Sunflower garden

Last Sunday I joined a one-day trip held by our department. We went to 桃園 to a "famous" sunflower garden but actually it was small and there were not many flowers in the garden. Though the sunflowers were quite beautiful, the garden doesn't deserve a second-time visit.

We had a barbecue as our lunch but I don't like barbecue so I had a box of bread and cake

(I was expecting a box of delicious vegetarian food.)

The weather was very hot and the sun was like burning my skin without a minute. I had no choice but brought my ultraviolet-ray-proof umbrella with me all the time. While almost everyone was busy making fire, roasting the meat and preparing the food competition, Joy,Iren and I were busy playing cards with the smoke keeping blowing toward us.

Even though I don't like the garden where we spent almost the whole afternoon, I do have a good time with many of my classmates this time.

Oral class & the other boleyn girl

I always enjoy my oral class pretty much because our material is practical and interesting. Above all, the teacher is really good and very nice to us; she is kind of like our friend. Though she always likes to make some fake affairs between the other male classmate and I, knowing she is just joking I don't feel offended or angry. Every week, she teaches us five slangs and makes us use them to make up a weird story or funny questions for each other. When it comes to midterm exam or final, her exam is always the most favored one because we only need to prepare a short conversation with acting (about 2 minutes). It is always a favor for us during a busy-taking-exams week.

**
Today she treated us 8 boxes of pizza as a good ending of teaching us for one year. We had tasty pizzas and a movie : The Other Boleyn Girl this afternoon. The movie is about Henry 8th, the king of England, and the two sisters Anne and Mary. At the beginning, Mary is forced to bed with the king because Anne offends the king. Mary always wants a country life more than a life in court but she falls in love with the king and gives birth to a son. However, Anne is exiled to France due to her adultery with a married Duke. When Mary has to lie in bed for the safety of the baby, Anne comes back England with her well-changed manner and seduces the king.
Anne even makes the king abolish the queen and crown herself as a queen. But she fails to have a son as an heir and the king grows hatred toward her for she made him break up with the Rome Church. In the end, Anne is executed but Mary lives happily with a man who loves her.

Singing contest & farewell

Last Thursday, our department held a singing contest and a farewell for our seniors. I signed up for the contest and my senior as well as my junior signed up for it too. My good friend Joy was also in the competition and she had prepared for it for almost three months; she was very excited and anticipated it very much. Her performance really shocked everyone and caught everyone's eyes. Because of her stunning dance, we all had a high. ( right, Joy? )

I didn't do well on the contest for I forgot some of the lyrics, which was an big mistake in a singing contest. But I did sing my song out loud; I did not have a stagefright. I was quite surprised that many of my juniors sang pretty well and one of them won the second prize. She was good and had a beautiful voice. My classmate,
2B won the first prize, which was no surprise to us for his great singing skill. He once participated in a singign contest held by our student association and he did well enough to compete in the final.

After the contest followed the farewell, which made the atmosphere sentimental and many of my seniors were sad because their seniors are going to graduate. Though I know little about their relationships but I still could feel their sadness and I did drop a few tears. (I wonder why.....).

090523

During the weekend I went to see my elementary friend in Taipei. She is a college student in National Taiwan Normal University but she has to take courses and live in 林口 because she majors in department of applied Chinese languages and literature.
The department of applied Chinese languages and literature is a new department so she has no seniors and because of the fewer numbers, students who major in applied Chinese languages and literature are forced to move to 林口. Their campus is as big as 9 soccer fields and located in a remote and desolate place. She said they have appealed to move back to the original campus but the principal said they should accept whatever the college offers to them and become more mature. In all, my friend has lots of complaints about their campus now. It's true that students always complain about their own school.

My friend took me to 九份 and we ate some famous snacks such as 芋圓 and 草仔粿. The scenery is really beautiful there; because of the mass cloud, the small town has a melancholy atmosphere. The weather there is also much cooler and more comfortable. Besides, the old but famous movie 悲情城市 once took scenes in the small town and made it a spotlight.

One day trip

The other day Joy and I went to Taiwan Art University to see the graduation fair in which each of her old classmates made their own art work to display. I used to dream of going to Taiwan Art University and wanted to major in radio and television department. But I still chose to be an English major over an art major because I could not just follow my own interest without considering that studying art is not so favored as studying English. I really have to say I was not brave enough to choose what I wanted most.

Joy met many old friends and she kept asking them what they are going to do after they graduate, I thought it was quite an unpleasant question but she asked them with a funny tone which made the serious question not so uncomfortable.

There are about 12 works in the fair. Some are accomplished by two or four people, others are done by one. The most impressive work was a book that recorded all the graduates' profiles and their pictures in the four years. Actually, other works didn't impress that much. One of them was very delicate and well-prepared but lacked of unity.

