Fun Things

Hey guys! Let's do something fun while we wait to get notified (or wait to depart the United States for our designated country)! Let's all introduce ourselves and share something interesting! This way we'll get to know each other--whether we go to the same country or not--and share some cool stuff. I'll start!

Hi, my name is Austeen. I am applying for China Fall semester. I like to play soccer, read, write, bake, and listen to music. Want to know something interesting about me? I'm afraid of birds...especially chickens! It's silly I know, but I got chased by one when I was a kid and it scarred me for life lol.

I want to share eatyourkimchi.com with you guys. It's the blog of a quirky Canadian couple teaching English in South Korea. They have really fun and cool information to share about South Korea. From traditional temples to weekly kpop music video reviews, they are sure provide an great insight into South Korean culture. You don't want to miss out on these guys! Check them out at their blog: http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/ or their youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/simonandmartina.

Tags: just for fun

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gracie on April 9, 2011 at 12:59pm

I am curious do you receive college credit on some of the Startalk programs? Also what activities did you do and were a beginner at Chinese when you went?

Permalink Reply by Michael on April 9, 2011 at 4:31pm

I went to BYU Utah Chinese Startalk. They give you the option to receive high school credit for going (I can't remember if it was a year or just a semester...) but I didn't take it because didn't need it.

You basically cover a unit of Chinese in the Chinese Link textbooks in three weeks. We would cover about a chapter every two days. We have a pre test to place us in levels, quizzes on dialogues and characters for every chapter, a midterm test, and a final test. It was pretty intense! I went to level three and level four (the highest levels they offer). But there were some people in level one who didn't even know how to say hello in Chinese when they went.

We did 3 hours of language lessons in the mornings and a couple of hours of culture classes in the afternoon. On the weekends we would go do cultural activities (dragon boat racing, hiking, etc.) eat at Chinese restaurants for dinner and watch Chinese movies in the evening.

I loved the experience and it helped my Chinese exponentially. I found the levels got quite a bit harder as they went higher. Level one had maybe an hour of homework per day at most while level four had probably 5 to 6 hours per day. It was mostly writing, memorizing, or translating stories and dialogues and characters. It is very helpful for all levels of experience.

At the end of the three weeks they throw a huge banquet to showcase for your parents and sometimes even Chinese officials all of the awesome cultural and lingual things you learn. Last year the fourth years announced and conducted the entire things while first years did martial arts and second and third years told stories.

Here is the vid they showed at the banquet showing all the things we did

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha0mRxvKcDI

We also made epic music videos in Chinese. Here is the one we did last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J718FGzW8I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3A6I6kjEAI

Here's the link to the website http://ce.byu.edu/cw/startalkChinese/ it might explain it better.

I'm open to any questions :)

heh heh :) sorry for such a long reply.

Permalink Reply by Jess Glass on April 9, 2011 at 4:38pm