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 A visit from our beloved Japanese friends

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 A visit from our beloved Japanese friends

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On one Monday in January, students from Armory high school paid a visit to PTNK. Getting the permission from T-Bảo, I and my friends came down to the hall to get some chance to talk to them. I personally did not engage in any conversation with them, but at least I have gotten to understand them more. Through a small discussion regarding the scientific research, I realized that they were pretty timid yet amazingly kind. I also learned that the study course in Japan was very diverse with a wide variety of activities for students to choose from which coincidentally PTNK cannot offer. Anyways, about their scientific research I was impressed by the experiment about planting the different types of tomatoes or something. The whole thing was straight up simple, but what impressed me was their creativity. Like they can utilize every knowledge taught to apply to life. That is something that I definitely to need train more, in this case I mean creativity and curiosity.

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On the day right after the visit from the Japanese friends, we had a listening about the history of Coca-Cola bottles. Many interesting facts were listed out, and one that caught my attention was the fact about the color of sprite bottle. If I remember correctly, the change in color was made due to the urgent need for recycling recognition. Then, T-Bao gave us a small task of advocating for a solution to reduce plastic circulation. By chance, I was also the one picked for presenting Chi Po argument. The gist of our argument was that, we should be using other materials to replace plastic. Honestly, this point is quite monotonous not gonna lie as you can see such argument anywhere on the Internet. That being said, an argument is an argument. Regarding my speech, I did a terrible job, I did not make enough preparation and eventually faced the music. If I was to vote, mine would probably be at the bottom. Sorry to my clanmates.

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At the beginning of the lesson, we played a small game called "guessing the animal class". Basically, a list of animals would be presented respectively, and our mission was to place them in the class that they belonged to. Not much else remains in my mind about this exercise. But still, it was very fun, so much new memory was gained. Another remarkable thing we did during lesson was creating a word form exercise. Every group did an excellent job, and ours was picked as the most suitable one (T-Bao actually gave us one extra clan point for this). It was definitely not the toughest one, but everything was perfectly appropriate. The 6k's one was horribly inscrutable. I remember it quite clearly because our group was picked to do theirs. I think we got like 4 out of 10 or something like that.

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Don't get tricked by the thumbnail. Even though the listening was not easy, I did quite a decent job. Some facts that I noted from the listening was that:

-8 billion metric tons of plastics are used up every year

-Plastic is divided into different categories such as: PVC, PET, HDPE

-In 2009, 4% of the total amount of old and gas extracted was turned into plastic

-One popular technique to reduce plastic impact is called "downcycling"

Talking about downcycling, The reason I remember it is because on that day there was a small competition between the clans to find out which clan would get the most correct answers for the listening practice. When I heard the downcycling for one blank, out of amazement, I shouted out loud to everyone around and Khoa from 6Ks heard it which in turn indirectly costed us our victory. Sorry to my clanmates again

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Here comes listening test after Tet. Surprise motherflipper! I was a little bit surprised to know that we were having a test right after Tet. Looking back at the test, my performance was fine, I got 4 incorrect answers and therefore received a 9. Not bad! I'm good with that. But what made me regretted was a question in the first section about a summer volunteer activity in some African country. There was a question where the correct answer was shack but I misheard it as shark. My friends all laughed at me afterwards. What an embarrassing moment!

After the test, we did a crossword about health. Even though, we were all fully focused, ChildPo only finished third. Guess we cannot beat the vocabulary zealots from 6Ks and I eat kidz. But still once again, alot of new knowledge was gained after the crossword, especially in terms of vocabulary.

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On the next day, we had some discussion about allergies, a topic that has many aspects to explore. T-Bảo let us have a small listening where we hear a doctor consulting his patients about allergies. I have lost sight of much of the details of that listening. Despite that, one crucial point that still sticks in my mind is the fact that, kids who have parents suffering from allergies in the past wlll have a higher chance of catching an allergy one day, this has something to do with genetics and stuff. Moreover, I also learned that the age with the highest chance to suffer from allergy is adolescence, maybe around 14 or 15 years of age. From this point, I actually want to share my own story regarding allergies.

In the 6th grade, I suffered severely from rash. It was the day right before the midterm test and I was sitting on the couch revising for the test next day. All of a sudden, I started experiencing some itches on the surface of my 2 arms. My skin just started turning red, and I scratched my arms nonstop. On that same day, my father took me to a nearby clinic, and after taking some pills, the symptoms were temporarily relieved. But right in the next day, amid the literature test, that itching feeling struck back. Fortunately, I was about to make it out and my marks were still fine. Truly an unforgettable memory!

Another story that I want to tell here is the peach tea allergy of one of my relations. It was about 4 years ago and back then, near his home is a milk tea shop. They offered a wide variety of drinks, and his favorite drink was peach tea. With just 20k, we get a 500ml cup of peach tea with a huge number of jellies. In the innocent

mind of every child back then, it was a dream come true. After school, he would buy a 500 ml cup of peach tea to relieve his thirst. Everything was in of control until 1 day, just like my story above, he started experiencing itches on his body. This time, it was not just the arms but his entire body. There were itches on his arm, back, chest, face, literally everywhere. Some days later, he also suffered from hives (or urticaria). Until one point, it just felt like his body was manipulated by red spots. Subsequently, his parents took him to the hospital, and it was diagnosed that his liver was malfunctioning which caused the accumulation of toxins in his body. After taking some pills and conforming to the doctor’s prescription. He finally recovered and made it out without suffering from any sequela later on.

