My Blog

For this blog I am writing about another thing that I love. I decided to pick a food, or should I say a dessert? Today I’m writing about chocolate. Chocolate is a celebrity, attracting people with it’s sweet personality. The definition would be ‘‘a preparation of the seeds of cacao, roasted, husked, and ground, often sweetened and flavored’’ dictionary.com. Sweet, sugary, smooth chocolate swirling its way into your mouth. Every bite of chocolate is like a bite of happiness.

First I want to tell you how chocolate is made, from bean to bar. First the cocoa beans are roasted in rotating ovens, this can take form half an hour up to two hours. The heat will bring out the delicious flavor in and the beans, and well as darken and dry them. Next the cocoa beans are cracked, so the outer shells can be removed. This leaves crushed pieces of the beans left, called nibs. The cocoa nibs are then crushed into a thick paste, this paste is called chocolate liquor (this does NOT contain any alcohol). Then the paste is sweetened by adding things like sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, or milk. Adding sugar will cause the paste to be a bit grainy, so the paste is rolled through steel rollers. Next the mixture is conched, which is a machine that mixes and mashes the chocolate to give it a smoother texture. Cheap chocolate is only conched for a couple of hours, while expensive chocolate is conched for up to six days. You can picture the delicate chocolate slowly being swirled around for days on. The longer it swirls the smoother it gets, until finally becoming a perfect, soft, mouthwatering cream. Then the chocolate cream is tempered by heating it up and cooling it down, this process is repeated several times. Finally the chocolate is ready to be molded into any form you’d like. This is the process, from bean to bar.

Most people immediately think of chocolate as an unhealthy food, that only has negative benefits on our body. But that is not true. Dark chocolate can actually benefit our bodies. For example it can help our circulatory system, which is the system that has blood pumping through your body. According to research, limited amounts of dark chocolate can even prevent heart disease. Some other benefits of dark chocolate is that is can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems, lower cholesterol levels in adults, and finally reduce the blood pressure in both overweight and normal adults.

As great as chocolate sounds it does have it’s faults. Chocolate can also cause overweight and obesity, if eaten too often. People can actually become addicted to chocolate, like a person can be addicted to drugs and alcohol. These people would be called a ’’chocoholic’’. Though dark chocolate may have its benefits, it is still chocolate. Because of its high amount of sugar and fats I can cause many health problems if you’re not careful.

The sweet smell of chocolate pulling you in, its mouthwatering scent filling your nose. Turning away is no option anymore, as it takes over your conscience and begs you to see. It shows off its smooth texture for the whole world to see. And before you know it, its too late to break free.

PERSONIFICATION

METAPHOR

SIMILIE

ALLITERATION

IMAGERY

My favorite animals in the world are dogs. What’s not to love about them? They are sweet, kind, happy, friendly, playful, and absolutely adorable. There are so many different and unique types of dogs in the world, and I find it impossible to have just one favorite breed. But Dalmatians are one out of my many favorite breeds, mostly because I have one myself. My Dalmatian is a girl, her name is Rasmine and she is now seven years old. I got her back in Denmark when I turned eight years old, and we picked her because of her unique eyes. She has one beautiful chocolate brown eye, and one stunning ice blue eye.

Many people believe, that dogs are colorblind, but thankfully that is just a myth. But dogs still don’t see all colors like humans do. The reason is, dogs are dichromatic, dichromatic means that they only see blue and yellow. But humans, humans are trichromatic, this means they see all the primary colors (blue, yellow, and red).  Also, humans have seven times higher proportion of cone cells than dogs, meaning that when dogs see colors they are pale or faded. Though they don’t see colors too well they have great night vision. Dogs have a high concentration of rod cells, and they can see better at night than people can.

Have you ever wondered if dogs sweat? I mean you don’t see a dog draining in sweat on a warm day, but what do they do? You may know one way they cool down their bodies, simply by breathing heavily. But dogs do actually sweat, through their paws. Humans have sweat glands almost all over their bodies, while dogs only have them on the bottom of their paws. Therefore you may see wet footprints on the ground, if a dog is sweating.

