Letter to GREAT MAMA

5 MUMMIES WALKING ON THE STREET :D

I took this picture so you guys can't really see me

Ivy's great moment

They were all look gorgeous, but who is missing???...

Here I was!!!! Tada, but played as Justine's horse

EW!! can't understand why my friends took this picture

YAY! I advertised for Yomost comp =)). JK, I was swimming at my cousin's house

My cousin took my glasses!!! Give it back to me gurl

Welll ya see?? I did have a great weekend :D, hope I got an A+ for the 'play outside' homework assignment :)

Mangareva, Pitcairn, and Henderson Islands

There are 2 main problems that Mangareva, Pitcairn, and Henderson islands had, they were:

• Civil War
• Unsustainable Development

Instead of having hereditary chiefs, which meant they would fight each other to get the position, Moreover, because the didn't use the resources wisely and unsustainably therefore people fought for food because foods are human basic needs. They overused and overgraded the lands for farming and deforestation, erosion are the consequences.
There are solutions they should have done to avoid those situations, there were:

• The first chief who ruled the island should have annouced that only his descendants could continue his career, no one else. If the rule was set up like that, it will create a more stable structure of society in the island.
• Instead of overused lands to farm, they should have taken the advantages of seafoods and use that as their main food. Or they should change to be vegetarians and then they wouldn't need to graze livestocks anymore and slow down the process of deforestation.

2nd 'Movember' 2010 Homework - Answer the questions on blog.

How does advertising influence consumption?

Everyday people turn on their TVs, go outside, surf the internet… they might see about 50 ads (that’s the number of ads I have counted so farJ). That tells you there are many companies; organizations… want to attract people to buy their products. Once they want their products to have high attentions and people to buy it, they would never show the bad side or negative side of their products. That’s why we always see and confused which choice should we make when we want to buy something because all the products seem to be perfect. When we see all the good sides, who is going to tell us about the bad sides? Because of the perfect masks like that, people would want to own those perfect products and obviously increase their consumption.

Do you think citizens are sufficiently informed about the sustainability of our consumption habits? If not, how can we become more informed about sustainability issues?

Habits are something that you don’t usually pay much attention of and do it as your routine. While we follow the habits, we don’t think lots about sustainability, about our next generations; we just don’t think that deep. To get people interested in thinking about sustainability, the government could tell us under advertisements, organizations, and social activities in order to send the messages about sustainability. If the advertisement of product we see everyday could attract people to buy the product by showing the good sides of it, why can’t the government get people’s attraction by showing the good sides of thinking about sustainability?

Do you think these advertising techniques influence what you and your friends purchase?

I think my friends do because advertisements have many ‘tricks’. To get people’s interest in their products, some of them use techniques such as celebrities, models… Because people all want to look good, be famous as celebrities and models so getting famous people to involve the ads could make people who admire that famous people to buy stuff that their idols use. For me, the reason why I don’t think it influence to me because I think kinda deeper. What I meant was companies that make contracts with famous people to involve in their advertisements are just actually business work (both sides earn money). Therefore introducing products through famous people’s statuses is just actually the famous people accomplishing their jobs.

Examples of Sustainable Development

1/ Solar energy heat up water or transform to electricity - never runs out.
2/ Save water by go to public swimming pool or wash cars less frequently.
3/ Social health care to take care of human's health.

Three Gorges Dam

The three gorges dam project brings the humanity to the greatest hydropower construction. Although, the project is unbalanced between providing energy for the country and causes human/environment interaction. First of all, the dam provides much electricity for China. The gorges dam provides 18,2 GW, as much electricity as a country like Vietnam uses. Coal is the main resource that China used to burn and take energy from. Burning fossil fuels negatively affects to the atmosphere of the Earth. Now, instead, people take advantage of the water flow to turn the turbines and generate electricity. Generating energy by hydroelectricity will be a friendlier way to exploit for energy. At the same time, building three gorges dam is also a human/environment interaction, and because the project is the world largest project in hydropower, meaning it affects really much to the environment. The species whose habitats are in the river, such as fish could die because of trash stuck inside the water in the upper part of the river. Human is also a part of this bad influence. Pollution in the upper part of the river may spread diseases. People may have to move because of the reservoir started to expand. As what people can observe, to meet the demand of electricity, the cost to pay is human’s own environment.

Immigration / Migration Essay

Rural people migrate to big, urban cities; this seems to be normal and ordinary for a developing country like Viet Nam. Therefore, my family found it easy to find a maid to look after our house. Our family maid, Mrs. Bich moved from her hometown to Ho Chi Minh City. This movement changed her, her sons, and her husband’s lives a lot. 

All the pull factors came to her when she had a phone call from a friend. Her friend said she could earn more money if she goes to big cities to find a job. There are tall buildings, a better life, a more modern life, and a life without working hard in the fields. Moreover, a push factor that made Mrs. Bich migrate is the land that she owned back in her homeland have been degraded, therefore it would easily cause her to fail in the crops season. At first, she couldn’t leave her family behind because she was afraid her children would not be well taken care of and her husband would have to do housework and take care of their children at the same time. 

