Journal 9

In my opinion, I think American food is hamburger. If my friend said, "Let's go eat American", I would think he meant we go eat fast food. I think hamburgers may consider as a traditional American food. American food is fatty because it usually contain a lot of cheeses. I really like French fries and hot dog but I don't know if they are American food or not. Anyway, American food is totally different to Vietnamese food, especially in taste. The first time I ate hamburger. Its taste is strange and fatty, and I didn't like it. But now it's ok for me.

Cmt: Jessica, Tram

Journal 8

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Winston Churchill.

This quote is easy to understand, but it's really hard to do it. We can explain simply that when a person always feel sad and hopeless, everything around him is just nothing, no color, no happiness, just darkness, difficulties, and fears. However, if a person always look at everything with his optimistic eyes, everything around him will become colorful, bright, happiness, and he can do everything he want, catch opportunities in his life, and be successful.

It's really hard to say if the quote is right or wrong because it depends on characteristics and point views of each person. However, in my opinion, I just agree partly with the quote. As I said above, when people consider or think about something in optimistic way, they may see good points in it, and they feel they can do it, and catch their opportunity, yet difficulties in our life sometimes make us become pessimistic people. We cannot find where to go, what to do. So, not only our attitude decides our life, but difficult situations also affect our attitude. Besides, sometimes optimism may cause negative results in some way. For example, some people are too optimistic about everything, they tend to think everything is ok, it's not a big problem, and they can do it or solve it. So, they can get failures if they don't realize how important a problem is, and what difficulties they are facing.

Cmts: Juha & David

Journal 7: My best friend

Actually, my friend and I don't have a lot of similarities, but maybe time makes us be close and understand each other. I met him when we studied the same sixth class, and up to now we are still the best friends. We share some interests in sports, traveling, and movie. He's really good at playing basketball, I watched his all matches but I never try playing basketball, I have no idea about it although I really like it. When it comes to traveling, it makes both of us hyperactive. We usually traveled whenever we want without planning. That always makes us surprised and interested. In addition, we like movie so much. We often went to cinema when we had free time.
However, we have a lot of different characteristics. For example, he doesn't like crowd and busy place but I do love it. Also, he's a nice person, he doesn't want to be competitive but I'm competitive person, I'm not nice like him. Besides, he's generous but I'm selfish. When we have a disagreement about something, he always let me win. Actually, I don't really want it, I want he argue with me. It may be more interesting.

Cmt: Henry, Victor, Annete

Journal 6: Silly topic

I think if animals could talk, everyone on the world would become vegetarians because they could sue human for killing and eating them. In addition, we might have more animal classmates. If animals could talk as much as human, they could also go to school as we do. And maybe, our teacher could be an animal. It's so funny.
If animals could talk, I would ask them how they would feel about human. Because I always feel it's not fair between human and animals. Actually, human is also an animal, but why we can kill and eat them, maybe it's natural selection. Although I eat meat day to day, I still feel how poor animals are.

Cmt: Tree, Yunjae

Journal 5: The rose

First, please enjoy the following song: The Rose

At the first time I listened the song I thought that all definitions of love in the song were right because everyone has different emotions and feelings about it. Some people feel that love is a razor and it just brings them pains and sorrows, but others think that love is a flower that is always beautiful and bright. However, to me, love is colorful. It also likes high notes and low notes mixed together to create a beautiful song. That makes love more attractive and stronger.
When I listened to the last part of the song, I feel that love makes people have power and perseverance to overcome all difficulties and challenges in their life. Love never dies.

Cmt: Angela, Mai, Juha

Journal 4: Weird weather in California

The first month I was here, California, I felt it's not bad because before I came here I thought that maybe it's really cold and I can die of it. However, when I came here, it's not really so bad. It's cold, I admit, but I can stand it, I still survive and feel so good about cool weather.
After the first month, I got sick of crazy weather. It was rainny. I hate raining, and I came here, it rained a lot. Some people said to me that it's strange because it rarely rain here, and this year had a lot of rain that hadn't happened for 20 years. It makes me frustrated. I wondered why it rained a lot when I came here. I hate rain and maybe God want to give me what they don't want.
Now, I have my personal experience about the weather in California. There is no rule for it. It's cold in the morning and evening, but it's really hot at noon. We have to suffer the heat of the sunshine as soon as it stop raining. That's why I catch a slight cold easily as the seasons are changing.

Cmt: Christiane, Ali

Journal 3: Fear

Water is the worst fear in my life. It seems to be a kind of strange because there are a lot of people like swimming in the sea. To me, it's really a disaster. I like beaches, but just enjoy the scenes or play with water in the low sea level. That's why it's rarely for me to go swimming. When I was a child, I like swimming so much although I don't know how to swim. At once time, I go swimming with my friends, and I have an accident. I thought that I might die but fortunately my friend helped timely. Up to now, although I know to swim, I still feel uncomfortable when I go swimming. Even sometimes I'm afraid of taking a bath. It sounds so weird, but it is.

Cmt: Angela, Tram