Using own knowledge and experience to solve problems or asking other people for advice?

           Everyone live in many problems that they have to solve. Regarding this issue, there has been a controversy about whether people should get over their hard time on their own with their knowledge or solve problem with help from others. Some demand that solving their own problem by themselves is important for people to develop their ability to overcome obstacles. However, I believe that it is better to listen to advices from other people because other people might give great solution that the one who is having problem would never think of and people tend to see other people’s problems more correctly than their own problems.

            First of all, when a person has a problem, he/she will have much more choices of solutions as that person asks other people for advices. Since everyone has different view of understanding the problem, there would be various solutions that the person who has problem can think of. If someone try to solve their obstacle on his/her own, limited mind might block some creative solutions for that. When I was in middle school, I had to decide whether I go to saipan to study or not. I was not going to go to saipan at first time, because I did not want to be apart from my family and study alone. However, my mom told me that studying abroad would be a great experience and helpful for me to get into good colleges. Now I know that if I stayed in Korea back then, I would have suffer from stresses about college application in Korea because Korean high school students, especially, have hard time to get into good colleges. Without my mom’s advice, I would not have made my decision to go to saipan and study.
          
            Secondly, People tend to ignore the base of problem of their own when it is their fault. In other words, other people can judge a problem fairer than the one who has a problem. Many people forget what they have done and just blame others for their problems. If these people try to overcome the problem on their own, that problem would never be solved because they don’t know that the base of problem is themselves. These people need other people who can tell what their fault was. One of my friends had a serious problem with her other friends and all she did was just blaming on her friends and telling me that how bad they were. However, everyone knew that she was the problem and I had to tell her about her behave. It was hard for me to tell her honestly but I told her that she has to change herself first to make the friendship better. I was kind of worried if she would get mad about that, but, fortunately, she realized her fault and changed herself. Like this, people have to tell other people and get people when they have problems. Keeping own problem as a secret is not good for anything.  

            It better for people to share their problems with others because just to feel being understood can be the best consolation. Thus, people have to get advices from other people to solve their problems.
 

Favorite metaphor of love

                  

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object.(Wikipedia) There is a huge number of metaphors of love all over the world made by many individuals. Personally, my favorite metaphor of love is “Love is a rollercoaster”. When I first heard this statement, I guessed some made this metaphor because love has up and down just like a rollercoaster.  A person in love can be the happiest person in the world, but as time pasts, that person can get hurt from love and be depressed. This is same as rollercoaster. There is the highest part of track and the lowest part of track for one ride. Other than this aspect of a rollercoaster, there are some more similarities between love and a roller coaster.

           First, there are lots of people who ride rollercoasters because everyone else rides it even though they are really afraid of it. This part of rollercoaster can also be found in love. Some people want to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend not because they like someone but just because many of their friends have ones. People easily get embarrassed when only they do not have date when everyone else does. Similar with this situation, if all of her/his friends are going to ride a rollercoaster, that person would go with them even if he/she doesn’t really want to because he/she doesn’t want to be left alone.

           Second similarity between love and rollercoaster rides is that people do it again after they decided not to do it again. Ones who have hurt their feelings from love always swear that they would never fall in love again. However, they eventually fall in love with someone else and then when they get hurt again, they regret about what they have done. Rollercoaster rides are same as this. People who have experienced tough rollercoaster say that they will never going to ride that again, but in the end, when they go to that amusement park again, they just ride it again. People do love and ride rollercoaster even if they do know that they will regret it later.

           Finally, rollercoasters and love both excites people. They make people feel thrill about them. No one knows what would happen and that is excitement of love and rollercoasters. If people know exactly how the track of a rollercoaster looks like, it would be boring for them. That is the reason why people want new rollercoasters every time. They always want to try to ride different one because the ones that they have already gone are boring now. Love is also like this. When 2 people fell in love at the first time, it is like the most interesting thing to get to know each other. However, after several years passed, they will know so much about each other, and that can bring boredom to their relationship.

