The Elections !!!
Tonight is the big night of the elections. The outcome of this night well have a major influence on the rest of the world for the next 4 years and maybe even longer. The two canidates for the elections to become president of the United States are Barrack Obama who is supported by Biden & John McCain who is supported by Palin. Tonight we know who is the president and basically the big "boss" of America for the next years. I am definetly sticked to my television tonight.
Last Sunday me and my friends went to downtown Cleveland to hear Obama speak. After waiting for a few hours and an introductory little concert of Bruce Springsteen, Barrack came on stage. The public went crazy and I have to admit that Obama is a very charismatic speaker. I managed to grab the attention from the audience and spoke strong language, which powered the people up to vote for him. After half an hour it started to rain and we decided to leave, but I am happy I saw Obama live. Because there are not many Europeans who can say that.
If I could vote I definetly would vote. I probably would vote for Obama, because I am very democratic orientated. I don't believe in God, I am strongly against the war in Iraq, and there are several more points which leads my vote to Barrack. Moreover I found it interesting that if elections were in Europe I am sure that Obama would win really easily with at least more than 70% of the votes. Most of the European countries are Democratic and in Europe lives a strong hate to conservatives. I think it is interesting how this differs from America.
Furthermore Americans may think the elections are only hot news in the USA, but I speak from my experience of being in both parts of the world as I say that, how strange it may sound, the elections are bigger news in Europe than in the USA actually. Everybody who I spoke the last weeks is staying up the WHOLE night to follow the vote counts, as there is a time difference of 6 hours with most of Europe and 5 hours with the UK. I am excited about tonight and can't wait to hear the outcome. I think that Obama has the better chances, but it is always a gamble who it is going to be. Also I think it could be good for the equality of people to have a black president. Although I am being annoyed very easily, by (black) people who vote for Obama because he is black and don't even look to his stand points. I don't think "being colored" should be an argument of becoming president and it pisses me off that some people do use this as main reason. I can't wait for tonight. Tonight is going to be a change in the world, which will be in the history books in the future.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Cristiano Ronaldo
I am going to write about Cristiano Ronaldo dos santos Aveiro also know as C.Ronaldo. He is one of the most popular soccer players in the world at the moment. The reason for writing about him is that obviously I am interested in soccer and in my opinion he is one of the greatest players at the moment. Ronaldo is only 23 years old and he plays for Manchester United in the English Premier League, which is considered the best and toughest soccer league in the world. He plays his 6th season for Manchester already, as he was bought by head coach Sir Alex Ferguson when he was just 18 years old. His career even started earlier though as he played 1 season for the Portugese club “Sporting Club de Portugal” when he was 17. Furthermore he is an international for his country Portugal, just like his teammate Nani.
Cristiano’s position in the field is usually the outside right or left wing. I am a winger myself too and I watch a lot of his matches to analyze why he is such a dangerous player. This makes me better as a winger myself.
A few soccer characteristics of Ronaldo are that he is incredibly technical, really quick and has a good kick. The combination of those qualities makes him a dangerous player and a scoring machine too. In the 279 professional appearances he made for his clubs so far he made 100 goals. This gives him a total scoring ratio of 0.36 , which means that he generally scores a goal in 36% of his matches.
Last season was by far his best season so far as he scored 42 goals out of 49 matches. He was topscorer of the English Premier League with 31 goals out of 34 appearances, he was topscorer of the Champions League with 8 goals out of 11 matches. Moreover he played in the European Championship with Portugal and he won several prices like the Barclays Golden Boot, European Golden Shoe, UEFA club forward of the year UEFA club footballer of the year and FIFPro World player of the year.
I love watching Ronaldo play because he does a lot of tricks, he is quick, really threatening and he scores a lot of goals. He is a good player and has charisma as well as he is really popular at the ladies because of his good looks. I am sure this season will be a good season for him again and although he won almost everything imaginable last year, I hope he can set the bar even higher this year.
