footsteps in my daily life
I woke up to find that there was snow all around: it seemed to have started to snow late last night... Although I usually drive to the Church, I walked there today since the roads were icy and I was not sure if I could drive safely.. The highest temperature was, according to the weather forecast, 27F (-3C), but sensory temparature must have been much lower because of windchill.
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Acts of charity excels observing the law, which is described in an anecdote in today's Gospel (Mk 1:40-45). This reminded me of the following words in the Gospel as well: "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath".
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I went to see a cultural show after lunch, which was the last event in the International Festival. Various kinds of music and dance performances represending different cultures filled our hearts with pleasure. Afterwards, I went to a Chinese restaurant with B-san to have dinner. I then stopped by B-san's house and had a chat with him for a while.
Today's topic on Teacing Reading in a Second Language was "Key Studies in L1 Reading". Although the major concern in the class is about Teaching & Researching Reading in L2, findings in L1 reading research are nevertheless worthy to pay attention to. One of the findings in L1 reading research that I found interest in was about learning vocabularies through incidental learning. According to a resarch in L1 reading, students were reported to have learned 5-15% of the new words encountered in the reading simply from reading to understand the text without particular intention to learn the words... This study shows the importance of the role of reading in vocabulary learning.
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I learned from an online article that many people were involved in the subway fire incident in S. Korea. According to the article, a man seemed to have set a fire in a subway train trying to suicide with other people... Some of the victims seemed to have tried to contact their family by cell-phone right after the fire broke out. I was deeply grieved to read the conversations between victims and their family... It is really a sorrowful tragedy...
I went to Starbucks with J-san to study: since I couldn't fully understand the article I read for yesterday's class, I went it over. I could better understand it through discussion with J-san. I met C-san there after a long time, and exchanged words with her. Afterwords, A-san jonined us, and we went to a Chinese restaurant to have dinner together. We had a pleasnat chat over dinner.
As early in the morning as 5am(!), the fire alarm went off all of a sudden, and all the residents in the dorm were compelled to go out of the building although it was a false alarm... We were all forced to wait standing outside in the rain(!) until the alarm stopped...
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I went to an office on campus to get the document that I asked for yesterday. Then I drove T-san to the Post Office. Later on, I visited J-san at his house and watched the Star Treck Enterprise together over dinner. It seems to take some more time for me to remember the names of the characters... I'm really bad at remembering the names...
I gave a call to C-san in Taiwan: it was the first ever phone call I made to Taiwan! When I called her at her cell-phone, she was still working overtime at her office...: we talked to each other sometimes in Japanese and sometimes in English. I was amazed by her fluent Japanese and English as well... Will I be able to speak Chinese as fluently as she spoke Japanese only three years after I start to learn Chinese? I had really a pleasant chat with her!
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I went to the ticket office in the SIU arena to get a free ticket for the basketball game on Saturday. A-san and I arrived at the arena 30 minutes before the opening of the ticket sale, but there were already many people there. Many people seemed to have had more than one student ID. I leanred from A-san that one can get as many free tickets as they want according to the number of student ID they have... What a great system!
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I went to the rec-center to work out first time in almost two weeks! Since I'd been suffering from cold for more than a week, I couldn't go to the rec for two weeks... Because of the two week break, I couldn't lift as heavy weight as I used to be able to... I have to start over again little by little...
While I was waiting for K-san at the short-time parking lot, I saw another K-san walking over to my car. Then I asked him to get into my car and had a chat with him for a while. It was very nice talking to him first time after a while.. Then I drove K-san to Malmart later.
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After dinner, I went to the rec-center with C-san and H-san to play catch. K-san joined us later, and we enjoyed playing catch very much!
I went to the SIU arena to see the basketball game with J-san and A-san: the guest team was U of Wisconsin. I don't know very much about basketball, so honestly speaking, I didn't expect too much before I went there. I just wanted to see what the college sports event is like... But fortunately, it was truly a great experience against my expectation! Regarding to the game per se, SIU Salukis won a splendid victory against UW by a score of 66-64: it was a very tight game! During the first half of the game, SIU was far beyond UW, but UW caught up with SIU in the second half and even had the lead for a while. But SIU turned the tables just 1 second before the end of the game and ended up winning a victory!!! It was so exciting! I will be hooked onto it for sure! The performace of cheerleaders was also awesome! Not only the basketball game in itself but cheerleaders' performance also entertained the audience!