Journey to the past

We have many possibilities to spend our free time nowadays. I asked my parents, how it was when they were young.
Lots of you wrote about youth free time in our century. Let’s have a look how it was for my parents to live 35 years ago.

The country my parents lived in is to be found on the map under Russia. It is named ‘Kazakhstan’. The school times were quite different from the times we know in Germany.
The students had days where school began 8 am and finished at 2 pm. On other days they had to be in school from 2 pm to 5 or 6 pm.
After they came home, they did their homework and then they had free time.

When my parents were between 5-10 years old, they often played games on the street like hide and seek, different ball-games, catching each other or just playing with their pets on the street or in the garden.
When they got older they met their friends at weekends, after they had done the work at home. This was to feed the pets like chicken, dogs and cats, to help to weed the garden or just harvesting the vegetables and fruits in the summer.
Furthermore they went to the city or hiked through the mountains nearby their town. My parents also went to church on Sundays and other days in the week.

When they had holidays it was also different to the holidays we know. They had holidays -one week in the spring time, three month summer holidays, one week in autumn and two weeks in winter.
In the summer holidays they spent their time with doing a mini job to earn money or joined summer camps, organized by church or the town. Often they visited the grandparents and helped them in their gardens.
If my parents travelled they just visited relatives in Ukrainia. But most of their time they spent with their friends enjoying their holidays.

I’m very glad that I have more free time than my parents when they were young and that I don’t live in a time where I have to do so many jobs at home. I think that the best of our time is the possibility to travel so much, my parents didn’t have those opportunities, so I’m happy to live today.
by Olesja

Computer (Ab?)Use - A Survey

We created a survey about the computer use by students in our age. We had 8 questions to find out the habits from young people. We were surprised about the results of some questions and others were like we expected. These were the questions:

Computer use - questionnaire:

1.How long do you use the computer a day?
O 1 hour
O 2 hours
O 3 hours
O 4 hours
O more than 4 hours
2. What do you use the computer for?
O For school
O For messaging
O For games
O For listening to music
O For shopping
O For illegal sites
O To get information from all over the world
3. How much money do you spend for the computer in a month? (pc games, internet connection and equipment)
4. Which games do you play on the computer?
O Action games
O Strategy games
O Gambling
O Killer games
O Board games
O Fantasy games
O Brain games
5. Do you have any health problems like…
O Eyesight problems
O Sleep disturbance
O Headache
O Psychological problems
O Overweight
O School problems
6.Have you ever found your love on the internet?
O Yes
if yes, how often?
O No
7.Have you met your chatting partner in real life?
O Yes_______ times
O No
O By chance
8.Can you live without a computer?
O Yes
O No
O Difficult

23 pupils filled in our questionnaire. Most of them use the computer for 2 – 3 hours a day for messaging and for school. This wasn’t like we had expected. We thought that most would tick 4 hours and we didn’t think that all students use it mainly for school. Despite the good intention some of them have already health problems like headache and eyes problems. This result was as we estimated.
One question really surprised us. Nobody had found his/her love in the internet, but we don’t believe it.
Likewise the next question of our survey. Our thoughts were that many pupils met their chatting partner in real life. The results showed us that twice as many pupil never met their chatting partner, as the pupils who did.
Frightening was the fact that almost all students are addicted to or at least cannot live without the computer. Regrettably our speculation came true.
In most cases our hypotheses were right. Although it was interesting to analyse the survey.

by Jessica, Melanie, Hümeyra and Irma