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~

Spring Kick-off!

Yay!  It's Springtime and the last quarter of the school year!  Let's make it a good one because this may be the last quarter LXP exists unless we find a successor to our club.  If you're interested in taking over next year, please speak with either Amanda or Debbie.  Anyways, I apologize for taking so long before having a recap of our meeting earlier this week.  The past two weeks has been difficult with tons of work, but we all still came out this week and got to meet some new members!  Also, I hope those who participated in the easter event at Aldrich park had fun this morning.  On tuesday, we all introduced ourselves and got to know what LXP was all about.  We had snacks and drinks as usual while playing game such as Cranium!

Be sure to join us for the up coming meeting as it will be Speed dating, one of our most popular events we have each quarter!  Do not be intimidated by the word "dating" as it will be a casual event where everyone gets a chance to meet various people and make new friends (or even develop a relationship along the way!)  Hope to see you all there and Happy Easter!

-Trenton

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

Winter Kick-off fun!

Thank you to those who made it to the meeting this week and don't worry for those of you who couldn't, there's always a chance every Tuesday for you to join the fun! This week, we had members from last quarter and new members this quarter come in to find out what the Language Exchange Program (LXP) is all about. We served pizza and refreshments, looked through the quarter activities, and play a few word games to practice our vocabulary in Chinese and English. It was very interesting because I learned not only a few words in Chinese, but also the meanings of a few English vocabularies as well.
If you have any questions or comments, please send a message on facebook to any of our cabinet members or e-mail us (e-mail on side bar on the right). If you have any suggestions on what you would like to do at our club meetings or ways to improve it, feel free to write a comment on our latest posts on this page or e-mail us. Thanks again and hope to see you all on Tuesday for our Mah Jong Night!

-Trenton