After pondering on her decision, she made her first internal migration. As soon as she stepped off the bus, she was really surprised about the beauty of the city. Now, Mrs. Bich is also pleased with the income she gets every month by working in for my family, because she has never made more than five hundred thousand VND per month back in her homeland. 

Since Mrs. Bich has worked in my house, we have taken her for nights out with us quite a lot. She said in her hometown it doesn’t have steel bridges like those in Ho Chi Minh City, and she didn’t even know that there is a machine to do such things as playing DVDs and making food like DVD players and microwave ovens. Now, as her friend said she would have, she has a better life, she has new clothes, she travels many places she has never been before, and what pleases her most is her salary helps her husband and children a lot. 

However, she usually feels homesick and also cries of loneliness because she doesn’t interact with anyone except my family. She is always worried when she thinks of her children and her husband. Sometimes this causes her distractions while she's working. She finally comes up with a decision to move and settle her family in the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.

Global Warming and Desertification (study for quiz)

Global warming and desertification

GLOBAL WARMING

Definition:

The increase in temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Causes:

-      Throw trash

-      Factories release smoke, chemical

-      Vehicles release smoke, poison gas

-      Burning fossil fuels causes he CO2 release into the atmosphere

-      Oil spill, wasting resources and killed sea animals’ habitat.

-      Wasting water by building buildings, swimming pools…

Effects of global warming:

-      Greenhouse effect

-      Climate change

-      Desertification

-      Sea level rises

Possible Solutions:

-      Turn off lights if they are not in use

-      Build swimming pools in our house to avoid dust mix with water so we won’t need to change water frequently.

-      Throw trash in trash bin

-      Recycle

-      Plant trees

Real world example

Polar ice caps melting

1.    Rising in sea levels. There are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet, but it won’t happen in all at one.

2.    Melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The icecaps are fresh water, when it melts, it makes the sea water less salty. Some of the steams would cool up the areas around north-east America and Western Europe. But it would stop some of other effects of global warming in that area.

3.    Temperature rising and changing landscapes in the Arctic Circle will endanger several species of animals. Only the most adaptable will survive.

4.    Global warming could snowball with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is reflected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps melt, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.

Storms and flood

Economy consequences, storm and flood cause do billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts. And many people lost there home, their family…

Warmer water and more hurricanes

1.    As the temperature of the ocean rose, the probably of the strong hurricanes will also rose. This happened in 2004-2005

2.    Every time the temperature increase by 5% for every 1*C (1.8 *F) rise in sea surface temperature.

3.    Summer heat warms the ocean’s surface and spurs Evaporation. As heat and moisture rise into atmosphere, billowing cloud, scattered showers, and thunderstorms form.

Spread of disease

When the temperature increases, the virus reproduced more and faster. Some of the insects carry disease back to the north in winter.

     Heat wave

          The deadly heat wave that swept across Europe in 2003, killing an estimated 35,000 people, could be the harbinger of an intense heat trend that scientists began tracking in the early 1900s. Heat waves not only make it seem difficult to body's function, they can be deadly as well. Extreme heat waves are happening two to four times more often now, steadily rising over the last 50 to 100 years, and they re going to be 100 times more likely over the next 40 years.

Vocabulary

-      Greenhouse effect: Observed heat from the Sun and then reradiated back toward

-      Greenhouse gas: Many greenhouse gases occur naturally, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.

-      Fossil issue: Resources that can burn to provide heat, such as coal, oil, petroleum, nature gas…

-      Desertification: The degradation of land when land becomes unproductive because it is affected by erosion, human…

-      Sustainable: Using resources in wasting ways

-      Carbon Dioxide: Oxygen + Compose of Carbon

-      Emissions: Gasses (CO₂) from transportation, factories released and go to the air.

-      Degraded: Reduced in quality and value (in this case, we talk about land become unproductive).

DESERTIFICATION

Definition:

The degradation of land when land becomes unproductive because it is affected by erosion, human…

Causes and Effect:

Human causes:

-      Overgraze: People allow animals to graze in a certain area split by fences without moving away. Animals hooves turn up the soil, make water easy to evaporate by wind.

-      Deforestation: People cut trees down; destroy forest without growing trees again make the land become unfertile.

-      Making wells: Plants can’t grow without water so people making wells to have ground water make the land unable to grow plants.

-      Mismanagement in irrigation: People let water evaporate wastefully which lead to the salinity in soil increase. Salinity in soil make it’s very hard for plants to grow

Natural causes:

-      Deforestations due to natural forest fires.

-      Sand storms sweep soil away, make plants hard to grow.

Possible solutions to desertification:

-      Surrounded plants by rocks to concentrate the amount of dew and keep plants’ moisture.

-      Plants tall trees to block wind because the wind blow soil away and it also blow dews away. Trees make the soil not easy to become arid because it provides water and nutrient into itself and the earth.

-      Use solar cookers to decrease the need of wood to cook.

-      Grow bushes in dunes’ feet to keep dunes stable and reduce the amount of sand blowing away.

