Trip to Colorado

It was about 7 o’clock at night on Tuesday when my friend came to my apartment and fetched me with a big van, and that night was the starting point of my trip. There were 11 of us all together heading for the trip, and we had our dinner in Ames before leaving the city. The journey to Colorado was long and tiring. We had to drive crossed Nebraska State where in between we stopped several times in the resting areas. There were 5 among 11 of us who know how to drive, thus they took turns in driving. We reached Colorado about 9 on Wednesday morning and we had our breakfast there in one of the fast food restaurant. Then we continued driving, and headed to our check-in venue for the key, continued passing Johnson Tunnel, and arrived at our villa. It took us a few hours that it was about noon when we reached our villa. Quickly, we unpacked our stuff, settled everything, took some rest, and then we went to one of the best Vietnamese restaurant for our lunch. There are quite a few Vietnamese and Chinese populations in Denver; we went to the Asia market to get some food supply after our lunch, and then headed back to our villa. The first day in Colorado was interesting, the people and the places are quite different from Iowa, and I really like it there.
We woke up at 7a.m. the next 2 days, and after having breakfast and got everything ready, we headed straight to the Rocky Mountain. I was really excited when we reached there just as if the mountain was waiting for me to explore, and my legs couldn’t wait any longer to start skiing just as if I were a pro. We headed further up to the mountain by cable car after we got our skiing equipments and entrance ticket. We started off our ski exploring with bunny hills. It was my first time skiing, and I never realized skiing was so challenging until in tried it myself. I fell down several times before I finally knew how to ski properly, and both of my buts hurt a lot. However, it was very fun after knowing how to ski and able to explore the mountain without falling down all the time. We went to explore the green area first, then the blue area where we skied from higher point down to the lower point of the mountain. The high speed of skiing down the hills made me felt excited, and knowing how to control the speed made me even excited. That was my first experience of learning how to ski by myself, it was challenging and exciting. I was a fast learner throughout the whole process of skiing, and my friends kept praising me because of that. I was really having fun with skiing throughout the two days. Since the trip to Colorado, I fell in love in skiing, and I listed it as one of my favorite sports. I really want to plan another trip there, try on the other mountains and explore them with the skiing skills that I had.

Journal # 7 - The best movie ever seen

What is the best movie you have ever seen? Why?

The best movie I ever seen is the movie Forest Gump which is directed by Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks as the main character in it. The movie is quite an old one yet because of the strong impression it had to me, I am still able to recall most of the scene in the movie at the moment. I remember that I watched the movie during my Junior High time. The movie pictured a story of life of the main character. He was a boy who lived and grew up with single mother, who was slower in studies as compare to other kids at his age, and who had a leg problem. Throughout the movie, lots of miracle happen in his life, first is the recovery of his leg. Then when he was in the military where he managed not only to save his own life but also a friend of his. Also he was able to survive a major storm out in the sea and captured big amount of shrimps. Later, he decided to run in his life and he became the longest runner ever in the history. There were only two things in his life that he appreciate very much, first was his mother who sacrifice a lot in the process of his growing, then was his lover since he was very young who became his wife at the very end. I admired Tom Hanks in the movie who was very determined in achieving his goal, also the pure heart that he had which made everything happened accordingly. I would highly recommend to anyone who have not watch the movie Forest Gump to take a break and watch it. It was a meaningful and touching movie talking about life, love, and many others.

Journal # 6 - My friendships

It has been more than 2 months since the first time I arrived in the U.S. and I feel that the past weekends was the best that I ever had in the states before. The moment was specifically on Saturday, I had my hair cut by one of my friend, then went back to have dinner with bunch of my best friends. I was very late for the dinner that everyone had finished their food when i reached at my friend's apartment, but they left some food since they know that i will be late due to the hair cut. After the dinner, we were having some fun games with cards while enjoying our beers. It was a real fun on that night that we went on and on until very late at night. Everyone was tired yet insisted to continue with the fun time, as a result, all of us decided to overnight there. There were 2 among us that live in the apartment and 6 of us that are not belong there, but one among 6 of us went to share a room with his girl friend who stays there, and that made up 5 of the rest of us had to spend our night sleeping on the floor of the apartment's living room. We moved the table, put down a big blanket on the floor, borrowed some pillows from our friends who stays there, and lay down prepared to sleep without brushing our teeth. Before sleeping, everyone was chatting and joking one to another for awhile till slowly one by one got into their dreams. It was a memorable moment for all of us on that night that it made the bond among us grew stronger and closer. I felt so glad that I have a group of best friends whom I could share my moment with. Most of them on that night was not my friends untill I came to the States, and I feel so glad that I met and have them as bunch friends that are unique and special , and whom I am willing to share most of my moments in the states with. I really appreciate the moment with them especially on that night and I hope this pure and solid friendships will long last, forever if possible.

Journal # 5 - Newspaper articles

Article 1 :

The title of the article is Grooving on 'Guitar Hero' by Tom Hummer, a junior in English from Ames. The article was published on October 16, 2009. The purpose of this article is to pursuade the reader that playing musical games such as 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band' doesn't discourage people to learn the real instrument, instead they are associated with the increase interest in the real instrument. The author started the article by sharing his personal experience of playing musical video games and introducing the criticism that 'Guitar Hero' got - "why don't people just learn how to play real instruments?". The author asked himself in the article "why do I play these games? Why don't I just pick up one of the real guitars I have in my bedroom?" which I thought is a very good tactics in writing. In my opinion, the author is overall quite effective in achieving his goal in the article. He stated some good arguement in the body of the article such as "According to The Annual Census of the Music Industries, the number of guitars sold from 2005 to 2006 - the year "Guitar Hero 1" came out and into the year after - went up by 41 percent." and also by giving example with similar phenomenon that happened in 1999 when "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" was first released which caused kids all arround the nation, including himself, bought skateboards and started to learn the tricks they were doing in the video games which are good examples that video games actually encouraged kids to get off of the couch and go outside for a change.

Article 2:

The title of this article which published on October 16, 2009 is “Engage in ethics dialogue” by Ray Rodriguez, the health promotion coordinator for ISU and a member of the ACHA Ethics Committee. The purpose of the article is to inform the reader of the important of ethics in daily life. In the beginning of the article, the author used the term “preventative medicine” and “prevention education” to imply that health can be improved by the acting before symptoms appear. Next the author continued by asking questions, “But how do we use the ethics of our professions and organization to help us with prevention? How do we plan for positive ethical outcomes before ethical issues arise?” I think this is a very well done strategy of writing, it makes the reader want to continue reading. Then in the body of the article, the author shared his personal experience several years ago when he became aware of guidelines and tried to figure out who else was interested in it which I thought are very informative. Also, the author included in the article that ethical development and integrity are listed as a dimension of outcomes that we should be measuring to show inter- and intrapersonal competence which I think is very direct and informative. Thus, in my opinion, the author is quite effective in achieving his goal to inform the audience of the important of ethics.