Though humans may se colors better, dogs sure have a much better sense of smell. Dogs have about 220 million smell-sensitive cells over an area, which cover the size of a pocket-handkerchief. Compared to humans, who only have about 5 million of these cells over an area the size of a postage-stamp. Dogs can also sense odors 100 times lower, than the average human. This is because, the percentage of the dog’s brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is 40 times bigger than that of humans.

Dogs have a great sense of smell, but their sense of hearing is just as great. Dogs are born deaf, and they don’t start hearing until they are around 21 days old. Dogs are also sensitive to extremely loud or high-pitched sounds, and they can hear at four times the distance humans can. Dogs have 15 different muscles in their ears allowing them to move in all directions, they can also move just one ear at a time. This allows them to gather all the sounds surrounding them, they can do all this without even moving their head. Dogs can detect sound as low as the 16 to 20 Hz frequency, while humans can detect sounds 20 to 70 Hz. You may not completely understand what this information means, but you can see an obvious difference between the numbers.

If you didn’t know much about dogs, I hope you learned some interesting facts in my blog. Just remember that dogs are not colorblind, have a great sense of hearing, and an amazing sense of smell. Dogs are human’s best friends, at least that is my opinion.

Sentence count and color

Simple sentences: 7

Compound sentences: 12

Complex sentences: 13

Compound-complex sentences: 4

Something that I absolutely hate is when people cut in line, also known as line jumping, butting, barging, budging, skipping, ditching, breaking, shorting, or pushing in. This is a problem that happens all the time, all over the world. I really don’t know why people cut in line. Well actually I do, but what I don’t know is why they don’t understand that it’s wrong. One example of line cutting is when people are standing in line to buy food. You might start out at the front of the line, but not for long. Someone will march into the room, and without even looking at the length of the line they just go stand by their friends who are in front of you. Then you would no longer be at the front of the line, but a couple of places back. It might not seem like a big deal, I mean it’s just one or two people. But those one or two people not only cut in front of you, they cut in front of everyone behind you. What about those people at the back of the line? They have to wait forever, because every one in front of them is letting their friends stand with them. So the line is getting longer and longer, with more and more people at the front but the same people at the back. Line cutting also refers to your etiquette. Some people think that it is okay to cut in line if the person you are cutting lets you. Did they just ‘forget’ that there are actually other people behind them that they didn’t ask? You might wonder why people don’t just say something, well they do! According to a study, a person cutting in line has a 54% chance that others in the line will complain. With two people cutting in line, there is a 91.3% chance that someone will complain. There are actually different types of cutting. You probably already know the front-cutting and back-cutting, which means to either cut in front of a person or cutting behind the person. Another type of cutting is called the ‘‘queue drift’’. Where an impatient person treats the line as though it were a slow-moving race, using every movement of the line to cut in front of others in an effort to achieve the pole position. This basically means that whenever people in the line move forwards, a person will move faster than the others and stand in an open gap between two people. When the line moves again, they will move further up and fill in another gap. This way they can slowly move their way to the front. I think this form of cutting relates to the traffic in Doha. Whenever the light turns green and cars start moving, you will see a car driving beside the line drive into an open gap between two cars. Cutting in line is a problem that happens all the time, and it can only stop when people start realizing they shouldn’t do it. I hope that in my blog you learned some more about cutting, and why it is wrong.