A Message From Mother Nature Homework

·         What is the main point of this article?

Weather extremes happen more frequently and stronger. Scientists are wondering do weather extremes have to do with climate change.

·         List four vocabulary words that you do not recognize or understand, lookup the definitions, write them out using your own words. 

Arid (adj.): dry, no rain.

Indicate (v): to point out, to show

Vulnerable (adj.): weak, easily to get hurt

Criticize (v): making judgments, showing disapproval

·         What is the difference between “weather” and “climate”?

Weather is short-term period conditions of the Earth’s atmosphere. Climate is how the atmosphere acts for a long period of time.

·         What are the examples listed in the article of “extreme weather”?

Heat waves, hurricanes, floods…

·         What experiences have you had with “extreme weather”?

I have never experienced with extreme weather but I have seen many people in my country had to deal with floods and hurricanes. People lost their houses, their families…

·         What does the word “perception” mean?

Perception is the way we understand things.

·         What is your “perception” of global climate change?

The climate, long-term weather on all over the Earth is changing. Because people released too much CO₂ therefore the gases are trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere and the sun keeps heating the Earth, make our Earth hotter and hotter every day, the phenomenon of CO₂ gets trapped in the atmosphere called greenhouse effect. Some places in the Earth were originally cold, now it is colder, places were dry now is getting drier » the climate’s change make it very hard for living things to live, the environment is becoming harsh for living things to adapt.

Geography project - Map final assessment

      The Floriana World history

            The Floriana World is a world that faraway from the Earth. It was created by Lady Flora, a goddess. She loved shoes so much that she made her land has a shoe-shape. Lady Flora created many things. One of them was a point; it shows people their location by giving them a series of numbers, according to latitudes and longitude on map of Lady Flora. On the map, latitudes are horizontal lines and longitudes are vertical lines. There were four main directions for fishermen to locate his location: North, South, East and West.

            At the beginning, there were only 2 countries in the Floriana world, the U.S.S and the U.S. Later on, the U.T.N, a new country, was born by religious conflicts between the U.S.S and the U.S. The conflict began when Glasism, a very popular religion was born in a cape faraway down to the Southwest of the Floriana world. It stated that glasses were very important, each family needed to buy glasses because Lady Flora always wore glasses everywhere she came. Glasism spread upward toward the center of the world. But the Glasism missionaries were not always welcomed by the local people every time they went to new place. Some people said they couldn’t afford to buy glasses; some said glasses are old-fashioned and ugly. However, the Flope (who led the religion) wanted to have more followers so he declared that anyone who follows the religion would receive 2kg of rice every month and have free glasses. After the declaration, the situation became more positive; many more people acknowledged the religion and the missionaries’ work went well. Unfortunately, no longer after the declaration, there were rebellions along the religious places. People started to argue which materials they should choose to make glasses, diamond or crystal. There were fights, bloodshed in diamond’s and crystal’s factories. After 20 years of fighting, 2 countries were divided into 3. Therefore, Flope’s office also divided into 3 offices and the power of the religion also decreased. The new country was the U.T.N. Even though 3 countries still didn’t have the same idea in their religion but they still trade with each other for their citizens’ good. People traded bread, fresh fish, coffee beans, grapes, silk, computers, books, shoes, socks, etc… Some people lived near shores moved to cities to find jobs; some people lived near mountains moved to rivers to grow crops. People even moved from their country to another by passports.

            In the Floriana world, people had lots of ways to interact with the environment. Near rivers, they grew crops, farmed; on sea shores they set up fishing villages and caught fish. Water got raw sewage caused water pollution. The need of wood made people deforest, left only three forests left in the world. Besides, the need of materials to make glasses also made people mining diamond and crystal mines. But in the other hand, people also recycle trash, for example, papers have already used by human used to print newspaper.

            Lands in Floriana world were very fertile. There were rivers, lakes, mountains, rainy zone (humid zone), sunny zone (dry zone), mines…etc therefore people had many choices for their jobs. Through hundred of earthquakes on the surface of the world, mountains were formed. In the U.S.S, its capital, Floopy was a great example of fertile land. Floopy was settled on plain, an even and flat topography. Floopy had many advantages in its topography. In Floopy, most of the people chose to grow crops because Floopy located was between two rivers. To the right is big forest, and not faraway to the left was sea port. Another advantage was Floopy was the capital so many people flocked into the city to find jobs. Plus, highway in the U.S.S ran through Floopy so it gave people way to travel, if there are any rivers interrupted the highway, bridges were the most efficient supporters.

            Go along the Southwest coast, this region shared many similar characteristics. 3 sea port were the main economic ports because 3 of them were met the river mouth so it took more people’s attention and the sea ports became wider. Taking the advantage of locating on sea shores, people caught fish, and they trade goods between the U.S.S and The U.T.N. Their jobs were mainly fishers so people mostly found food by fishing. Moreover, depended on the climate, the level of how fertile land was, people also grew crops because the zone was a rainy zone so people always have job to do. Even though the zone spread into 2 countries but people still spoke the same language and they were very religious people.