I am going to write about Cristiano Ronaldo dos santos Aveiro also know as C.Ronaldo. He is one of the most popular soccer players in the world at the moment. The reason for writing about him is that obviously I am interested in soccer and in my opinion he is one of the greatest players at the moment. Ronaldo is only 23 years old and he plays for Manchester United in the English Premier League, which is considered the best and toughest soccer league in the world. He plays his 6th season for Manchester already, as he was bought by head coach Sir Alex Ferguson when he was just 18 years old. His career even started earlier though as he played 1 season for the Portugese club “Sporting Club de Portugal” when he was 17. Furthermore he is an international for his country Portugal, just like his teammate Nani.
Cristiano’s position in the field is usually the outside right or left wing. I am a winger myself too and I watch a lot of his matches to analyze why he is such a dangerous player. This makes me better as a winger myself.
A few soccer characteristics of Ronaldo are that he is incredibly technical, really quick and has a good kick. The combination of those qualities makes him a dangerous player and a scoring machine too. In the 279 professional appearances he made for his clubs so far he made 100 goals. This gives him a total scoring ratio of 0.36 , which means that he generally scores a goal in 36% of his matches.
Last season was by far his best season so far as he scored 42 goals out of 49 matches. He was topscorer of the English Premier League with 31 goals out of 34 appearances, he was topscorer of the Champions League with 8 goals out of 11 matches. Moreover he played in the European Championship with Portugal and he won several prices like the Barclays Golden Boot, European Golden Shoe, UEFA club forward of the year UEFA club footballer of the year and FIFPro World player of the year.
I love watching Ronaldo play because he does a lot of tricks, he is quick, really threatening and he scores a lot of goals. He is a good player and has charisma as well as he is really popular at the ladies because of his good looks. I am sure this season will be a good season for him again and although he won almost everything imaginable last year, I hope he can set the bar even higher this year.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
NDC Soccer Results
The Soccer Results :
I am writing this blog on the van on the way back from Roberts Wesleyan College. We played one of the most important matches of the season today. This match could decide if we have a good chance of going to the final national championship at Fresno Pacific University in California.
Before going into the match we had a conference result of 7-0-0, which made us the number 1 in the NAIA American Mideast Conference. On the second place was Roberts Wesleyan University with a result of 6-1-0 and on the third place our big rival Rio Grande University with 6-1-1 as a result. This means that the gap between us and Roberts Wesleyan was 3 points and the difference between us and Rio Grande is five points.
After our good 2-1 win against Walsh University earlier this week, we stepped on the pitch with good confidence. Although the weather was freezing, the pitch was shit and the referees were gay, Luke Holmes and Steven Kane both managed to score a goal in the first half, which resulted in a comfortable advantage going into half time. The second half we kept up the good work even with the weather getting worse and worse. Midfielder Jack Fitzgerald and defenders Dan Knight and Jonny Morris played an outstanding match and managed to keep the Wesleyan-players tight. Although we created more and more opportunities in the second half, RWC scored a goal from a lucky strike in about 20 minutes before fulltime. This made us wet our pants as we had the Ashland-game in the back of our minds, where we lost 2-1 in the last 20 minutes after being on a 1-0 advantage. Finally the ref blew his whistle to end the game with the final score at 2-1. Everybody was really happy and me in particular because I got a chance to play some minutes in both the end of the first half and the end of the second half.
Winning tonight means that we increased the margin between our rivals and with only 3 matches left in the conference, the Falcons are incredibly close to the championship title and have a good chance of going to the nationals in California also. The thing now is that we must not sit back and relax for the last matches. Although 2 of the 3 teams we will play are low-rated in the conference and although we only have to win 2 out of 3 matches to insure our title, underestimation can ruin all our good work if we don’t look out.
Concluding I think that we have an incredibly good team. It is probably the best team I ever played in and I think the international mix of players works out very well and if we keep up the good work, we will be playing in California in December!!!!
I am writing this blog on the van on the way back from Roberts Wesleyan College. We played one of the most important matches of the season today. This match could decide if we have a good chance of going to the final national championship at Fresno Pacific University in California.
