Meagan CP#10

Yesterday evening, I talked to Nishimura-san via Facebook. We've exchanged messages a few times these past couple weeks about our plans in NY and FL. He was originally supposed to go to Texas and visit all of the major cities and then see a Texas Rangers (Texas' baseball team) game at the ballpark in Arlington, TX. Then, he found out his friend who was driving had to cancel suddenly, so he decided that it would be easier to travel with some other friends to south Florida.  He ended up visiting Miami for a few days and going to Downtown and South Beach.  He liked how everything was metropolitan with large buildings and stores, but was simultaneously open and spacious with waterfronts, beaches, and sports complexes.  The winner of the trip was checking out the Heat stadium and taking photos of the huge complex it sits on.  I shared my similar experience in NY and how like Miami, it is very huge, very busy, and very metropolitan, except for the beaches and sports complexes. Those are located at extreme ends of the city and require at least two and a half hour commute to get there.  Nishimura-san has been to New York as well and loved visiting the city, especially the Metropolitan Museum and Times Square. He did a lot of shopping there as well as SoHo. SoHo is my favorite area in the city as well (along with East Village and Brooklyn), but I expressed my concern at how expensive everything had gotten.  When he came, he was able to find good deals on most clothing. This year it has been outrageous; basic underwear and socks are sold at $20! However, we've both been having a swell time traveling our cities and have made plans for our usual Starbucks meeting this week once I come back home to Tallahassee.

Meagan CP#9

This weekend, I got an update from Miyamoto-san on Skype about how she had taken a trip with her daughter and Toshi-san's family to Orlando the week before last.  They had spent a few days in Disney World, Sea World, and shopping in the outlet mall, which she claimed is the ultimate shopper's paradise as it is full of sales and bargains that are so rare and hard to come elsewhere.  Her favorite event was going to Disney World and experiencing Magic Kingdom with Marin.  It made her happy to see Marin so excited to meet Mickey and Minnie Mouse in person as well as give them a big hug.  The second best was watching the dolphins and whales at Sea World as they were so disciplined and could perform countless acrobatic feats with their trainers.

Now, Miyamoto-san is preparing to pack for her move back to Japan and so far, she says its a pain and struggle having to prepare and organize the whole house into a million boxes and suitcases.  It also irritates her ankles when she stands or moves for very long periods, so she has to take frequent breaks and have someone else to help her with the rest of the moving process.  I offered to help her out as soon as I returned to Tallahassee,  that way she could finish up quickly and have some time to relax before the long flight back.  Hopefully, we can meet up again soon before the move as we were so busy we didn't get much time to fully enjoy each other company's or get to take a nice trip. She plans to be in Japan by the end of the month, so I suggested we do lunch if it is possible (we live far outside of Tallahassee) before the week is over. She is totally cool with that!

Meagan CP#8 - Menace Beach!

On the night of the international dinner, Lila, Kia, and I took Nishimura-san to Menace Beach at The Side Bar! It was the perfect opportunity for Nishimura-san to experience American, Tallahassee-style nightlife.  We came on a good night as it was crowded and the DJ had a nice blend of house, old school, and trance music.  We also met up with fellow CIES students, Gracias and Marian, and their friends.  It was really cool because there was a big group of us dancing, taking several photos, and meeting a few new people in the club atmosphere.  Nishimura-san was really popular as he talked to a couple of guys about where he was from and his plans while living in America. He got at least three people to follow him on Instagram and vice versa.  He also showed off his lovely dance moves and got invites from others in the crowd to dance along with them.  Basically, Nishimura-san had fitted right in with the American club culture, which is primarily based off of having a fun time either drinking, dancing, or socializing.  We did a little of all three (everyone's 21+!) throughout the night and had a blast trying out awkward or obscure new ways of dancing in group formations.  The best move was our continual spin and slide pattern around each other to the beat of the music, as if we were practicing a choreography for a music video.  It was also neat to witness everyone's club attire as some of us were casual, fancy, or in a funky costume. The ravers of the club predominantly sported the costumes and we explained to Nishimura-san that this is super common as rave culture leaves much creative freedom to their members style and fashion.  We spent the rest of the night mingling inside the club, talking to some old friends and or new ones, then dancing to the point of exhaustion before eventually crawling back home before daybreak.