Green= complex sentence

Red= compound sentence

Blue= simple sentence

For my second blog I wanted to write about something else that I love, which is soccer. Soccer is one of my favorite sports, though I enjoy almost all sports. I play soccer twice a week, and I absolutely love it. Though I’m not an amazing player, I love playing anyway. In Denmark I used to play a lot of soccer as well. Usually during break and after school, with my class from Denmark. Playing soccer in Denmark is both very alike and very different from playing her in Qatar. It is alike because the rules are still the same, so there’s nothing new to learn. The main difference is the weather you play in, which is quite different. In Denmark the weather is cold, and it’s usually very cold outside. Here in Qatar it’s always very warm, and there’s hardly any wind. I personally deem that playing in Denmark is better, because I prefer to play in cold weather with some wind, though sometimes it gets too cold. Next I want to list a few interesting facts that you may, or may not, know about soccer. European teams have reached the finals in The World Cup every single year, except in 1930 and 1950. Back in 1930 goalies actually wore the same jerseys as their teammates, but today the goalie always wear a different shirt so you can tell him apart from the rest. Another cool fact is that the highest number of goals scored by one player during one game, is fifteen goals. Ronaldo from Brazil shot these fifteen goals. In 1995 a Manchester City fan was actually banned because he brought dead chickens, he would swing the chicken above his head to celebrate. I really don’t understand why he would do this, but it was his own way of celebrating. The next fact I’m going to tell is actually quite sad. A referee from Brazil performed an atrocious act and exterminated a player by shooting him dead. Because the player scowled at the referee when he didn’t agree with the penalty decision. The crowd quickly seized up and the worst part is that the referee actually escaped on horseback before anyone could catch him. Soccer is definitely not a menial job, and it requires a lot of skill and teamwork. It is manifest that soccer is popular, but did you know how much? Soccer is the most played and most watched sport on Earth, making it the number one most popular sport. Like I said, soccer is extremely popular, and I don’t think its popularity will ebb anytime soon. A weird fact is that soccer is called football in all countries except for America. So below I will list how you say soccer in a few different languages, you will be surprised by how similar some of the names actually are.

English: soccer

Danish: fodbold

French: le foot

Spanish: de fútbol

Swedish: fotboll

Norwegian: football

Turkish: futbol

As you can see these are all very closely related to the word football, which is what most countries call it. I hope you learned some new facts about soccer you didn’t know before, or at least learned some new words.

For this blog I wanted to write about something I love, Christmas. Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year, better than any other. First I want to talk about why and how we celebrate Christmas, and how it came to exist. Christmas is celebrated for several reasons, but mainly because of religion. It is believed to be the day that Jesus was born, a day that should be celebrated every year. Christmas is also celebrated to show your love towards your friends and family, to bring people together. We celebrate Christmas in many ways, each family might have their own traditions and rituals. Christmas is usually celebrated with your family or close friends, you eat a delicious meal and give gifts to each other. Christmas is celebrated in many different ways all depending on the country that you’re from. Some celebrate Christmas in the morning, and some late at night. I have always wondered why in America they celebrate Christmas on December 25^th, and in Denmark we celebrate Christmas on the 24^th. In Denmark Christmas is called ‘Juleaften’, which would be translated to ‘Christmas Night’. Because we celebrate at night, or in the evening. But Americans celebrate it the 25^th,much earlier in the day, the 25^th in Denmark is called ‘Juledag’, which means ‘Christmas Day’. Which makes sense since in America you celebrate Christmas during the day. Since I’m not familiar about how Christmas is celebrated in America I’m going to tell you how we celebrate it in Denmark. Like I said before we celebrate in the evening. Guests usually arrive around five, and dinner is served at around six. For dinner the main things we eat are duck, pork, potatoes, and red cabbage. Later we dance around the Christmas tree while holding hands and singing Christmas songs, and sometimes we dance around the house while singing as well. For dessert we eat the usual like candy, chocolate, ice cream, and so on. But we do have a special tradition, where we eat ‘risalamande’. This is a dessert made with rice where it’s mixed with cream and eaten with a type of warm berry sauce. The tradition is to hide an almond in the ‘risalamande’ and the person who finds it gets a small gift like a box of chocolate. Even though I don’t love ‘risalamande’ I always eat it in hope of finding the almond. When we are eating the ‘risalamande’ you would usually hide the almond in your mouth if you find it and not tell anyone, just because its fun to watch the rest of your family desperately search for it in their dessert. But no matter how much I eat I never end up with the almond, it’s always someone else. As you can see Christmas is celebrated many different ways all over the world, but the important thing is that we all celebrate it for the right reasons.