Safety Class

I had Safety Class yesterday.
The lecturer was a female police officer, Christine.

昨日、自己防衛についての授業があった。
女性警官（いい響き♪）のクリスティーンが講義してくれた。
















She is wearing a bullet proof vest on this hot day.

クリスティーンは毎日防弾チョッキを着なくてはいけなくて、テキサスのくそ暑い気候でも、ノルマは変わらない。

















The back seats of police cars are made of plastic. Not of fabric like in front seats.
Most of international students thought that is because bad guys don't deserve nice treatment in a police car. But turns out, it's because the drunken people do their stuff whenever they are, like peeing and puking.

日本のパトカーはどうかしらないんだけど、アメリカのパトカーの後部座席はプラスチックみたいな固いやつで覆われていた。なぜかというと、よっぱらいがおしっこしたり、嘔吐したりするためだ。なるほどー。
多くの学生は、悪いことをしたひとは、心地よい乗り心地は身分不相応だからだと想像したが、もっと物理的に理にかなった理由だったのねっということに。

















A poor Kazakhstan student, Galum, is getting arrested.

カザフスタンの学生が逮捕！　by TAMUニュースウィーク

















My Libyan roommate, Adnan, on a police car. He's always busy making bombs everyday. Watch out with those Arabic with heavy backpacks. He's smiling because he's about to conquer his plan...

He is very friendly and teaches me a lot about Muslim. I like him a lot:) I'm glad that he's my roommate. It's too bad that I can not visit him to his hometown because that's against the Arabic tradition.

あたしのルームメイトのアドナン君。19歳で、もう毎日はしゃぎまくり。でもとってもいいやつ。よくイスラム教について話をするし、そしてなぜかよく怒られる。すごーく自分のことを信じてるって感じ。




















Busted!

つかまっちゃった！あ、エッチ用品点で売ってる手錠と、本物の手錠の違いは壊れないということ。そりゃそうだ～。

Pitbull vs. Porcupine

A poor pitbull with 1347 quills of a porcupine.

The heart of Math or Physics

I was looking for Sushi Bout post at Will's blog the other day and found these... man, Americans are creative!









































... and I am pretty sure they are not some high school kids

Cultural Relativism

Today, we had to discuss in our listening 300 class about the definition of culture,how we are interested in other culture, what we found in U.S. that are similar and different from our home country, and how tolerant we think we are.

I was asking question to Kazakh students about their religion because I said I'm very interested in other cultures. Most of Kazakh students told me that they are Muslim but not serious about praying or their food like my Muslim roommate from Libya(who doesn't come to one of the afternoon class on Friday because he wants to or has to pray). I asked if they have thought to leave their religion because they know that they are not serious about being Muslim, but they all say no, and one of the Kazakh boy who was next to me said it's because the Kazakh society expect you to be Muslim. I wanted to ask what he think about the social expectation on their religion but our teacher, Mr. McLoed, joined in our group because we were in the front. At that time, the Kazakh boy asked me I ask about their religion because I want to be a Muslim. I said no, but I want to know what people believe in it, so I can at least show some understanding to other culture but not just saying, oh that's so wrong or crazy.

When I said that, Mr. McLeod started to talk about cultural relativism and female circumcision in one of the countries in Africa. He asked us if we should do something to stop the crucial ritual that has been going on in the area for long time and considered as their culture, or we should not do anything because it's their culture. I said we should not do anything because it's their religion and I think they should change when they want to and not by outsiders. They know what is right or wrong but they just need time to convince their majority Mr. McLeod said we should because it's crucial and sometime lethal procedure on girls and there is no scientific benefit from it like the circumcision on boys and because he thinks that we have responsibility to save those poor girls and to do "right" thing. I wasn't quite sure how he thinks that people should fulfill their responsibility to others but it sounds really pushy when he said that.

Maybe that's American way of thinking that they have responsibility to change other to do better or right.

Oh, my god, I can't believe it takes me about 2 hours to write this blog. That's how poor my writing skills are....

Men and Women, Which are smarter

This is a writing subject that my composition teacher came up the other day in class. This is not official subject for my essay assignment or anything, but I want think about the supporting reasons for both sides.

At first, I thought that there is no absolute answer to the smartness between men and women, but of course the teacher said you have to pick one side for academic writing practice. I am a woman, so of course I wanted to take women's side but the funny thing is I couldn't come up with three supporting reasons for that... I was thinking about the definition of smartness and three possible reasons for my statement.

I asked Fumiko about what she would write, and she said she wants to say women are smarter too, but she would write men are smarter. She gave me three suportive reasons for that too. 1) historically, men have better job that women, 2)men are good at focusing on one issue, while women tend to think about surroundings, 3)men are good at working under a lot of stress. I these are totally right. But I disagree with her main point. and she does too.

But if I just insist on saying I disagree on this statement but cannot come up with reasons, I will sound uneducated.. so if anyone have good reason to prove that women are smarter than men, or know good book to read about this, let me know.

A Paragraph

In my Advanced Composition class, we did our first assignment, which was to write one paragraph about "Where Are You From".

“Where Are You From”

I am a veterinarian from Japan, interested in learning more about veterinary infectious disease and cultures in other countries in U.S. There are two things that have a strong affect on me, my father, and my hometown. My father, who is also a vet, has had an important influence on my life. He has shown me his work, woke up earlier, and went to bed later than me since I was little. His passion and curiosity for his work and academic area made me think that I want to be like my father. I became a vet this March and came here to prepare for my application to graduate schools to study more about veterinary infectious diseases. My hometown is Kumamoto prefecture in Japan. It is known for agricultural products such as the Guinness size orange, rush and horse meats. In a typical countryside like my hometown, people expect you to be like everybody else. I have been in U.S for 3 years since I was 3 years old, so I have been categorized as a weird girl since I came back to Japan. I like to be unique but hate to be judged. I want to understand people who are different from me, and I have started to be interested in the lingual and cultural differences with other countries.