Thursday, February 16, 2012

Más Cultura

Last week was our last Iluzion performance at a basketball game for this year.  We usually have other performances throughout the semester, like going to perform at local elementary schools, but we don't have any of those scheduled yet.  However, I do have a video of last week's performance, so here it is!!!!
Also, here's a picture of my team.  We're actually missing a few people in this picture, but it's still a good picture and I love all of them.
Okay, so now let's talk about other things that are going on in my life.  I'm still dancing a lot.  Our spring dance show is coming up in about a month and the dances that I am in for the concert are really coming along now.  I'm excited to take them to the stage. :)

Also, my thesis is actually coming along really well already.  We started researching today!  It's going to be an interesting topic and surprisingly, I'm excited to research it more. (I can't believe I just said that)  Actually, it's probably a good thing that I'm excited for it.  I have a feeling that my thesis will go more smoothly if it's something I'm interested in.  So, I guess I should tell you what it is now...

The monolingual teaching practices in the Andes of Peru is contributing to the destruction of the indigenous culture.

So, there's my thesis and what I have to do is research it and try to convince people that it is, in fact, true.  I will do this by writing a 15 page paper completely in Spanish and giving a 20 minute presentation in Spanish.  Although that may sound impossible to you, I'm pretty confident about it.  I mean, I did just spend a whole semester in a Spanish-speaking country.  Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty good about it so far.  We'll see how long this good feeling lasts. :)  Hopefully the whole semester!  If that's the case, then this thesis will be a breeze. :)

My other classes are still going well, too.  Jazz, of course, is awesome!!  Classroom management is obviously teaching me what to do when little Billy is poking Penny in my future classroom. :)  But for tonight's blog, I mostly want to talk about my Methods class.  It's a class that essentially is about how to go about teaching a foreign language (not necessarily Spanish).  In my class, there are 5 students (including me).  Four of us have a focus in Spanish, but the other is a TLE from China.  A TLE is a Teaching Language Expert.  Young adults come from different countries to teach some language courses here at Carthage.  So this student in my class is teaching lower level Chinese classes at Carthage and she just arrived in the U.S. about a month ago.  It's been awesome having her in my class because I know how she feels since I just experienced studying abroad last semester.  Plus, I've already learned sooo much about China and her language, which is really cool!!!

Things I've learned about China:

  • They are 14 hours ahead of us in time
  • There winters are the same
  • When a child is born they say that they are 1 year old and when that child turns 1 (in U.S. age), then they say the child is 2 years old.
  • In the language, they don't really have a lot of grammar.  They just add words to make sense of a sentence.  For example, in English we might say "he talked," but in Chinese they would say "he talk yesterday."  It's actually pretty cool.
  • Also, I've seen her write in Chinese many times already and she writes SO fast.  It looks so cool.
  • Finally, I learned how to count to 10 in Chinese, but I already don't remember.  It's hard and the pronunciations are interesting.
Outside of class, I have also been learning sign language.  Not actually, but I do watch an ABC Family T.V. show that has a lot of sign language in it, so I know some words here and there. :)  Obviously, I'm also keeping up with my other T.V. shows including Grey's Anatomy and Glee. :)  Also, because all of you know that I love movies, I'll tell you that I went and saw the movie The Vow the other day.  It was really good!  However, I will say that the movie theaters here are expensive compared to Peru. :)  And by expensive, I mean, only a few dollars off, but still those couple bills count. :)

Anyway, I guess you could say that my life is going pretty well right now here in the U.S.!  I still miss Peru every once in awhile, but I've been keeping in touch with several people that I met through my program, which is wonderful!  I always love talking to them!

Well, I hope you had a good week!  Keep smiling!



No comments:

Post a Comment