The Kite Runner and The Good Lie

At the end of the movie the brother Mamere gave his brother Theo his passport and flight ticket back to the US. When the brother, Theo, hesitated and called it a lie, Mamere told him that it was a good lie and talked about how he needed to repay Theo for his sacrifice when Mamere was seen by the soldiers. This is probably why the director of “The Good Lie” chose this title. It gives a foreshadow of what is to happen later in the movie and shows self-sacrifice for his brother.

As for “The Kite Runner” I missed the middle part of the movie, but in the beginning the movie was focusing on the two brothers and their relationship while they were practicing for a kite running tournament which was a big deal. I think they chose the title since kite running was such a big part of the story and also displays the culture.

When resettling in a new country as an immigrant there are many challenges, some easier to overcome than others. The immigrants in “The Good Lie” come from a developing nation with very little technology and when they arrive in the US, they struggle to understand how, for instance, the phone works. An even bigger challenge would be the culture difference. Norms are very different in the US compared to Sudan, where the brothers are from. In the movie one of the brothers walked into the house of their “guide” thinking that it was ok, his reasoning being that the door was unlocked.

The brothers in “The Good Lie” struggle to find a job since they have no education after running from a conflicted area. They manage to get jobs with the help of their “guide”, but some of them lost/left their job because of their personal values differing from what’s acceptable in the US. One of the brothers worked in a grocery store and wanted to help out a homeless person, so he gave her food from the store and quit the job after.

It’s not all bad however. The brothers received housing, food and work so they could live a good life in the US compared to their life in the refugee camp. I believe they’re able to adapt to the US given enough time and use the opportunities handed to them to improve their lives even more, maybe even start families of their own.

Plastic under water

Currently, life under water face the problem of plastic pollution and global warming increasing the temperature in the sea, killing off many coral reefs. The plastic can sometimes look like food for certain fish and that plastic will then stay in their stomach, because it’s pretty hard to digest plastics.

The documentary made me think how sad it is that fish have to suffer because of our actions. I’d like to think that I’m already pretty decent when it comes to recycling plastics and cardboard, so I don’t think I will recycle more because of the documentary.

I do think, however, that not everyone is as aware of this issue so raising the global awareness on this topic is always a good thing. Maybe it would make people recycle plastics more.

I believe we need to remove a lot of the plastics from the water, and that is quite hard to do as an individual, but maybe supporting organizations that want to help life under water would be enough if a lot of people does it. Also if everyone recycled more atleast we wouldn’t worsen the situation.

Napalm girl

Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known for being the “Napalm Girl”, and her family were living in Trảng Bàng in South Vietnam. In 1972 South Vietnamese planes dropped a napalm bomb on the village, because it had been attacked and were being occupied by North Vietnamese forces. She received third degree burns after her clothing got burnt by the fire. The children fled with the South Vietnamese soldiers you can see in the picture. She was taken to a hospital in Saigon, and it was unlikely that she would survive the burns. After 14 months of staying in hospitals and 17 surgeries, she could return home.

Spotlight

The main conflict in the movie was that Cardinal Law had been covering for pedophile priests within the catholic church. The priests and Cardinal Law was being “protected” by confidentiality and sealed documents. It was resolved by the lawyers helping out in the investigation by giving evidence and making the documents available. As well as a former priest helped the investigative team by confirming whether or not a priest had had pedophilia charges against them, which led to Cardinal Law resigning.

 

Lion

The movie was interesting and I liked it. It shows the horrible conditions poor people in India are living in. As well as the lives of parentless children living on the streets and in the orphanage that is comparable to a prison.

When Saroo returned to India he kind of had to choose between his real biological family and the family that adopted and raised him. He “chose” the adopted family. And if I were to be put in a similar situation I would have done the same considering how the adopted family are the ones who raised him and are the people Saroo spent a majority of his life with.

 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a book written by Mohsin Hamid. The book was published in spring, 2007. Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan, where the main character in the book, Changez, is from.

The book is about Changez telling his story to a stranger he met in a café. Most of this story takes place in New York, and places he visits during work or vacation. He meets Erica and falls in love with her, but she has some problems. She isn’t able to get over her previous boyfriend, Chris, who died from cancer.

So far the book seems interesting. I know that he leaves the U.S later in the story, and I’m wondering what event caused him to leave. So I’m curious about that I guess, but most of all I want to know more about the stranger he met and is talking to. He seems suspicious and out of place. I want to know more of his story.

My Son the Fanatic and Free for All

In My Son the Fanatic the father is a hardworking man that tries his best to adapt to the culture in London. He’s undermining certain rules in the Quran. He drinks alcohol and eats bacon. While his son is the opposite, he thinks these rules, and other rules in the Quran,  should be followed strictly and calls out his father. The father gets angry and beats up his son after a heated discussion. The son is struggling to find a place to belong since muslims aren’t welcome. According to the son.

