Monday, August 27, 2007

Thanksgiving


Thanksgiving is a tradition in the US that is celebrated every year the fourth Thursday in November.

The history of thanksgiving, particularly in the US, goes back to the year 1620, when a group of about one hundred people (named pilgrims) arrived to Plymouth in the US from England, escaping from religious persecution (they questioned the beliefs of the Church of England). They went first to Holland and later they aboard a ship named Mayflower in which they did their trip to America.

Once in America they faced a very terrible winter so nearly half of the pilgrims died (around 46 out of 102). After that winter an Indian named Squanto, who knew their language, taught them how to plant corn and catch fish. Also, thanks to Squanto the pilgrims could negotiate a peace treaty with the Wampanoag, a nearby Indian tribe.

After their first harvest in 1621 the pilgrims decided to have a three day feast to give thanks to Squanto and the Wampanoag tribe, who helped them to survive their first year in America.

Nowadays, Thanksgiving is celebrated as a familiar dinner where the most common foods served are turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy and pumpkin pie. In many families there is a special prayer of thanks before the meal. Also family members may each mention something they are very thankful for.

If you want to learn some more about the pilgrims and the first thanksgiving in an entertaining way, there is a movie named “Mayflower: the pilgrims’ adventure”. Here they narrate everything I have already told in the first two paragraphs here, so I think it’s not necessary for me to write it down again... is it?

If you want to learn some more about thanksgiving in a not-that-entertaining way, you can visit this pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)

http://www.thanksgivingworld.com/thanksgiving-history.html

http://www.rumela.com/events/thanks_origin.htm

Friday, August 24, 2007

Knut



The day that Knut made his first public appearence there were many people waiting to see him.
He is now the most famous polar bear in the world because of his life story, a story that has touched people’s heart in Germany and all over the world.
When he was born, Knut was rejected by his mother and then he was put in an incubator. After that, he survived just because of the attention he received from Thomas Dörflein, his carer.
But the exact moment that Knut became a world famous bear was when animal rights activists started a debate, because they said that killing Knut at birth would have been better for him than have been raised by humans.
Many people disagree with that point of view. Even more, schoolgirls started a campaign to avoid Knut’s euthanasia.
Finally, the zoo said it had no intention to kill Knut.
Now Knut is famous worldwide and he es even going to be the mascot of an international environment conference in Berlin in 2008.




Wednesday, August 15, 2007

A website I enjoy



A website I enjoy is Kitten war. Here they show you pictures of two kittens, and you have to vote for one of them. I found this website in the links of another website I really like called “uncyclopedia”. The link to kitten war was in an article titled “kitten huffing”.
The main reason I like this website is because you can find lots of pictures of cute cats there.
Another thing I like about this website is that you can upload pictures of your own cats to make them compete with other cats around the world. I have already uploaded 4 pictures of my cats. Nao and Chubi are my “winningest kittens”. Following them is Gabriela. And finally is Achu who is no longer my cat since he is a loser (he has won just 36% of his battles).
I usually visit this website twice a week or more just to see how my cats are performing.

Here I leave the link to kitten war http://kittenwar.com
Also, if you want to know about kitten huffing, here I leave this other link http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Kitten_huffing