As the title says, this blog will contain information about the life in Norway. If you are interested in how life in this fabolous country is, lean back and enjoy your reading.

My name is Dimitrije Obradovic and I am from Serbia. Although I have been living in Norway for fully seven years and have Norwegian citizenship, I will never forget my home country. I was nine years old when I left Serbia with my father, my stepmother, my little brother and my little sister. At that time, I knew only a few things about Norway: I knew the country where we were going to was located in North- Europe and I knew the climate is colder than in Serbia, but I didn't know how the people are like. I didn't know if they will accept me or not.

In 2005 we lived in a small town called Kyrksæterøra. This town is located a few hundred kilometers away from one of the largest cities in Norway, Trondheim. The 29th of May 2006, ten months after we moved to Norway, my little sister Sara was born. In 2007, one year and four months after Sara's birth, on 30th of September, my little brother Marko was born. The same year in November we moved to West - Norway. We now lived in a huge house in Lye, Time Kommune. Lye was a small place located only 30 kilometers from Stavanger. I stayed in Lye for two more years before we mover to our current place. This moving was the hardest because I had many friends in Lye and now I had to leave them behind.

I am now 16 years old and I'm going in Sandvika videregående skole (Sandvika High School). I live with my father, my stepmother, my two younger brothers and my two younger sisters. My 14 year old brother and I have the same mother. Our mother lives in Serbia and we visit her every summer and winter.  
The other three kids we are living with are our half- brothers and half- sisters because we only have a common father, not a common mother. But enought about my life, let's talk about the life in Norway. 

Life in Norway is fantastic! You are free to do whatever you want to as long if it's not against the law and as long as you don't hurt anyone. People in Norway are very kind. They are perhaps the kindest people on this planet. They really like to help and they would stop every time you have to cross a road because they are never in a hurry. Many people think about Norway as a cold country, which in fact is true. But here in Oslo, the temperature can be up to 28 degrees celcius during the summer and down to -25 degrees celcius during the winter. These weather conditions are ideal for skiing during the winter and swimming during the summer.