Human Trafficking

Today we saw movie about human trafficking. The movie was called Trade. After the movie, we read some texts about human trafficking and answered questions on p. 189 from our english textbook:Access to international english, Cappelen damm.  I worked in pair with one of my fellow students and together we came up with these answers. At the very end i also put in a picture that shows a little bit about trafficking in the world.

TASK 1 asking and answering

She was told that her children could go to a boarding school, who is a big thing for girls in africa. She was also told that she would clean a house and be well paid. She was a domestic slave. She took care of the children, a two year old and a baby. She cooked every meal, worked 100 hours a week and only got 70$ a month. She also did gardening and cleaning .She worked alot, and didn't get the money that she should have earned and promised. She was told to not talk to anyone and was responsible for everything in the household.She contacted immigration attorney and got her rights back. There was put up charges against the couple she worked for.  Edwin Canilang was from the Philippines. He came to Canada he thought he got the opportunity to work with welding and plumbing. He also came to Canada because he was promised good wages and a steady jobHe was put to picking garbage and digging ditches, which was not the job he was promised.   One of the men escaped and called the Philippine embassy, which came to rescue them. Around 800 workers are trafficked into Canada yearly, and another 1000 or more pass through Canada.

TASK 5 vocabulary

Forpliktelser - duties, Advokat - attorney, Forlatt - abandoned, Kroppsarbeid - Labor, Årlig - yearly, Påskudd - pretense, Rykte - rumor

TASK 6 quick research

Human trafficking is a way to exploit people. Persons are sold bought and traded much like slaves. It's estimated to be a five-to-nine billion dollar a year industry. Trafficking victims typically are recruited by using forced or because they are deceived or fraud is used, and power is abused or their simply abducted. Threats, violence and economic problems can often make a victim consent to exploitation. 
Exploitation includes forcing people into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. 
For children, exploitation may also include forced prostitution, illegal international adoption, trafficking for early marriage or recruitment of child soldiers, beggars, for sports or for religious cults. 
The norms based on international human rights law, such as vienna declaration and yogyakarta principles prohibit human trafficking and council of europe. Charter of fundamental rights also prohibit them and do effort to save the victims. 

Countries of origin are shown in red, destination countries are shown in blue; Data is from the UN, in 2006

Source of picture : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking

Things we learned in class this week

Yet again we worked in group, but this time each group had a completely different task.  group 1 got Discussion, group 2 got Information, group 3 which was us got "typical Norwegian" and group 4 were secretaries/ assistants. After we gathered information, we all held a presentation in front of class to present our theme and information.

Group 1 showed us the chart on the picture below and asked us relevant questions which we had to answer. Some of the questions were:  Why do you think there are no Syrians on the chart? Why do immigrants come to Norway? The answers were that the reason to why there were no Syrians on the chart is because this is a chart that only shows the refugees that has legal citizenship. The reason to why immigrants come to Norway is to seek Freedom, Work and reunite with family and lastly to get an education. This group also had a discussion which revolved around the theme of foreign workers and what we think they would bring back from Norway and some positive and negative things about having foreign workers here.  Here it was brought up that most people would maybe take Nuggati, Salmon, Brown cheese, komler, milk chocolate and bacon sausage. One negative thing about having foreign workers is that it can be hard to integrate them into society, communication problems, body language can also be a problem, if you saw the video about hand gestures you can see that one hand gesture can offend a foreign person without you knowing. Some positive things are cheap and properly work.  We can learn about different cultures and traditions.

Group 2 showed us three different videos that they liked. I will link the three videos down below, but I will also tell a little bit about what they are about.  The first video, which Maren chose, was about American hand gestures that could get you in trouble in other countries.  The second video was chosen by Julia and the video reviled the experience of studying abroad in China.  The last video was about two youtubers comparing the culture in China and the culture in the USA.

My group, group 3, talked about typical Norwegian things. We chose to talk about the most typical Norwegian things we could think off like: Smalahove, Pinnekjøtt, Russ celebration, Cabin trip/ boat trip, Bunad, 17^th of may, skiing, brown cheese, cheese slicer (ostehøvel) and packed lunch.  This are things that brings out the typical in typical Norwegian. If you ask any Norwegian, those things will probably be mentioned right away. I will not tell so much more about all of them since I have a very interesting and fun video linked down below which explains typical Norwegian stuff in a fun and enjoyable way. However, I can tell a little bit about those things that I wrote down that weren’t mentioned in the video, which were: Cheese slicer, Pinnekjøtt/ smalahove, brown cheese and cabin/ boat trip. Cheese slicer is a Norwegian invention to cut cheese. It was invented by master carpenter Thor Bjorklund from Lillehammer in 1925. Norwegian are lost when it comes to cutting cheese without a cheese slicer.  Pinnekjøtt is cured, dried, smoked and then steamed lamb meat. It is very popular in Western Norway, especially at Christmas. A hardcore version, which I would never dare to eat, is Smalahove. Smalahove is a dish where you remove the brain of the head of the lamb, then salt the head, and the dry it. After that the head is boiled for around 3 hours. Only the bravest enthusiasts dare to eat the sheep´s eye.