Before going into the match we had a conference result of 7-0-0, which made us the number 1 in the NAIA American Mideast Conference. On the second place was Roberts Wesleyan University with a result of 6-1-0 and on the third place our big rival Rio Grande University with 6-1-1 as a result. This means that the gap between us and Roberts Wesleyan was 3 points and the difference between us and Rio Grande is five points.
After our good 2-1 win against Walsh University earlier this week, we stepped on the pitch with good confidence. Although the weather was freezing, the pitch was shit and the referees were gay, Luke Holmes and Steven Kane both managed to score a goal in the first half, which resulted in a comfortable advantage going into half time. The second half we kept up the good work even with the weather getting worse and worse. Midfielder Jack Fitzgerald and defenders Dan Knight and Jonny Morris played an outstanding match and managed to keep the Wesleyan-players tight. Although we created more and more opportunities in the second half, RWC scored a goal from a lucky strike in about 20 minutes before fulltime. This made us wet our pants as we had the Ashland-game in the back of our minds, where we lost 2-1 in the last 20 minutes after being on a 1-0 advantage. Finally the ref blew his whistle to end the game with the final score at 2-1. Everybody was really happy and me in particular because I got a chance to play some minutes in both the end of the first half and the end of the second half.
Winning tonight means that we increased the margin between our rivals and with only 3 matches left in the conference, the Falcons are incredibly close to the championship title and have a good chance of going to the nationals in California also. The thing now is that we must not sit back and relax for the last matches. Although 2 of the 3 teams we will play are low-rated in the conference and although we only have to win 2 out of 3 matches to insure our title, underestimation can ruin all our good work if we don’t look out.
Concluding I think that we have an incredibly good team. It is probably the best team I ever played in and I think the international mix of players works out very well and if we keep up the good work, we will be playing in California in December!!!!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
FIFA09
I am going to write about FIFA 2009 also called FIFA09. It is a soccergame for the playstation, xbox, psp etcetera. Every year there is a new FIFA-game available in the shops. The FIFA-games are a part of the EA Sports games. Americans are mostly not really familiar with this game and they rather play the other (sport)games from the Electronic Arts-company like NBA (basketball), MLB (baseball), Tiger Woods PGA Tour (golf), NFL (football)and Madden.
The term FIFA stands for the Federation de International Football Association (french) and this is the international soccer association in Europe.
My suitemate Eric Shega, a player for the second soccer team, has a Playstation 3 and he just bought the game today. I am already in love with the game almost the whole soccer team is constantly in his room to play the new game, where we used to play FIFA08 last week before the renewed version was available today.
The difference between FIFA08 and FIFA09 is that the graphics are improved enormously, the movements and the players are incredibly real and there are a couple of new features as : control the celebration after a scored goals, new tricks and new kicks.
It is hard to describe but when you are playing this game with your control it looks so real that you almost think you are actually playing in the soccer match. This makes it so much fun to play and that is the reason for writing right now.
The term FIFA stands for the Federation de International Football Association (french) and this is the international soccer association in Europe.
My suitemate Eric Shega, a player for the second soccer team, has a Playstation 3 and he just bought the game today. I am already in love with the game almost the whole soccer team is constantly in his room to play the new game, where we used to play FIFA08 last week before the renewed version was available today.
The difference between FIFA08 and FIFA09 is that the graphics are improved enormously, the movements and the players are incredibly real and there are a couple of new features as : control the celebration after a scored goals, new tricks and new kicks.
It is hard to describe but when you are playing this game with your control it looks so real that you almost think you are actually playing in the soccer match. This makes it so much fun to play and that is the reason for writing right now.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Cultural Differences between America and Europe/Holland
Since I have been in the USA for the last couple of months I noticed that there are a few major and minor differences between the USA and Europe (and especially Holland off course). In my point of view those cultural differences are really interesting and I am feeling like writing a sort of a summary about the differences I recognized in my time here in America.
