From 2013/09/01 until right now, I’ve spent over 4 months’ campus life in SUIS. During these months, I think I worked hard and have already eventually become one of the school members.

I’ve got too much to write, and it makes me don’t know what to write down first. Nevertheless, I started to write the first event, which I think was a major part of my four-month-campus life- I met new people. And usually it follows by making friends. I guess I have made a few friends in this school among boys and girls in these 4 months.

The second event I would like to indicate is my new habits. The American education system is way different from Chinese education system; thereby I need to change myself to follow up. My worksheets turned into my laptop. My desks became my locker. My classrooms are everywhere. Most importantly, my anxiety of tests, exams, and quizzes went nowhere. The timetable seems have become more flexible. Thanks to that, for the first time in forever, I got plenty of time to do what I urged to do. Perhaps that’s why my folks usually tell me transferring to this school is sort of setting me free from a jail, which was used to be everlasting.

The grades are another part need to be concerned about after studying for 4 months. I reckon I did well in my first semester. For the first term I got 9As and 2Bs, and the final result for the whole semester still remained 9As and 2Bs, though the specific subjects changed. My German improved and got an A, however my grade of Chinese declined to B. Ironically, my Chinese History was always B, which I thought, is quite strange and unbelievable. My dad blamed me on that. As what he thought, Chinese is my mother tongue. Also I’ve learned Chinese History before. I should have handled it very easily, however I didn’t. Well, I’m still astonished by that. Maybe I need to work harder on my Chinese next semester.

I don’t reckon my whole semester went through perfectly. Many challenges lied on my way. The first immense one was the Student Council Election. Thanks to everyone for their toleration and help; especially, Sy and Carter for assisting me go through this. Academically, I was afraid of my English, and now my anxiety still remains. I guess it’s normal since many of us are not native speaker. My fear reached the peak after attending CISSMUN. I had to try extremely hard so that I could catch what the native speakers’ were saying. The resolutions were filled up with tons of SAT words; I could hardly understand any of those words. I reckon my pressure can turn into motivation. I’m now reading Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Hopefully, I will have some progress during reading.

To draw a conclusion, I was excited about my following semester and looking forward to new experiences. I wish I could improve myself from many aspects.

P.S. Happy New Year!

Honestly, when I saw my score paper, I was fully disappointed for my 70 scores. It was exactly a “C”! Such a bad score!!!

As what Mr. Manno wrote on the report, I expect my score would be very good, since Sue, Elsie, Maggie and I have making lots of efforts on our final project, but also Lydia also helped us. However, the result was not as good as I wished.

First of all, Mr. Manno told us that he had no clue what we were saying in the video sometimes. That’s true, because we didn’t add subtitles, and the volume was not very high. To solve this problem, we decided to add subtitles.

Moreover, personally, I think that we also need to improve our video definition.

Also, the video is too long and dull. It lasts for over 6 minutes, and a real advertisement shouldn’t take so long. The biggest problem must be the story.

Gladly, we got full point for our organization, which is 25 points since we have proper parts in our advertisement. But that was also the only part we did well.

According to Mr. Manno, our story was too boring. Especially, comparing with other advertisements, our story was way duller and longer. Our story was just a normal story-a bad student become a good student. Everyone knows that kind of story.

Fortunately, Mr. Manno gave us a chance to redo this final project based on the same product. We have found out our major problems, and then we need to solve them. Adding subtitles is not a big deal since it is just a technic problem. Now we are working on the resolutions for the story, as the story is the main problem. It needs to be more creative and more attracting.

Hopefully, we wish we could have a better score after redoing our final project.

1.        mishap

n.

 “No mishap overtook them; if they had stayed too late in the forest, and night came on, they laid themselves down near one another upon the moss, and slept until morning came, and their mother knew this and did not worry on their account.”

From the context we can find out that both Snow-White and Rose-Red were safe in the forest, no accidents happened to them. So mishap must mean accident.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: accident

2.        precipice

n.

 “And when they looked around they found that they had been sleeping quite close to a precipice, and would certainly have fallen into it in the darkness if they had gone only a few paces further.”

