United States History Tour

8th Grade United States History Tour 

Starts at 8:25AM on Sept 10th

Thank you ahead of time to the National Park Service and all the great park rangers who will make this tour possible.

 

Iceland

Our Iceland call was with Hilja Guomundsdottir. Iceland has been relatively lucky to not be hit very hard with COVID-19 as they've been going to school without masks or distancing. Luckily, there weren't many shortages in supplies, but Hilja also says that they did face a brief shortage of hair dye due to hair salons closing. The big news in Iceland at the moment is a volcanic erruption currently happening, which is also causing a bit of gas pollution and risk of gas deseases. Hilja says, in way the volcanic erruption is affecting them more than COVID. There are also earthquakes and tremors happening. The erruption is pretty close to the capital so many people choose to get closer to see the erruption in action. The last erruption was in 2013. The houses there are built for the cold and built to withstand earthquakes. Cold is a very regular thing and Icelandic people handle it quite well. No wind is also considered to be good weather. There are many unique Icelandic traditional cuisines including blood pudding, lamb, and foal's meat. Hilja says that the one thing you must see in Iceland is a volcanic erruption, and you coud also see the northern lights to experience nature in it's purest form. Popular sports in Iceland include soccer and handball, and of course a bit of skiing in the winter time. According to Hilja, most people in Iceland speak English, ans as far as television and music, Icelandic modern culture is quite similar to America. One ppular Icelandic rock band is Kaleo.

We had the unique oppurtunity to talk to a man from Zambia, a country near the southern side of Africa! We learned that during the COVID-19 pandemic has made it very challenging and extrememly expensive to come home. The man we talked to has lived in seven countries. Rob teaches English as a second language to his students at a local school nearby. Rob reports being able to bond with his family over the pandemic by being able to play board games much more than usual. His family really enjoys to travel and when the pandemic shut things down his family didn't know what to do because they were unable to travel. They realized the beauty of the country of Zambia after not being abe to travel. We learned that one of Rob enjoys being able to try all of the food in different countries. He especially likes food from Thialand including papaya salaad. We found out that sports aren't too big, but rugby, golf, and soccer are the most prominent in Zambia. School in Zambia is much like the school here in America with an A day B day schedule, as well as daily advisory. There are also some pretty amazing animals in Zambia as well! They have occasional bat migrations as well as cheetas around the area!

9:30 A.M.: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

We started the day talking to one of our realy good friends from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Lucy Sang and her 14 year old student. We started off with the first things we talked about were things like if they had to go into online learning and if they had to go into online learning when the pandemic hit. Fortunate for them, they never had to go into online school, but they did have to wear masks to school right when it hit. They are still in strict lock down and they don't see an ending to it any time soon. We go to talk about some sports and found out the her student is actually into car races so we talked about Texas Motor Speedway which was fun. After that it was time to talk about a must ask, food. Of course we wanted to know if they had some similar foods over there so we aksed about the obvious choice, McDonalds. They have most of the same food that we have which is not always the case so it was cool to know about that. We decided to circle back around to sports and found out that the biggest sport there is in fact baseball!!! We got to share all about our fields that we are near and that was it. We were so happy to get to catch up with them and can't wait to talk to them again! Blog By: Sawyer Telford

This second to last call is at Jamestown, Virginia. While on this call, we learned a lot of stuff and here are some of them.

Facts:

• Jamestown is still a pretty popular city but is known as "Jamestown County".
• Jamestown is considered as the 1st successful colony.
•  Jamestown is home to the ruins of the first permanent English settlement in North America. 

• Bodies were buried in unmarked graves to conceal the colony’s decline in manpower

Sorry I have to cut this short, we have another call!

-Leighton

Mystery Skype

On our first "Mystery Skype" we talked with Denmark, a country in Europe! While this was a very exciting Skype to learn more about the country, there was also a little twist. The people we talked to were Sawyer's cousins, Kim & Annica. While Skyping with them, we found out that Denmark is a mix between a Socialist and Democratic Republican government, also known as a Monarchy. Another thing that we found out is that when we were talking with them at 4:00 P.M., it was 11:00 P.M. there. Another thing we learned about is the main source of economy, being pork. Another big one is the windmill, which was actually created in Denmark. Now, they are manufactured in Denmark and shipped out to places that have ordered them. One of the last things we learned about was the weather. The weather in the winter is extremely cold with highs not typically getting above 0℉ which and in the summer the highs do not get above 77℉!

-Sawyer

National Museum of the Pacific War

On to the National Museum of the Pacific War! This museum is located in Fredricksburg, Texas. In this call, we learned many new things like the Americans won every battle they had against the Japanese once they entered World War II.  Then when America entered WWII, America's army was ranked #15 or #16 because of the inattention it had been getting because of the Great Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war. Our manufacturing force was much better than Japan's, which would be a huge advantage in the war. We produced 5 million M1 Grands (an advanced gun) during the war.  It was a wonderful history lesson, where we got to add to our knowledge. Thank you so much for speaking with us, hope you have an awesome day.
- Alyssa, Caitlyn, Ansuman