About Jesus Shaves

Q: Post about a time when you found yourself in Sedaris situation(#3). What were you trying to explain and why was it difficult? Was there anything humorous about the situation, or did you mostly feel frustration?

A: Actually I have no many foreign friends now, but I got interesting experience of communicating to foreign students in ESL classes. The teacher usually seperate us into several groups to talk and do some projects, during this time I always have difficulty to talk to some classmates. For example, when a Colombian student tries to explain a opinion to me, I can not understand, sometimes she doesn't want to say again. At this moment, I am a little bit embarrassed, and I hope that she isn't angry and say more about that.

Normally, I have difficulty to talk with the classmates from other countries. Especially, for us, sometimes we can not use our limitted vocabularies to explain what we really want say. We also had to pronounce more standard, clearly and slowly. For example, the same word a Japanese classmate says that sounds different from, even I can not get it at all if they say quickly.

Sometimes it is really difficult, and most of time I feel frustration about this. Because if others can not understand what you say, you are very frustrated at once, sometimes you are also afraid of that they don't want to listen to you contituely. But I found that only if we pay more patience to listen to, we can get or give confidence and understand one another eventually.

The Lottery

Question: Once you have read the entire story, what is ironic about the discussion of the traditional or ritualistic activities that surround the lottery? what point do you think Jackson may be trying to make?

Answer: The ironic thing is that we don't know clearly why many people take part in this traditional lottery celebration. Once I have read the entire story, I had many doubts. Why some boys selected a lot of stones in one corner of the square or in their pockets? What's wrong with the men stood away from the pile of stones and the women wearing faded clothes? There are a three-legged stool and the black box, but why they put the box on the stool?  They sang "a perfunctory tuneless chant", but we always think that chant should be holy. It is also strange that some people made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and then the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another.
I'm not very clear about that final purpose that Jackson tries to make. Maybe he just want to state and describe many detail screens, and these screens are also not related many strange details in the main body in order to give people a feeling of lottery again and again.

Fostering Sustainable Behavior

4. At the beginning of the chapter, what does the Samuel Butler quote suggest? Do you agree?

Samuel Butler agrees that people have a strong desire consistent and hope others to see.
I agree with him. We usually do something with other people together, and different people have different ideas, if we can not find a compromise, we will not achieve our goal. If you have a unique opinion, and others probably will not change their ideas, so finally maybe you have to alter your opinion. Because you don't want to see the condition that other partners look at you together, certainly you will have no other choices.

Glory at Sea

4. If you had to summarize the movie, what would you say? Is it important that you "understand" everything in the movie? What are some of the different aspects that are open to interpretation?

This story is totally very moved. I think that they know that the boat is very fragile, but they all can not stop to look for their family members. It is probable a huge risk. So, finally, it is a tragedy. However, hope always exists and we need to try sometimes.

I do not think it is important to "understand" everything in the movie, because we all understand emotion. Those people they wanted to find maybe were friends, lovers, family members and so on. We can not define simply that their decisions were right or wrong. We just need to trust them and give them best wishes.

If we stand on the point of rationale, they should not take the risk to look for other people because it is too risky. If we understand their actions from emotion, they may did the right thing because they just can not stop thinking of those people they love and care and trying to find and save them.

5. In your opinion, is the ending a happy or sad one?

Anyway, it is a sad story with a bad ending. I can not feel happiness in the movie. When I saw the ending, firstly I felt hopeful and moved, but I realized that they also distributed their own lives. Maybe their family members want them not to go to look for them.

Two Questions

1. How did issues of obedience and authority play themselves out in your group?
Acturally we chose the topic "Obedience in Family" quickly, because we thought it had close connection with everybody. Then we tried to think and research some material from books and Internet. While we were looking for the examples, we found that authority parenting has many various types and also cause different results. According to the examples we focused on, we found that both hyper authority and zero obedience are not good ways in parenting. The real best way is that parents had better raise children strictly sometimes, and it is also very necessary to give private space for children.

2. Did working on the presentations change or re-enforce any of your ideas about the material we covered?
The experiment we talked in classes made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. And I had to think about authority seriously. Most of time I felt I really didn't want to follow the expert's rules, it seemed like make me crazy. But when we were preparing our presentation, we realized that authority in family is very necessary and useful sometimes, we can accept it easier.

Cool Hand Luke

Question: What was Luke's life worth? Did he accomplish something of value?
Answer: If Luke just needs to stay at the jail two years or several years, I don't think it's worth his escape from prison. Maybe the criminal thinks less two years is suitable for himself, but it has no absolutely fair in the society. You make great effort to break the fact, once you fail, you have to pay a high price, that will be worse. If the criminal have to spend the left half life to stay in the jail, it is maybe valuable if someone really wants to break the prison. Because the life only has one time, he has no time to wait... 

A Song Lyrics

歌名: 放学啦
歌手: 花儿乐队

在学校中感到了压力
同学们在相互地打击
面对着你的问题
不知道该怎么反应
希望能快点儿离开这里
这里得不到我想要的东西
希望那铃声它快点响起
告诉我们好吧
已经放学了放学啦
我们在这里学到的东西
让人们看上去不会欢喜
谁也不知将来会到哪里
怎样才算是活得有点儿意义

Song: The Class is over

Singer: The Flower Bland

In schools we felt pressure

And students were pitching into each other

About your problems

I don't know how to reply

Hope to hurry to leave here

I can get nothing what I want from here

Hope the bell rings quickly

Please tell us

The classes are over

The things we learned here

It seems makes students not happy

Who knows where we will go in the future

How can we live meaningful

The Poem

A HAPPY WINTER
WE THREE AT BOSTON

Everywhere is snow. We
See  through the window. We

Talk, eat. We
Think, silent. We

Share together. We
Happy winter.

sometimes obedience is boring

Honestly speaking, I have to face to some obedience things sometimes, but I really would like not to accept some somewhere or in some situations. For instance, when I studied in a university in China, all of our classmates usually were asked for going to do something that we all really did't want to do, such as a boring professor's speech, a show for some government officials, some comment for the campus journal, and so on. I just don't want to solve these in the campus, I don't care how much and frequently it exists or happens in the society. At the same time, if some certain people follow the obedience thing, I will also feel very uncomfortable. For example, some teachers sometimes give your credit according to the school's certain ratio, they divide all the classmates into several levels exactly even alter your real score to match the list they want to make. So, I really don't want to accept these things.