          
           Like this, love and rollercoaster rides have many similarities. Other metaphors also well describe love, but this is my favorite one because it is a metaphor that describes hidden part of love. Most of other metaphors express the beauty of love or the good things of love. However, “Love is a rollercoaster” shows the other aspects of love that people always knew it but did not think of. I think this metaphor expresses the best about love.
 

self description

My name is Cathy and I’m almost 18 years old but I just became a junior in high school. The reason that I am still a junior is because I came to Saipan, a small island that is located at middle of the Pacific Ocean, to study English. That time, I couldn’t speak English well so the principle put me in to lower grade than the grade that I actually have to go in following my age. I was not very happy at the first time because then I would graduate with younger people than me. However, now I love our class. Our class is kind of loud, but all of us are having so much fun together at school. Our class is the biggest class in our school and so many interesting things happen all the time. Also, now I can tell that if I went in to higher grade, it would be much harder for me to adjust to the new environments of foreign school. It has been 3 years passed after I first came to Saipan. Now, I feel comfortable to be on this island than 3 years ago. 3 years ago, I couldn’t even say that my homestay is a home that I have to live until I graduate because I felt so lonely without my parents and friends in Korea. However, now, things have become familiar to me, so now I don’t feel lonely anymore, and I sometimes think that Saipan is better than Korea.

 I have a lot of things that I like, but there are 3 things that I especially like. First of all, I love perfumes. I really want to start collecting perfumes but it would cost too much for me, a student who studies alone in foreign country. My favorite perfume is La petite Robe Noire from GUERLAIN. This one first gave me interests in perfume and made me seek as many as possible numbers of perfumes that have nice scents. Someday I would start collecting nice perfumes over the world when I get my job.
 

         Second thing that I like to do is listening to music. I am always with earphones on except I am having meal, memorizing something or talking with somebody. I am writing this with music, also. I love music. This is not a bad thing but there is one disadvantage having this habit. Last time I was studying AP American history for chapter test, but suddenly I just wanted to listen to music and I just spent 2 hours for music instead of study for 2 hours. That time I seriously though about how I would reduce time to listen to music, but I decided to not to do anything. I know that my decision for me wouldn’t last long, so I just told myself to control the time to spend for music.
 
            


       The last thing is Hello Kitty. Since I had ability to recognize characters, I liked Hello Kitty and only Hello Kitty. I have many Hello Kitty stuffs. I can see 5~6 things that have Hello Kitty printed on my desk right now. I think I would like this cute little cat even until I have a daughter and my daughter’s room would be decorated with Hello Kitties.

         

 

         I tried my best to describe myself, but I know that it is not perfect. I think it is easier to describe somebody else than to describe myself because I actually don’t know how I look like to others and how they think about me. For me, this was the hardest topic on the lists of topics that I have to write journal about.   

 

New year's resolution

I have three new year's resolution for this year. First one is to memorize all the words in "word smart". I began to study SAT from last year. I have studied TOEFL before but SAT was so different from TOEFL. I had to memorize much harder words than words that are required to memorize for TOEFL. I took the real SAT before I went to Korea for summer vacation, and the result was not that good. I found out that my scores would be increased as I know more words. It would be much easier for me to read things and understand if I know all the words in the text. Also, I will be able to read decent essays with harder words. I am not good at writing essay, so I would study lots of hard words to improve the quality of my essay. I am planning to go to the university in Korea, so TOEFL is more important for me than SAT. However, It would be so much helpful if I also get a good score on SAT. Therefore, I will memorize every words in “word smart”

          

 

My second new year’s solution is to get advanced level of SCUBA license. I got SCUBA license with SH and Amelia during last spring break. At the first time, I did not want to learn SCUBA because I was scared to dive in deep sea. However, I changed my mind right after we went to SCUBA to lao lao beach. I had so much fun. It was experience I have never had and imagined. I felt like I was flying but in the water. Now me, SH, and Amelia all have beginner’s license of SCUBA and we heard that we can get advanced license by learning couple of additional things and it is not difficult. Also, it is important for us to finish advanced course because SCUBA advanced level license can be additional point for some colleges, so it would be helpful for us to send applications to colleges. That is the major reason that our moms made us to learn SCUBA. We are planning to start it during Christmas break and I am so excited about it.

          

 

My last new year’s solution is to start studying Japanese seriously. I have been able to understand Japanese a little bit since I was in middle school because of my favorite Japanese group. I got interests in Japan because of them, so I started to watch many Japanese drams or TV shows. From that, I could learn little of Japanese, but now I want to start to learn Japanese properly. I want to take Japanese ability examination (JLPT) before I graduate high school. I think Japanese would be much easier for me than Chinese because I am Korean. Korean and Japanese are very similar in what order they put words into a sentence. Also, I decided to take Japanese for foreign language class at my school. We use rosetta stone for our foreign language class from this year, and it is a good program to learn language especially on part of speaking and listening. I will improve speaking and listening skills with rosetta stone and I will get other books for reading and writing skills. Like the SAT words, I will memorize lots of Japanese words, especially kanji. I think kanji will be the biggest obstacle for me to study Japanese, but I will try my best. I will be so happy if I can understand everything when I watch Japanese movie or drama without subtitle. Also, I want to visit Japan someday.