end-of-term dump

嗨～ hi everyone. sorry for not posting more often but tbh life hasn't been super interesting lately because all focus has been on finals.

finals

finals consisted of four presentations, three papers (four if you count the script for the video) and one video.

職場中文 professional chinese

this one wasn't so bad and was the easiest of the bunch. we wrote and presented about our experience applying to next term's internship and our hopes for said internship.

跨文化 cross culture

for this one we all chose topics having to do with cultural differences and interviewed people, then wrote and presented about our findings. my topic was communication styles across culture (shoutout to mills for educating me on this in english). usually western cultures tend to be direct and low context communicators while eastern cultures tend to be more indirect and high context communicators. though my pool of interviewees was small (i don't have a lot of local friends still), i was surprised to find that my taiwanese interviewees were direct almost as much as they were indirect. i was especially surprised that this was true for both younger and older interviewees.

here's my ppt if anyone is curious (sorry but i'm not going to translate it all here, call me if you want more detail lol)

媒體 media

the concept of this one was a news report of sorts. we had to write our script out beforehand so our teachers could check it, so i count it as another paper. afterwards we were to record and edit a video. my topic was use of media during protest with BLM as an example. i won't share the video here–it's honestly really lazily edited and just watching the visual without understanding the audio is quite pointless.

獨立研究 individual research

we have been working on this one since the beginning of term in our 專業單班課 (professional one-on-one class). my title is "the Relationship of Intercountry Adoptees and Sending Countries with Chinese-Americans as examples". i ran into so many problems with this one and honestly i'm a little conflicted about it. first off, i didn't have time to actually conduct the research so all the "conclusions" i make are all speculation. on top of that, after getting out all that i wanted to write, my character count was over double the limit, so i had to cut examples and supporting logic which obviously took away from an already kind of weak base. i did save the long version though. that being said, i do intend to use this topic as my honors thesis topic back home, so it's not too bad.

now the hardest part with this one was the recorded in-person presentation, with no notes of any kind allowed and teacher follow-up questions. this marks the first time i have ever presented without notes (and in chinese no less), so i'm proud. i also had a time issue with this in the during the early stages of development. i was hitting 13min when the presentation wasn't even halfway done 😅 . once the center processes the recording, i have to check and edit the subtitles and then i'm officially done with it.

here's the a bit of a journal note from presentation day (7/7): *note: i write out the pinyin when writing chinglish. i'll add the english*

woke up earlier than my alarm today like 7:30 definitely because of nerves. and so i was up approx. 3 hours before my presentation. because the bus runs way less times during the summer, i was catching the 9:45 bus for a 10:20 call time for a 10:55 presentation. anyway, i got ready, recited the presentation completely from memory in my room, did some self talk and then off i went. in order to minimize stress and anxiety i went to yi guan (一館 a building on campus) instead of the call room bc waiting in there would make the anticipation worse. i was practicing in yi guan and everything was pretty solid. i barely had to look at the ppt and then i’m late to the 10:20 call time. so stress shot up so damn quickly. unbeknownst to me the laoshis (老師 teachers) had built in time in case the group before ran late, so we went directly to the baogao (報告 presentation) room and well idk i was definitely stressed at this point. keep in mind i’ve never delivered a presentation without any form of notes before. the other students are going through their presentations on the big screen and i rehearse last. my rehearsal went so terribly. seriously the worst ever since i had memorized it. my chinese and logic was all twisted up and i was like shit bc i only had one time to rehearse. afterward three new laoshis joined and nearly immediately after my disaster of a rehearsal, i had to present. idk how but it was as smooth as i could ask for which wasn’t really that much. we'll have to wait for the recording to see. i don't know the time but it was within 10min unsurprisingly bc of all my practice times were in the 8-9 range. the questions from the laoshi were "give an example of what you would do research-wise? elaborate on the future research slide" and what do you mean when you say “the birth families don’t have as much power”? this part was a little less shun li (順利 smooth) bc i didn't prep it before (and that’s the point) but people seemed to get it. after presenting, i nearly walked off with the mic still on. after all the presentations in my group, the hawaii guest teacher praised me telling me it’s really important topic and that he loved how it was related to me and he knows a lot of other flagship students are the same which was super validating. and before the presentation, yang laoshi (楊老師) shared similar sentiments and asked a lot of questions of what my point was and it’s nice to know the teachers were genuinely interested–at least as it seemed.