From the context we can find out that if they moved a little bit they may fall down from a very high place. That indicated that place must be an object like mountain. So precipice must mean mountain.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: mountain

3.        clumsy

adj.

 “It was not long before they grew quite at home, and played tricks with their clumsy guest.”

From the context we can find out that it was a bear in their house, and the bear was very dirty and untidy. According to that, clumsy must mean dirty and awkward.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: awkward

4.        hearth

n.

 “’You can lie there by the hearth, and then you will be safe from the cold and the bad weather.’”

From the context we can find out that the bear was afraid of the coldness and bad weather, and to avoid that in a house, they must use a fireplace or other appliances like that. Therefore, hearth must means fireplace.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: fireplace

5.        henceforth

adv.

“Henceforth the bear came every evening at the same time, laid himself down by the hearth, and let the children amuse themselves with him as much as they liked; and they got so used to him that the doors were never fastened until their black friend had arrived.”

From the context we can find out that the bear came to their house every day since they accept him as a friend. So we can tell that henceforth must mean from now on.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: from now on

6.        crevice

n.

 “The end of the beard was caught a crevice of the tree, and the little fellow was jumping about like a dog tied to a tope, and did not know what to do.”

From the context we can find out that the little man was trying to hide himself from Snow-White and Rose-Red. And a good place to hide himself was a hole in the forest. Therefore, the crevice of the tree must be the hole or crack of the tree.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: crack

7.        coarse

adj.

 “The little bit of food that we people get is immediately burnt up with heavy logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy folk.”

From the context we can find out that dwarves ate little food and swallow was a very rude action. Further more, the speaker also used greedy to modified people. Therefore, coarse must mean greedy or rude.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: rude

8.        odious

adj.

 “’How odious you are!’”

From the context we can find out that the dwarf thought that the two girls abused him, so he though that they are odious, or horrible person.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: horrible

9.        feeble

adj.

 “The little man had been sitting there fishing, and unluckily the wind had tangled up his beard with the fishing-line; a moment later a big fish made a bite and the feeble creature had not strength to pull it out; the fish kept the upper hand and pulled the dwarf towards him.”

From the context we can find out that the dwarf was very weak and he could not catch the fish well, so it’s very clear that feeble means useless, weak, or ineffective.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: ineffective

10.    toadstool

n.

 “’Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure a man’s face?’”

We cannot use context to understand this words since it’s a professional words. 

No synonyms from the Thesaurus

11.    hovering

v.

 “There they noticed a large bird hovering in the air, flying slowly round and round above them; it sank lower and lower, and at last settled near a rock not far away.”

From the context we can find out that the bird was in the air and birds can fly. Therefore, we can know that hovering means fly.

Synonyms from the Thesaurus: hang

I would like to talk about the advertisement “ Hades Bank” made by Sy, Carter, and Michael.

Here’s the link: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQyMTE4MDAw.html

Briefly, the whole advertisement is like this:

At the very beginning, there’s a logo. I really like it, since I love black and white style. By the way, I also gave some suggestion to Sy for this logo.

Next scene was a poor man Michael with an empty wallet crying and exclaiming. All of a sudden, a man in black got into the scene and helped him.

Then, two men in black-one seemed like a salesman-Sy, the other one looked like a bodyguard-Carter. They were introducing their low interest rates. Sy’s exciting intonation was really attracting and funny.

After that, the bodyguard turned into a salesman suddenly, advocated people to use Hades Bank and threw lots of fresh, new, red, real RMB everywhere.

Some other consumers’ recommendation and Sy punched Kevin S for saying he hated Hades Bank.

At the end, they add their dark sides and terrible torture to their advertisement…

Generally, I think this is a good advertisement, also a good example except the torture part… Although it’s funny, it’s also a little bit horrible… I don’t think consumers are going to borrow money from this bank for punishment…

And I really like the part, which was introducing the services spots. The way they took video and the focusing are pretty well!!Especially, their camera has a high pixel and doesn’t shake at all!!

