Week 4: Open Convo

Most people are probably having upcoming midterms, so tonight was just an open conversation night. After a short reminder about Queen Mary, everyone pretty much just talked among themselves and enjoyed the snacks (maple cookies!). Conversation night certainly may be the simplest activity LXP can set up, but it's also probably the best way to get to know the people you've met so far and learn about languages and/or cultural differences.

Thanks to those who stopped by! Good luck on all your midterms~

Potluck and Idioms

Maybe I should've ate more.....oh, haha. Thanks to all those who brought food and to those who joined us for the potluck event. I hope you guys like my salad and veggie burgers!!! We had mochi, snicker doodle, and even Beijing duck! It was fun eating and hanging out. A group of you were getting into some distur...errrrr.......interesting topics, some sort of riddle...haha.

We all got to learn terms and uses of sentence enders of Chinese (there's a word for it, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment). We then played pictionary with idioms from the English Language. Idioms are sayings that we use to mean something without saying them directly.

These expressions could be along the lines of "cut to the chase" which means to "leave out all the unncessary details and just get to the point," or "Put a sock in it!" which means "to tell noisy person or a group to be quiet." Yeah, fun stuff, lots of laughs too!

This was the last meeting of the quarter. I wish you all luck in your finals and a great Spring Break, I hope to see you all back again next quarter.

-Trenton

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

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