Music Exchange

Ah, sorry everyone!  It seems I forgot to take pictures this week.   But, at least we have memories from the music we listened to?

Anyways, we had everyone bring in laptops, mp3 players, ipods, walkmans, CDs, and flashdrives and shared with the rest of the club in what music each of us listens to.  We started the meeting out by playing a fun ice breaker game that you can try out right now:

Music Questionaire!

1. Put your iTunes (or whatever music player) on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.

If someone says are you okay, you say:

What do you like in a guy/girl?

What is your life purpose?

What is your motto?

What do your friends think of you?

What do you think of your parents?

What do you think about very often?

What is 2+2?

What do you think of your best friend?

What do you think of the person you like?

What’s your life story?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What do you think when you see the person you like?

What will you dance to at your wedding?

What will they play at your funeral?

What is your hobby/interest?

What is your biggest fear?

What is your biggest secret?

What do you think of your friends?

How would you describe yourself?

Seem familiar?  I got this idea from being tagged on Facebook with these same questions.  It's really fun, and sometimes you get really interesting answers.  After the ice breaker, we got paired up (but eventually just became groups) and listened to each other's music and learned a bit about each other.

Be sure to join us next week for a recipe exchange event!  Bring in your most well known dish and share it, and the recipe, with the rest of the club.  Hope to see you all there!

Calligraphy Night!

Yay!  Chinese Calligraphy has always been an interest of mine, and I'm so glad Yang Laoshi was able to teach us.  Also, thank you for those of you who showed up.  The club generally had a great time and learned quite a bit from the Laoshi.

We were informed with the history of calligraphy, the equipment necessary for pro calligraphers, and the methods of correct strokes.  Calligraphy is supposedly good for your health in exercising patience, practice, focus, memory, discipline, and control of the entire body.  It goes beyond just writing letters and making art, it can be part of our life in its entirety.

Isn't Chinese Calligraphy such a beautiful practice?

Anyways, the up coming event should be Karaoke.  I'll send the invites and Sam will send the e-mails out when we find out.  For a bit of info, Karaoke is actually a word from Japan derived from the word Kara (empty, like in Karate= empty handed) and Oke (from the sounding of the word Orchestra).  So it essentially means "Empty Orchestra" where we sing the melody and lyrics to a certain song.  Hopefully we get to do karaoke, I love to sing (but I warn all of you, I'm a horrible singer)!

-Trenton

Speed Friending

Hey everyone!  Hope you all had a wonderful Valentines Day and enjoying the 3-day weekend.  We had our rendition of speed dating by having members mingle with our "Speed Friending" activity.

A lot of people showed up this time and had a great time.  Thank you to those who participated, and for those who joined us for dinner after the meeting.

After the meeting, we all went over to Steelhead's where they have a special on pizza.  If you buy a rootbeer, you get a pizza for $5 compared to the usual price of $11-13.  And if you get the spicy draft rootbeer, it's unlimited refills!  It was a delicious dinner, satisfying event, and a great deal.  Thanks again for those that came and be sure not to miss out on this up coming meeting as we will get to do Chinese Calligraphy!  It has always been an interest of mines to practice calligraphy.  So hope to see you all there!

-Trenton

Scrabble Night & Outing

Oh man, I feel bad for you if you missed out on this week's meeting.  We all got together and played Scrabble (though a few of them resorted to Mah Jong) and a pretty good time.

Then someone mentioned they were hungry.  Pretty soon, everyone started saying they were hungry.  So we all decided to go to the UTC right across campus to eat dinner.  We went to Steelhead's for their $5 special on pizza and got 6 pizzas.  It was so good and so worth it for the price we paid (though I kinda forgot what the total was).  Best of all, Andy paid for all of us!!! (lol, j/k we paid him back).

We did have a blast, but not to say we didn't learn anything.  Preparing for Scrabble, we learned a few new english words that helped our game play.  Aa, ae, oe, and eau are appearently words.  We also learned a few new phrases in Mandarin if we won, lost, or gave praise to the other player.  So if you don't want to miss out on the fun, come to our meeting next time!

Chinese New Year!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  Sun neen Fai Lauk!  And all the other sayings.  Happy Chinese/Lunar New Years and thank you for those who brought food and everyone else that came to celebrate this auspicious holiday with the club.  We had a potluck with traditional New Years food, played 2 truths 1 lie (ice-breaker game) and got to know each other better, learned a few sayings for Chinese New Year (in Mandarin and Cantonese), and found out our chinese zodiacs and their personalities.

We then started playing around with this little mini prize game that Virginia brought from Taiwan.  It had a lot of toys for kids, but then it had a weird effect on us and we all started to play like little kids.  I was urgently trying to win a pack of Maple Story cards (I don't know why).  It was fun and we enjoyed ourselves in celebration of Chinese New Year.

Next week, we will have scrabble night and and casual conversation night.  So we're going to just chill and possibly have some light refreshments like usual.  Have a great weekend and hope to see everyone again.

-Trenton

Obama Night

Who would have thought learning about politics was fun right?  Thank you to those who came to our meeting in celebration of Obama's Inauguration as well as learning a bit about our political system.

We had a mock presidential run between three groups and learned a few words in Chinese and English for us to use on our mock propaganda.  We had a difficult time trying to figure out a way for us to vote for each other, so we settled it through a simple game of rock, paper, scissors.  We will now have a place called Andyland very soon (you should have been to the meeting if you don't understand the joke).

For next weeks meeting, you do not want to miss it as it will be the celebration of Chinese New Year.  Throughout next week, LXP will be out on campus selling merchandise for Chinese New Year with other fellow clubs on campus.  More information on next week's celebration will arrive very shortly in your e-mails and facebook messages, so don't miss out and join the fun!

-Trenton

Mah Jong Night!

Thanks to all that came to our meeting for Mah Jong Night!  Even though most of us didn't know how to play, there were other who were able to teach us and help us win several games.  We started out the meeting playing an ice breaker game to get to know one another.  It's called swapping identities and everyone tries to remember the 3 facts about that person they swapped names with.

It gave us a chance to practice our English and Chinese as well as getting to know more people.  After the ice breaker, we started Mah Jong.

It was confusing at first, but by the end, one of the games that had started didn't want to stop until someone won.  (btw, Ethan looks so cool in this picture, lol).

Again, if there's any questions, please e-mail us, leave a comment on this blog, or send us a message on facebook.  Look forward to next week's meeting as we will be celebrating Obama's Inauguration!

-Trenton