Surprises

Well, it seems I start to understand Coordinate-geometry but I would lie if I said my knowledge is close to optimal. My last test was 2 out of 5 so I think that's the moment when I have to give up my dreams about Maths 5 in my report book finally and concentrate on protecting my 4. It is not going to be easy though.

However I have been living my 3rd revival at Spanish. Yesterday I held a presentation about México and I got 5 to it. I was surprised how cool things I can say if I want. I used words as executed by head shot (fusilar), Viceroyality of New Spain (Virreinato de la Nueva España). Well, I tell you the execution story because it has conenction with Hungary in some way. The executed guy was Maximilian of Habsburg (Emperor of México) who was the younger brother of Franz Joseph who was the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

It was snowing here quite a lot in the last 2 days and I would like to show a photo from my window. It may look very artistic but I just can't sue the camera properly. I made it last evening when it was heavily snowing.

Today I was reassuring everyone again that I am still quite conservative. On History we had a kind of debate class and it was about the politics in Hungary in the 1840s. There were 4 significant parties in that time and we had to vote for one according to its program. I didn't vote for the most conservative one though but I vote for a slightly conservative. I was a lonely conservative. In my class the radical reformers and the liberals were in majority (4-4) .

Tomorrow I will have a good day, I have only 2 lessons because my English teachers are absent. On Tour Guiding the teacher was the tour guide who we had in Scotland. I was a bit surprised. At first I didn't recognise her though.

I am very exhausted. Luckily this time It wasn't my turn to be the goalkeeper in the class team but next week probably I will.

Top Secret revealed

I think it is the best time to reveal our Top Secret plan which was made by my buddy (Ádám) and myself because it was revealed today at school. We have the possibility to hand in drafts for our classtrip in May and we were working on 2 drafts.

I am thinking whether I have taken up so much tasks this year. I can bear it now but I am curious whether I will bear it in April when I will be less fresh and I will have to invest extra energy on my first tourism Exam. We will see... As Harley said: hard work pays off.

Today I was playing football in the class team against the teachers' team. We won 8-3 but I got 2 easy goals but I made some nice saves as well so I can say I was doing well but nothing extraordinary. I also got back my Biology test and I got 59%. I was very satisfied with it and I was the second best in my group which was a kind of surprise. Yesterday I got back my Statistics-Probability great test and finally I managed to be the best in the group. I got 101.5%. You know I am a loser kind of person. I have been second 4 times at chess on local contests and twice victory was in my hands and I let it go. I was second at Maths once, I was second at swimming a long time ago when I could swim better. It wasn't a serious contest though. At table tennis I can lose sets for 9-4 or 10-6 leads. So I am always the second and I am so happy when rarely I can be the first. So I am realable among the good or average ones but it is rare when I do outstandingly. The only exception is History on the positive side and Biology on the negative side however I don't think to Biology as failure. It is interesting to mention that it is only the second occasion I have reached more than 100% in almost 12 years. I let you guess which subject it was but you won't find it out. If you say history you are on the wrong path because it was CHEMISTRY. I got 120% once at elementary school at it. Thank you for reading few hundred pages from my autobiography.

I have to add that I am not entirely satisfied with Maths because I made the usual Ropi-kind of mistakes (for example: I substitued the wrong number to an equation).

Stereotype II

For you I collected some more stereotypical Hungarian things: good drivers; salami addicts; hot cuisine full of pepper and paprika; “a small nation struggling and surviving against the odds”; oppressors turned troublemakers; indigenous; often desperate and hopeless; calm and objective way of thinking; courage; audacity and insistence on ideas.

Also: we don't share our private life in great details, we switch to informal style very slowly, that's why we use each other's family name a lot at first unless we talk with people in similar age. Hungarian learn less languages compared to EU average.

The "flu season" is starting in Hungary. It is an usual epidemic here. The substitution board is full at school, many students are sick and so on. Luckily I don't really get any illnesses. Today we discussed the term averages and marks. I was No 1 among boys and No 4 or 5 (Biology deteriorates my average a lot) in the whole class according to averages. The class average was 3.95 out of 5. We were 18th out of 21 classes in the entire school. It is not so bad because we used to be the last ones. Today I managed to say something absolutely not wrong on Hungarian Literature ... marvel happens.

Today I got the topics for the Oral part of the final exam at Geography. I have 43 topics to study. These are not so difficult I think except a few. There are some I would like to skip but 80% of them is not so horrible. It is good I posted it here because it is not a great problem if I lost my papers.

