fuLFilLMenT...

WaHaHaHaHa... I made it!! I went to swim this afternoon! It was really cold today, and I didn't get to have my nap after lunch. Irritated though, it was for my Second Language Acquisition project.

When I was all set, and heading toward the gym to swim, I realized that it was SNOWing outside! Not really heavy, but it's so far the heaviest snow I've seen. Right after I saw the snow, there were people jogging pass in front of me. It was so cold and windy that when everyone exhales, it would be like smoking tobacco. So, I wonder why the people jogging could keep on jogging in such a cold day. Aren't their lungs freezing cold? It's cold air they were inhaling...(crazy exercise-aholic) They could have done some exercises that are indoor or something.

I thought it might be snowing more heavily after I got out of the gym. On the contrary, there were only light snow. It was almost like no snow. A little bit disappointed though... The weather forecast predicted that there's 40% of chance to snow on Thursday. Looking forward for that!!

ExeRCisE!! exERcisE!!

After five days of turkey dinners and big meals, I could finally go swimming this afternoon. I think I gained some weight recently, "that's nice, it means you're eating well" someone said to me this morning. Deep in my heart I was thinking, "yeah, it's all because of the heavy and unhealthy food you've got here on campus, thanks to you".

I've got to loose some weight for god sake. Can't tolerate myself living like a pig! After a couple of months I might not be able to speak any language any more, maybe I'll be OINKing like a pig.

But there's something I really don't like about swimming. Everything's fine until I finish my swim. It gets so dry that my skin begins to itch. Even putting on body lotion after shower doesn't help a bit. It's just itchy. And I hate the smell of the water in the pool. I believe everyone knows the smell. So, after the swim, that kind of smell is all over my body, and I still can't get rid of it after shower, it somehow strongly remains. Point three, I always have to wash my hair after the swim. And you know my hair is growing longer and longer, it's quite bothering to wash it everytime I go swimming. Besides, if possible, I like to go swimming every Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays (I have full schedule on Wednesdays) and Saturdays. As long as my skin won't be itching so much, I'll try my very best to beat my laziness and go swimming.

baCK to HOme

After five days if Thanksgiving break, I'm finally back to Hines Hall. Working on my Second Language acquisition project these days. This time I'm doing it ON MY OWN, and I'm actually really excited about it. I'm looking for my participants today, and I get to find people from all kinds of country around the world. As long as the person is learning English not as his/her first language, I can ask the person for help.

I wonder how Americans do if they ask people for a help like this. My experiment won't last too long, it is going to take around ten minutes or so per person in total. I always feel like I'll have to give the person some present or gift, but I'm told that I'm thinking "in an Asian way". So, I changed my mind, and decided not to give out any gifts. But instead, I'll be willing to help people for their project whenever the help is needed. By the way, I found a website that will be used in my project. It's National Geographic channel's website, and it provides video clips to watch. If you are interested, you may click on "National Geographic" to link to it. Although it's not as complete as the ones played on the TV, it's nice to explore and practice your listening a little bit.

In conclusion, it's nice to be back home. Although it's empty, Home Sweet Home.

THanKSgiVIng DInnER aT Ryan'S HouSE

It was a very cold and windy day today. When the wind blew to my face, my cheeks and my ears hurt! It's that cold. I've never felt hurt in the cold weather in Taiwan. Unfortunately, it didn't snow. I've been expecting for a long time. But the weather forecast says that it might not snow within this week. No good...

This was my first Thanksgiving dinner in the States at other people's home. I was so thankful for being invited, otherwise my first Thanksgiving Day would end up cooking myself in the dormitory. The food was fantastic, among all, I loved the turkey, the smashed potato and the chocolate pie the best. I ate so much that I think I gained at least 3 or 4 kgs today.

Noodles, marshmallows etc...etc...

??????

Mashed potato and gravy etc...etc...

Other side dishes...

