i dIDn'T ABanDOn mY BloG!!

It's been a long while since the last time I edited my blog. Actually, some of my due days for a Langauage Acquisition presentation and for EIGHT bibliographies were postponed to next week. So, I could finally be able to take a break to catch up with my breath and to update my status on my blog.

Although I haven't written my blog for a long while, I always kept in mind that I have to remember everything special that had happened to me. Since the last time I posted an article is on Oct. 12, I shall start from the day of Thursday, Oct. 13. Before that, I want to share a very cheerful news. That is, I got an A Plus for my first presentation as a graduate student in the United States. At the same time, I received another A Plus for my Summary and Response article. :)

Thursday, October 13

Usually I would go to a supermarket called "Walmart" downtown to buy stuffs for daily use on Thursdays, because it's the only day I have in a week that is ok for me to go there. Since I couldn't afford a car here, I always take the bus to get there. The picture below is the transfer bus.

I also took the picture inside the transfer bus.

We will have to transfer with this bus after taking the bus for the main streets. It's 75 cents for each ride (transfer buses are for free as long as you take the buses for the main streets) and it takes about 30 minutes to get to Walmart. In the beginning of this month, I got a great news from one of the bus drivers on fall break. He told me that they will offer everyone free rides on every first Friday of a month. So I was always thinking that I should make use of it if I have time on the first Fridays of the month.

Friday, October 14

We had a project for the class Language Acquisition. Me and other three second-year students were in the same group. We decided to do some experiments on preschool children who are around three years old. It was the place I mentioned before in other articles. But the only pity thing was that the 16- month- old child who I called angel didn't show up that day, because he was sick. I'm so sorry that I wasn't able to take his picture and show it to you. But I still took other picture to show you.

He seems to be thinking something seriously.

Aren't her blue eyes beautiful?

Me, Tama and Yoshiki

After we came back from the private day- care institute this day, me and other two Japanese friends cooked together for dinner. Tama and Yoshiki are both second-year students and we all have the same major. Me and Yoshiki treated Tama for dinner that night because Tama was going to drive us to Indianapolis for a TESOL conference that I'll mention later.

Wednesday, October 19

Another cheerful thing happened today. That was, one of our Midterm Exams were postponed!! You have no idea how happy I was when I saw the bulletin posted on the classroom door. Plus, our class for that day was canceled.

And in fact, almost everyone in the class was as happy as I was. Although the picture is fuzzy, you can still tell that everyone's smiling happily.

Thursday, October 20

Me and my group members for the Language Acquisition project had to do more experiment and had to have more subjects to do it. So we went to the day-care-center near family housing on campus. The children were only toddlers, that is, they are only around 16- 23 months old. The experiment turned out to be a totally a disaster because young children at that age have no patience. They would run away whenever they feel like doing so.

Do not be deceived by their cute and little figures, they were devils that couldn't cooperate with our experiment.

Friday, October 21

It's the day that I went to the TESOL conference in Indidanapolis. We had to pay for 35 dollars for the 8 hours conference. But since we were required to go by the department, we get to have a 25 dollar refund. That means, we would only have to pay for 10 dollars. It was a great deal. But instead we would have to hand in a 750 words report in one of our required classes.

The conference was really nice. They offered breakfast, very delicious lunch as well as a cookie break. But that wasn't the main reason why I liked the conference of course. The 25 minutes presentations were awesome. We get to choose which presentation we want to go to, and the presenters would try to cover every information about their research.

Another bonus for the conference was that they had lots of publishers, such as Longman and Cambridge, over there that day. They all offered a discount that day. The publisher Longman even offered anyone who's interested three free copies. That is, if you fill out the form they gave you, they will ship you three books that you've chosen, and they will charge you nothing. All the books in the catalogue were at least 20 dollars. How exciting! I can't wait to receive mine.