Culture Shock?

People may experience many emotions after they leaving a familiar culture to live in a new and different culture, changing from excitement and interest in the new culture to depression, frustrated, and want to go home. It is natural to have difficulty adjusting to a new culture especially in the same time, while you have to face a lot of works. After hanging out with other people from other cultures (going to school with) may have change with values and beliefs that differ from yours. You may use different ways to express yourself or your ideas may be very different from what you are used to. But once you get used to these entire problem, you will feel yourself grow up a lot and own a very special experiences.
Yesterday I just talked with my friends who also from Taiwan, they said that due to our country is a mixed culture country (Chinese & Japanese culture). We do not have a strong identity for ourselves like others. (Taiwan has colony by Japanese for 50 years during my Grandparents generations, therefore, we have been influence by it a lot! It is hard to explain in a short essay but until now Japanese culture stills continuing affects us in many ways but now days Taiwanese are more protect and develop our own cultures! Well, I do not know it is good or bad but it is also a kind of culture to my countries, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t really have a culture shocked too much since I came here for experience a different life; I think it is also because I do love the street view, the atmosphere and the cultures of the UK. But sometimes I miss my friends in my home town and the “convenient store”. In Taiwan people are very rely on convenient store, so that you can find a 24 convenient store everywhere. In the convenient store, you can do many things in there such as pay different kind of bills, buy a music concern ticket, charge your mobile phone or when you feel hungry you just pop in to there to buy a hot food. But in England normally shops closed in the early time because people like to have a relaxed time more. What is more, British people like to go to the bar and have a beer not only at night, it is interesting! Anyway, no matter where you are from, what is your culture about? I think people should respect and try to learn something new from each other’s cultures and because of the cultures differences, our life in this globe are not so monotones!

Yes! End of Block 1 !!!!!

Finally, we had finished the block 1 on last Friday. But I don’t feel released at all because the block 2 is started on Monday, and it will become even harder. What can I said, During the Block1, every student just gets to know each other, and started to get used to the life in London. The students who study aboard have to overcome many things, not only the study but also the difficulties of the life. Indeed, time management is very important to us, otherwise, we can not handle the challenges. I think we all did a great job! What I expected from Block 2? Well, I hope we can continue to focus on how to write the essay such as Summarising and Paraphrasing Skills or Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism, because essay is so much important to the master course.
As for facing the new block, today I have arranged a relaxing day in my own way, I went to eat a Mexican food and saw a French film, “CoCo before Chanel” in a movie theatre with my friend. By the way, the actress, Anne Fontaine is my favourite actress!Although the movie is not like what I have expected but it was OK. At least, I have got some inspired by this story. Anyway, I feel full of energy now, and look forward the new challenges of the life. (I was cached a cold last week.)

Dragon's Den Project

First of all, I must say that I was enjoyed the process of doing the Dragon’s Den project with other students from the design class. At the beginning, we could not decide which product we were going to present because each of us have different opinions. But after we had a bit argument each other, we had decided to follow Allan’s ideal because Allan had some working experiences relate with marketing. Then, our design group was trying to design differ sharp of our product, Smouse. In the end, Allen and I were so pleased to see the results, it was excellent! They were all doing a grate job! The Smouse looks very smart and simple, and it was what we all want. Moreover, before the date of presentation, we had met our members after class, at the meanwhile, our design group had finished our power point, and then we did the rehearsal roughly together. Well, I like to do the presentation because it was fun and also it was a very good opportunity to train ourselves, not only the English parts but also the courage. Anyway, I am appreciating this experience, and feel glad to cooperate with our team member; hopefully we will have second chance to do something “new” as well.

English Grammar

This week we have learning Tense, and it includes different Tense and Passive Voice. Frankly Speaking, I have been learning English Grammar since 12 years old but the tense of the grammar still confused me sometimes. I think the only way that I can improved my Grammar skill is practice and practice. But I feel so bored doing the Grammar exercise, why we have to learn about the Grammar things? I really hope I am a bilingual rather than just a Chinese speaker.

In my option, one the grammatical differences between Chinese and English is verb conjugation to denote tenses; the context is used to define between past, present, future, and all the other kinds of tenses. For example, there is a single world in Chinese that means sing. If you want to use the present tense, you simply say “I sing”. If you want the past tense, you have to say something like “Yesterday I sing” where yesterday provides the requisite context. And if you want the future tense, you have to say something like “Tomorrow I sing”.