Firstly I hope that Americans who are reading this will not be too insulted by the opninion that Americans are lazy in some ways. They use their car as there only transport option. This is in contrast with Holland were litterally everybody cycles. All the Americans I who went to Holland which I spoke too found it stunning that everybody is cycling all the time. Most Americans think that it is a really good thing and would like it in their country too. In my point of view the reasons why people don't really cycle in America are that firstly the distances are usually bigger, the infrastructure is not built on cyclers. In The Netherlands for example there are cycle lanes everywere and all the roads around towns and in centres of cities are practically free of much traffic which makes cycling safer. At last bycycles are expensive here, they are usually seen as uncool and the climate in the winter (at least in this part) is not too good to make the use of bycycles attractive.
Also another "lazy" aspect of America is that there are drive-thru's for everything here. In the time I have been here I have seen drive thru : fastfood restaurants, pharmacies,movie rental, ATM's and even a drive thru-bar !! In contrast to this beautiful country we only have a few drive thru MacDonalds' in my country.
Furthermore here is a quick minor difference in between. Americans eat their French Fries with ketchup!! Europeans always eat them with mayonaise and when me and some english boys ate our french fries with mayonaise , some American people were "shocked".
Another major difference is the enormous fastfood-society in this country. Since I have been here I recognized : MacDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns and some more places as fastfood-branches. In Holland we only have Macdonalds and Burger King and no Starbucks either. In the time I have been here I ate the unhealthiest food in all my life. Here in America it is really hard to find healthy food, because the society is overwhelmed by fastfood-branches and restaurants with assumly better quality of food are usually expensive. In Europe we mostly go to restaurants to get food and we have way more little specific restaurant with their own advantages and qualities. Or we just cook our own food at home, which is always a healthy dish with vegetables. Ordering food is an exception which usually happens once per 3 weeks. This fastfood-culture combined with the car-culture causes an increase in people with overweight. Although underestimated the consequences of overweight is the number 1 death cause in America.
Furthermore almost all American cars are automatic in stead of manual.
At last I recognized an enormous difference in autocracy compared to Europe. There are a loooooot more police cars and officer patrolling around and still the criminality rate is higher. I think this is because of the weapon legalisation in the US.
Also everything you do or everything what happens is strictly registered with help from Social Security numbers and personal records which schools, clubs and organization register all time. Escaping from bad things which happened in the past is impossible in this society where everything is registered. Autocracy also means that everything is supposed to be really safe and you are required to sign waivers all the time to prevent the chance of people "sue-ing".
Furthermore it may sound awkard but (waiting) lines are really long here and it seems like Americans won't mind to wait for an hour to get informed about their bank account, phone costs, food or anything. Also the atmosphere is really strict in some areas. Especially on the airports after 9/11. My personal experience is that I was standing in a line at the airport and i moved 2 steps to the right to look how long the line would take me. The next second there were 2 policemen just running to me to loudly yell at me that I was not "supposed" to do strange things like that.
I can talk for hours about examples of autocracy I noticed and heard, but I think I made my point about the differences on this point. America is said and supposed to be the country of freedom, but in my opinion the freedom is strongly restricted here compared to Europe. In America you always everything is registered and you always have to be "right" because the punishments for some things (which could be described as an expression of freedom) are hard and may affect your future really bad.
I hope I did not offended any Americans with this blog, I just wanted to show an insight in the Dutch/European brains. Some people find this blog probably really negative, but I think America is a great country and I really enjoy m time here. I am tired now and I could be continuing this topic on my next blog, where I could describe some differences between America and Europe where I find the American choice more positive because I already know some.
lazy, fastfood, lines, ketchup, social, autocracy
Firstly I hope that Americans who are reading this will not be too insulted by the opninion that Americans are lazy in some ways. They use their car as there only transport option. This is in contrast with Holland were litterally everybody cycles. All the Americans I who went to Holland which I spoke too found it stunning that everybody is cycling all the time. Most Americans think that it is a really good thing and would like it in their country too. In my point of view the reasons why people don't really cycle in America are that firstly the distances are usually bigger, the infrastructure is not built on cyclers. In The Netherlands for example there are cycle lanes everywere and all the roads around towns and in centres of cities are practically free of much traffic which makes cycling safer. At last bycycles are expensive here, they are usually seen as uncool and the climate in the winter (at least in this part) is not too good to make the use of bycycles attractive.
