blog 9

Nina Yang

W&C III

Ms. Guarino

04/30/2015

Fortuna

  Someone had said that life is composed by every single day that you live, so that people treasure more of their lives. However, I don’t really think so because I think that life is composed by every single second that I live. My thought became more and more firm since SAT is coming in just two days. I realize how time flies the days before SAT. Now, I know that not only good days pass really fast, but also bad days too. Less than forty-eight hours until the test that is able to determine future life! I have really to value every single second before the test to not do things that would make me feel regretful.

  The hardest part for the SAT is that I have to prepare it with my schoolwork done in time. Sometimes there are tests on next day, but I still have to do the SAT problems to prepare for it. I can understand why the seniors said SAT is miserable and a teenager’s killer. It can really drag me nuts sometimes. On the other side, I still think it’s a good thing to improve my volition to get ready for my future life. I acknowledge that my future life would not as easy as my high school life and it’s definitely going to be harder and contains more struggles and problems. Every coin has two sides, so does SAT.

  There had also some time for me to relax on Wednesday since it was only half-day of class, and it was so nice outside. Everybody realized that spring is here and put on his or her bright summer clothes. Our writing class even had class in the good weather while doing a project, which was to take pictures of things from A to Z. It could be either things or adjective that describe a thing. We were all enjoy doing it and had a really amusing class on that day. Therefore, after another win in the tennis game in the afternoon, I decided to learn the word “to relax” in Latin. “To relax” in Latin is “relaxat”. Since we are learning about language in English right now, it’s fairly helpful if I learned other languages like Latin. As we know, one of the roots of English is Latin, so that many words in English are similar with the words in Latin. As many people said, many languages are dying right now, so in my opinion, before we preserve them, why don’t we master them first?

  Since Thursday has almost passed, I have only one day till SAT comes. Therefore, the word of the day must be “good luck”! “Good luck” in Latin is “fortuna”, which is similar with the word fortune. At last, I hope that people are taking SAT on this Saturday, which including me will have good luck to accompany with us! Fortuna!

  

blog8

Nina Yang

Ms. Guarino

W&CIII

04/28/2015

Free life

  “No school on Monday! Yeah!” This is the best news after prom that we deserve a day off since we sold more than 250 tickets for prom. Since I have to take SAT on this Saturday, I spent whole day doing SAT problems in the library, and I think it’s going to take over most of my time in the next few days.

  Why do we have to take different tests to evaluate ourselves and determine the futures of us? I always ask myself this question and get confused about life. Doing the same thing every day only for a good grade. That may not what I want my life to be exactly. After different arguing inside my mind, I realized that I’m just live in this kind of world. People compete with each other in a very direct and unscientific way. However, I cannot change it right now, but am I going to be like everyone else in the future? Graduate from college, find a job, married with someone I don’t even know right now, and live like that for the rest of my life? No, I don’t think so. At least, these are the least things I would like to do, and I really don’t want to be restricted by life or myself. I really like the movie that called “Life of Pie”, which is talking about a young man and his family was hit by a natural calamity during the voyage to Canada. At that time, he began his navigation with a tiger for a long period of time. He learned how to survive on the sea, get along well with the tiger, and most importantly, he rethinks about his life. I’m kind of jealous about his free life, and he was able to determine his life by himself. Therefore, my word on Monday is “gratis” in Polish, which means “free” in English. How do people understand the word “free” in their lives?

  When I was in Primary School, I thought being away from my parents was free at that time. Children always have an “independent” thought deep inside their mind. Not listen to their parents and do what they want to do. I was thinking like that at that time. However, my parents just couldn’t leave along for even one second, and I didn’t think I was “free” at all at that time. When I grew up a little, at the age of 13, I went to middle school. At that time, I thought if one day I could have a boyfriend with my mom’s permission, that would be free. However, my mom thought fall in love in an early age would definitely affect my grade, so I wasn’t free at that time either. Now, I don’t feel free because I have no choice but to go to school every day.

  People may not feel free at any time of their life. However, we don’t feel free only because the knowledge we have and the age we are limit our understanding of being free. Once we grow up and stand into a higher platform, we would not feel restricted anymore.

blog7

Nina Yang

W&CIII

Ms. Guarino

04/26/2015

Hard working days

  Days are passing fast as if someone has pressed the speed forward button on the remote control of life. I still couldn’t believe the thirty-day challenge has moved into the second half, so I decided to add more fun into my thirty-day challenge: to watch movies in other languages and read stories about different languages.

  This Saturday was a perfect day for watching a movie, so my roommate and I watched a French movie called “The Chorus”. Therefore, my word of the day was the name of this movie, which was “Les choristes”. The movie was talking about how a music teacher in a school that full of problem boys finally turned the kids into sensible young men. The movie moved me so much as the story goes on. At first, the kids didn’t like their music teacher at all because they thought he has no difference with other teachers, and they often played tricks on him. However, the music teacher’s songs, which wrote by him, finally touched the kids’ hearts. Besides, he used his real heart to get along with the kids, and finally gained the kids’ respects and loves. Many students of him grew up into very successful people, and they were still having a thankful feeling to their teachers after they grew up. The movie was really a good and creative movie because there has few movie talks about this kind of story between teacher and students. Since I was learning French recently, I was able to understand some sentences in the movie, and that made me feel really excited since I’m able to understand another language besides English and Chinese.