All the family members were really nice to me, they gave me big, warm hugs when it was time to apart. Me and Yoshiki were then invited to their house for Christmas before they gave us a ride back to campus.

Extra activity...playing with a ferret

Tomorrow It's the day after Thanksgiving. Lots of stores and the malls will have big sales and large discounts. Sadly, there will be no bus services tomorrow. I'm still wondering how to get to the mall.... (puzzled...)

tHaNkS gIvInG pArTy

Few days ago, I was invited to a Thanks Giving party, which is held tonight at seven O'clock at another dormitory. I was asked if I'd like to cook a dish and share it to everyone or not. Of course I'd like to share with everyone, and let them try different kinds of food from Asia. As a result, dumplings were added to the menu of the Thanks Giving dinner. No one had dumplings for Thanks Giving meal before. Everyone was charged for only 2 to 3 dollars (actually it wasn't enough), and I get to ask them to prepare ground pork and dumpling wrapper.

It was fun preparing the food, and it was even more fun to enjoy them. We had a short, quiet and sincere prayer in the beginning, and then everyone just dug in. The turkey was totally awesome! We also had pumpkin pies, a sweet potato pie, a French cake made by two French girls, smashed potato with gravy, some cookies and the hand-made dumpling.

Americans are fast in "collecting" their food, and their really good at finishing their food in a very short time. They were so fast that I didn't have the chance to have one of the Thanks Giving dishes, which was a kind of bread that looked really nice.

Everyone there in the party was a really nice and decent person. Yoshiki, a second year student who has the same major as I do, and I were even both further invited by one our friends, Brian, to his house for Thanks Giving Dinner. How exciting! I'll be showing you the pictures this Thursday night.

It's my first Thanks Giving dinner in the states. It was really nice and, well, it eventually had to come to an end. I'm really gratitude to be given the chance to come here to the states, to be further educated, to feel and to explore in another part of the world, and above all, to experience a different kind of life that will never be forgotten.

prEParINg fOR thANks GIviNG brEAk

There's going to be a five-days-Thanks Giving Break starting from next Wednesday. During those five days, the university offices are going to be closed, and there's NO meal or mail services! That means, we will have to either cook ourselves or spend money to buy meals during the break period. All the dormitories are going to be closed except for one-- Mills Hall. And that's not even the worse part. The bad part is that people who don't live in Mills Hall but want to stay on campus not only will need to move to Mills but they'll have to PAY EXTRA MONEY. We are charged 10 dollars per night. Cheaper than the motals off campus though. It's about ten minutes away from my dorm on foot, and it's actually not as comfortable as Hines Hall is. I shall take pictures of the rooms when I move there. Anyway, I applied for a room this Friday, and I will move to Mills Hall next Tuesday.

Since there's no meal services during the break, I went to Walmart to buy all the food I'll need to survive through the break. I bought so much food that I nearly had to stuff them into the refrigerator. The refrigerator got so full that is was hard to close the door.

Knowing that I've got so many food prepared, I'm really glad, ease and not anxious. I've got so many ideas of cooking the meals during the break. Really looking forward for it. Although I might not be able to go for a trip on those days, I think it might also be nice to save the money to travel in winter vacation that starts from the middle of December.

sNOwfLAkeS

As the weather forecast predicted, it did drop under 0℃. After having my breakfast in the cafeteria, I set off to my class. When I got outside, it was snowing. It wasn't really snowy, but I think it's called the snowflakes. There's no way I can express the joy when I saw it. I laughed right after I noticed the snowflakes, and I giggled all the way to my classroom. I was so ready for the coldness, so most of the parts of my body didn't feel cold. But, my fingers and my ears were frozen! I haven't buy gloves and earmuffs yet. I plan to do it this Friday, if possible.

I tried to take the pictures of the falling of the snowflakes, but it was too small and too light to be seen in the pictures. Anyway, I still took a few pictures in the back of our department's building, Root Hall.

