Natural HIGH

Today I finally have a chance to experience what it is like about a real party, as today is the residential hall's annual dinner. After a pretty simple dinner(compare to the Chinese one), people start to dance(that's very good idea for balancing the eating and sporting!). They seem can't tolerant the sitting there with the music playing, have a very natural dance, very casual, which is, I think, totally different from the way the people from China think toward themselves. What I have been moved about is that they seems to be very care about other people's feeling, I mean they want to make sure every people in the party have a good. I and several other Chinese initially sitting there and watching their dancing was brought to the crowd by them, and they hold our hands to force us to dance with them. I have to say, they are really friendly, and this is the first time I have a natural HIGH, because people there were not smoking, were only drinking a little bit alcohol. They appeared to do that very crazy, but do it in a healthy way.

The End of the New Semester

It's time to have a summary for my first semester studying abroad. I have a reflection about what the most different aspect compared to the one I used to study in is the way of how students are led to absorb the context practically. It gives students chances to manage well the task they are assigned, potentially forcing them to learn how to manage my time in a reasonable way and learning more about myself in or after the process of doing assignment.

The biggest difference between the concept of assignment here and my home country is that the assignment usually is comprehensive enough to include many knowledge points and relatively have a long length of time for student to complete. Such kind of task is a really good way let student to connect the basic knowledge learnt in several weeks, and is also a good way draw students' attention to prepare and have clear aims on the coming lessons after the publication of a assignment.

There are several realisation I made from doing the intensive assignments in this semester. As I had totally 8 assignments(2 for each unit), it is not easy to have them done if there is no well planed schedule. Some of my classmates prefer rushing the assignments intensively a few days before the due date. I don't think this is really a good idea. Working in this hard way will expose me to the risk of getting sick, and let me extremely negative about my course. This could be a huge negative effect on my motivation of what I am studying and passionate about. To avoid this situation, it would be much better to have a general idea of what a assignment require student to accomplish, most importantly finding out what are the difficult points in it and trying to have a plan to tackle the problems bit by bit. In this way, it could be much easier to balance my time, giving me satisfaction and confidences after addressed a small problem.

This kind of comprehensive assignments in small number gave me a big picture of the units, helping me gain a better understanding the units in a concrete way.

Just need a languages switcher

Finally, I have reached the end of this semester. This is the 13th week, the last one, so the exams will come in the following month. Quite happy for that, as I guess this semester is the most busies one I have ever, and I know I can survive it in this new system.
So today I try to squeeze a bit of time to play basketball, my most favourite sport, with my friends with multi-culture background. Actually, both of them are from Malaysia. I found that it is very easy to find someone to speak Chinese if I am sick of speaking English all the time. The interesting thing about the Chinese from Malaysia is that they can speak various languages, including Hokkien, Cantonese and Haga, these major dialects from China. So it is no a problem to speak any languages I want with them at all. When I just like to speak English, just need to switch to English. If feeling tired of it, just need to switch back to Mandarin, even back to Hokkien (Fujian), where I am from. This is a really great relief for any homesick symptoms, during which I need to share some common senses with others.
I totally agree Australia is a multi-culture country. It always send welcome signals to the people here from around the world, no matter how different they are. It provides a really friendly environment to the people. This is the point I love this country the most. I gradually have a sense that Australia is not only a country, but also a world.