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.