Today, I put the counter and the weather sticker of Terre Haute in the sidebar of my blog. You may always know how I feel by browsing my blog.

I heard that it's going to be even colder tomorrow. I've already decided what to wear on tomorrow, and I'm so excited about that!

Dear diby:)

It's 4:05 A.M. here in Taiwan. I'm quite exhausted but still awake.( >< ) I've spent SO many sleepless nights fussing over my lousy job. Two mentally defective bosses plus one stupid moron - one of my colleagues from KAO YUAN university really torment me. I'll tell you more details if we have chance to chat by web phone. Got to go to bed. Good night!!! (HA..HA)

TOrnADo aLArm!!

I'm so glad that I'm alive! Today around dinner time, a tornado alarm went off. We were asked to leave our rooms and to stay either in the basement or the lobby. This is what I read from the Indiana Statesman on-line:

ISU takes cover from storm

As sirens alarmed campus at 5 p.m. Tuesday evening, students, staff and faculty prepared themselves for a possible tornado.

Students in residence halls were moved into basements and first floor lobbies, while students and employees in the Hulman Memorial Student Union crammed into the basement of the building. Twenty minutes later, the sirens were shut off and everyone was given permission to return to their everyday lives.

Jan Arnett, dean of students, said Tuesday, "I've been here 30 years and we've never done this before. Not that I can recall."

When we were asked to gather in the basement and the lobby, lots of people I met were got excited about it. Well, I was one of them. I asked for information about tornados, and what I got was that it's dangerous to be near the window. Tornados can easily break the windows and suck everything near the window. The eye of tornados work kind of like a typhoon's eye. All of a sudden it can all be peaceful and calm, you may even see the blue sky and the sun. After a few seconds, it'll turn out to be a disaster. I was worried that the buildings might be knocked down by the tornado, but I was then told that the big buildings on campus are safe. If it's smaller houses, they might be pull up by the tornado. Sounds scary, huh?

It was just sprinkling in the beginning, and it started to pour.

These are the pictures taken after the tornado alarm was shut down. The sky was so uncanny.

tHE End oF FAll

Here's something I read about the weather forecast on today's newspaper "THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR":

November will now stop imitating August

Indianapolis' unseasonably pleasant weather is about to become seasonable, and not so pleasant. Temperatures are expected to drop into the 20s (℉) by midweek.

Over the weekend, Hoosiers (somebody who comes from the state of Indiana) moved about like it was August. With temperatures in the mid- to high-60s, the sun shining, runners ran in shorts and T-shirts. [...]

All that's coming to an end.

Wow, if it really drops to 20℉, it's amazingly going to be around -6℃!! I wonder how it's going to be and feel like under 0℃. I hope I have enough clothes with me to survive through the winter.

I started to enjoy reading the newspaper here. There are two kinds of newspapers freely offered on campus. One of them is the one that I cited the weather forecast--" The Indianapolis Star", it's offered everyday including weekends. The other one is our university's newspaper "Indiana Statesman" which is issued every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. In the beginning, I only knew our university's newspaper, so that's the only one I read. They wrote mostly about the news happened in Terre Haute and on campus. When I discovered that there's another kind of newspaper offered, I started to take only The Indianapolis Star. It's more like a newspaper. It has lots of sections such as sports, living, food & drink and business. Basically, it's for free; but if you want to read it, you'll always have to go and get it earlier. Otherwise, none would be left when you get there too late.

This week, for ISU, is the week of International Education Week Celebrations. It starts from today, and we had a kick-off event this afternoon. Every countries around the world, if possible, has to give a presentation and to show the features of their country. It was the first time for Taiwan to join the event, so we might not be that good as others. But, I'm truly proud of Taiwan, and I'm so proud of being part of it. In the beginning, all the Taiwanese that were there greeted everyone in Taiwanese (not Mandarin). During the presentation, we played a video clip that was made by the Tourism Bureau. It was so touching to see some of the attractions in Taiwan. Not until I saw the video did I know that deeply in my heart, I really miss Taiwan.

