Joyce

I absolutely loved how Joyce started her speech with speaking in chinese.Ii thought it was kinda cool that she did that because we had to try to figure out what she was saying by her actions. She taught us 20 to 25 words total she said. That only took us about a half hour. I was told that chinese was one of the hardest languages to learn, although we only a little bit, I thought it was quite easy.

Joyce told us how she started a school in 2001 called the Purple School. At first they only taught the language of Chinese but now they teach 8 different languages to children from ages from 0 to 10 years old, with 31 different catagories. She talked about how much easier it is to teach a child a foriegn language because at a young age beacause you are more aware to the sounds. The Chinese language has over 10,000 characters, each sound has its own character.

I learned from Joyce that the Chinese language can have 3 different ways of saying the same thing. There is one way to talk to the people above you, your elders or your boss. Another way to speak to your friends, and the last way is to speak to someone below you, such as your children.

Holiday

one holiday that is not most celebrated is presidents day. i mean in elementary school we might have looked over the presidents but i dont remember much of it. we dont ever really take the time to look back and recognize all our presidents. if you really think about it, we only really go over the presidents that did all the big things in the world, ie lincoln, roosevelt, washington. what about the little guys? they deserve some appreciation too. i think we shud celebrate all of them. i like the fact that we have a presidents day, but noone really takes notice of it. well except as a day off for some.

Loren Yellowbird

Loren did a great job of speaking to us at our class last tuesday night. He described to us how most white people treated him and his people of the Arikara tribe. He hated white people for the longest time because of what they did to them, but soon he realized that not all white people are the same. so he slowly gained trust in us. he takes pride in his culture and would like to keep it alive. he does this at his job by telling people the history of the Arikara tribe and teaching his own kids the language and other aspects.

Journey to a Hate Free Millenium

"White Race = Creator
Asian Race = Maintainors
Hispanic/Black = Destroyers"

I thought the movie was quite insightful. I mean you dont really realize how far people will go just to commit hate crimes. Matthew Shepard seemed like a great guy, and all the people, it seemed, that didnt know him only bashed him for being gay and used him as an example as a sin. i mean i didnt even know the kid and i already liked him, at least from what i have heard. Or look at James Byrd, he suffered a horrible death only because he is black. Hate crimes are big deals and supposably easy to commit.
Ghandi once said, "you must be the change that you want to see in the world."
in my opinion i blame the parents and the schools. mostly because if the parents are racist in the home then the kids will pick up the habit from them and take it into the schools. sometimes if the teachers have the seame views they wont say anything. therefore if the parents paid a little bit more attention to their kids' lives we might not live in such a messed up world.

Pricilla and Corey

Pricilla was our first guest speaker. She is the fourth generation in her family born in South Africa. She is one that talks very quickly, therefore we got alot of information in a short amount of time, which means I did not get the chance to take a lot of notes. However there were a couple of sujects I did catch. The marriage and the education differ very much from the U.S.
The caste system mainly revolves around your wealth and education. A man or woman of the upper class cannot marry one of the opposite sex from the lower caste system. the male proposes by delivering ten healthy cows to the womans parents. It shows thanks and appreciation. However if the wife proves to be unfaithful she has to return all the cows.
The education in South Africa is a bit more intense than ours. They wear uniforms and have more extreme dicipline. if a child gets backhanded or hit with a ruler the parents have no say.


Corey was our second guest speaker that night. He is from Canada. As hard as it is to believe there are many diffferences between the States and Canada. Hunting for example, in Canada you take an eight hour class when you are twelve years old but you have to have an adult  within arms reach of you at all times. You can go for your muzzle loader, rifle or a bow. Indians do ot need a license to hunt and the game wardens do not carry guns with them.
Another subject he talk about was our politics. We have two political parties, they have seven. Our politicians slam each other in commercials and on billboards. However  theirs go door to door and raise money for thier campaign.