The last group were just secretaries. They had the task to go around and make a google document in which all students were included.  In that google document there was a little bit about  what every group presented in front of us.

Maren´s video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWFPHW7BCCI

Julia´s video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBdiyKMUuF4

Andreas´s video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg_q8YUuuzM

Typical Norwegian : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebqdwQzmSHM

The downside of traveling abroad - Cultural shock

One of the biggest changes when we travel abroad is the cultural changes. Every country has different cultures and different ways to act. I think that the most common frustrations when you are aboard is information overload - you  have to learn so many thing many new things and information, Language barrier - it can be hard sometimes to talk a different language that you aren't so used to talking, and you can only talk this language to be understood, Homesickness - you will probably miss your home and family a lot, and sometime homesickness can really ruin the whole trip abroad.  

On the graph under you can see different phases of being abroad and the cultural shock.  The cultural shock is divided into 9 different phases. 

Phase 1: Everything is new, interesting and exciting. 

Phase 2: Differences become apparent and irritating. Problems accord and frustrations sets in.  in this phase you will be over the so called  honeymoon phase, where everything is good and you're happy. 

Phase 3: You may feel homesick, depressed and helpless.  You will miss your home country a lot, and your family. Depression will seek in sometimes.  Homesickness can really ruin your trip, all depending on how you take care of this problem. 

Phase 4: You develop strategies to cope with difficulties and feelings, make new friends and learn to adopt to the host culture.  It will be easier to communicate and everything when you have learned how this new culture works. 

Phase 5: You accept and embrace cultural differences. You see the host as your new home don't wish to depart and don't wish to depart or leave new friends. you have finally starting to love it here and the thought of leaving is devastating . 

Phase 6: You're excited to come home. To finally see your family after a long time. Still it is sad to leave all your friends and host family. 

Phase 7: You gradually adjust to life at home. Things start to seem more normal and routine again, although not exactly the same. 

phase 8: You may feel frustrated, angry or lonely because friends and family will not understand what you experienced  and how you changed. you miss the host culture and friends, and may look for ways to return. 

Phase 9: You incorporate what you learned and experienced  abroad  into your new life. 

School Presentation : Terrorism

Last week and a part of this week we had group presentations in international english. We could choose a subject of the board that we wanted to talk about in front of the class.  The group I was on decided to talk about terrorism. The reason why my group chose to talk about terrorism was because it was such a relevant topic in the news and all around the world at the time. I also wanted to talk about terrorism to show my fellow student that terrorism is something that happens every day, not just the few times it is in the news. 

 I feel strongly about the social medias impact on terrorism. I feel that because of the social media people are more frighten about terrorism, but I dont think there is a reason to be a lot frighten then what we were some years ago. Terrorism happens everyday, and more people need to realize that. Of course it`s terrible when someone attacks places near us, but at the same time that is what the terrorists wants - they want a reactions from us, the want us to be scared.  It has gotten to the point where finger pointing is a thing.  People get scared and point fingers at a group of people or religion just to have someone to blame everything on.  Terrorism has caused a lot of xenophobia, which is hate against strangers. Terrorism has also caused one of the biggest refugee crisis where a lot of refugees are neglected into countries because of the hate and the fear of them being terrorists, but also the fact that some people are scared that their country will lose its culture and that the foreign cultures will take over.  My opinion is that we should set ourselves into their position, where everything is taken away from you ; your home, friends, even family, education and  jobs and then depending on the rest of the world to help you, only for them to turn their back on you. We live in 2016 and to see that the younger generation, my generation, are more open to help people  then the older generations, is sad. That we kids can see what is wrong with the world, which is our future, only to have the grownups not listening til us and not doing anything.  Now I´m not trying to drag all the grownups under the same comp. Its just that what happened to the saying " treat people the way you want to be treated" that we always learned when we were kids.  We saw what happened in the wars before and then I'm asking myself why are we doing the same mistake over and over again.  We should rather help then make everything ten times worse. 

Every day someone loses their family member because of terrorism, everyday a child dies because of terrorism and I think many people forget about that and only focus on terrorism that happens in the area near, like when Paris was attacked. To think that what happened i Paris happens everyday in countries like Syria, is very frightening. 

This presentation made me learn a lot more facts about terrorism, like that since 2000 there was around 72 135 terror attacks and half of them happen in four countries.( look at the picture to the right).  That means that there was 4508 terror attacks every year and 12 attacks every single day until now. To have 12 attacks everyday in 16 years i a lot, and i wish it wasn't that much. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/ The_number_of_terrorist_attacks_worldwide_2000-2014.png