Today in human geography you told us what our test will be like. I am surprised on how fast this chapter went by. I am not very worried about the first part of the test but I am worried about the second part because I missed a day;s worth of notes because I was out sick. For the first section of the test we will have to answer 15 questions in the CIA world factbook in fifteen minutes. this should be easy because I was able to find most sample problems in under thirty seconds. I will hopefully be able to do well on the second part but I might have to get old notes from somebody to make sure I have what I need to study.

We did not do much in human geography today we mostly just went on Verracross to check to make sure our grades were in order for the fourth quarter and also we shared some facts we found on CIA.gov. You also mentioned how much blogs affect our grade and this is true. They do not just raise our grade but the blogs also strengthen our grade and make it harder to drop a grade level. I am overall happy with my grade and I hope I will be able to keep it next trimester.

1. Even though America is 6546254 square kilometers larger than India, India has 943 million more people. If you go to the west in America, it is very lightly populated and there is only dense population in urban or suburban areas, when India is just densely populated almost everywhere.
2. Vatican City, the smallest country, is smaller than a square kilometer. This is smaller most cities and even towns in America and it has a population of 1000.
3. America has 6,586,610 kilometers of road. I did the math and this would wrap around the Earth 164 times.
4. 98.1% of people in japan speak Japanese. This is because of Japan's loyal culture and strict immigration laws. It is also a secluded island so there can't be much illegal travel from other countries unlike countries with bordering countries.
5. .07 more males are born on Earth. This number decreases and the population gets older though because women live longer than men.

• Why do people migrate
• Push forces
• civil war
• environmental degradation
• unemployment or underemployment
• religious or ethnic persecution
• pull forces
• better economic opportunities
• better health services
• political freedom
• Total fertility rate (TFR)
• TFR- average number of children born per woman
• For population to remain the same, the TFR must be 2.1
• Higher than 2.1 population climbs
• lower than 2.1 population falls
• world TFR is 2.42

I am home sick today because of a high fever. I forgot to do my blog yesterday. I might be out sick tomorrow too.

          I just finished the Test and I am very happy with how I think I did. I did not get a 100% though because I thought El Paso may have been named that because of the Spanish presence in Texas. Other than that, I feel like I got the rest of them right. I may have made a small mistake on some of the time zone ones but I don't think I did. I am glad I studied so long because this test was definitely harder than the last one. I did like this test format better because there was less writing involved and if you are not sure of an answer you can use process of elimination to find the correct answer. I hope the rest of the tests are in this format and I am exited to learn what we are learning next.

        I am very worried about the test tomorrow. I am writing this after just studying for four hours and I am still not confident in myself. I think it will just come down to how hard the test is. If it is multiple choice with some short answers and essays I think I will do fine, but if it is mostly fill in the blank without a word box I think I will fail. I think this test seems much harder because of how much more we learned and wrote down in notes. I feel like it would be helpful if you posted the powerpoint on veracross so I could type the notes because I can't even read my own handwriting. I know most of the things about maps but I am struggling with the different types of culture. I have  to study for a English test now so I do not have time to study more geography, but hopefully I can study more in the morning or lunch.

         Even though the time we live in has some controversy, I feel like the future will be much more peaceful. About a year ago it seemed like there was going to be a WWIII because of North Korea, But now that they have agreed to denuclearize there seems to be no world changing wars in the near future. People will still probably not get along and there will be wars in the Middle East, but they will most likely end in a couple years. It would sadly be impossible if everyone in the world decided to be friends and helped each-other to populate other planets for example because of how different cultures are, But maybe we could all individually focus on inventions to help the human race or the Earth and not weapons to win a war that is not there. Problems will still be on earth such as overpopulation which will be very hard to solve because Humans will run out of food. Running out of space is not a issue because of how much land is on Earth. In the future there may also be bases on Mars. I know it sounds science fiction but we are very close to sending a man to Mars. But no one will ever be able to guess how the future will be.

• geographers study both definitions of culture.
• culture - what people care about
• specially important cultural values derive from a group's language, religion, and ethnicity
• culture - what people take care of
• the second element of culture of interest is production of material, wealth, such as food, clothing, and shelter that humans need in order to thrive and survive
• scale, space, and connections help geographers help geographers explain why similarities among places and regions do not result from coincidences
• scale is the relationship between the portion of earth being studied and earth as a whole
• globalization is a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something worldwide in scope
• globalization of economy has been created by transitional corporations, something called multinational corporation
• the transitional corporation conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters and principle shareholders are located
• recession that began in 2008 has been called the first global recession. home buyers in the US to sales clerks in Japan were all caught in a web of falling demand and lack of credit

• Regions of culture
• Culture is the body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people.
• - origin of word, culture, is "to care for"
• Two meanings-
• To care about
• To care for

• geographers identify three types of regions, Formal region, uniform region, homogeneous region
• an area where everyone shares more distinct characteristics
• common language, economic activity, climate
• characteristics may be predominant rather than universal
• functional region(not important)
• Vernacular region
• An area that people believe is part of their cultural identity
• the american south is a region of individuals recognized as having distinct environmental, cultural, and economical preferences

• Why is each point on Earth unique?
• A place is a specific point on Earth distinguished by specific characterizations.
• Describing features is a essencial building block for geograpghers
• Location can be identified in 3 ways
• place names
• A toponym is the name given to places
• site is a physical character of a place
• Situation- the location of a place relative to other places
• Region- a unique area
• Most often applied at two scale
• Surrounding political states
• Constrained within one political state
• A region derives its unified character through the cultural landscape consisting of cultural religions, and physical features

• GPS- Global positioning system
• system that determines position of something on Earth
• GPS for U.S contains 3 elements
• satellites placed on predetermined orbits
• Tracking stations that control satellites
• Receiver that locates 4 satellites and finds their precise location
• Applications-
• Turn by turn direction in vehicles
• Navigation aid to pilots and sailors
• provides social media apps

            Today in Human Geo we discussed about how GPS and other things on the internet can intrude on our security. We used ancestry.com as a example. Sending ancestry.com gives you all of your information through your DNA, which may affect your future. I skimmed through the terms and conditions for ancestry. and a sentence stuck out to me. "As we are constantly striving to improve the Services we provide you, your data may be used to enhance our existing user experience or to develop new products and services." This seemed very interesting, because they are stating that they will use your data for further research, meaning they might store it. They also said, "This Privacy Statement describes our practices for collecting, storing and processing your Personal Information and the controls we provide you to manage it within our Services." Proving that they will store it and not just throw it away afterwards. I will not read the 30 page terms of conditions now, but I may in a free period and report more things that stood out in future blogs.

Today was mix match day in spirit week. So far I think spirit week is pretty fun am interested in what people where tomorrow. I will probably just wear my uniform tomorrow because I do not know how I could dress up like a baby. I also have a doctors appointment after school and should probably not go to the doctor's dressed as a baby. In Human Geo today, we got our tests back. I was very happy with my grade and I was not surprised by it because of how much I studied. I did get points off for my essay which you can't really study for you just have to be good at writing and thinking deeply. I will hopefully do better on next test's essay questions.