Study Guide

Topics Covered:

            Maps

• Political
• Physical
• Thematic

            Culture

§         what is culture?

§         what are elements of culture?

§         how does culture divide into subcultures?

§         how is culture learned?

            5 Themes of Geography

·         location

·         place

·         region

·         human-environment itneraction

·         movement

           

            6 Elements of Geography

• World in Spatial Terms
• Places & Regions
• Physical Systems
• Human systems
• Environment and Society
• Uses of Geography

            Tools of Geography:

• Global Positioning System (GPS)
• uses satellite to determine location
• Geographic Information System (GIS)
• store/gather/analyze/display data

           

            Careers in Geography:

·         Land surveyor - measures the land, maps boundaries

·         Location analyst - finds the best place for a specific function

·         Climatologist - studies weather patterns and data for specific functions

·         Urban Planner - plans how to make the city a better place to live

            Vocabulary:

·         Geography

·         Environment

·         Location

·         Place

·         Spatial

·         Region

Family Tree Project

Reflection on Family Tree Presentation

            This project was a lot of fun for me. Because Mr. Blake did not give us anything solid to work on, very few rules and guidelines, I could let my imagination run wild and had a lot of fun experiments with my new presentation tool prezi. J I could take (steal???) several albums from my parents’ room. I could see myself growing up before my eyes as I rummaged through my pictures. My memories, some of them quite sharp and embarassing, returned. (Oops, my parents were coming home. I’d better tuck the pictures away and look innocent! J) I announced to my parents that I was going to do a project about my family tree. I was really impressed when my parents recited a list of about 50 people and I just could not put all of them into my painting-black family tree. They seemed to be really psyched about my project, and took me and my brother around to pick some cool food that I could boast around. It turned out to be bánh trung thu. I moved about my house like a shuttle, waylaid my cousins (older) and poured queries on my exasperated cousin. I plunged into my room, creating a big mess and jostling  everything on my path. I couldn’t remember how I cleaned my room afterwards, but anyway, I managed to wriggle out of the destroyed, crumpled manuscripts (some older than I am) the first piano song I played and the very first chess set I had. Unfortunately, I could not show them to the class because of memory reasons. J

            Apart from my own experience, I saw even more clearly how diverse AIS is. There are so many nationalities within 10 meter squared of my room. Emily is from Hainam, Olia from Russia, Jennifer from Norway, and Darlene, Vivi, and Henry from the United States. There are so many cool things to talk about. Emily is a polyglot, 4 languages she speaks! Olia pronounced very cool Russian words (too fast I couldn’t repeat, but I guess that the faster it is said, the cooler it sounds!). Jennifer told as that only one out of ten people in Norway is actually Norwegian. Henry was a Boy Scout. He brought to us all the different badges and told us all the different levels that he could achieved when he participated in the Boy Scout. Even within Vietnam I could see so many differences. Because my family is Christian, we celebrate Christian holidays such as Christmas, Easter,… I don’t really know about traditional Vietnamese holidays.  Therefore, holidays such as cung co hon are not very familiar to me. In addition to that, I could taste Johnny’s bánh dưà from Ben Tre, Mary’s banh chung banh day, and probably some more I could not remember. So many things are different about us, but however, I could see that we are united. We celebrate Tet. We believe in religions that encourage nonviolence and love. We can relate to each other. I could see that albeit our different backgrounds in our cultures and subcultures, we are relatively similar as humans. And Mr. Blake summed everything up, “We are not very different, therefore we need to treat each other as we would treat ourselves.”

            This project was very inspirational. Not only could I touch my heritage, but also see how my friends came to be. I could see that my friends are so much different from me, and I, once thinking that Vietnamese people are so boring, changed my view completely after listening to 17 very talented presenters!

Vũng Tàu

Characteristics of Vũng Tàu

            I have had a few privileges to go to some nice places and vacation sites in Vietnam. One of them, is Vũng Tàu (pronounced like Voong Tau). It is famous for its beaches. Vũng Tàu is, I think (I don’t have any data for this statement), the most famous city (I’m only sure in Ho Chi Minh City) if you want to go for a swim. Partly this is because Vũng Tàu is quite near Ho Chi Minh City, only a 4-hours drive, meaning about 160 km (possibly 100 miles) will suffice in fleeing the polluted hustle of the metropolitan area of Ho Chi Minh City, escaping the noise that 7 million people is capable of, and to a pleasant, tranquil, quiet opposite of the contamination, the burdening din, and the probably-able-to-age-you-ten-times-faster quick pace of life of Ho Chi Minh City.

Vũng Tàu, famous of its beaches, obviously has beaches. And quite beautiful ones too. The water is not like Nha Trang, a translucent green, but rather, a pretty dark azure blue accompanied by a salty smell that have the tendency to reassure me that I am not surrounded by floods of cars and motorbikes that seem to be endless. Another of its beautiful physical (not man-made, just to reassure you in the period of time when humans are able to make one whole island J) feature that I really like to visit are its hills. Vũng Tàu’s hills vary in its vegetation. Some are bald (no trees), with a basalt red color. They look beautiful in the sunset. In the afternoon (2 to 4 o’clock), I like to explore the ones with lots of trees. The hills look like a painting from a very creative artist who do not have any tastes for wild colors, well, because the whole work of art, is green, but is extremely various in its different tints and shades…It is very nice to be able to climb up, look down at people and gaze towards the sea. Vũng Tàu’s climate is able to support some agriculture. There are different rice fields that come in many sizes and shapes, and if you happen to be awake during the boring 4-hour journeys, you will be able to see people planting rice, a very enjoyable thing to look at.

Vũng Tàu is more like a vacation site than a city to live in. Therefore, there are a lot of inns and hotels in the city and few people. The streets are nearly deserted. If you happen to live in Ho Chi Minh City your whole life, like me, being able to see no traffic on a road is a treat that you can only observe on Ho Chi Minh City’s streets at 2 o’clock in the morning. And I hardly am that patient. So it feels quite strange. J There are so few people that you can play soccer on the streets only to find that you are interrupted every 10 minutes by a single car passing by (However, I highly recommend that you don’t, because you can hit a pedestrian, and that’s not fun, at all).

Vũng Tàu mainly supports an economy that focuses on tourism, because it is such an attractive vacation site. However, I do think that Vũng Tàu has some form of fishing, because I often see different boats wandering about near the horizon. What else does it do J? Also, people take advantage of the beaches by mining sand. The mine looks very ugly.

Does it seem like a nice vacation site for you, Mr. Blake (and few, if any, people who haven’t gone there yet)? Sounds nice to me…Trust me, it really helps when you think too much for a whole year, and gets to relax once every year for two days. And I am the one who experiences the whole process firsthand. J

About Me

     I'm Alex, studying Social Studies period 1. Social Studies is one of my favorite subjects because I like to understand about the world I live in, because I'm good with facts, and because I like to compare and contrast different things, which is done a lot in geography. I am someone who approaches learning in a logical/mathematical way. I am good with facts, recalling facts and analyzing them. I have a pretty good command of English, and therefore can understand most of what Mr. Blake teaches. I am better with group work, because I like talking and cooperating and sharing my ideas with my friends. The one thing that I would like to improve is my creative skills. I have trouble with thinking outside the square and I am the one who usually follows the rules and rarely breaks out of what are called the standards.