Hello, Tim!
This week’s weather was still quite unpredictable. Nothing too radical, so I think the weather was not bad?
Contents of This Week
(Scroll down to find these stories!)
-Regarding the Response of Last Week
-We Need Support for the Annual Performance!
-One Book in Chinese Since Forever
-Taking the Actual IELTS
-I Got the First in German Reading Competition at School!
-On the 228 Memorial Article
-End
Regarding the Response of Last Week
Thank you for your reply to the letter of last week. Maybe I have never talked about my future plans (if I do have one) on the blog much, so that’s why it’s shocking to you, Mr. Maher, of my saying wanting to go to Germany to study.
As you know, Tim, my family is not a wealthy one. We rent a house, living through every month with the salary of my dad’s job. Still happy and satisfied about life we are, though, using the remaining money for our leisure activities: my books, my mom’s yarn, and my dad’s cigarettes. We would never call ourselves poor, but certainly, we don’t have to ability to afford schools as expensive as England’s. I promise, Tim. If given the chance, I would jump on the first plane available and head right over to England to study. I really wish to. In Germany, the schools offer a lower price for international students, and I think that would be my aim.
A lot of the details are still blurry, to be frank. The methods of applying, the actual amount of the tuition fee and the living costs in total, the subjects I’m going to study, etc. That still requires quite a lot of planning ahead, but for now, I think I wouldn’t have enough time for adequately preparing myself for the college entrance test even if I can study two subjects at once.
One thing for sure, though, is that I have to have myself prepared for as many aspects as possible. If I fail to go abroad for university, I could still work towards a better school in Taiwan.
We Need Support for the Annual Performance!
Our annual performance will be on May 31st, and given that we had to have everything prepared from scratch, we don’t have much time left, and nor do we have enough money to pay for all the expenses needed. That was the reason why he had to go to the streets and ask for donations last Saturday.
“Hello, we are the students from CCSH- the English Honors Program. At the end of May, we are going to hold an annual performance. We would need some support to successfully launch our program, so we are wondering if you have some receipts or change for us?”
This is basically what we said to the strangers on the streets, Jay and I as a team.
To be honest, this is the first time that I actually the chance to experience how it feels like when you must talk to strangers and ask them for help. Some blatantly ignored us and kept walking, some made the usual response of them being in a hurry, and these not only made Jay and me a bit embarrassed with a cardboard box in our hands, but also I was reminded of my own reactions when met with the people that were doing the activities WE were doing at the moment.
Of course, there were people who were generous and said encouraging words that lightened our souls a little, but most of the time we just got ignored.
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| The place where we started. |
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| Jay and I were walking side by side, but I had to stop to take pictures of the scene in front of me, so that is the reason why he was in this and the following several pictures. |
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| I would love to live near this place. No wonder it's expensive in this area. |
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| In a park is a river. |
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| Coming across a temple and Jay decided to pay some spiritual tribute. |
I am not sure if going onto the streets was the most efficient way of getting money for the project, but it sure was an experience I won’t quite forget. The feeling of doing something you know might embarrass yourself.
One Book in Chinese Since Forever
I have always loved reading (universally known).
From elementary school through the first year of middle school, I read only novels translated into Chinese. In the second year of middle school, I started to keep track of all the books I have read, keeping an eye on how many books I read per year. Yellow pen for Chinese books, blue for English.
That was also around the time when I picked up my first Percy Jackson novel in English, and then the proportion of the two colors started to tip, and before I realized, out of twenty books I read, there is only one in Chinese.
After the Secret Chamber of Harry Potter, I picked out a book (still a translated novel though) from my shelf. The Iron Druid Chronicles: The Shield of Gaia.
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| The same picture as last week's, I know. |
The Iron Druid Chronicles is a series of books that fall in the genre of urban fantasy. The author, Kevin Hearne, somehow managed to be seemingly living in the worlds of mythology of every culture!
The story focuses on a Druid (from the Celtic mythology) who is in the form of a university student while he is actually 2100 years old. Atticus had lived for so long that he was actually a dangerous existence to many gods from different cultures, the Norse Gods, the Greek, the Celtic, the Japanese. Inside the books were adventures of how he outsmarted the attempts of murder from Gods with his loyal hunting hound which can communicate with Atticus with a mental link (Oberon was its name), and his young Druid apprentice named Granuaile.
I know, that was not an ideal summary of the whole plot, for it was far more enticing and laughter-drawing. The author was practically like a walking mythology encyclopedia. In his books, there are (takes in a deep breath)
Celtic, Greek/Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Indian, Japanese, African, Slavic, American folklore, and even Chinese mythology had its mention!
Most of the time the stories were adrenaline-pumping, with the vivid descriptions of the fight acts and the sheer intelligence that aids Atticus in his battles. You make think that with a druid two thousand years old, Atticus would be like a serious and gloomy old sage. Quite the contrary, though. He was witty with laughing-out humor and he has the willingness to move on with the modern changes and that was simply admirable.
…
I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I am sure that there are still tons of thing swarming in my head that I want to share, but his is the third time of my rewriting these paragraphs, the ones about the concepts I particularly favors in this series, for example, the binding magic that was given by the earth and the substantiation of the saying of “Another language, another mindset.” but I just cannot form them into a structure that makes me sound less like rambling. Maybe another time when I come back to this series. In April, the series finale will be released and I would come back to this again, to see if I have any progress or not. Ugh. It’s disconcerting to leave something hanging there.
