Eindexamen engels vmbo bb 2013, tijdvak 1

Flyaway Parrot 1 A 12-year-old pet parrot has been reunited with his astonished owner Jerry Williams after an absence of more than two months. Jack, a blue-fronted Amazon 1) , vanished from his owner’s home in Liverpool in November. The bird was in the habit of following Jerry around the house. One Sunday morning Jerry stepped out of the back door, completely forgetting that Jack was sitting on his shoulder and suddenly the bird flew off. 2 After making it through the coldest December for a century, Jack was found towards the end of January, sitting on a fence outside a tropical birdhouse at Chester Zoo, some 15 miles from his home. Andy Woolham, the zoo’s head parrot keeper, said: “I could tell he was very hungry so I made him come down using a grape. No parrot can resist a black grape.” Andy decided to take the parrot home to look after him while they searched for his owner. 3 One of the most amazing things Andy noticed was that Jack was mimicking the clucking of hens all the time. During his time on the loose Jack had clearly spent some time with chickens in a heated hen house. Parrots mimic the sounds they hear in their surroundings. 4 Two weeks later a friend who visited Andy’s house, recognised Jack from a ‘missing parrot’ poster she had seen at a local vet’s surgery. Jerry said he was speechless when the zoo called to say Jack had been found. “Ever since the day I watched helplessly as he flew off over the trees at the end of the garden, I thought I’d never see him again,” he said. “We are having a lot of what I like to call QPT - Quality Parrot Time. It’s wonderful to have him back.” noot 1 Amazon is een soort papegaai.

I Lost Everything in a Fire Jasmine Barlow, 17, from Dorset: “What do you do when you can’t find your favourite jeans? Turn your room upside down, or run to the nearest jeans store for a new one? Well, how would you feel if you didn’t just lose a pair of jeans but all your belongings? Every photo, letter and memory, turned to ash. That’s what happened to me the night I lost everything in a fire.” 1 “It happened on Saturday, 2 January, when I had just gone to bed. Around 11pm, Mum’s voice pierced my sleep. “Wake up! There’s a fire!” she screamed. Confused, I stumbled out of bed and saw a cloud of smoke climbing the stairs. Within seconds thick smog filled the house. The smell was so strong that I was coughing and choking uncontrollably. Mum ran to a window, forced it open and jumped out. Luckily our next-door neighbour heard her and brought round a ladder to get me, my two sisters and my brother Jack out. 2 It turned out that an electrical fault had caused the fire. Jack had inhaled smoke and Mum had broken an ankle. While they recovered in hospital, I stayed with my grandparents. But it just wasn’t home. After three weeks Mum and Jack left the hospital. ‘Finally we can get our life back,’ I thought. But that’s when it hit me - we had nothing to get back to. 3 When we went to our old house for the first time it was like stepping onto the set of a disaster film. Black marks all over the walls. Everything was covered in black soot. All our photo albums were melted plastic. So I felt like my past didn’t exist anymore. 4 My mate Lucy turned up with a bag full of clothes and make-up. She’s my best friend but I still felt ashamed accepting her old stuff. I didn’t want hand-me-downs, I wanted mý stuff. Strangers arrived with old furniture and household items for us but I wanted to shout ‘We’re not a charity case!’ 5 School was just as tough. I lost all the work for my school exams. With the deadline four weeks away, I had to stay in every night to catch up. It felt so unfair. I didn’t have a laptop any more so I was stuck in the school library rewriting all my notes while my friends went home. 6 Gradually I managed to buy some of the things I had lost. I bought a digital camera and took more than 200 pictures in one day, desperately trying to create new memories.

Losing everything made me possessive too. I refused to let my sister borrow things. I wanted everything for myself and didn’t want to share anything with others. But on the plus side, I’ve learned not to take things I own for granted. Material possessions don’t really matter. You can survive without your stuff, it’s having your family and friends that’s important.”