1. Northern part of the Great Plain (Hungary)
   
2. The Small Plainland and the Subalpine Region (Hungary)
   
3. The Transdanubian Middle Mountains (Hungary)
   
4. Southern Transdanubia (Hungary)
   
5. The Northern Middle Mountains (Hungary)
   
6. The Physical geography of Europe
7. The physical Geography of Northern America
8. River discharge and food hydrograps
9. The inner structure of the Earth
10. Plate Tectonics/ Constructive and Destructive margins
11. Volcanic activity/ Volcanoes
12. River Landforms in lowlands
13. Sea currents
14. Drought and water supply in developing countries
15. Warming up of the air/ Weather and Climate
16. Formation of falling precipitation
17. Cyclones and anti-cyclones
18. Global air circulation
19. The equatorial belt
20. Global Warming
21. Mediterranian and Monsoon Climate
22. European Union
23. Evolution of EU
24. Old and new industries in the UK
25. Mediterranian farming
26. Japan - levels of development
27. The effects of intensive agriculture
28. Advantages/disadvantages of transport forms
29. Non-renewable energy sources
30. Renewable energy sources
31. Population Growth
32. Population Structures
33. Transnational Companies
34. Sustainable development
35. World trade
36. Inequalities in World development
37. Tourism- recent trends
38. Hungary - population development
39. Hungary- the structure of economy
40. Hungary- employment (structure)
41. Hungary- energetics
42. Hungary- machine industry
43. Hungary- fundamentals of the agriculture
    

Well ...

Yesterday afternoon Russia stopped sending gas to Europe through Ukraine. It influences Hungary pretty much.

Russia Shuts Off Gas Supplies to Europe

The Associated Press

01/07/09 - 06:31 AM EST

Updated from 2:14 a.m. EST

By Maria Danilova

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia has shut off all its gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine -- the latest move in a pricing dispute that has reduced or halted fuel deliveries to a dozen countries during a winter cold snap.

Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom, which had sharply limited supplies through Ukraine on Tuesday, has stopped all gas shipments through the country as of 7:44 a.m. local time, said Valentyn Zemlyansky, spokesman for Ukraine's Naftogaz.

About 80% of Russian gas to Europe is shipped via Ukraine. Other smaller pipelines run through Belarus and Turkey.

"It was the Russian side's decision to stop all gas deliveries to Europe" through Ukraine, Naftogaz head Oleh Dubina told reporters. "I think it is inappropriate."

Russia confirmed the cutoff, but said it was Ukraine's fault because it had shut down the last pipeline carrying gas from Russia. Gazprom also says it is reducing to compensate for the gas it accuses Ukraine of diverting.

The Russia-Ukraine natural gas dispute has left tens of thousands of people in Europe without heat as governments scrambled to find alternative energy sources.

By early Wednesday, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Turkey had all reported a halt in gas shipments, while France, Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary had reported substantial drops in supplies from Russia.

Russia stopped all gas shipments to Ukraine on Jan. 1 after both countries failed to agree on prices and transit fees for next year.

Over the past week, Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning off tens of millions of cubic meters of gas meant for Europe from its transit pipelines.

Ukraine admitted diverting some transit gas, saying it had the right to use the fuel to run its pumping system. Gazprom then started dramatically reducing supplies to European consumers this week.

The crisis erupted after Russia and Ukraine failed to agree on a gas price for 2009 and on payment of $600 million Gazprom says it is due from Naftogaz.

URL: http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/10456393.html

Well, in the past 2 years I advised 2 quite cheap holiday opportunities, which are not so popular but I guess they are nice places and cheaper than popular places such as Italy. Let me give you an advice. Be careful when you swim in the sea in Italy because at some parts it is very dirty. So the two places which I mentioned were Ukraine's shoreline (Odessa etc...) and Albanian, Montenegro shoreline. Of course my idea wasn't accepted but if on any Wednesday after 8 periods of suffering at school a cold home will be waiting for me then I won't be happy and in the next few years I won't go to Ukraine.

The term will be closed on next Wednesday so teacher soo will start or has already started giving term marks. I got 3 at Biology, which is very good to me. However my English teacher is hesitating about my mark. I am between 4 and 5 because I got 4 to my grammar test so she await for my Literature marks from our native speaker teacher. It is the first time ever that 5 as a term mark became an option to me at English and I hope it is going to be more than an option.