My First School Day In The US

To this day, I can not forget a bunch of stupid mistakes that I made in the first day when I went to Intrax. Even though I had been living in the US for two weeks, I was not use to life in this strange place at that time. Every step, which I was making, gave me a tension. Because I lived in Glenview, my journey to school was started from a train station. I bought a train ticket after many complications and got on the train. When I arrived in downtown, I was nervous and excited simultaneously because of an expectation for new start in the US. However, this muzzy day stared from in a bus.

I had never taken a bus alone, thus, when I stepped on the bus, I wanted to make sure if that bus was right one to go to Intrax. I remembered that a bus going to water tower place is the one which I have to take and a thought, which I have to get off near millennium park, crossed in my mind at the same time. I was confused while I was choosing which bus stop is better to ask, and eventually, a mention from my tongue was 'Is this bus going to water park?' I did not notice my mistake, so I repeated the same question over and over, because a bus driver asked me back many times. He ended up catching my fault and corrected it 'water tower'. I was so embarrassed because many people in the bus was staring me. But the continuity of mistakes did not finish at that.

The bus was almost getting to my destination, so I wanted to make a stop request. However, I could not find stop buttons and it made me disconcerted again. Luckily, a man found a stop button and pushed it. It was a fact, that I became to know later, that there are strings to make a stop request in American bus. I did not know that, because, there is no string in Korean bus. In any case, the bus stopped at the stop and, the man and I was standing in front of a rear door to get off. But the door did not open. I was in confusion and he looked also embarrassed. I could not say anything to the bus driver, because I already felt humiliated before that. While I was being in panic, the man said to him. "Open!" Then, a passenger said that we had to push the door to open it. Even before having feel a relief, I was ashamed of my English about why I had not been able to say even just one word 'open'. You might be curious why the man also did not know the things that I did not know. He was unmasked as a Intrax new student like me. Anyway, the ridiculous mistake continued in Intax.

After I took a level test in there, I was sitting on a couch to meet a Intrax staff. There was a another new student sitting next me. He started talking to me. He said "The test was so big!" Because he used a word 'big' instead of 'long', I guessed that his English was not so fluent. But I should have judged mine before having judged his English. After I said "Yes. It was long.", he said "I am Tired." So I said "I am Sojung." But he seemed that he could not understand me and I repeated it again. After three minutes, I realized that he had said that he had been tired, not said his name. That was the worst mistake I have made ever.

That kind of mistakes happened for a while in that beginning school days in Chicago. If I look back on the past now, they were so many stupid ones. But, unless I had made that silly mistakes, there might not be who I am at the present. 'Mistake is a mother of success.' My familiarity in the US, my English skills, and many precious friends... I know that all of them was built on that mistakes and thank for being able to talk these funny memories with smile.

Cultural difference between America and Korea

People in America are more friendly to strangers than people in my country. We can meet many friendly people who start talking to you in a street in the US. My life is more comportable from other poeple's estimation about me now that I live in America. Because America people usually respect other people's own personality than our country. The biggest difference between people from the US and people from my country is manners for senior people. We have a lot of strict invisible rules when we meet older people than us. For instance, we should use formal languague to seniors even in informal stuation. On the weekends, Americans spend time with their family but in my country people usually hang out with our friends. American families seem to have more strong union with their family. It seems because their territoy is huge, thus, they can not meet their friends easily. Expressing their opinion directly is important to Americans, whereas expressing out opinion indirectly is more important to people in my country. Especially, in a stuation which we complain about something, it makes us seem to be more polite. American families have a variety of family types like sigle-parent family, lesbian family but families from my country usually have simple type of family because we are not that open-minded about someone's difference. I think having confidence and expressing that is better in the US than in my country. Apparently, it seems to be related to different concept about modesty. One thing we could learn from the US is education to raise studnet's creativity. In Korea, the education is focused on memorizing impormation. If I could change one thing about American culture, it would be law which allows possession of gun. It make me feel being in danger while I live in the US, whereas, in my country, I feel safe at least about getting hurt by gun. When I think of American culture, I think of they have more freedom for everything. Even if they do wierd deed, The biggest misconception people in my country have about the US is all American is extrovert. Americans wouldn't like culture, about which people share a same soup bowl in my country. My country has more restect to eldery people than the US.

Why Is Our Diet Changing?

Our Diet is changing. That is obvious fact which we can be aware everywhere. Go to downtown and look around. You can probably see a lot of variety restaurants; American food, Japanese food, Italian food, even junk fast food which we can not figure out where it is from. Imagine the time when we consumed simple meals including only some food which we can find easily, however, can not be sure whether they have enough nutirients in them. Our food life is definitely at the time of the change. Then, we might be curious if our diet is changing in a positive way or negative way. There are some people is pursuing healthy food, on the other hand, there are also another people is chasing junk food life. However, that is extreme examples. People in modern society are usually in the middle of these types. Whatever it is going to positive way or negative way, the factors of diet changing are same.

First of all, the main cause is lifestyle changes. Nowadays, in many case, work-life balance of workers in modern society is leaning toward work. They are living busy life and living alone is becoming a upward tendency. They prefer to finish up their meals quickly with some 'fast food'. Thus, a sales of fast food is rising and a culture of going out for meals is spreading. Apparently, it seems to be unhealthy since they usually have lots of MSG and do not have proper nutrition. Nevertheless, there are not only negative effects. One of new lifestyles is a pursue of healthy life. Increase of some terminal disease from improper diet habit alerts people to the danger of unhealthy food. To avoid a miserable disease, some people choose a lifestyle which is trying to eat only healthy food like organic vegetable and fruit.

Second factor of diet changing is globalization. Because of this, we are now able to have variety choices of food at last. On the one hand, we can run into fast food restaurants everywhere. Even though it was hard to find that kind of food twenty years ago, these days, we can get some junk food easily which are usually from Western countries like hamburger and pizza. On the other hand, we became to be able to find a lot of healthy food with ease from some countries even where are very far from our country. For instance, sushi from Japan, kimchi from Korea, Greek yogurt from Greece are some examples of them. We can also buy some tropical fruit and unusual vegetable even in a market near our home. They can give us special flavor experience, not to mention different nutrition.

Last but not least, overall increase of wealth in the world is one of the cause to change our diet. Everything in the world is making progress. They never regress to old way. So do diet. Food industry is developing steadily and they are offering us opportunities to have many diet choices. In a negative way, they are always trying to invent more sharp-tasting food with bunch of chemical seasonings. In a positive way, some food companies,which is targeting people who want to eat healthy food, are launching more healthy food products. According to economic develop of many countries, people became to be able to afford lots of food. The tendency of eating meals out seems also to be from this factor. The point is which food people choose to eat. It is also a double-edged sword. We can choose a hamburger or Mediterranean meal for lunch.

These factors is making our diet change. Having many choices is positive, however, being exposured to junk food is negative. In this flood of food, whether we want to raise our satisfaction or give our body healthy essential nutrient is depending on our choice.

Introduce me and my partner

Hi! My name is Monica and my partner name is Sumo. I am from South Korea and he is from Thailand. We are both from Asian country, so we have some similarities. However, we grew up in different country, we also have many differences. Then, let me introduce us. First, I want to tell you about our similarities. We found that both of us are easy to make new friends. We enjoy meeting new friends. Speaking of our favorite subject, both of us like mathematics. It is sad that our favorite subject is not English, though. We are studying English at Intrax, and we found that our weakness in studying English is speaking. Thus, I want to get opportunity to improve our speaking skill a lot in level 9. Second is about our differences. My favorite film is 'Forest Gump', but his favorite one is 'Cars'. I do not know even what the movie is.