In Free for All the father is a highly educated American citizen, he’s a physician. His son has grown up in America and likes to play guitar. His father doesn’t like to listen to his son playing the guitar late at night. The father thinks he should spend his time studying for school instead of only playing the guitar. The father gives his son a warning about not playing the guitar, but he turns the volume up even louder. The father gives him a slap and the son calls the police. The judge gives off a verdict saying that the father is to buy his son the latest model guitar and guitar lessons. When the father gets home he proposes that the entire family should go to Karachi. Once they land in Karachi he beats up his son and the police doesn’t stop him, since the culture in Pakistan is different from the USA.

In the My Son the Fanatic story the son was struggling to get used to the culture in the country they live in, whilst in Free for All the father was the one that hadn’t adapted to the culture, since he thought it would be okay to hit his son.

Thoughts on the movie Gran Torino

Gran Torino’s rich portrayal of cultural diversity and genuine dialogue combine to tell a noble story of how human relationships can evolve across cultural boundaries and lead to valuable personal realizations and fulfillment – even in the most trying circumstances.

Walt definitely changed throughout the movie. He went from absolutely hating Thao and his family to sacrificing his own life so they could live a better one. Walt was angry whenever the gang terrorized Thao and saved Sue from the black thugs.

Walt was quite clearly not very happy about the Hmong family moving in right besides him and was very vocal about their traditions in a negative way. Which might indicate that he has previously had negative experiences with different cultures in general or in his neighborhood.

Water Crisis

Water is important for human health. And currently over 40% of the global population has some sort of water scarcity. On top of that roughly 800 million people do not have acces to clean water. Millions of people die from diseases associated with lack of water and sanitation, and most of them are children, in fact 1000 children die every day.
However there has been tremendous progress within this crisis. The United Nations made access to water and sanitation a human right in 2010. And between 1990 and 2015, 2.6 billion people gained access to better drinking water sources. But it’s not good enough, because the amount of people affected by water scarcity is projected to increase.

The biggest problem that occurs with water scarcity is that people aren’t able to get clean drinking water and die from thirst. Another thing is that without water you can’t water the crops and grow food. So water scarcity is linked to hunger, at the same time water scarcity is linked to the lack of education, because children are often given the chore of fetching water. And often times they have to walk far to get water. Either that or the children are too sick to even go to school, because of diseases from polluted water or horrible sanitation.

Water scarcity is horrible, but what causes it? Well, there are many causes for water scarcity, one of them is pollution. Pollution of water is a huge problem in places where they do not have access to a good sewage system. Pollution can be oil, chemicals or fecal matter. Another problem is that a lot of places throughout the world has water scarcity because they just aren’t close to any water sources.

“What needs to be done to solve this issue?” You might wonder. Those that struggle with polluted water need a better sewage system so they do not contaminate their water with feces. Improve how we grow and water crops and improve things related to farming. In other words advance technology related to water conservation. What we can do is support organizations that focuses on clean water and how to solve this problem.

International Day

This project is about informing students about different situations around the world. For example: the zimbabwe and venezuela rooms where someone with competence held a presentation about the situations in those countries. In the norwegian room we were comparing “oil children” in Nigeria to those in Norway. I was in the norwegian and Venezuela rooms.

First I read about the different rooms and decided that the norwegian room seemed alright and had an alright topic. I only registered for one room since we were told that we should be 2 people in 1 room and there weren’t rooms for everyone. And I got placed in the Venezuela room. The wednesday before the international day we made posters, which didn’t manage to finish, and we were told to go around the school and inform students about the different rooms and post stickers and posters around the school.

When running around posting stickers and posters we ran into very few people, since most of them had classes at that time, but we talked to and informed 2 or 3 people about “our” rooms. When I went to my rooms during the project, the teacher/adult running that room barely knew about us and the fact that we were supposed to help in some way, so they didn’t really have a plan on what to do with us. So I ended up just watching the presentation in the Venezuela room, but I learned a lot. When I was supposed to go to the next room, the “Norsk” room over at the “B-bygg” nobody was walking around looking for rooms, most of the people either sat in the canteen or at their classrooms not doing much, so there wasn’t really a lot of work to do.

I learnt a lot about Venezuela and the current crisis there, other than that i didn’t really do much. People shouldn’t have been allowed to be in the canteen and should’ve been “forced” to do something, since there was very little action in the last couple hours and most people sat in the canteen while i sat outside the “Norsk” room scouting for people. There was also a presentation in the “aula” that I wasn’t informed about. I feel like the teachers could use more information and guidance on what to do with the International English students and relay that information to us, the students.