here is my rule of three that I have came up with in the class.


I used my dog's names which are,


Mack, Marron and Muffin

hello

hello everyone.

I did not notice until now but today was Father's Day!
I wonder what people did.


Last Friday, which is the day before yesterday, I had my mid-term exam for the Intensive Reading class.
Oh, that was hard. VERY hard. We had to translate the English texts into Japanese and answer a question on the stories we have read in the class.

Also on the same day I had a test for the French class too.

It was a listening test and we had to write down the sentences that the teacher had said.

I like the French class, however it is very difficult for me.


I first learned French when I entered the elementary school in Japan.
Then I moved to the United States and learned Spanish after in the elementary school there as well as learning English at the same time. That was very, very difficult since I was learning two different languages at the same time...
After graduating that elementary school and entering the middle school I learned French from the very begging again.

Then my family and I moved to England and learned French from the beginning again.

After a year, I came back to Japan. In the middle and high school I went to, we were able to take a foreign language class but instead I took the Global Issue which is a class we learn in English.

From all these things, it looks as if I can speak French fluently but the fact is, that I forgot everything that I had learned!!!!!!!

So I started learning French in this university from "Bonjour" !!



I like learning different languages though, because being able to speak different languages means that you are able to talk with more people from different countries! Isn't that nice??



Salut!! (that means 'Bye' in French!!!)

ESS

Hello and thank you for coming to my blog!

Yesterday I took part in a play organized by the Drama Section in my circle, ESS.

The story was a parody of Cinderella and I was acting the mean Step Sister.

Basically throughout the whole play, I bullied Cinderella...

ESS has four sections; Speech, Discussion, Debate, and Drama.

We have to choose one of the sections that he/she would like to participate in, and once he have chosen it, he cannot change the section. The final decisions will be made at the Summer Gasshuku(合宿), which is something like a summer camp. 

So there is something called trial period for the freshman in ESS to experience all the four sections. At this point, I have experienced speech, discussion and drama.

Trial period for the debate section is starting from this week and I am so excited!

Also another thing that I wanted to write in the blog was about the homework from the British Culture class. Briefly explaining, the homework was to write a report and the topic for it could be anything as long as it is connected to British culture.

So, I choose Alice in Wonderland for the research topic.

From researching, I have found out many interesting facts and I thought it would also be interesting to share those facts.

One of the facts that I got surprised at was that the model of the Alice in the book, named Alice Pleasence Liddell did not have a blond hair. The image of Alice with blond hair was just created by the animated film by Disney!!

Another thing is that many names of the characters in the book were taken from the author, Lewis Carroll's (whose actual name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) friends and places he was familiar to. For example Cheshire was the name of the town he was born in, and Dodo came from his name Dodgson, since he sometimes pronounced his name as "Do-Do-Do- Dodgson" for the little children to remember it.

The last fact that I would like to share is the poem from the book.

In the end of the book, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Saw There, there is a poem that uses acrostic. Acrostic described in the dictionary is; “A composition, usually a poem, in which the first letter of each line spells out a hidden word or message.”

This is how the poem goes;

 

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear

Long has paled that sunny sky;
Echoes fade and memories die;
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream
Lingering in the golden gleam
Life, what is it but a dream?

I really love this poem not only because the words are beautiful but because you can actually see the affection towards Alice. 

It is very interesting to read this book focusing on the riddles and words tricks that Carroll uses.

Vampires

We have talked about vampires a few weeks ago in class in the poem, "Vampire Sestina" by Neil Gaiman.
My image of vampires stayed almost the same before and after reading the poem, and here is my image toward this imaginary character.


Vampires suck people's blood for living and they usually suck all or most of the blood in the body that the victim usually dies. Even if the person is alive, they do not remember anything about the blood-sucking and just feels sick from loss of blood and also feels strange about the mark of the holes on the neck, which is the mark of the teeth of the vampires.

I have never seen the movie Twilight. However, I have read comic books and stories about vampires. They usually are very handsome and nice looking, man with dark hair, dressed in black suit with a cloak. The outlook of theirs are almost the same as that of the human's, unless they do not show their sharpened teeth.

They cannot be exposed to sunlight, therefore they can only move at nighttime. In the daytime, vampires stay inside of their coffin, or at their mansion which is built inside of a very deep and dark forest where the weather is always gloomy and thunders are to be heard. almost no one comes in but if there is a human visitor, they enjoy having their blood as dinner.


Other stories I have heard about is that they can turn into bats and they can turn human (usually a lady) into vampires if they wish to do so.
One way of doing it is to suck a person's blood not as much as she dies from anemia. Another is to suck from her and give her the vampire's own blood.

In the class, Dr. Cheetham told us another two ways which were biting the same lady for three times, and in the occasion when the lady wished to become a vampire and so did the vampire wish to let that woman become a vampire.

These are all I know about them.

Thank you!!