  Prom had finally come, and everybody who is going to prom seemed busy preparing his or her prom suits and dresses. Since I’m not going to prom, people came to me and ask me to put on make-ups for them on Sunday. My professional ability of putting on make-up made me wondering about being a dresser. I was really satisfied when people said “wow” after I’m done with my artsy works on their faces. After seeing their pretty dresses, I was feeling regretful in my decision of not going to prom. Therefore, I decided I’m going to prom next year. When most of my friends have gone to prom, I decided to finish my challenge of the day. Since it is the day of prom, the ward “prom” is what I’m going to learn. The word “prom” in Spanish is “Paseo”.

  There is only less a week to my first SAT, and I’m feeling kind of nervous right now. I really hope I can do well, at least, not too bad. It’s the last week for me to prepare. Working hard! 2400!

Next half challenge

For my next half of 30-day challenge, I'm going to watch movies in the languages I've learned and talk about them. Besides that, I'm going to find stories about languages. Maybe it's a story that talks about how did a language came from, and how did it spread. Basically, I'm moving to the history backgrounds and the stories behind the languages since I'm able to gain more knowledge from it.

In class

The old days had____.
Find your work from the ___.
The ___ few days were freezing.
He had ___ away for three years.
It was a story from the ___.
Do not repeat ___ successes.

I'm so excited to be here.
The party was so exiting.
I'm inspired by the story.
The movie was really inspiring.

6. blog post

Nina Yang

Ms. Guarino

W&CIII

04/24/2015

Religion

    In Taoism, which is a Chinese religion, people believe in a causal relationship that called Karma. Whenever I feel depress on something that happened contrary to my expectation, my mom would say that the good thing would coming soon and just be patient. She said that everything happened in this world should be equal. The numbers of Good things always equal to the numbers of bad things; it’s kind of like “God closes one door while opening another window for you.”

  “The ball is coming, Nina! Watch out!” My Wednesday finally ended with a winning tennis game. Guess what the score was? Eight to zero, and we got the eight definitely! I finally felt worthy of taking 2 hours car ride to Massachusetts on a windy Wednesday. At that time, I felt everything is equivalent because if anything bad happened on you, the good one would be follow after. Trust me! That was exactly my mom said to me before. Therefore, after the end of the day, I decided to learn the word “equivalent” in Irish for my challenge of the day. The word “equivalent” in Irish is “coibhéiseach”. To my surprise, I first thought Irish people also speak English, but apparently they have their own language. More and more people right now tend to speak English instead of learning their own inherited language. Since many languages are endangered right now, I would probably learn some language that is going to extinct and has less people to speak it.

  When the alarm was ringing the next morning, I had problem opening my eyes.  Then, my roommate seemed to be awake by me because I could hear her yawning. I finally started looking for my phone by using my hand. Every morning is hard for us and even harder than any math exams. So, the bad things came in a roll. When I was looking for my phone on my desk, my hand knocked over my water bottle, but I didn’t realize it. After turning off the alarm, I fell asleep again. When I woke up again, it was almost eight o’ clock. At the time I got to my first class, it was 8:20, but my teacher didn’t mark me late. Until now, the good thing has not happen yet, but I hope it’s on its way! After the long long day, it was time for my daily challenge. Today’s language was Hausa, and I bet many of you have not heard of this language before. I wanted to learn what the word “life” is in Hausa. The word “life” in Hausa is rayuwa, and “that’s life” is “it ace rayuwa”.

  Religion takes over a big part of my life, and I kind of live upon it. In my opinion, people should have something that they believe in so that there is actually something that restricts them from doing bad things. Besides, it’s also a hope for people to live on in their lives.

5. blog post

Nina Yang

W&CIII

Ms. Guarino

04/21/2015

Days

  It’s the thirteenth day of the challenge, and I feel like the challenge has become a habit of mine. I finally seem to adapt this challenge as a part of my life but not to do it because I have to do it. Hope that I can still working on this challenge even if I don’t have to do it at the last. To memorize the words is hard, but to keep on working a thing is even harder. This challenge makes me understand

  My last week’s prayer for nice weather didn’t seem to work at all. Instead, the nice weathers during weekend dropped from 24-Celsius degree to 12-Celsius degree. I was freezing on Monday morning when I was walking to class. The wind went through my clothes, and it seemed like holding knife and stabbing in to my skin. I could feel the pain clearly, and I heard people was screaming when they walking by:” Oh my god, my legs are cold!” To be honest, I already get used to the warm weather, and I felt upset because the god of weather betrayed me since it was so warm during weekend. After a whole day of freezing rain, I finally got good news that we don’t have practice today. It’s a great time for me to do my homework ahead. So I took out my iPad and started to think about my day. Since the weather condition was terrible, I was also in a bad mood. Therefore, I decided to learn the word “cold” in Latin. “Cold” in Latin is “frigus”, and it is totally different with English. However, it’s kind of similar with “cold” in French, which is “frois” because I learned that many words in French or English were all came from Latin.

  Tuesday came in order after Monday. Tuesday is my busiest day during the week since I have no free period today. I felt kind of frustrated about days because my first SAT is coming soon. Besides to practice some SAT problems, I have to finish a bunch of homework everyday. I acknowledge that what life is like as a junior must be busy, but when sad feeling comes, you have no choice but to face it. A day seemed like a year for me on Tuesday, but I finally got over it. Obviously, the conclusion for the day was not that perfect. The word the day is a Nepali because Nepal people lives the happiest life in the world according to a research. In Nepali, the word “happy” is “खुसी”, and I know you probably can’t recognize it. So do I… But I learned a new and pretty language today! That makes me a little happier.

  All in all，what really happens to you is not important at all, but what important is how you see things whether they are good or bad. An optimistic attitude really matters and can determine your future. Therefore, look up instead of looking down.