Part A – Read and Relate

a) I did not understand what kind of creatures the newcomers were until the end of the text. I know there should have been some bell ringing when the teacher revealed that Harsog had three heads, but I thought it was an idiom. However, it became painfully clear to me that the teacher meant it literally. In the next sentence, he or she explained to Harsog that the creatures were from planet Earth, and that they were called children.

 

b) Yes, we need to change our TV habits. I do not expect some kind of dramatic measures, however. They will come by themselves, slowly. Most people today consider digital entertainment to be one of the major causes of global obesity. That may change. With a little fantasy, video games and physical activity may become compatible.

 

With the introduction of Nintendo Wii, we slipped the surface of what may be a new era of video games. Certain games on the Nintendo Wii platform, like Super Real Tennis, contribute to keeping the children fit.

 

 

Part B – Free Writing

Task 8 – Change we can believe in?

 

Barack Obama – a milestone in US history

On the fourth of September 2008, Barack Obama broke a two hundred and thirty-two year old tradition by becoming the new president elect. Never before has there been a president with Afro-American ancestry in the White House. In a quarter of a millennium, the USA has been governed exclusively by white men. Now, the times are changing, and new hope and motivation is made among the minorities.

 

When Barack Obama announced his presidential campaign in February 2007, no one would have thought that this man had the properties to one day enter the White House. With the wrong skin color, your chances would normally be approximated to zero. You may wonder why 2008 was the year this would change. Only ten years ago, it was beyond the realm of possibility to see either a black man or a woman as a runner-up to the presidential election. Incredibly enough, both of this came true in the previous campaign.

 

Former president Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, raced Obama in the chase of becoming the Democratic Party’s president elect. Pretty much like her opponent, she represented a neglected and suppressed group of people. I am of course not speaking of an ethnic minority; I am speaking of a gender.  On the twentieth of January, 2008, the Americans are going to swear their forty-fourth president into office. Statistically, fifty percent of those forty-four presidents should have been women. But as we all know, there has never been one single female US president.

 

No, the USA is apparently not yet ready for such a change. Though they may have let a black man into the White House, it may still be a long way until a woman follows his footprints. It is especially the conservative Christian population who are disinclined to vote for one of the traditionally weaker sex. Christianity is in coarse features what makes the social differences between the USA and Europe. It is now over thirty years since the first female head of the states appeared in Europe, but the USA has not caught up yet. Christian tendencies may just be the one thing blocking the road ahead.

 

Though there is no female president yet, there certainly is a black one. With his entrance to the White House, the attitude of the world changed. Ethnic minorities may now have the courage to speak out louder in society, and the courage to take their rightful share of the government.  Despite racism, and all other prejudices, Obama overcame the conservative resistance. He beat John McCain, war veteran and American symbol, in the final election. And by doing that, he proved that impossible is almost nothing.