Meagan TP#12

We spent our last two sessions last week, Tuesday and Wednesday, finishing Zhang's summer assignments. For her reading assignment, the second part was to create a visual depiction of a scene from the book, so we made a nice drawing of the main characters, Jake and his grandfather Billy, rebuilding Billy's beloved sod house on Billy's huge farm.  Then, I reviewed and corrected Zhang's spelling assignment in which she decided to write a story incorporating the new vocabulary she learned from her summer reading book and/or other reading sources.  She made common mistakes with tense and having a few letters in the wrong place, so we re-wrote the misspelled words a couple times and made example sentences with the words in each of the basic tenses. That way, Zhang could see how and when the words are conjugated in order to effectively make the correct statement.

On our last day, Wednesday, we went to a film screening of The Lorax in the down town park with Zhang Li's parents and my family.  Never seeing the film before, Zhang was captivated as soon as it began.  Every now and then the plot would confuse her and she would pose a question to me in English or her parents in Chinese, but she was able to comprehend most of the film and even noting some contextual clues that emphasized how disastrous stripping a land of its natural resources can be.  For example, she mentioned how unusual it was that the land of Thneed-ville was completely artificial, and that the female love-interest, Audrey, never even seen a real tree before.  By the end of the movie, she had formed a complete opinion and shared that it is important to balance our actions with the earth, as we may take too much from it and hurt it in return.  At the end of the night, I gave Zhang a small gift (a jade bracelet from a local Chinese jewelry store) and a guide to fourth grade grammar to prepare her for the new year.  We promised to contact via Skype anytime she needed help or a friend to talk to!

Meagan TP #11

Last Monday, August 19, I met Zhang Li again at the library.  I had brought some grammar worksheets from online to work on that focused on diagramming sentences and the eight parts of speech (Interjection, Articles, etc.) flash cards. For the first activity, Zhang had to read a passage from the Wizard of Oz and circle what action is occurring in the sentence, by whom, and for what is describing the action.  This gave her some further insight on how to properly structure sentences and be able to interpret the details in order to grasp the full meaning of the text. The following activity was kind of a quiz based review on the basic parts of English speech in which I held up a flash card for Zhang to explain and provide an example (i.e. "what is a conjunction?").  We had covered parts of speech during past grammar reviews, so I wanted to first gauge her memory on the subject.  She was able to address prepositions and articles with ease, but she was less familiar with interjections and conjunctions, so we spent some time reviewing and making examples of the topics.

Over the weekend I didn't assign any new vocabulary words as I figured it would be fun for us to cover spelling by playing scrabble.  During the last half of the session, Zhang almost beat me by several points as she was able to spell at least twenty words in fifteen minutes! She was very good at making four or five letter words, with a couple six letter words to boost her point score.  She has also started to notice when she makes an error and will ask or try to correct it before double checking with me or a reference tool.  We played one more round before going home, in which she won by 30 points to 12.

Meagan TP#10

Saturday, August 17 was a very short, fifteen minute session as Zhang Li and I were both going on family trips later in the day. We spent our time working on a crossword puzzle I made as a quiz from her past vocabulary words.  Her spelling abilities are strengthening, as she was able to recall most of the letters from the longer words and could quickly fill out the spaces for the shorter words.  The occasional errors occurred in that she missed a letter or switched two around.   Furthermore, we worked on a worksheet for her summer school, which was a reading assignment on her book Kindred Souls, but had to complete a composition on.  Zhang needed assistance with spelling and certain word structures, and content after we created an outline that she could use and successfully express the main idea and why in her two paragraph assessment of the text.

Zeb CP#10

    Wednesday evening (the 14th) I met with Haneul for a conversation partner meeting. Most of our time was spent in a video call with her friend Min Hyoung (I think I spelled that right?). Min Hyoung was asking me some questions about job interviews and resumes, so I gave him the suggestions that I had to offer. I also looked some things up online and sent him the links. When we were done with the video call Haneul and I talked a little bit about my coming trip to Alaska and then finished up the meeting.