Life isn’t Magic 1 Harry Potter has millions of fans, but there is at least one person who doesn’t like the famous wizard - the REAL Harry Potter, who lives in Portsmouth, England. The worldwide success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter has brought nothing but misery for the 22-year-old bank employee, who has the same name and a scar on his forehead as well. No, life for the real Harry has not been magic at all! 2 “After peaceful years of being a schoolboy with an ordinary name my life changed completely when the books became popular,” says Harry. “At first I thought it might be quite a good thing to have the same name. But now it’s like someone has cast a bad spell on me. The reactions I get from people range from making fun to plain aggressive. I wish the writer J.K. Rowling had never used my name.” 3 J.K. Rowling has often said that Harry was her favourite boy’s name, so if her daughter had been a son he would have been called Harry Rowling. Potter was the surname of a family who used to live in the neighbourhood when she was young and she always liked the name, so she borrowed it for her book. 4 Harry says that his name is an obstacle in his professional life. “When I got my job in the bank where I work, they couldn’t believe that I was telling the truth on my application form,” he says. “I am the only person in the building who doesn’t have to use his full name when I’m talking on the phone. Beginning a phone conversation with the mention of my name is never a good start. It distracts people too much. No one ever believes that I’m telling the truth about my name.” 5 His name is also troublesome in his private life. “When I was dating my girlfriend Philippa, I had to show her my passport, my credit card and my driving license to convince her that I wasn’t lying,” he says. He even got into trouble when he was nearly sent off the football pitch for telling the referee his name. He had fouled someone and when the ref asked his name and Harry said: “Harry Potter”, the ref thought that he was being cheeky and was giving him a fake name. “I had to get my coach to come over and tell the angry ref that it really was my name.”

6 Now the real-life Harry is praying that the last Potter book and movie mean he can finally have some peace. He says: “I’m hoping my life can get back to normal now.” COMMENTS I guess the ‘real’ Harry Potter isn’t clever, otherwise he would figure out how to make money out of the shared name. James, NAPA My second son, born in 1979, was named Michael, because we liked the name. Unfortunately our last name was Jackson. It didn’t bother him at all. He even learned to moonwalk! Ard Jack So sad, how would you like to have a famous name like Michael Meyers, like me. Mike M If you really hate it that much (which I doubt) you should try ‘Harold’ or ‘Henry’ or get over it. Some people have actual problems. NAOMI I say he should keep his name Harry Potter and learn to live with it. It makes you a stronger person. Accept the unwelcome fame. Tommy Pierce I suspect he’s just after publicity. He should have played Harry Potter. He looks far better than Daniel Radcliffe. SOMONE

Foster Parents - 72 times over 1 The secret of staying young is: changing diapers! Just ask 81-year-old Ann Rose and her husband Tom, 73, who are about to become foster parents for the 72nd time. This amazing couple has cared for 71 children since they decided to become foster parents some 15 years ago. So they must have been changing some 6,000 diapers since then. “We don’t think we are too old to be doing this,” says Tom. “We love having the kids with us. They keep us young at heart.” 2 Tom and Ann have been married for 42 years. Their own two children have grown up and left home. Ann spent 35 years working as a drug and alcohol counselor. After she retired, she decided she wanted to help people in a completely different age group. “When they are little, before they might get bad,” Tom explains. “She thought that if we took in kids we could give them a good start, so we decided to give it a try.” 3 Their first foster child was only 3 years old and came with a heartbreaking story. “He was taken from his home after he drank from a bottle of chemical cleaner that burnt his throat. We enjoyed having him so much we thought we’d take in another child.” The bighearted couple give shelter, food, love and encouragement to children usually age 5 or younger who mostly come through a Salvation Army 1) agency. 4 Most youngsters stay for two or three months at the Rose home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but some have stayed as long as three years. Although they usually take in one child at a time, they’ve sometimes had as many as five at once. The hardest part of foster parenting for them is knowing that the children will leave at some point. 5 While most couples their age are enjoying their golden years on the golf course or going on holiday, the Roses say there’s nothing else they’d rather be doing. “The kids are a real joy,” says Tom. “We know couples who are retired and they are really bored. We never have time to be bored.”

6 At the moment the tireless pair doesn’t have any children staying with them, but they expect to take in child No. 72 soon. “These kids need a safe home, with structure, with boundaries, with love, and that’s what we give them,” says Ann. “We get so much back in return. They’ve enriched our lives.” noot 1 Salvation Army = Leger des Heils