Freedom Writers

The film is based on a real story in Woodrow Wilson Classical High School. The teacher Erin Gruwell successfully reformed her students and made them learn much more than things they could learn from school. At the beginning she was very excited about being a teacher.

Though later she realized that her students were not the ones she was expecting, she didn't give them up. They were segregated into racial groups in the classroom. The tension is apparent whenever students from one race look at those from another race. Gruwell also had a hard time with her department head, who told her not to focus on teaching her students to learn and read but to focus on teaching them discipline and obedience.

Once, Gruwell used a racist drawing of one of her students to teach them about the Holocaust. She gradually won their trust and she came up with a way to get to know them more. She bought them composition books to write down their experiences of being abused and seeing their friends die. In order to reform her students, Gruwell took two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spent more time at school.

She also invited several Holocaust survivors to talk with her students about their experiences and took them to the Museum of Tolerance. However, her colleagues and department head disliked her unorthodox teaching.

Dirty Sexy Money

The series is about a lawyer, Nick, whose life has been connected with the Darling family, the richest family in New York, since his father was their personal lawyer. When Nick's father mysteriously dies in a plane crash, he agrees to take over his father's job as the Darling family's lawyer in order to find out who murdered his father. The Darlings constantly rely on Nick to handle their problems and Nick struggles to balance his family life with the demands of the Darlings.

As he gets to discover what his father had been doing for the Darlings and secretly for another man,Simon Elder, things become complicated and there is a history between the Darlings and Simon Elder, whose parents used to work for the Darlings but somehow were exiled to Russia by the Darlings. Now Nick works for the Darlings but he also pretends to be with Simon Elder because he needs some information about the death of his father and the Darlings see their cooperation as a benefit for them to destroy Simon Elder's empire.

09.04.09

Last week, I saw the news about the student in my university who quit her academics and decided to work as a public official. I was really shocked and thought about her decision. What am I going to do after finishing my college? I don't plan to study further and I would like to earn money by myself. Actually I've been thinking about preparing for the national exams. I want a stable and nice income as well as good benefits though I don't like a boring and stereotyped job. I want my future to be colorful but I still have to be down-to-earth. After all, I know I'm not the kind of people who can take any jobs.

******

Face Off
It's an old and classic film which starred John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. When I for the first time watched this movie, I was only ten. My dad loves actions and I used to watch lots of action movies with him. I remember I loved Face Off for its plot and the two main characters were so creative and appealing. I watched it again last night (byPPS). I still feel this movie is really good and it really intrigued me, making my eyes sticking on the screen. That kind of enjoying can be hardly aroused when I watch some other movies.

09.04.04

*Family-get-together
It's not unusual for Chinese to get together on Tomb-sweeping Day. I returned home during the holidays to hang out with old friends, sweep my grandmother's tomb and enjoy staying with my family. Americans have Thanksgiving; on this big day, they celebrate and most importantly they show their gratitude. They are grateful for what they have and forgive whoever once hurt them. Somehow I feel Tomb-sweeping Day is kind of like Thanksgiving. On this day, we get together with family, perform traditional rituals in order to show our respect to our ancestors and sometimes we retrospect to the old days which we can chat about with our family.

*Big news: the youngest public offical
These days, finding a job is getting harder than ever, no wonder there are a bunch of people who try so hard to get a position of public service, which assures stable income, social benefits and a better status nowadays. I was really shocked that one of the sophomores in my university passed the basic level exam of public service and she decided to quit her academics for she's already got a 28,000 per month job.
She said she didn't inform her family of the truth that she was going to prepare for the exam and quit her studies. The reason she wanted to pass the exam so early is that she wants to earn money by herself.

To be continued

Tutoring

Tutoring is a quite common part-time job for college students. I have been tutoring since my second semester in freshman and I am getting more familiar with this kind of part-time job.
I start tutoring because of earning extra money and experiences. Many people think tutoring is always a well-paid job but actually it depends. As the recession goes on, many parents are not interested in finding a tutor for their children. Even some of them do want a tutor, they will lower the price of tutoring as possible as they can. In that case, they may hire someone who is able to handle their children's studies but not so professional.

I think teaching is hard. Sometimes the question is not about right or wrong; instead, it's about a common usage of a language ( English). There are little rules for language beginners to understand a language's common usage even if they do well on a language's grammar part. Learning a language is not only studying its grammar but its practical application in daily life. But sadly the top priority of students in Taiwan is doing well on exams rather than growing interests in languages and applying them to real usage. One of my students hate to read English magazines for there are too many words he cannot understand and he only wants to get high grades on tests. It really disappoints me to only teach him basic grammar in textbooks.