Also another "lazy" aspect of America is that there are drive-thru's for everything here. In the time I have been here I have seen drive thru : fastfood restaurants, pharmacies,movie rental, ATM's and even a drive thru-bar !! In contrast to this beautiful country we only have a few drive thru MacDonalds' in my country.
Furthermore here is a quick minor difference in between. Americans eat their French Fries with ketchup!! Europeans always eat them with mayonaise and when me and some english boys ate our french fries with mayonaise , some American people were "shocked".
Another major difference is the enormous fastfood-society in this country. Since I have been here I recognized : MacDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns and some more places as fastfood-branches. In Holland we only have Macdonalds and Burger King and no Starbucks either. In the time I have been here I ate the unhealthiest food in all my life. Here in America it is really hard to find healthy food, because the society is overwhelmed by fastfood-branches and restaurants with assumly better quality of food are usually expensive. In Europe we mostly go to restaurants to get food and we have way more little specific restaurant with their own advantages and qualities. Or we just cook our own food at home, which is always a healthy dish with vegetables. Ordering food is an exception which usually happens once per 3 weeks. This fastfood-culture combined with the car-culture causes an increase in people with overweight. Although underestimated the consequences of overweight is the number 1 death cause in America.
Furthermore almost all American cars are automatic in stead of manual.
At last I recognized an enormous difference in autocracy compared to Europe. There are a loooooot more police cars and officer patrolling around and still the criminality rate is higher. I think this is because of the weapon legalisation in the US.
Also everything you do or everything what happens is strictly registered with help from Social Security numbers and personal records which schools, clubs and organization register all time. Escaping from bad things which happened in the past is impossible in this society where everything is registered. Autocracy also means that everything is supposed to be really safe and you are required to sign waivers all the time to prevent the chance of people "sue-ing".
Furthermore it may sound awkard but (waiting) lines are really long here and it seems like Americans won't mind to wait for an hour to get informed about their bank account, phone costs, food or anything. Also the atmosphere is really strict in some areas. Especially on the airports after 9/11. My personal experience is that I was standing in a line at the airport and i moved 2 steps to the right to look how long the line would take me. The next second there were 2 policemen just running to me to loudly yell at me that I was not "supposed" to do strange things like that.
I can talk for hours about examples of autocracy I noticed and heard, but I think I made my point about the differences on this point. America is said and supposed to be the country of freedom, but in my opinion the freedom is strongly restricted here compared to Europe. In America you always everything is registered and you always have to be "right" because the punishments for some things (which could be described as an expression of freedom) are hard and may affect your future really bad.
I hope I did not offended any Americans with this blog, I just wanted to show an insight in the Dutch/European brains. Some people find this blog probably really negative, but I think America is a great country and I really enjoy m time here. I am tired now and I could be continuing this topic on my next blog, where I could describe some differences between America and Europe where I find the American choice more positive because I already know some.
lazy, fastfood, lines, ketchup, social, autocracy
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Cedar Point & the haunted house
On Sunday me and my friends from the soccer team will be traveling to Cedar point. This is a theme park that is about a hour way from Notre Dame and is supposed to have a lot of good rides with big roller coasters etc. It will cost us about $50 but it will be worth it. everybody I spoke so far said "OO MYY GODD, Have you never beeeeeen there?!? You should really go sometime". So i guess it will be much fun.
Speaking about theme parks. Last week we also traveled to a haunted house. They had people roaming around the house in special costumes, they were dressed up as monsters with chains and knives. Me and a bunch of friends went and i have to admit i was a bit scared at some parts. We had to pay $17 to go around twice. The actors kept jumping out on people, and everybody would run off especially our friend called David Manson. We also went with quite a few girls, you can imagine their reaction.
I really love theme parks, roller coasters and attractions. This summer I went on holiday in America as well and me and my family went to the Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Here we had a few roller coasters and saw the film sets of many well known movies. I was really impressed by looking behind the screens of the movies and by seeing how incredible some special effects are used to make the movie more exciting for the audience. At last we one of the most popular theme parks in Holland is Six Flags (byetheway now called Walibi World). I already heard people about Six Flags here in America so I suppose that it is known in America as well.
