Vacation

I'm so excited, cause my super vacation is starting tomorrow!

This is the first time for me to travel so many places in a one period.

12/14~12/16   Los Angeles (California)

12/17~12/20   Seattle (Washington)

12/21~12/26   Las Vegas (Nevada) Grand Canyon (Arizona) Monument Valley (Arizona)
                         Brice Canyon (Utah) Zion (Utah)

12/27~1/2       New York City (New York), Boston (Massachusetts)

1/3~~~new quarter (spring quarter)


I think this is the last chance that I can travel so many places in one period.

I will definitely have fun.

Wonderful trip, coming soon.

Blast

Finally I have finished the final exam.

I think i did well in an exam for linguistics, but final paper for Iraq was really bad.

Horrible. I finally didn't finish reading the book for writing the paper.

So the contents of the paper is really light and uninteresting.

I hope I pass this course. please...

In next quarter, 

1. I'll become more professional about bilingual education.

2. I'll brush up my writing skills.

3. I'll make my English more professional. (I want to make it different from other study abroad students' English)

After this winter break, we don't have enough time to travel or play.

Next quarter will be a study hard quarter.

I also start to write my final thesis.

To achieve all the things above, I decided to read books about bilingual education carefully every time, one chapter one day, and write summary about it.

If I find any unknown word, I will look up it each time.

I hope, it'll help..

anyway...

Winter break!

I can't do it anymore....

I can't write about Iraq anymore, I got so tired.
I don't wanna read the tons of articles anymore.

Finally, I started to write a paper in the middle of reading the book.
If I continue to read the book until finish, I won't be able to write a paper by the due date.

Reading all the book and the materials doesn't necessarily mean that I can write a good paper.
Anyway, I've just started writing.

But soon I found the requirement of this paper by the professor, "Quote specific case from the book." lol

Oh, my, goodness...

I even find any tips  I can quote from the book to write this paper..
If the TA found that my paper doesn't have any quotes from the book, I'll fail..

Does it mean, I should finish reading the book?
But still I have more than 300 pages and the due is tomorrow.

Plus I have a final exam of linguistics course.
That is easy one, but I need to study a little bit.

uh,,,,

Why is it so hard without any club activity or so.

While I was in Japan, I did lots of other activity like sports club, part time job,,
But the course works were not so hard as this study abroad life.

Oh, and I live on campus, i don't have to commute to school taking so much time.

I have lots of time to study now.

Why?

Is is only because of the language barrier?
....maybe no.

I think this is because, the UCSD system is quarter system, not semester,
We have three quarters in a year.  Automatically one period for each course is shorter than that of semester system.

I've gotta go back to study.

undie run

UCSD is crazy. I knew, but I recognized it.

Today we had a crazy event, called "undie run"

This event is that students are running around the campus.
What is special?

yeah, students are running around the campus being naked wearing only underwear!

hahahahaha

Everyone including 'girls' wears only underwear and is running around the campus shouting something at midnight. WTF seriously.

Everyone got crazy because of the final.

I didn't join it, but I wanna try it next time..

I heard we have this event on the each quarter's final week.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

I have been reading materials about Iraq refugee caused by Iraq wars for these three days.
I'm gonna die...

I don't think this reading will finish. It seems endless.
The professor sent us the list of the materials about Iraq refugees.
We need to read them and write about what caused Iraq refugee crisis.

Surprisingly, when I opened one of the list of the materials I received, one of them showed another bunch of lists of materials,, and again, I opened one of them, it showed another lists !!!!
materials are increasing endlessly.

One of them is http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/iraqi_refugees/index.html?offset=0&s=newest

This includes 587 articles...WTF!

I don't think I can handle these articles by Friday.
I need to come up with a better strategy to survive this paper.

But I can't cut corners in this final paper, because the mean TA is warning me that he will give me F if I turn in the same quality of paper as the previous one..

Ah,,,,oh my god. I think I need 72 hours fighting with coffee.

I heard that UCSD Extension (English school) has already finished,,,
Extension students don't have finals...!
I hate them! Unbelievable! No Finals? Unthinkable.lol


Anyway, I will do my best..

Final week, but...

This week is the Final week, we don't have class, and we need to study HARD for finals..
But I can't concentrate on study..

because I have so many reading materials to write final paper..
Too much...
All of them about Iraq refugees..
I'm soon to be tired of reading...ah...

today, other roommates and I went to the restaurant, TORPASTA,
for farewell for Leslie, one of our roommates.

He is going back to Australia after this quarter. So sad
I'll definitely miss him...

He is a so kind and nice guy.
I am really lucky to meet such a nice roommate.
someone has a very bad roommate..(lol)

We had TORPASTA at the restaurant,
TORPASTA is the sandwich of pasta.

Sounds weird? lol

It is like pasta in the bread...

Yeah, it was a kind of surprising to see it for the first time,,

The taste was.....hmmmmm not bad, not perfect..

