Serenity

It rained very much and persisted for a long time yesterday. In the morning, I was waken up by the sound of the rain, and then I closed the window and went back to sleep. When my eyes had opened for the day, it was noon again - just like the usual days.

But it was still raining! Since wearing a rainwear was inconvenient, I didn't want to go out to have lunch. In order to handle this kind of situation, I had bought some instant noodles before. This was the best situation to eat instant noodles.

I was glad that it was Saturday and students don't have courses on Saturday, so I didn't need to go to the university. Also, I knew it rains seldom in HsinChu, if it rains today, the following days will rain with less probability. But my good mood was disappeared in the evening because it was still raining! This time I needed to make a decision whether or not I would go out to have dinner and make me wet. Before long, I made up to have another kind of instant noodles. I thought I had made a good decision to buy two kinds of instant noodles.

Since I was a boy, I like rain. The sound and the scene of the rain have hundred of thousands forms. Different forms of it always bring different feeling to me. Also, the smell of the rain is so special that I am hardly to forget it.

I still remember the strong rain and wind appeared in my junior high school. That day, I saw it from the hall in my junior high school. It looked like a magic! The rain looked like a water wall which moved from the left side to the right side. In that moment, I had a desire to stand on the ground in order to feel the strength of it. It was a pity that I didn't really jump to the ground to be inside the rain. I was too preservable to live with more power.

Beside the strong rain, the small rain has its own charming. Walking in the small rain makes me feel a little loneliness but peaceful. I think it is a kind of enjoyable. Maybe it feels like something filled in my own heart and this feeling is indescribable. Or you could imagine it from the scene : A gentleman who wears in suit walks in the rain. Although he brings an umbrella but he doesn't want to open it up. He walks with varying speed casually and sings an unknown song. That is somewhat closed to my feeling.

Latest I try to listen in Japanese while I am going to bed. Instead of listening the context in the textbooks, I listen in dramas. Here, dramas don’t mean the classical ones such as “Phantom of the Opera”. The entertainment business in Japan is very strong. For example, when a game becomes popular, companies will make relevant goods with similar scripts in animations, comics, fictions, and dramas. In contrast, if a comic becomes popular, companies will make games, etc. Also, companies can sell relevant CDs, posters and calendars. We call these goods as ACG relevant goods. ACG is the abbreviation of Animation-Comic-Game because they are the main industries in these goods. The dramas which I listen in are the ACG-relevant goods.

Since ACG is interesting, listening in dramas is not painful. The most serious problem in textbooks is boring. No matter how clear and informative the textbooks are, if I can’t finish reading/listening in them, they teach me nothing. On the other hand, ACG-relevant dramas can’t teach me formally, but I can finish them with higher probability. By a long time experiences of watching Japanese animations and taking a little elementary courses, I had some ability in Japanese. For example, I can listen in the dramas and understand them naturally without translating them into Chinese first, the way I understand Japanese is as natural as I do in Chinese. Although my English ability is better than Japanese one, I think my potential in Japanese is larger because the way I learn in Japanese is better than in English. It’s more natural and interesting in learning Japanese. I had been listening in the dramas for a long time before. After a long time “training”, my listening in Japanese improved a lot. However, I stopped listening in the dramas someday. I forgot the reason why I stopped. Maybe I’ll remember the reason after listening for a while these days.

As what I’ve said, dramas are not textbooks, so they can’t teach me formally and incrementally. I need find appropriated dramas for me. For example, as reading English fictions, no matter how interesting the fictions are, the first and the most important criterion is: I can understand it. This criterion also applies to listen in dramas in Japanese. The dramas I’m listening in now are “ARIA in Natural” CD 1 and 2. The stories are good and interesting. It can ease the nervous days. Reading the comics and watching the animations of ARIA are also good way to relax, but we can listen in dramas with closed eyes, so I think to listen in dramas is a better way to take a rest, and it helps me learning Japanese.

After Mr. Magar Etmekdjian read this essay, he gave me many advices, and I did some revision.