Verb conjugation is one of the tough parts of the English learning for Chinese speakers to master, basically because there are too many tenses, and each can only be properly used in particular situations. We all know not to always use the present tense of English verbs, but most of time our attempts at switching up the tenses lead to incorrect or surprising sentences.

Anyway, I will try to be a good student, and hopefully my writing & Grammar skill can be improved in this one year!

e-mail to my friend on 1st of July.

Hi Nia!

We just decide to stay Taipei only for 5 days, and not going TAIRUGU CANYON because it's too far, and I checked guide book, and it says there are lots of good places near Taipei, and we can visit their within a day. :) And what I expect in Taiwan is... maybe some modern places rather than traditional one? I'm not really much with temple or something, but I wanna feel the city and modern places. :) I wanna visit some streets that have many cute cafe's, and some shopping as well. :) Although I like modern thing, I heard that the museum is very very good, and one of the biggest museum in the world, so we're thinking about spending maybe a full day, or half day? in there. ;) Btw, how about London? Is it still rainy? haha- I thought you already did master degree in UK, but it wasn't? I remember you study media. :) Are you still pursuing the same major? Tell me about your life in these days!

Best regards,

Ashley Yoo


Dear Ashley,

Sure, I know you love modem things and the cute cafe' ^^. Well, in that case, my recommend as follow:

Taipei City: MRT= Subway

(Blue line)
1: (Taipei City Hall station) Taipei 101
http://www.taipeitravel.net/user/article.aspx?Lang=2&SNo=04000096&K1=37
Pub: MINT or Room 18

2: ( Zhongxiao Dunhua Station) Cute cafe' & Soho
a. Just walk around the streets where behind the California Gym, there are some very unique shop and Cafe' around the streets, I love this place! b. The 24 hours Eslite Bookstore is a culture hot spot that gets busier as the night goes on.
T_T sorry, my favourite Bar has been suffering by a fire last month, it is re-building now.

3. (Zhongxiao Fuxing station) Exit 2 is connation with the Fuxing SOGO department store, and you can eat the very famous food that you must try, called DinTaiFung on the ground floor,then, after you finish the dishes, you can go the exit 5 of the staion, and just keep walking about 5 mins, you can go shopping in the Breeze Centre.

(Red line)
1. (Shilin Station) National Palace Museum: It's a world class museum as you mentioned ^^ (you don't remember that I had been working there for a year?)

2. (Jiantan Station) Shilin Night Market; you can have a lot of local food there!

Taipei County: Yes, there are some good places near Taipei city that you can visit it. So... Plz tell me where are you going, and I will give you some advice, then!

About my life in London; I am get used to live here right now. London is a quite cool place, everything is just soooo London and When I visited the Big Ben, it has recalled me a lot of memories, like we have been there together with Emily, um... time goes so fast!
Well, I am not doing the same course as before (BA & final year), it's my first time to do the MA course, I study Enterprise and Management for the Creative Arts in London, and I am doing the Pre-sessional in this summer. By the way, the weather in London this year is hot and it's not raining all the time, so it's fine for me. :)
Moreover, I live in school accommodation at the moment, the dorm is OK to me cause I can make lots of new friends but I prefer to move out with another 2 girls in Sep. :) Anyway, I will write you more about my life here next time, I need to do some home work now.


Any questions about the trip in Taipei just let me know! & enjoy your life in Korea!

Nia

new life , new me!

It has been a week already to stay in London, I do love London and meet new people but sometimes I feel some depress by leaving friends and family from Taiwan; it's my second time to come to England, so everything is not so exciting like last time I was here, it's very strange feeling this time, maybe just because I have grew up a lot and see more things now, so I have more pressure and responsibility from this society. Well, I am a positive person; I think everything will be fine! I will try to enjoy my life here. I want to have a new life and a new me!

first impressions

The first city I have been visit in the UK was Bath. I studied language at international, Bath in 2003. Bath is a very beautiful place, when I arrived at Bath; my house family picks me up in from of their lovely house. Well, after my house mother showed me the streets and the way to the school, I felt so empty and miss my family so much; there were no 24 hours convenience stores or any exciting activity in Bath, it was quite and boring, so I felt very depress and started to cry at my room but once I went to school and made some new friends, I felt much better! In my school there were only 3 Chinese speaker, most students were from Europe and Japan, I could speak English all the time, I felt so exciting about this environment, everyone was so friendly to me, I had a really good time in there. In the end, I did not want to go back to Taiwan.

http://www.cityofbath.co.uk/