Im very exciting to go to Cedar Point this fall break weekend and i'm sure I will have a good time with my friends.
Speaking about theme parks. Last week we also traveled to a haunted house. They had people roaming around the house in special costumes, they were dressed up as monsters with chains and knives. Me and a bunch of friends went and i have to admit i was a bit scared at some parts. We had to pay $17 to go around twice. The actors kept jumping out on people, and everybody would run off especially our friend called David Manson. We also went with quite a few girls, you can imagine their reaction.
I really love theme parks, roller coasters and attractions. This summer I went on holiday in America as well and me and my family went to the Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Here we had a few roller coasters and saw the film sets of many well known movies. I was really impressed by looking behind the screens of the movies and by seeing how incredible some special effects are used to make the movie more exciting for the audience. At last we one of the most popular theme parks in Holland is Six Flags (byetheway now called Walibi World). I already heard people about Six Flags here in America so I suppose that it is known in America as well.
Im very exciting to go to Cedar Point this fall break weekend and i'm sure I will have a good time with my friends.
Cafeteria food
I have been eating in the cafeteria almost every day since I came to NDC at August the 13th for preseason. The cafeteria serves 4 meals a day during the week and 2 during the weekend and my meal plan allows me to eat nineteen meals a week. The reason for writing about cafeteria food is that I am getting more and more pissed off that the food is so low-quality. Notre Dame College is a school that is so focussed on athletes with it's 17 different sport teams and more than 400 student athletics according to Sue Hlavacek. In my point of view it should be very important to give healthy food to the students and especially to the student athletes who are representing the school.
A typical cafeteria would contain spaghetti bolognese, bread, pizza and drinks from the fountain. They have pizza at least 3 times a day and I even saw it at breakfast once. Honestly I think I have never eaten as unhealthy in my life as I do at the moment and all my inetrnational (mainly english) teammates agree with this as we already spoke about the crappy cafeteria-food. You could reply to this introduction with the question " why don't you just go for the vegetables then?". This is because I have tried to eat salad and other vegetables a few times but the quality of this vegetables and the way they are served is so bas that a rather go for the unhealthy "eat-able" food. I ate tomato pieces yesterday and they were still frozen. I had string beans last week and they were hard as a rock. The thing is that I just cannot understand how you can serve this quality of food with a brand new cafeteria and qualified cooks. I don't want to be ignorant and too negative with this blog but I know for sure that the whole school agrees with this reaction to the cafeteria food : "Even I can make better food for myself then the cafeteria". So what could be a solution for healthier and better food in the cafeteria? I think the solution lays in stop serving pizza 3 times a day and try to make a more healthy and vegetable-based menu for the students. After all unhealthy food is one of the biggest problems of America with it's increasing overweight-rate.
A typical cafeteria would contain spaghetti bolognese, bread, pizza and drinks from the fountain. They have pizza at least 3 times a day and I even saw it at breakfast once. Honestly I think I have never eaten as unhealthy in my life as I do at the moment and all my inetrnational (mainly english) teammates agree with this as we already spoke about the crappy cafeteria-food. You could reply to this introduction with the question " why don't you just go for the vegetables then?". This is because I have tried to eat salad and other vegetables a few times but the quality of this vegetables and the way they are served is so bas that a rather go for the unhealthy "eat-able" food. I ate tomato pieces yesterday and they were still frozen. I had string beans last week and they were hard as a rock. The thing is that I just cannot understand how you can serve this quality of food with a brand new cafeteria and qualified cooks. I don't want to be ignorant and too negative with this blog but I know for sure that the whole school agrees with this reaction to the cafeteria food : "Even I can make better food for myself then the cafeteria". So what could be a solution for healthier and better food in the cafeteria? I think the solution lays in stop serving pizza 3 times a day and try to make a more healthy and vegetable-based menu for the students. After all unhealthy food is one of the biggest problems of America with it's increasing overweight-rate.
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