PYRAMID OF PYRAMIDS

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT POLI?

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!

Hi! I'm back!

Holidays were great, but when they are over it's time for the weekly challenge!

This time, I am going to talk about the Timisoara soccer team, called Poli. They are 4th of Romania League I. They are also playing in the UEFA champions league.

Since we arrived a bit after the players because of traffic jams, we only saw Dan Alexa come in, he was also late and looked really tired! But he said: "Hi everybody!" when he arrived.

picture from http://www.politimisoara.com/

As we could not enter the stadium, we had time to take a look at the team bus which is super duper. It is because, or rather thanks to, the wreck of their previous bus with a city tram in 2007. The RATT (transport society of Timisoara) does not hold a grudge or maybe Poli is their sponsor, because all the new city buses carry Poli colors (white and purple).

bus: prosport.ro and wreck: hotnews.ro

But some supporters went and talked with one coach who was passing through and he had someone open the side gates of the stadium for us! The colors of the team are everywhere: white and purple!

Thanks to him, we were able to watch the team warming up routine which is quite complex but very efficient. Poli is really a great team: after their warming up, they scored awesome goals!

We were lucky to see them practice in Timisoara because they are leaving for a training camp in Turkey tomorrow, Saturday 01/16, for 11 days. Even greater, we saw the first training session of the new striker from Argentina, Vasquez, freshly recruited!

Here, we are with our friends from karate that we met there by chance!

see you soon for the next blog entry!

THE BEGA RIVER

Hello !

This week, I was challenged to write a report on the Bega river.

This river is 254 km long (158 miles) with 178 km (110 miles) in Romania and 76 km (47 miles) in Serbia. It originates in the Poiana Rusca mountains, which is part of the Carpathian range and flows into the Tisza River (tributary of Danube River). It flows across 20 towns in Romania, one of which is Timisoara, and 15 cities in Serbia, one being Titel where it is called Tisza.

In Timisoara, people removed big blocks of stone from the river, one of which with the same engraving found on a cobblestone on Union Square. They are still finding many things where they are dragging its waters. They are also many couples in love along the canal as well as plenty of restaurants.

Here are some pictures of Canal Bega in Timisoara:

THE ATOMIC MUSHROOM

Last Monday, Dad sent me a funny picture. I had to find out what it was!

As Emilie had prepared us some excellent mushrooms the day before, I found a striking resemblance. With Mom's help, I found it was a very special mushroom: the one produced by the explosion of an atomic bomb.

This explosion was indeed the 1st test of the atomic bomb. It took place on July 16 1945 at 5:30 am in New Mexico in the United States, more precisely in Alamogordo, in the Jornada del Muerto Desert.
It was the result of Manhattan Project which was launched in June 1942 because everybody believed that the Nazi Germany was trying to build their own atomic bomb.

To build the site, the army came to help. It was so big that security rounds had to be done with a jeep.

The plutonium core assembly was done on Friday, July 13th. In the afternoon of the same day, the core was driven to the metal tower where the bomb was to be launched to be fitted in a special mechanism. The whole thing was called "the gadget". The explosion was done on a tower because the higher an explosion is, the more destructive it is.

The explosion, at first planned at 4:00 am, was delayed because of bad weather conditions. The green light was given around 5:10 am because it took about 20 minutes to get to shelter. But the surveillance aircrafts could not make it on time because of the weather.

The theory behind this bomb is that billions of atoms are split within a millionth of a second. For a short period of time, the light produced was like several noon suns were in the sky within 20 miles. The light from the explosion was witnessed from 160 miles away, even a blind woman reported seeing the light from the explosion! The sound blast was perceived from 100 miles! The atomic mushroom reached the altitude of 10,000 feet. The radioactive cloud went up 36,000 feet.

A crater of 400 m was formed, with a hole in the center 100 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Inside the crater only dust remained and around the crater a green material had appeared: trinitite. It was desert sand transformed by the explosion. The tower had vanished!

If I had seen this, I think I'd said it was amazing. An Army general on site found it more extraordinary than usual extraordinary!

See you soon for a new and even more amazing blog.