NABE

I need to take some rest. I read a book all day long today.

That is about bilingual education, I saw tons of words "bilingual"...
I don't wanna see it anymore.

Because of that, one of my friends invited me to an event, which he called "NABE party"

Soon I reacted, "NABE? National Association Bilingual Education?"

He said, "what? no, it's n-a-b-e. Japanese food, it's kind of like shabushabu."

lol

I read Soseki Natsume often now. That sounds sophisticated. That is good. I should have enjoyed Japanese literature before. I found it important to know famous Japanese literature as culture.

The end of the summer time

Here, we have summer time in the States unlike Japan.

So from today, we got out from summer time.

I gained one hour today. It feels weird and interesting. Today is 25 hours.
Wow. The time lag between the U.S. and Japan became 17 hours from 16 hours.

Today, I worked on looking for good resources for our group work in the course, bilingual education. Group work is hard for me, because I have some responsibility for working. Every other people can do the same work easier than I. (like searching for resources) If it were an individual work, I can do it by my own pace. But I need to follow everyone's process.

OMG,,, I can't find good resources for bilingual education in Canada. Due is tomorrow.
I hope every other members also cannot find good resources.

Funny experiment

I co-operated a funny experiment.

That experiment was psychological experiment. The researchers are study about how the attractiveness change by race.

I participated in the experiment as an Asian.

The process was that I keep on seeing lots of girl pictures, and I put some ratio of her attractiveness judging by only seeing their face.

The ratio was 1 to 7. If you are really attracted by her, you can say 7. If you felt her ugly, you can say 1.

I checked more than 100 girls' faces. lol

Maybe I tend to have a preference of Asian girls....

That was funny experiment.

From next week, I need to start dealing with crazy writing assignment again.
Last one was about El Salvador,

Next one is Vietnam....especially Vietnam war...

I didn't eat dinner at first in my life today. All the restaurants on campus are closed on Saturday.
I am hungry. But I will stand.

difficulty

I got feedback about my writing assignment from the professor.

She commented, "Your paper is complicated and confusing structure. You should learn how to write more simply and formally. In some part, your sentences are so casual."

.......damn,

I got shocked. That is the barrier between native speaker and non-native speaker.
I need to tighten up my writing skills.

This week I could concentrate on study, which satisfied me.

Next week I will concentrate on study more. I have TOEIC test on next Saturday. I need a certain score.

By the way on our campus, one girl was murdered by someone, which makes me so scary...
I can't believe that it does happen really, seriously/

Challenge

I decided to try to join a think tank.

The think tank is called Roosevelt Institute.
It aims at changing the society of the U.S. and international world.

It makes students research and think about policy or reform critically
and publish journal for suggestion or implementing new policy.

Sounds cool. Plus it has a Education section! Cool. I can put what I studied into practice. I wanna join it.  But I am worried whether I can catch up the activity because of the lack of the English skills.

But maybe I will join Educational policy research section, so I can use my knowledge about bilingual education or language acquisition. I think that is gonna be nicer than very spontaneous  daily conversation.

I need to study more to discuss policies on Education with other American students equally or publish journal.

This is challenge. But that kind of challenge makes me strong, I hope.

Midterm

My midterm was over. Actually I didn't do so well. I should have studied more ... but I don't like that kind of technical or theoretical problem including phonetics, morphology...(they are sub-field of linguistics, boring)

Finally I can study what I want. It is very nice and amazing that I can check our the books from the library up to 100! In Sophia, I can check out only 10. There are already more than 30 books in my room.

And midterm election of the States was also over.

In California, Democrat won.

Talking about California, Proposition 19 didn't pass.

What is Proposition 19?

That is what legalize using Marijuana(Drug). I don't know about the detail information of this proposition. But some of my Californian friends seem disappointed lol.

I have once experienced Marijuana smell. I just sniffed INCIDENTALLY. (I'm serious. I do not smoke even cigarette) I was surprised that there is really people who smoke Marijuana on campus. Crazy. But that was bad smell, non-attractive...

By the way, the process of passing proposition in California is very directly.

Citizens in California vote pro/con to each proposition.
Wow! So directly. In Japan, we don't have any power to vote to proposition or act directly.

I think this system has both sides: good side and bad side.

Good side is, by this process, propositions are judged exactly by (most of) all citizens.
Bad side is that some people who don't have enough knowledge about politics or society can be controlled by other factor including advertisement, evil politician or agitators.

I hope that every citizens in California understand the importance of bilingual education and become con of the Proposition 227.

problem

Nowadays, I am a little bit nervous. Maybe because of the stress from the lack of chance to talk as much as I want.

As you know, when I am talking in Japanese, I talk more or less emotionally. Especially when I am excited in talking, I use tons of words and motion. I also use rhetorical things including metaphor, emphasis, and sarcasm.

But in English, I cannot do that. I can have very usual simple conversation with my friends. I can communicate with them having that kind of "Tasteless conversation". That is not enough for me!
uh,,I am frustrated...every time I speak with friends, I can say less than 30% of what I want to say.
I have said this many times, but I want to say this again, that daily conversation is quite more difficult than usual class language skills including discussion or listening lectures. Maybe it is the level non-native speaker cannot achieve in short terms.

Now I feel (I don't know what the real thing is, but anyway), non-native speaker cannot talk with native speaker with the same competence or the same amount of expression, even if they take tons of time like ten years or more....

Now I have learned English for about 8 years. I can read, listen, write, and speak English well in a certain level. But every time I feel what I speak in English is not exactly what I want to say, that is "different" something. What is this feeling? Maybe I have grown up in using Japanese more than 20 years. That makes all my cognitive parts in my body fitted into Japanese. Every cognitive perception is Japanese on me.

Of course I know we cannot make learning language as fluent as our mother-tongue.
But this is so frustrating. Only one month or so is ok. There was no problem. That is because we just got to know each other, and introduced ourselves. We meet new people every day. At first I know we are different people, so just communicating was enough. But one month later, I come to need more high level conversation. If I were a very silent person, no problem would not happen. But in Japanese, I am very talkative.(I should say, I found I am talkative in Japanese since I came here.) To be talkative in English in usual conversation is hard....far away....

To solve this problem, what should I do?

Anyway, THERE WAS NO GOOD MEMORY IN HALLOWEEN.