狂奔於中大湖的小馯

久違中大湖，帶小馯去了三次，第一次陰雨綿綿，第二次大雨滂沱，第三次太陽則微微露臉。而我最喜歡大雨滂沱的中大湖，除了沒有行人打擾的清靜，穿著雨衣陪小馯在雨中欣賞美麗的中大湖。小馯似乎很喜歡沒人的中大湖，在相思樹林裡前後左右不停地狂奔，還不忘回奔撞得我一身溼。這跟在家裡總是呼呼大睡的他很不相同，我也樂見大雨滂沱與興奮狂奔的小馯。

別離

我不喜歡離別，但因為相處過。在異鄉與異國人譜出難以抹滅的回憶。

送Saki去機場時，才意識到要分離了，雖然還是說說笑笑，雖然八月還可能在台灣相見，但就是有點捨不得。她是個知進退的瘋狂可愛小女生，朋友成群。我想她的人生會很精彩！希望她找到好工作，跟大地(Daichi)能續緣。

Yui則是同班兩期的同學，還住在一起兩個月。很懷念有她的日子，在她離開後，我就窩在她原來的房間裡寫這個回憶。言行舉止很規矩的她，是個派對女孩，平日乖乖地上課，週末則是個晚出早歸的女子。尤其回日本前的十幾天，她常不在家。One day she said, “Sorry! I’m a bad girl!!!” I said, “No! When I was your age, I did the same thing!!”  嗯！很有趣的對話，但我相信在最後的這幾天，她活的很開心！尤其最後一個晚上，家裡來了近二十個人，快把家裡給擠爆了！也快把這個安靜的社區搞翻過來。把她送上飛機，這難忘的二十個小時。

TV Programs Worth Watching

AECP A1 Essay #1

How many hours a day do you watch TV? Do you never stop switching the remote control to change the channels when you watch it? TV is one of the most popular entertainment media in the world. Many people spend a lot of time watching TV programs; for instance, the average Taiwanese watches TV for more than seventeen hours a week. As a result, it becomes more and more important for us to choose worthy TV programs to watch. There are numerous ways to pick suitable TV programs, but I think that TV programs worth watching depend on the age of the audience, the audience’s purposes, and the opinions of experts.

First of all, TV programs worth watching depend on the age of the audience. Actually, TV programs are always designed for different ages in many countries; thus, many countries have already set up a TV rating system, especially for protecting children. There are four ranks of TV rating systems in the U.S.; for example, TV-G is suitable for all audiences, TV-PG is parental guidance suggested, TV-14 is parental guidance for children under fourteen, and TV-MA is suitable for mature audiences. If the TV rating system is complete, you can easily choose the fit of TV programs to watch.

Second, TV programs worth watching depend on the audience’s purposes. The common types of TV programs are comedy, news, education, sports, game shows, reality shows, talk shows, teenage shows, soap operas, etc. Sometimes, we can learn new knowledge from TV, such as the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and National Geographic. If you like to travel, the Lonely Planet will be a good option; moreover, you can pick the news channels, like CNN, BBC, ABC, etc, and realize what is happening around you, in your country, or in the world. I like to watch the sports and dramas, such as ESPN, Friends, Lost, and the Nanny. By watching these TV programs, especially after an exhausting working day, I can feel really relaxed.

Finally, TV programs worth watching depend on the opinions of experts. An investigation that was made by the University of Washington in Seattle in 2006 found 40% of three-month-old babies and 90% of two-year-old children watched TV programs more than one hour a day in the U.S. Furthermore, if children are too young to start watching TV, there will be more serious effects than on older children. Other experts have said if children watch TV more than one hour a day, it will affect their attitude in school; in addition, if they watch TV more than three hours a day, they will have more problems in studying. For these reasons, parents should take care about not only what kind of TV programs their children watch, but also when they start to watch and how long they watch them.