here's my ppt (again not going to translate here)

now all that's left academically is mid-year proficiency exams. i'm most worried about the OPIc which tests speaking level. all the times i've been tested before, i've done just OPI. the difference is that OPI is on the phone with an actual person and OPIc is a computer talking to you. the testing strategy for OPI is just talk until the person asks you a new question and moves on, but from what i hear of the OPIc, the computer randomly generates a question and immediately after asking, starts recording for three minutes only. that means you can't ask for clarification and you don't even really have time to think.

random outings and photo dump

06/17

we said goodby to our 語言夥伴 (language partners). i'm sad we never got to meet in person bc of the pandemic spike, but my partner and i hope to meet up sometime. it's just that she's at the 交通 (jiaotong) campus which is a solid 2hr trip one way. this photo was from our ending meeting.

06/18

i went out to an actually not bad mexican place followed by exploring 松山區 (songshan district) including 國父紀念館 (National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall) who is known as the father of taiwan. the name actually literally translates to "country father memorial hall" and 松山文創園區 (songshan cultural and creative park). both had exhibitions up and outside the memorial hall, a lot of dance groups were practicing.

memorial hall:

cultural and creative park: complete with a "baroque" courtyard. (i believe the last photo to be a penguin)

took a friend to one of my favorite places 初雪 (first snow):

06/23

sunset sky from the dorms:

06/24

my friends from UO here on summer programs got out of quarantine and we met up for fried udon, drinks and 士林夜市 (shilin night market). on the way, it was seriously down pouring. we have definitely entered rainy season. the thunder and lightning here is seriously insane.

(sound on for thunder)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_9d3e3ef3d9744e1b98a0bc07720ad52d/720p/mp4/file.mp4

06/29

official last class of the term:

to celebrate, my class and i went to our favorite nearby korean spot:

07/05

view from my dorm window on a nice day:

during the presentation prep week, i was a little stir-crazy because the weather had been really bad and it's hard to go out mid-week anyway. so this clear night, i decided to climb up to the top of campus to the sport courts and track at like 10pm in hopes of seeing stars, the city lights and just getting out and away from human noise. and i got what i wanted. the stars and moon seemed so much closer than they do at home. especially the dipper–it was so big. oh how i wish i had a camera that could capture the stars. until then, just take my word for it. seeing the city from up high was great too. i also saw some new parts of campus on this late night exploration.

07/07

after the big 獨立研究報告 (individual research presentation) mentioned earlier, i decided to treat myself to ,you guessed it, 初雪 (first snow). i finally got there early enough to get the watermelon! then i went to my favorite kind of place in the world–the beach. it took me a minute to find the path off the road to 沙崙 (shalun) beach up in 淡水區 (tamsui district), but it was totally worth it. i had gotten off the LRT at 沙崙站 (shalun station) and walked the entire length of the beach to fisherman's wharf (i went here in previous post). i had time to kill until sunset so i found some shade and read my octopus book for a few hours before heading back to the beach where i searched for cool shells and tested the waters. swimming isn't allowed but i saw two guys out there diving for something anyway. the sunset, as usual, was worth waiting for. i caught the first part at the beach and the rest at lover's bridge.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_868487a52dea4d1781d62e3cbd5a132d/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_3523dc159b85410184cc5ed404b75de8/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_587136d8a7d441d7aeee695ab8832955/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

thanks for reading and look forward to my summer break updates! my friends and i have some fun things planned.

♡蘇晨