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@In October, we members of the TOFU gathered and began working on the project. First we split into two groups, the Sweden group and the Brunei group. I chose the Brunei group, because Brunei was a foreign country that I didnft hear about often and it sounded really interesting.
@We started sending and receiving e-mail from the students and teachers of Brunei, but before deciding what our topic of the debate will be with them, I thought it was important to know more about their country, so we researched about Brunei. We checked about Bruneifs education, medical treatments, language, clothing, food, the Royal family, Mohammedanism, and so on. What I researched was about the things that are free of charge as a policy of the King. @Because of the income of natural gas, Brunei has an easy budget, so the burden of the citizens is very small, especially medical treatment, tax and recreation. Because there are proposals of taxes only going up in Japan, it was very surprising. Through TOFU, I have been able to understand a little about the country of Brunei. There are many countries in the world, and I have realized that it is very interesting and important to learn about them. @For our self-introduction, we mailed Brunei a video in December, and in February we attended the gMinato Youth Summith. who visited Nagasaki, and it was very valuable to be able to hear what people the same age as us are thinking about. After that, we listened to two lecturers who talked about gWhat we can do for the future of our worldh. @There we were asked what the true meaning of peace is, and realized that there are many definitions to the word, gpeaceh. They told us that the opposite meaning of gpeaceh is not always gwarh. Every person having the human rights they should have and not in a state of war is the true meaning of gpeaceh, and not having potential rights is gviolenceh, they said. Unless this gviolenceh is eliminated, there is no chance of the world being gpeacefulh. @Also, they told about how unequally money is spent. If the arms expenditure of countries were spent on preventing injections of people of the developing countries, all the people will be able to receive it and there will still be over half of the money left. Looking at these specific numbers made me feel very embarrassed. @During February, we decided on our debate topic. One was about gterrorismh, considering the 9.11 attack, and another was about the book, gIf the World Were a Village of 100 Peopleh. First we debated by ourselves, and then we made our script bearing in our minds the word gpeaceh. @At last, on March 9th, we got on the line with Brunei. Seeing the moving pictures and hearing the Brunei sidefs voices, it was very impressing to feel that we were actually communicating with the people on the other side of the line. |