January 29th, 2011 NDYS VC By Wendy

     We had a NDYS video conference on January 26^th, 2011. We gathered at Monica’s home in early morning. We were excited and looked forward to this day coming. We wanted the conference to be perfect and prepared the computers and the props in advance.

Please notice Scott’s foot.

Irose cut the name tag.

     The students in Japan used Japanese to present their solution for dangerous places and showed their wonderful Safety Map. They were also considerate. They typed the presentation in English for us because we didn’t understand Japanese. 

We listened seriously.



They explained for us.

We responded to them and asked questions.

     Scott was responsible for taking pictures and used his body language to communicate with them, making us laugh. He is a great member and he gives us a big hand.

The photographer

The screenshot of the video conference.

Scott wrote something to the Japanese students and Yoshie.

We worked hard.

     And then the friends from Russia joined the Video Conference. Scott used Russian to say hello! They were so surprised about our Russian greetings. They were curious about whether Scott could see anything.

 



The greetings from Taiwan to Russia.

Scott took off his glasses.

The greeting to Japan.

     



The landslide impressed me. The difference of the landslides between Taiwan and Japan is that the landslide in Japan goes slowly and the Japanese are worried about the condition of the land after the landslides. When their presentation was end, they said hello to me and asked us what “i-chi-ban” meant. It was surprising and touching to me. The conference was about to end, but our teachers, Kay and Cindea, who were in Turkey, hadn’t shown up. We were so disappointed.

They said hi to me.

They asked us questions.

After we said good bye to Yoshie, our teachers joined the meeting. We were too excited to say anything. We missed her so much that we showed the posters of her pictures in the video conference.

We said good to Yoshie

We wrote down Kay’s name.

To our joy, Kay looked healthy and well. What’s more, we were thrilled to see Huri and Cindea! We had a Chinese and Turkish course online. We had a good time with Esra and her brother.

We talked to Huri.

Our healthy teacher, Kay.

The energetic teacher, Cindea.

The beautiful girl, Esra

My Feedback

     When the Japanese students presented the safety map, they not only used the Japanese but also translated their presentation into English in the process of conference. However, my teammates and I had difficulty understanding everything. Because of it, I think that we have to do more practice of listening. And it seemed that the Japanese team had assigned a student to be responsible for typing and translating for us. If I were them, I could not have done so well. I hope I can explain and present our safety map more fluently next time.



     When Huri joined the conference, she seemed so excited that she talked with us happily. The friends from Turkiye also talked to us in English fluently. In contrast, we were too shy to say many words. We even could not fully understand some sentences Huri said and those from the friends in Japan. In the English class, in order to make us practice English listening, our teacher always speaks English slowly. However, the speed of the speech in the conference was totally different. I didn’t get used to the speed of the speech. Maybe we have to talk in English more often and listen to what the teacher says in English more carefully.



     Next time, I hope I can be more active in the conference and talk more. Despite fact that I may not say every sentence in English correctly, but the most important thing is that we have to communicate with all the other participants. I do not want to just lift up the name tag and the signs written in the English words in the video conference. Lastly, I would like to thank Monica’s parents for providing the space for all of the NDYS members of KIHS to have the online video conference.

BY Wendy

▲Monica’s parents

▲our members