Taking the Actual IELTS
This is the day.
And did I mention that the test was 7000 expensive Taiwanese dollars? Yes, last week I did.
That price was where all the pressure comes from. I wanted to do well in just one go so that it wouldn’t be wasting money. I do hope I did well enough.
I woke up at six in the morning, for it takes time to travel to the designated place for the test, and my mom and I needed breakfast first. We took the MRT to a faraway station and had breakfast at McDonald’s. I had to arrive at the check-in before 8:30, but it was only 8:10 when we got there. The test begins at nine, and that means I had to sit at the desk in the room with an acute trepidation nibbling in my heart. I propped my head on the desk and slept (not so deeply) until 8:50.
The first section was the listening part, and immediately after it was reading, then writing. Not break time was given, and you can only use your time for the test in exchange for a toilet break.
There was quite an impressive amount of heavy Australian accent in the listening test, and it was hard to comprehend. A phone number could be heard in the recording, but since it was only played once, there was no time to double-check if I got the right or not.
There were only three parts of the reading section, with forty questions in total. All three were long articles, and it was difficult to find all the needed information unless you read between the lines. Even with my regular reading habits, it was hard to digest it all in just an hour. Worse yet, for the True/False questions, it wasn’t just a matter of black and white while there was another option you can choose: NOT GIVEN. That means you cannot be unsure of the statement given, and if it wasn’t mentioned in the article, you can’t answer True or False even if common sense says so.
The writing was initially the part I worried about the most, for when I was practicing my argumentative writing was horrible and the chart analysis was not any better. At school before the speech class, I asked Alex, our only foreign teacher for some tips, and what I got was the usual and possibly the only solution: Outlines are to be planned before you touch the actual essay writing. He gave me some tips on what to write for each paragraph as well as the sites for more mock tests (which I didn’t have time to do). I decided to put the techniques I just learned a few days ago into action. Twenty minutes for the chart analysis (five minutes planning and fifteen minutes writing. I got a chart on the money given as aids for the developing countries by the U.S., the EU, and other countries) and thirty-five for the argumentative essay. For the essay, I also used five minutes of making a structured plan and the rest for writing. The remaining five minutes was for last-minute inspection for grammatical mistakes or spelling checks.
The topic for discussion was which was more important, the appearance of a building, or the actual function of it. I state that both are equally important and used the Great British Museum I went to as an example (I was so glad that I had the chance to go to England last year), making descriptions about the Museum itself and then went on to talk about the displays and their educational value to prove that both factors (function & appearance) are crucial. I think I did a nice job, at least it was something I am satisfied with, unlike the time I did my practice.
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| Trepidation in the IDP Center |
At six in the evening I went back to the same place for the oral part of the exam (We left for my grandma’s house first, for the first three parts ended at around one and we had nowhere else to go to. The oral test was one-by-one, and I was scheduled to take the test at six.) I was very nervous, afraid that I might stutter (I did) or use the wrong tense (I did. “I had been born.” EXCUSE ME???) or I might get the questions I am not so good at answering (I did. “Tell me your habits of reading newspapers” WELL I DON’t) Worse of all, the instructor was holding an emotionless poker face all the time. I knew it was necessary that they are not to interact with the test taker, but that all added up to my pressure-meter. I think I did a fairly… average job. Not bad, I would say, but not remarkable either. We will just have to wait for the result that will be out two weeks from now.
I Got the First in German Reading Competition at School!
There were only ten competitors including me so that was okay. That means, though, that I will e going out and compete with students from other schools in Taipei soon. That would be a nice story, so let’s wait until then. Already am I writing too much, so let’s just move on to the last section.
On the 228 Memorial Article
We got this article on Tuesday when Ms. Lin printed this out for all the classmates.
The 228 Event was indeed a tragedy that will always be in the history of Taiwan. However, less and less do people truly understood the meaning and the story behind the whole incident. That or they simply ceased to care. I, to be honest, am quite fitting with the description. I asked my mother about the event just tonight, about whether her parents or those of my dad were affected by the event when the massacre took place. Mom said that she was not sure if my father’s parents were affected, but hers were luckily away from the massive chaos somehow. There was no tragic story when the horrid mass killing took place in our family, and for that, I was truly grateful.
Mentioning about the politics, we recently learned a new word in class: Orwellian. It means when one with authority was trying to claim complete control over people.
That word came from the name of the author, George Orwell, and we know that because…
Well, we recently started reading Animal Farm by the particular author. Ms. Lin asked us to read the book with utmost scrutiny. By that, it means that we have to write down all the definitions of the words we don’t understand the book.
No.
Unacceptable. Though being a part of the assignment, still a novel it is, I can no longer bear the thoughts with novels that had my handwriting since the third year of elementary school. Therefore, I took a notebook when reading and instead of scribbling the words onto the novel, I could do it on a notebook.
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| With occasional illustrations! |
But I digress.
I suppose that you have read that book already, have you, Tim?
I went a bit ahead of the schedule and am currently at the part where the pigs are making excuses of having the milk and the windfall apples all to themselves, and also their taking away of the new-born puppies into seclusion for some “education”. It is not hard to see how the book is going to progress in the coming chapters. the book appreciation section for next week would be more about this novel.
End
I ended up typing much more than I initially expected that I would have, but what’s done is done, and hey, I put down all the remarkable events!
Utmost sincerity & thank you for your reading,
Hugo
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