Today, I chatted a little bit with my sister and one of my best friends in college on MSN messenger. I felt really happy to know what they're up to recently, and there's no way I can describe the joyful feeling. All I can say is that I really miss you guys, and no matter what, please do nothing but make yourselves happy. That's how I want you to be, always happy and content.

eNERgetIC On my STUdieS

I can't believe I stayed up all night last night. Before 7 0'clock in the evening, I was working on the quiz for Language Acquisition. We're moving to the Second Language Acquisition recently, and it's more about adults. After taking the quiz, I started to do my take-home test for Proseminar given on Wednesday. Proseminar is the basic class that we're studying for the introduction to linguistics. It's pretty interesting, reviewing what I've learnt in college and trying to understand linguistics more in depth. As to the take-home test that I was working on all night long (no kidding, "all night long") non-stop, was a test on syntax. Surprisingly, I wasn't tired at all when I was doing the test. I think I might be kind of fond of syntax. Frankly, solving the problems was like solving math questions. I always like to think logically, math and the syntax problems can only be solved when you follow the rules.

Although I burned my midnight oil last night, I'm more energetic than I expected. I have no clue why I'm not tired, and normally, I'm supposed to be. I talked with my professor about my 11 pages of term paper today. Somehow I'm really excited to write it. To me, papers that are more than 5 pages are big papers. But my professor encouraged me, and gave me some good suggestions on how to write some of the details. I'll be writing about the English Education in Taiwan, focusing on teaching native English speakers who come to Taiwan to teach English. I hope it works out well, and I will turn them in on next Monday.

By the way, when I went to Walmart this Thursday, I found out that they've raised their price from 75 cents each ride to one dollar each time. Now it's going to cost me one more quarter to get to Walmart. But it's much more better than walking for one and a half to two hours to shop there.

Tomorrow, I shall have dumpling for dinner. Hand-made dumpling, I wish they'll be good.

InsTRucTIonS FOr pOStiNG yoUR owN MesSAge 張貼文章指南

Recently, I knew that the members of my blog can also post their own messages. Which means if you joined as one of the members of my blog, you will be able to write your own article, share your pictures, and not to post comments all the time. Here're the steps you need to follow in order to post what you want.

1. Click on the "Blogger^TM" sign on the left side and very top of my blog.
2. You will find yourself on the home page of Blogger. You may consider to change the language of the website in the bottom of this page. Click on the fifth choice "Language". And you may see lots of varieties of choices like Korean, Japanese, and Spanish etc.
3. Go back to the home page and key in your ID and password to log in
4. You will see my blog listed on the dashboard. Link to it.
5. As a member of my blog, you will have two choices—"Posting" and "View Blog"
6. Under the catalogue of "Posting", you may click on "Create" or "Create new post" to start to write a message. Don't forget that you can also share your picture on my blog!

Have fun…

我最近發現有加入我的布落格的朋友們可以張貼文章喔!! 你可以跟我一樣發佈文章和分享你的照片。以下是我歸納要張貼文章前的步驟：

1. 到我的布落格點選左上角的標誌「Blogger^TM」。
2. 連結到了Blogger^TM的首頁後，你可以考慮切換使用的語言。在首頁最下方有幾個選項，點選第五項「Language」後就會有多種語言可以選擇。
3. 更改使用語言後回到Blogger^TM首頁，輸入你的使用者名稱和密碼登入。
4. 在控制主頁連結到我的布落格。
5. 如果你有加入我的布落格，你可以「張貼」或「檢視blog」
6. 點選「編寫新文章」或「建立」就可以發表自己的文章了唷！再也不用一定要回我的文章才可以發言嘍！

使用愉快嘍…… 別忘了盡量使用英文哦！

THe fIRst CHanGE of SEasON in TErrE HauTE

I can tell that the season's changing recently. The color of the trees were already turning from red to yellow these weeks, and the leaves are starting to fall these days. The color now on campus everywhere is just beautiful. So, I decided to take some pictures on some of the spots near our department building.