All in all, we have different ways, like the TV rating system, your purposes, and the expert’s opinions to choose TV programs worth watching. At present, there are so many programs on TV, and in fact, you don’t want to watch most of them even once. If you want to spend a lot of time or you just have a little time to watch them, you had better have your own way to select the suitable TV programs for yourself and your children before you turn on the TV set.

The Snowy Owl

AECP A1 Assignment #2- Summary & Quotation

The Snowy owl is one of the biggest owls in the world and also the biggest bird in the Arctic area. Its length is 21-26 inches, but when it spans its wings, it could be 60-65 inches. The female owl’s body is about 20% bigger than the male’s. Although most of the owls go out for searching prey at night, the snowy owls always do that during the daytime. Their sharp claws called talons and eyesight help them to catch the lemmings and other kinds of mice for main food easily, and sometimes they eat rabbits and birds.

However, during the long and extremely cold winter in the Arctic area, it’s too hard for them to find enough food. The Wildlife Fact File (1991) stated, “The snowy owl is capable of fasting up to 40 days at a time. It survives on the thick deposits of fat under its skin” (p. 3), or they would migrate to the southern places, even to the Caribbean Sea. In the article, they indicated “they have long been rare in Europe, but a careful protection program enabled one pair to breed successfully in Scotland. In eight seasons, they had borne 23 healthy chicks” (Wildlife Fact File, 1991, p. 3).

Every May to September, the female owls that are more than two years old can lay one egg. It takes about one month to hatch the eggs; then the chicks can break the shells by themselves and stay with their parents about one and a half months before they have the ability to take care of themselves. The article says, “The owlets hatch after a 30-day incubation period, using a temporary ‘egg tooth’ to crack through their shells. At hatching, they are covered with thin, white down, which is soon replaced by a coat of sooty, black down. At 43-50 days, they can fly. After 60 days, they are able to hunt” (Wildlife Fact File, 1991, p. 2). The life-span of the owls can be up to fifteen years; on the other hand, if they are raised by humans, their life-span can be up to twenty-eight years, almost twice longer than life in the wild.

*Reference

Wildlife Fact File. (1994). Snowy owl. (Card 11, Group2: Birds), 1-4.

The Hairy Mammoth

AECP A1 assignment #3-Summary and Quotation

ps. I put it & "Snowy Owl" here because I love them and hope I did a good job in summary! Ha!

The hairy mammoths are the biggest elephants in the Earth’s history, but they all were extinct ten thousand years ago. The average hairy mammoth was 12 feet tall, and its weight could reach 13,225 to 15,450 pounds. The scientists discovered them in the Arctic area, such as “Siberia, northern Europe, northern Eurasia, and North America” (Wildlife Fact File, 1991, p. 4) and found there are many similarities between them and the modern elephants. By studying the modern elephants and the fossils of mammoths they have found, scientists can rebuild the amazing creatures now.

The hairy mammoths were vegetarians; therefore, they had big flat teeth to chew the plant that had a lot of fibers. They lived in one of the severest cold areas in the world, so they had to eat a large amount of food to maintain their fatty body and had hair to keep them warm. The Wildlife Fact File (1991) stated, “Their fat, which was especially thick around the shoulders, was used as an emergency store of food” (p. 3). Although they were the biggest animals at that time, they still had some predators, such as humans, Saber-toothed tigers, and wolves. Humans hunted the mammoths with spears and axes for food and clothing. The scientists guessed that only humans and wolf groups could hurt the adult mammoths because they hunted the mammoths in groups or with tools; on the other hand, the Saber-toothed tigers would prey only on the young mammoths.

The female mammoths could be pregnant after they were ten to twelve years old; furthermore, it took twenty-two months to gestate and just have a newborn from a conception. They liked to live together; thus, the pregnant and young mammoths could get good protection from other adults, and their lifespan could be up to sixty years.

*Reference

Wildlife Fact File. (1991). Hairy Mammoth. (Card 4, Group7: Prehistoric & Extinct Animals), 1-4.