 Seeing is believing

this is TORPASTA

James (one of my roomie)

 

 Leslie (one of my roomie)

Nima (one of my roomies)

Damn

The second paper returned. The grade was as bad as the first one.
that was C-


And the TA commented on the paper,
"I was VERY lenient with this grade. DON'T DO THIS ON FINAL PAPER"

Damn! So mean! What a mean TA?

"VERY lenient" ??

Ha! So what !?

maybe if I turn same level paper, I will fail.

But this is so mean! uh,,frustrated...

All the classes in fall quarter has finished

Today, all the classes in fall quarter finished!

Ten weeks has passed really soon. But all the course I took in this quarter were interesting except for Gospel choir. That was okay.

I hope I could pass all the course...lol

The only thing I can be sure is that I can pass the Gospel choir course.

How about other course? ....lol

I never thought writing English (or writing paper) was so hard.

Pretty much hard.

To Japanese people who want to study abroad

Important English skills are not speaking and listening, but reading and writing.

writing...it might be nightmare..

I took a bad grade again on second writing assignment of the course, "Debating multiculturalism" The topic was Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S.

What was wrong?? 

I need to improve writing skills. To write sophisticated English, I also need to read more books.

Final topics is "Iraq immigration(refugee) from Iraq war"...

I hope I can get better grade next time.

by the way, I've done a final individual project paper assignment of the course "History and Theory of bilingual education"

Having done group project presentation and individual project paper, there is nothing to do about this course! Yeah!

That was nice class. The content was really interesting for me, which makes me feeling whether I change the topic of my final thesis from "critical analysis of English education policy in Japan" to "Bilingual education for minority children related to Japan"

hmmmmmm

But the bilingual education seems more interesting to me now...lol

I have a lot of resources here in California and less people know about minority children in Japan. It's meaningful to introduce this issue to the society by my thesis.

I can get real resources by interview to minority students, which support my thesis convincing.

Also this topic is closely connected to the immigrant policy.

That sounds interesting..

ahhhhhhhhhh.

The only things I can do is

study for final exam of "introduction of linguistics"

and

writing assignment about "Iraq immigrant"

---

appendix

the group member of bilingual education group project.

I love this team. I wanted to do more group project with this members.

Presentation

I finished the group project of bilingual education course.

I was so happy because through this group project every member was very king and helped me a lot. They checked and edited my poor writing English, they taught me a lot of funny things about the United States and the UCSD. I am a really lucky person who can meet such nice people. Other groups seem not so friendly as us.

Speaking of presentation, I felt a little bit nervous before starting, but I did well.
Our topic of the project was searching for the Canadian bilingual education.
My part was comparative analysis of bilingual education between Canada and the United States.

Summarizing, I can say Canada has official languages: English and French. But the United States doesn't have any official languages. This has a big influence on people's attitude toward bilingual education. Many of Canadian have incentives to learn French. They are very positive, because it is declared that French is also an official language. In contrast, some Anglophone citizens have xenophobia and they don't feel necessity to learn foreign languages. This makes differences in success of bilingual education..

Finally, after doing a presentation. We took a group picture as my memory.

Thank you, Ariel, Nader, Mat, Ariadne, Margaret, Sarah, and Audrey.


By the way,

one of the Japanese students in this study abroad program talked to me about what courses she is going to take.

She said, "I am going to "English Conversation" course opened at UCSD extension.

I asked her, "Why?"

She said, "I don't feel any progress of my English skills though I have been here already for three months. I want to improve my English skills and communicate with native speakers better, that is why I will take conversation course."

Me : ".............."

I said nothing to her anymore at that time...

but that was a totally stupid idea, because...

1. We cannot improve foreign language skills in such a short time period like three months even if we are in a foreign country. Second language acquisition doesn't happen only in one night. We really need to be patient.


2. Even if she takes the "conversation course", she might not be able to communicate with native speakers of English smoothly. That is because there might (must) be a lot of "non-native" speakers (especially lots of Japanese) in the "conversation course". It might be meaningless for her to converse with non-native speakers in the class.


3. "Conversation course" sounds so boring. Think about if we take the course named "Conversation" in our native language. There is no interesting contents in it. First of all, there is nothing we can learn in terms of academic. The only thing she can gain from that course is lots of Japanese friends who doesn't speak English well.


4. Wanting to be able to communicate with native speakers? What for do we live in a dorm!? Everyone (of-course including she and me) lives in a dorm with NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH. They are next to the door. She can talk with them every time. She has already enough opportunity for practice.


5. UCSD extension is not actual UCSD. I was wondering why she doesn't  take usual regular courses of UCSD, even if she can take them. What for did she come here? She can take "conversation course" even in NOVA..lol


Oops.

I got a little bit critical...
But I'm pretty sure that I don't think that's good idea.

In terms of second language acquisition, we need to be patient.

Luckily, I feel my English (especially listening skills and speaking skills) improving, though.

good night