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As far as I can remember, my handwriting is not my strong point. Strictly speaking, it's awful.

This is the story about the winter camp two days ago, there were two groups of students. The first group had to prepare the events like role plays and speech, and the other one had nothing to do. Therefore, the teachers let the free students watch the movie "The Trueman Show" without subtitles. I was one of the free students because I was afraid there was not enough time for me to prepare the special events.

In deed, I've seen this when I was a boy. My parents brought me to the movie theater and choose this movie. I can't remember the reason, but I thought it's a good movie. So this time I could understand the movie easier without the subtitles.

The history of my growing up is somewhat interesting. When I was a student in the elementary school, I call myself the genius, and I felt I was not very smart after being a junior high school student because I knew some really smart guys there. However, it makes me get back the confidence that I kept a good grade and attended some contests as a high school students in HSNU. Therefore, sometimes I don't believe what I evaluated before. I think this is a good chance to watch the movie again.

Without noticing this, nine of the ten days have been passed. I still feel like that only several days passed.

As time goes by, people change. My English ability seems to improve less so far, but from my past experiences, I have the feeling that the winter camp has planted a seed in my mind. I believe someday it'll grow up and affect my English ability. Just like the other things I've experienced. Sometimes you tried something, and you would find out the benefit behind it after a long time.

It's time to the class, I was late for an hour yesterday, this time I should arrive on time.

It's well known that the difference between the western and eastern people, and we often discuss about the culture shock or somethings like that. Today I found some good things in our tradition.

This morning we discuss about the holidays and the religious. Chinese have many interesting holidays and old legends. It is a pity that I can't describe them in English. Actually I even don't know the whole story of them. It's a shame for my ignorance of our culture. For example, I'd like to introduce Mid-Autumn Festival, but I didn't know the name of it, so I called it the Day of the Moon. What worse is, I don't know the cause of celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival, all that I know is some interesting stories related it, although I don't know how to say these stories in English.

During the process of discussing the traditional holidays, I found our history is really a big treasure. American and Australian may have many attractive life, but they lack their own culture. Speaking of the gods, when the teacher asked how many gods do we have, and can we introduce them. All the students smiled and said nothing first because we know there are too many gods to mention and all of them are interesting.

Recently I attend a English winter camp. This winter camp holds on for 10 days, and there are 3 foreign teachers who came from Australian. Until now, it have been passed 7 days.

In the first day of the camp, teacher Magar said, "The most important thing is the words. Without words we can't say anything." Yes, we all agree with this. We could make correct communication if we use the correct words. In the other hand, we can't express our thinking with perfect grammar and poor words. I believe keep writing is a good way to memorize the words. There are lots of thing needed to memorize, and we can't memorize them without using them frequently.

I also learned explaining things in English. There are many chances to explain the words in English. You know, sometimes people ask us some words, it's a piece of cake to explain them in Chinese. Actually, words are just symbols to save our time. If we have enough time and good memory, we can use a few key words to describe everything. For example, when mentioning "diary", we could say that it's the text you write everyday, and it keeps the events of the day. After giving such a description, we could use "the text" to refer "diary".

bbns read my essay and gave me some advices. This essay is the revision. Hope you will think this one is better.

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Handwriting isn't my best part since I have memory. Strictly speaking, it's awful.

Since I have memory, my handwriting has been bad.

Although mom always tells me, you can't have a bad handwriting for a whole life. Sometimes writing with good look is necessary, for example, writing love letters. People believe that traditional papers shows deeper feeling. I don't know whether people still believe this now, but my handwriting has never been better. How bad is it? When being a freshman, one of my final exam scores was subtracted by some scores due to my ugly handwriting. I think the teaching assistant might be very angry when reading my papers.

Yes, we'll get more experience when getting older. Sure, there is some progress in my handwriting, while it's not getting beautiful, but getting special - I could use less time to finish a character. MY CHARACTERS have been simplified, although it's still hard to recognize for others. Actually, sometimes recognizing the characters after some days is also hard for me, but this doesn't bother me at all. I record most of information in computer.