Taekwondo

Have you ever heard of Taekwondo(跆拳道) club? I don't know why, but most people aren't familiar with this sport. Even if they have a Taekwondo club at their schools, they never notice its existence unless they have friends in this club. Unfortunatly, I had this kind of experience in my high school life. So, in this post, I'm going to tell you about this sport which took a great porpotion in my high school life.

I was once in our school's dancing club in the first semester in high school. However, due to too much time of practicing, my parents asked me to leave the club and got in another. I had learned Taekwondo for many years so I chose this club right away. I thought it was better to choose something that I was familiar with.

When I went to Taekwondo club, I really had a lot of fun! My other club members were all nice people and we laughed all the time through practicing. My coach was sometimes strict but also humorous. Although it was exhausting during the training, we all worked hard and improved.

I became the club leader when I was in the second grade. I organized performances for the school's birthday and for the newcoming students with my coach. We broke wooden broads and even balloons! It is too hard to explain our shows so I'm giving you a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzKphoiCnt8
haha hope you like it! :)

Cause a Scene

You might be very curious about this topic. How come my senior high school's life became a crime? When we got in this class, we had begun our lives with a great number of presentations. From novels to movies, our teachers gave us topics and we made ppt and presented them to our fellow classmates. "Cause a Scene" was our final and the biggest presentation. It was for us to show our parents, friends and teachers what we had learned for these years.

We chose our own favorite topic and presented it with keynote (the ppt in Apple). We used imac which was a very special experience for most of us because we used Windows. What was great for keynote was that its color and skills were better than Windows.

We also used imovie to make a little movie in order to combine our characters to the main topic, cause a scene. We were all suspects and there was someone killed in the building we lived in. That's when the story started. I was a dance teacher, and as you can guess, my topic was about street dance.

We talked about our topic for about ten minutes in English with keynote. That was how we present. We used three parts of movie to begin, take a break, and end. I shared the links below, you can watch them if you are interested. :)

Part 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA2UAjULF0U
Part.2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsNnxc7Yz3c
Part.3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFngD1dpq-0

I really felt a sense of acheivement when we finished this great work. We praticed for so many times and tried to make eye contact with the audiences. It is not easy to speak in the language that you aren't so familiar. However, when we conquered that problem, it felt awesome!

Service Learning part 2

Here comes the second part of my service learning!
This time, I became a second grade student and we had to teach our school sisters about this activity. We had to take control and arrange everything.
Before we went to this Dili elementary school in 南投, we had a lot of work to do.

We had to think of subjects to teach the students and activities for them to play. My job was the leader of the activity team and I had to make my partners practice their introduction of the game to the children there. I also need to arrange a little party at the end of this three-day camp. It includes not only being the host but also the orders of the performances and I choreographed few dances.

It had been only three days but took us more than thirty days for preparation. I took on more responsibilities this time. I learned how to get things in order and knew how to be a leader. It was an exhausting experience but very useful indeed.

What's more, I really love the children there. Although they were sometimes really out of control, their sweetness and naive faces always melted my heart. I really hope that I can have another chance to ga back there and have fun with them again.

Service? Learning!

After the trip to Beijing, here comes a trip to Hualian!

However, this was not just a trip, it was a program for us to go to an aboriginal elementary school for service learning! You might ask "What is service learning?" It is an activity for us to teach the students and play with them. Here goes the details!

We prepared for almost one and a half month for this. We arranged teaching courses including English songs, drawing your favorite person etc. We also prepared many games for the kids to have fun during this three-day camp. What's more, we had a great fun party at the last night with the children. We all danced together and they were really good!

Before we did this activity, our teacher had said many times that this wasn't about service, it was a chance for us to learn. I really learned a lot from it! Not only the way how you communicate with children, but also arranging your time and how to organize my work. However, I was just in the first grade in senior high school. The most important parts were done by our school sisters. They already had experieces so they led us and taught us. Next year, it was our time to lead our younger school sisters! I will share what I have learned from it in the next post, and I'm sure it will be more interesting than this one!

  

Hello Beijing!

2010 Winter
Our 8 days educational trip went to Beijing. A city with modern and traditional buildings. On these days, we visited every tourists' spots that are extremely popular. I won't list them all because I don't know the exact English of them. I'll just name a few. For example, Summer Palace (頤和園), Old Summer Palace (圓明園), Palace Museum (故宮), National Aquatics Center (水立方), the Great Wall, and anything you could think of.

There are too many pictures to show you, so I picked the ones I like the most. We had a lot of fun there. :-) We took silly pictures, fooling around which made our teacher really angry, and danced on the Great Wall! We screamed in our hotel rooms and even practiced dancing in the lobby! You may ask "Why practice dancing?" That's another activity I'm going to talk about.

Except the spetacular scenes, we had done something really special that normal people wouldn't have the chance. We went to a senior high school in Beijing called 海淀實驗中學 and got into their classes to take courses with them! Before all of us became classmates, we had a small party. That's why we had to prepare performances. We also played games. It was a lot of fun!


                        

Most people had been mislead by the government that people in China are our enemies. However, this trip has made me realize their hospitality and their enviness to Taiwan's creativity and freedom. To tell the truth, they are just a bunch of happy students. Just like us! The only difference between us was the accent.

Beside all of the above, food, was also an incredible experience. The dumplings from 百餃園, the ducks from 全聚德, etc. The best meal in these days, I think the honor goes to a restaurant called 老舍茶館. The delicacies tasted wonderful and their show was amazing! Face-changing! 變臉 in Chinese. The skill was unbelievable and we were the only crowd that gave them not only applause but also scream.

Too many fun things to talk about! I don't think I have the energy to tell you more. Maybe I will say about other experiences in the nest post. I will just stop here for this time. Hope all of you enjoy my good old time! :-)

The First Misson From My Class

What's so special for us, the language advanced class?
There are only 30 students in our class and we have abundant activities which other students can never think of.

We have a topic for every semester, and there will be a speech every Friday which is related to our topic. And in the first semester, our topic was about "Fashion". Except speeches for fashion cultures all over the world, our teacher gave us a difficult assignment, an exhibition of fashion!

For weeks, we had stayed late in school painting, writing, coloring, and decorating. About a month, we finished everything and looked at our colorful work, and we all felt a sense of acheivement. :-)
In our exhibition, we showed our worksheets from the speeches, colorful painted chairs, hand made
dress, and of course, a fashion runway!

 Although it had been extremely tiring and we really hated that our teacher gave us such an exhausting homework, everytime I recall the memories, I realize that the most important part was not the sufferings but the lovely times with my friends and the experiences I learnt from it.

These are something that we can never learn form textbooks and tests. So how can I forget?