Christmas, New Year, India

Well, I must remember not to highlight my posts to change colour from the bottom up, as they always seem to disappear and I cannot recover them - annoying.
Christmas was a bit wierd, being the first one with out grandparents, and my sister being at her in-laws. It wasn't helped by studying up until the week before, and only wrapping presents and putting up the tree on the 24th. However, we celebrated an engagement and the welcoming into the family of the new generation of kids, which was exciting.
We went to see Eragon over New Year, which was good, but not at the same standard of the book - I felt they missed some of my favourite storylines, and wasn't sure how they would film the sequal as they seemed to miss out some major plots, and not explain other parts of the story, (expecially as they didn't explain the dwarfs inside the mountian clearly.) However halfway through the film my mum realised that she'd visited the mountains in the film when she was a teenager and had walked along the ridge of the High Tatras in Slovakia, and reminiscised on the way home!!
I'm off to India on saturday, so will hope to post photos once I return. I'm visiting Gujarat as part of one of my modules next semester, and am well excited as it'll be the first time I'll have visited a country outside of Europe - hopefully one of many!!

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize was presented today to Mohammad Yunus and The Grameen Bank. The Grameen Bank is fantastic as it is a bank in Bangladesh that gives out microcredit loans of tiny amounts to people who wish to start up businesses but don't have any financial support to pay it back. One of the most successful schemes is they loan the money to buy a mobile phone for a woman in a village. She then lets all the villagers use the phone for a small fee, thus paying back her loan and enabling the villagers to contact other villages. The scheme is an amazing idea and today they got the the recognition that they deserved. Read about it here and read or watch Mr Yunus's lecture here. He talks about how the world needs to start focusing on peace and poverty again instead of fighting wars. Its very inspiring and a good lecture to make you think.

Hey, I've just realised that iTunes free tuesday music track this week is Stoney. He's a guy from Sheffield and his sister used to be my CU leader. If you've got iTunes, check it out - if its like the rest of his music should be great!!

Gen X, Y or simply google generation

I've finally caught up on my blog reading and found Ben had refered to this Guardian article on the Google Generation. It's just blown my basic world view, I've realised that I am no longer classed as Gen X. Ever since I first heard the term, it was explained that Gen X related to people who were born to about 1984. Now I realise someone's re-classed it and I now am Gen Y. When did this happen, or did my education system just have different definations to the rest of the world?

Saving the World (using little things, small ways)

Over the last couple of months I've been studying Humanitarian and Development Practice at Oxford Brookes Uni with the aim to go off and help people, fighting against injustice around the world. Now that always seemed a slightly huge mammoth task, but I've realised (as I've attended lectures, and read books and had conversations with the amazing people on my course) that the best way to attempt it, is through small, little changes. Changes that might be as small as writing a letter, or encouraging someone to follow their dream, but those changes can escalate till they make a difference on a larger scale. Its the whole cell idea, where one cell will multiply till it could take over the whole body. One of my lecturers as written an entire book on this idea "Small Change" and the way he's used it around the world. Its very inspiring when you feel helpless, as you don't need to have a PHD in saving the world to encourage people to use the inherent skills they possess such as gardening, bargaining, etc to start making a difference.

How many of me? I feel special!!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Zooomr

Hey, was reading the BBC website and it had a link to Zooomr which is like Flickr, but also can add music and geotag all the pictures which is great for me remembering where I took a photo. Plus at the moment, they are upgrading all bloggers who sign into Zooomr and mention them, with free pro accounts!!

spanish pyranees4 Hosted on Zooomr