Good friend & good series

My good friend in elementary school, Ann came to Taichung to attend her cousin's wedding and visited me as well. She is kind of a friend that grows up with me though we did not go to the same junior high and senior high school; we kept in touch every little while. Since our long relationship, we share many things and chat about mutual memories, even the one we both used to have a crush on. It 's very nice to hang out with old friends especially eating delicious stand food and drinks with them. Somehow I never thought the food in 逢甲 night market was very tasty, but it turned out to be a quite good experience to eat stand food there with my old friend.

Upon talking about what I did when I had time to relax, I introduced Ann to watch the series: Desperate Housewives; she also insisted that Grey's Anatomy was a good series which might give me some inspirations. After watching several episodes of the series, I came up with some thoughts about "lines." It's all about lines in our daily lives. We draw a line to keep things clear and to feel security because of an organized situation. However, if there is anything we can't make sure how to handle it , we hardly draw a clear line. Even if we do draw a line, it's like a floating line, which we use to show how clinical we are and how well we deal with our own mess.

Lavender Cottage

One of my old friends came to visit me and my other friend, Momo last weekend. She wanted to see the famous lavender cottage in 新社, so as good friends I and Momo couldn't let her down though actually we didn't know how to get there. We did some route searching on yam map and made notes in order not to get lost. However, after one and half hour, we finally arrived at lavender cottage by asking people directions. It was a long and kind of tiring journey; especially the mountain route, there were many big turns and the roads were uneven.

Each of us spent 100NT on tickets and one ticket had two purposes: 60NT for eating or drinking and 40NT for souvenirs. The food there was unacceptably expensive and the only thing that really deserved a try was the ice cream. The ice cream had five flavors: lavender, lemon grass, rose, blueberry yogurt and mint chocolate. I chose lavender and lemon grass for others seemed not so special and they tasted so good that I even wanted to eat more, which I didn't for the price was not low and it might be too much ice cream for my stomach to digest.

There happened to be a small Florence market and we bought some milk peanuts candy with lavender and gui hua flavor and a tiny lucky container filled with lavender and perfumed beans
as souvenirs. The lavender garden there was not big but delicate and there were also many kinds of different flowers beside lavenders; the scene was quite good.

Housewives 2

After Mary Alice's mysterious committing suicide is resolved, her widowed husband, Paul, deals with the possibility that Zach (his son) was Mike's biological son. Meanwhile, Zach's grandfather knows the existence of Zach and decides to leave his entire empire to him. For Paul raising Zach like his own son, Mike doesn't kill Paul though he knows that Paul killed Deirdre.

Susan gets involved in rather complicated relationships with her ex-husband Karl, Mike, Dr.Ron and neighbor Edie. Edie burns down Susan's house after Karl rejected her for Susan. Susan ultimately rejects Karl in order to reconcile with Mike but unfortunately makes Mike the victim of a hit-and-run by a new friend of both Bree and Susan, a dentist named Orson.

Lynette is informed by her boss that her husband Tom, has been making regular trips to Atlantic City. Lynette thinks Tom is having an affair but it turns out to be he is visiting his other child, whom he gave birth to after a one-night stand before he married Lynette. The child's mother demands a large amount of money for the past eleven years support, which Lynette and Tom cannot afford. However, the single mom finally decides to move to Fairview to be close to Tom instead of taking the money.

Bree seeks to bridge the gap between she and her son Andrew with the help of her AA boyfriend, who is also a member of SA. On hearing that his mom's new boyfriend used to sleep with many people (not only with women), Andrew seduces him into having sex to spite his mother. Bree abandons Andrew outside of the town and tells him she can't give him unconditional love.

Housewives

I watched some TV series like desperate housewives, nip tuck and lost file. I never thought watching series could be so much fun. Housewives really intrigued me for the funny and cranky lives of the four women: Susan, Bree, Gabbe and Lynette. It starts with Mary Alice, one of their closest friends, mysteriously commits suicide in Fairview (the town housewives live in).

In the first season, a mysterious plumber named Mike Delfino moves to Fairview in order to find out the murderer who killed his former girlfriend, a drug addict Dierdre. The show reveals that the mystery of why Mary Alice took her own life is connected with Dierdre's death. By the end of the season, the show tells that 15 years ago, when Mary Alice's name was Angela, she bought Dierdre's only son and fled with her husband Paul to Fairview, keeping the child from being taken away. When Dierdre found them, Mary Alice refused to give up the child. Dierdre hit Paul and went upstair to get her son. Mary Alice was shocked and murdered her. Her horrified husband dismembered the body, put it in a toy-chest and buried it in their backyard.

to be continued