The Grand Canyon

My AECP A1 assignment #1--Describe a Place(2nd draft)

During this winter break, I went to the south rim of the Grand Canyon with my friends. This was my second time there, and I still enjoyed the scene very much. First, we went to the desert view. There is a tower that is the highest place of the south rim and was built by the Native Americans. The first floor is a shop where they sell all kinds of regular souvenirs with the Grand Canyon logo, such as mugs, T-shirts, postcards, etc., but they also display some handicrafts that were made by the Native Americans. For example, they weave a kind of special blanket with colored twine. They make rocks and minerals of different colors into sand and use the sand for painting symbols on rocks or walls that are called rock art. After I went up to the tower, the walls of the tower were painted with all kinds of symbols. Each symbol has a specific meaning, such as the sun, the moon, rain, and all kinds of animals. When I arrived at the highest floor, the fourth floor, I saw the beautiful valley of the Colorado River. Because of the continent uplifting, the river water had the potential to erode the ground and made the sharp and deep valley of the Grand Canyon. The deepest location from the rim to the river could be over one mile deep. Most of the upper formations of the Grand Canyon are limestone, and their color is red-brown because of the large amount of iron. After that, we went to the Bright Angel, which is also an amazing place. When I was on the rim, I saw some small houses in the valley, and they all were covered with bright-white snow. A man told us that it takes about 8 hours to arrive at the houses. We tried to take a walk along the trail, but the trail was covered with snow. Although it was the first time I could touch snow and I felt extremely excited, it was too cold for me to walk on the icy trail for a long time. After about 30 minutes, I gave up and went to the nearest shop and bought some useful books about the Grand Canyon. When we left there, we saw the beautiful sunset. The sunlight made the walls of the canyon reflect red, orange, rose, and some amazing warm colors. It was a wonderful trip for me, and I want to go there again.

My Silly Journals 4

[Living in Another Country]
I lived in China for two months and live in the U.S. now. I didn’t have any special feeling about living in another country, although I have to spend some time to know the culture of them at the beginning. I like to try the different life style, so I came here and try to get close to the American life. I think the most interesting things are the ways people celebrate holidays in the U.S. and the special social behavior in China. Last month, I went to the downtown Tempe with my friend on the Halloween, we were so surprised about people’s dressing. It was our first time to join the real Halloween “party”, and I really like it for people’s rich imagination. During my first trip to China in 2000, I was so surprised about their behavior in the public especially in scenic spots. No matter what places, there were more than hundred and hundred people around you. When you want to take a picture, you have to keep saying: “excuse me” or you will see some people you don’t know in the picture. When you want to buy something to eat, you have to keep going in the line and tell the waiter what you want loudly or you will have nothing to eat, because the waiter and the people who beyond you will ignore you. I very enjoy living in another country because I can experience different cultures!


[My Favorite Season]
My favorite season is autumn. Someone may say: “autumn makes people sad because of the falling leaves.” I like autumn for the cool temperature. When I came to Tempe this August, it was so hot and the shining sunshine even made me couldn’t open my eyes. During the summer time here, I always stayed inside the buildings. I went to school in the early morning, and went back my apartment in the evening. I also don’t like the summer in Taiwan for its hot and humid weather. Now, it is autumn in Tempe. After class, sometimes I like to take a walk or ride bicycle from ASU to the Salt River and take some pictures for my friends, because they always ask me to introduce Tempe to them but I didn’t want to go outside in summer. I really enjoy the cool weather now, and finally I can go outside and take some beautiful photographs to introduce my friends how beautiful Tempe is.


[Hot News]
Most of the narcotics are illegal in Taiwan, but recently, there are several famous people who have become suspects for taking in the narcotics such as hemp, cocaine, amphetamine, MDMA, etc. Before that, some of them just finished the imprisonments, but they still keep taking drugs. They are TV stars, singers, or sport stars, and they also have a lot of young people as fans. It’s a big problem to Taiwan’s society, because it’s not only a crime but also affects other people especially the adolescents.