The color was a little strange in several scenes. That is a fly in the ointment. Pretty color with high definition would be better! Moreover, the font of the subtitle was not good. I suggest that they should change another one; for instance, Time New Roman, or Cambria. It’s very easy to recognize the subtitle in their advertisement though.

This is an interesting and attracting commercial! Well done!

What did you like about Greek Mythology?

The part of Greek Mythology I like obviously is the interesting stories through the whole book. I admire Ancient Greek people, as their creativity was so amazing. They can make up an entire system of the view of world. At that period of time, since there wasn’t a word called science, people can imagine substances as whatever they want. Those creative Greeks came up with so many stories of gods and goddess and made everything in nature make perfect sense according to their gods’ rules. And Greek Mythology influences western countries so much; many culture are originated from Greek Mythology ; even now we can still hear many Greek Mythology characters’ name in modern POP songs. Those stories are really interesting and the relationship among so many gods and goddess is so complicated. I really respect those ancient people for their great creation, imagination, and creativity.

Dislike?

The thing I dislike is that relationship among those gods is too complicated so that sometimes I really got confused with all of those gods. Zeus had too many children. Throughout this book, most of the minor gods or the characters exist are Zeus’ relatives or descendants. Moreover, those Greek names are too hard for me to memorized and read. Why are Greeks’ names all so long and difficult to read?

Learned?

I learned many methods to learn a book from this Greek Mythology unit. In this unit, we tried Myth circles first, which is a discussion group of 4-5 people; everyone has a job to do. After a few trials, we used another way to learn the articles. It’s called Socratic seminar. Everyone got together and discussed the stories, what was confusing, what was interesting. I prefer Socratic seminar to Myth circles. I think Socratic seminar is more efficient and everyone can get to talk. 

The best part of my news article I think is my interview and information. Also, as Mr. Manno’s comments,I have many information and news value. Those news values and information all come from the interviews with Mr. Eaton and Ms. Raina(Thanks to Mr. Eaton and Ms. Raina for their time to have those interviews with me.)

And according to Mr. Manno’s comments, I need to improve my news article’s formatting and structure. A good and clear organization can help my readers to understand my news article better. That’s also my goal for writing such an article. I want people to know what a principal like Mr. Eaton exactly do every day for his work life so that I can achieve my goal. Also, putting my news articles into paragraph can help to distinguish different story and values.

In brief, I really did well about my interviews and news values. But I need to organize my article to let it become more neatly.

 
Artemis is represent the  cruelty.

Topic: Why the god Eris likes to throw the golden apple everywhere?

First, to answer’ What did you like about the Journalism unit?’

The answer must be the imaginary news article part!!!! That’s amazing! Well, the reason why I think must be that I like to create something interesting, I like fiction and I think I’m good at imaging things. When I was writing that article, I felt free. And I only used about 1 hour to finish that. It’s fantastic to write such an article.

The second question is tricky-‘ What didn’t you like?’

I have to say that finding some news values from my beat-school administration is really hard for me. This beat doesn’t like other beats such as gossip or canteen. It’s easy to find some interesting things and fun facts from the interview. But mostly, the school administration’s events are serious and formal. From the interview with the principal Mr. Eaton he also said that he couldn’t remember something really funny in his work life.

That’s why I dislike it.

What did I learn?

Since I’ve never written something like this before, of course, I learned a lot from this unit. I’ve learned that how to write a news article without any personal opinion. Though it’s really hard to do so at the very beginning. Thanks to Mr. Manno that he taught me how to do so. Mr. Manno also taught me how to use proper words in an news article such as we cannot use ‘things’ ‘something’ and any oral words. That’s not formal and also not clear. Readers need to read a clear informational news article.

Another essential thing I learned is how to structure a news article, what do a news article need. A clear structured article can help reader to receive information better.

This project also improved my interview skill. I also put my public speaking skills into my interviews. That’s really fun to conduct an interview with other people! Thanks to Mr. Eaton and Mr. Raina for their time to have interviews with me!