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By the end of the last lesson, we were reminded that there would be a class debate next lesson and the topic was "whether school should restrict the student's consumption of junk food". My clan ChildPo along with CKC and 6Ks were arranged in the Opposition side. From my point of view, the proposition side, which was the opposite side, did a better job than us. They made some adequate point about the role of school and also how time at school will shape a child's lifestyle. All of this have been mentioned in my flip video which Mr. T-Bảo definitely has watched. From our side, we mentioned something about the school turning into a black market which was, indeed, not very convincing. Some of the members on my team also didn't have good enough rebuttals as they just keep targeting the sources of information from the proposition side instead of really arguing back. Understandably, the proposition side finally emerged victorious.

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Onto the last week of February, we discussed quite an interesting topic known as weird sports. For the warm-up, we played a game where we decided whether some sport is real or imaginary based on their name. The most reminiscent one for me was the quidditch one, I was like what?! How is a "Harry-Potter" sport real? Next up, we proceeded to do some reading articles in the textbook and each clan would be assigned to do a separate part. Ours as far as I'm concerned was lacrosse. Then, we played some sticky ball throwing which almost seemed near impossible as the distance was unbelievable. Another thing we did that week was advocating for one sport we want to make the new national sport in Vietnam. We picked extreme ironing and the speaker chosen was Chau Gia Huy. He did an excellent job when mentioning the fact that we can capitalize on the floody weather of central area to be the arena

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This week was super chilled as we simply just brushed up on the knowledge that we have learned so far. Everything was smooth and nothing got out of control. Here is the list of vocabulary we encountered during revision. Just to clarify, Khoa from 6Ks was the one to make this list in a docs file. He shared it to everyone, therefore my list may actually resemble his list because obviously we learned the same stuff. Of course not all is from his list some have been written down by me previously. This is not copying

-Thrive on (stress, hard work)

-be on the minds of people

-provide a spur for

-physical exertion

-ammunition

-crippling

-freewheeling

-inoculate

-gentlemanly

-melodrama

-spurious

-anecdotal

-unmask

-constituent

-spate

-be in the public eye

-allergen

-venomous

-greasy

-be fit for purpose

=turn a blind eye to sth

-a lump in one's throat

-movingly

-two-pronged

-hobble

-sensitise

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The listening practice we did was extremely tough. I do not know where T-Bảo got the material from but I am sure that they were definitely harder than CPE. On that day, members from each clan would take turn to compete for points by listening to extracts. There were like 9 or 10 extracts. The one I did was about modernity and its effect on the size of electronic devices in the future. I got like 7 out of 8 which was acceptable I guess.

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My self-reflection on my performance. I did ok and got an 8 which was fine I guess. Still I regretted having made one mistake on the test. It was a sentence transformation and the object was debt which carries a negative connotation. For somehow, instead of inevitable I wen for the verb "acquired" which has a positive connotation. So silly from me.

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Honestly speaking, when you come somewhere else that is not your home, hatred and discrimination is expected. It doesn’t apply for studying abroad or immigration but for everywhere across the globe. From their point of view, you are being the land invaders. And they actually have a point tho. These are 2 of the most viral clips of one of my favorite Youtuber Tyler Oliveira. Basically, he is a youtuber who comes to the scene and reports what is going on in the video. They are completely real, natural, and not staged. And in those two videos, we can clearly see the chaos and destruction that the immigrants can bring to the U.S. If they are to immigrate peacefully, that is completely fine. But just some people do not have the same thought. They get past the border through the means of violence.

In the video that we watch about chinese immigration, one of the main factor that led to the flee of tens of chinese to America was the opium war. They were facing all sort of hardship back in their home country. Oddly as it may sound, all of that was instigated by the U.S and other western countries

P/s: I cannot paste the image in this section so I would leave the link instead.

Reference:

I Investigated NYC’s Illegal Immigrant Invasion… (youtube.com)

I Investigated the U.S-Mexico Border... (youtube.com)

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Next stuff is presentation week. Everyone did great and there is not much to say about this week. In between this week was a section for collaborative presentation about model minority. It went well despite all the odds. I actually really like Danh's point about downplaying racism. Among the group presentations, Le Minh Khoi's group was definitely the weirdest. He was being stereotypical the whole time and his argument was just so flawed especially when it comes to comparisons between males and females

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This week, it was my group turn to present. The topic we chose was domestication. Everything went pretty well. Even though it was not immaculate, we definitely have improved a lot. Our slideshow was especially impressive when we pursued a pixelated Pokémon style. I'm still sad because we lost 0.5 due to the fact that we submitted the report behind schedule. On Wednesday, we had some typical listening practice, and on the side nothing special really happened. And that concludes the very first week of April