Well, I always forgot to note that there are a few kinds of wild animals on campus. There were one time that I saw a hare in the bush on my way to the class. It was cute, but I didn't have the chance to take a picture of it. Other than that, I often see chipmunks around. They are tiny, and they can run really fast. Also, there are lots of squirrels on the campus. They are bigger, sometimes fatter, and their motions are usually slow. That why I got the chance to take some pictures of them today.

The last picture of the squirrel was amazing, coz it was looking at the camera. Actually, it was looking at me, making sure that I wasn't going to walk any closer. It was aware that I was a little bit too close to it. When one of my classmate saw it, he suggest me to send it to the local newspaper or the newspaper on campus. And the first thing that came to my mind was that "am I going to get any paid back"? Well, he just said that he couldn't guarantee on that, and that there's not a good possibility that I will get any reward.

Anyway, the memory and these pictures themselves are already priceless. And I'd like to mention that, if I'm right about it, most of the trees on campus are a kind of plant called "sycamore". They look like maple trees, and they also change their color as maple trees do; but they're not the same species. Actually, it's the kind of plant that this town is famous for.

a THunDEr sTOrm LAst NIghT

I wanted to write my blog last night. But there was this horrible thunder storm that came from nowhere all in a sudden. Usually when I close my windows, I won't be able to hear a sound outside. Although the windows in my room are solid enough, but I could still hear and feel the wind blowing really hard outside last night. After a few minutes when the thunder storm started, all the power in my area went off!! And I haven't even took my shower yet. I don't have flash lights with me, and I certainly don't happen to be a romantic person who keeps candles in my room. So, the only way I could take my shower was to bring my laptop into the bathroom with me. In case that the bathroom was going to turn damp while I'm taking my hot shower, I opened the door of my bathroom to let the vapor through. Well, the laptop worked pretty well, it was bright enough for a substitute.

After a two or three hours, somebody seemed to fix the problem. And I could hear lots of people cheerfully screaming "yeah~". It was almost three in the morning, and I had no idea why they were so happy. It couldn't be because they really wanted to study, could it? As the time the electricity came back, I was almost asleep. So, I had to forcefully get off of the bed, and turn the lights off. The next day, I heard that there were eight people killed in the thunder storm. I didn't know that it was that serious. Fortunately, I survived.

i'M A slEePy heAD!!

I can't believe I slept through the whole evening. I had my dinner around seven, and then I went to bed and slept until twelve fifty without doing anything. It' s one of the bad habits I have. Whenever I get busy, I always feel tired. It's hard for me to be energetic.

I forgot to mention that this Monday was Halloween. There were lots of parties going on on campus, and each residential hall had their own activities. Unfortunately, I didn't join any of them. The only conclusion I can make is that eight bibliographies are PAIN IN THE AxS. I think I'll join the activities they have on Halloween next year. Actually I missed a few great events that I could have joined for my first graduate year in the states. I missed the walk when I had to babysit my classmate's son. It's a little bit complicated but fun event. I'd rather explain it soon in the future. When I don't sleep through the whole evening without doing anything.

It might also be because I went swimming these two days. For today's afternoon, I went to the gym and swam for an hour. Well, I choked myself about two or three times when I was swimming. That was because I tried to learn and practice a new skill-- to turn myself around, kick the wall and continue another round without stopping. It seems to be easy, but actually, it's not. That's why I chocked myself twice today. I'll keep on trying anyway, but maybe not this week. Because I found out that chocking myself is really painful and that it makes me more tired, especially it makes my eyes sour. Everytime I go swimming, I see a few people that are really good at swimming while others are really strange. That's going to be a long story, so I think I'll save it and I shall tell you the detail when I have everything finished.