Seung-Hui Jeong/Memory Chain/Thursday 1-3PM

One memory that remains vibrantly clear to this day is the day I flew a kite for the first time. This particular memory is as colorful as the kite itself, with its two long tails and its huge body striped with all the bold colors of the rainbow. Dad bought it from a man selling kites at a beach stand where there must have been fifty different kites all billowing haphazardly from the wind. I must have been no older than ten and this kite was as large as myself. On days when the wind was particularly strong, I staggered from the weight of it and had to put in all the strength of a ten-year-old to not have this giant kite drag me around. My parents often took me to a quiet beach nearby home where there weren't a lot of people and I would run the length of the edges of the beach, flying this gigantic kite with the sound of the wind rushing through my ears.

 

The reason this memory has stuck with me for so long is probably because every aspect of it, the big beautiful kite with all its fantastic colors and the backdrop of the lonely beach that somehow seemed wintry even in the summer are all so wistfully idyllic. I can't remember much of where I lived then but this memory makes me strangely melancholy and nostalgic for a place I don't remember enough to be missing. Perhaps it was the carefreeness of it all and the Kodak-picture-perfect candidness of it that seems so strange now.

 

I took this kite wherever I went and I remember showing it off to my cousins on the roof of my grandmother's house. It ended abruptly when the kite crashed onto the side of the building and it never recovered after that. I couldn't fly it anymore afterwards but I still held onto the remains for years, begging my parents not to throw it out until finally, I was able to get over both the kite and its memories.

 

 

Subin Lee / Memory Chain / Thursday 1-3pm

How Mind Protects Us By Forgetting

 

They say that your mind protects you by forgetting things that can be harmful to you. I didn't realize that it was true until an experience I had in 2010.

 

It was in my second year of middle school, when I got the biggest scar I have on by body. We were on a school trip. As it was the time in middle school that we got to sleep somewhere else, everybody was super excited. It was the same for me and my friends, too.

We all enjoyed our first day of the trip. At night, the teachers instructed the students to go to bed immediately, without playing all night. But as you can guess, we didn't listen. My friends and I were wide awake; we were ready to have some fun. After playing Truth or Dare and several rounds of other games, we decided to play statues(red light green light; Korean name for this play is 무궁화 꽃이 피었습니다) in our room. The room wasn't quite big enough, but it didn't seem to matter to us. At least, that's what we thought.

 

We chose who will be 'it', and the rest of us waited in a room across from 'it'. Because the room was quite small, the game went on quickly. It was just in a few seconds' time when the first one ahead touched 'it', and everyone ran rushing backwards. This is where a piece of my memory is gone missing. I thought I had run, but in a blink of an eye, I was suddenly down on the ground and my friends were screaming. I couldn't understand why they were all crying, until I slowly realized that blood was coming out of my right knee. It didn't take so long till I figured out what had happened. A glass sliding door between the two rooms had been broken; I had crashed into the glass door. It was a complete chaos, with blood all over the floor, friends crying, teachers running into the room. The ambulance came, and I got stitched in the emergency room. My parents drove all the way to pick me up in the middle of the night, and I ended up being the only student who came back on the very first day of our first school trip. Not to mention a scar on my right leg.

 

You can say that I was extremely surprised in that situation. I was dumbfounded, because for me, the whole thing happened out of nowhere. It was just like in the movies, where they have the quick, sudden screen change between the scenes. I believe that it is because my mind worked to protect me from the sudden shock. It worked pretty well, since I don't remember anything in that short moment, including any pain. It might be possible that my friends' minds worked, too; no one seemed to remember what had exactly happened. Their minds could have decided to protect them from the impact of seeing a shocking sight that they had never seen before.

 

Well, thanks to my protective mind I had to make up an explanation of what had happened. I lied to my teachers and parents about that I had slipped from stepping on an open suitcase. But no one got hurt from my lies after all; literally, I am the only one who had been hurt.

Since this unusual, odd experience I believe that our minds work in a way to achieve what's best for us; to protect us from harmful memories which can leave us with a trauma. I honestly thank myself, or should I say my mind, for doing so. I can guarantee that yours will do too if you are ever in a situation that can give you a baleful impact. But please don't risk anything to test this; your mind deserves better!

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201502398 Subin Lee

Chyue/Writing Experience (Week 2)/Thursday Class, 1-3pm

Chyue

201501098

 

Writing Experience

There are miscellaneous of writing style in Essays. Actually, I didn't have a chance to write essays in English when I was childhood. Writing an essay can be either easy or hard. The writing of a good essay is a very simple process that is often made harder than it is. But I got a chance to start writing when I was middle school student. From that time, I really love to write Essays.

At some point of my high faculty English years, I wrote lots of exclusive varieties of essays, poems and person analysis and many others. There have been many specific classes that I've written many various things in, however the most inspiring magnificence to me became my senior year English. The most inspiring thing about it became the assignments that I did, the instructor and the books I read. The Assignments that were given to me in my English magnificence in excessive school have been matters together with poems, and man or woman evaluation. I did plenty of man or woman evaluation for books including Beowulf and The superb Gatsby. This taught me a first rate deal of the way to write desirable person evaluation due to the fact my trainer could move over our papers one at a time and tell us what we needed to make the paper stronger. Poems had been also a laugh element for me as it become kind of an undertaking for me to make matters rhyme and float right so it would sound properly. I recall writing a poem approximately this stuffed bear I had added to magnificence and it turned into a poem approximately love, due to the fact we had to write like Shakespeare. I think that my English instructor helped my writing improve tremendously, and over time I have visible enhancements from using her strategies.

 My English class was taught with the aid of a very intelligent man by the name of Mr. Kyaw Khine. Many humans notion that his teachings were to strict, however I realized that they just did not want to study. He taught me how to write more proper through sitting me down and letting me write a paper freely, than he would inform me all the mistakes I made, and I'd restoration them. My instructor also helped me with a whole lot of punctuation and while to apply positive punctuation on the proper instances. My instructor not only taught me but also let me know about English the way to write properly and he also taught me many things approximately life and this inspired me to do nicely in his magnificence. He additionally assigned many books for us to examine that handled lifestyles situation.

 

Chyue/Writing Experience (Week 2)/Thursday Class, 1-3pm

Yunji Kim/ Memory Chain/Thursday 1-3 PM

I was an ordinary highschool student. I hated drawing attention and tried to blend in as much as I can. I　never participated in school events and dances, except one thing, school orchestra. I had always participated in orchestra since I was young and I signed up for school orchestra as well. I was the first-chair cello, a concert principal.

Just like any other days, our orchestra was practicing for the big annual concert. It was just a week before the big day, and our conductor decided to add a cello solo part to the music and asked me to do the solo part. I was quite confident at that time and thus I accepted to do so. The solo part practice went very smoothly and I thought there was nothing to worry about.

Finally, on the concert day, waiting at the back stage, I peeked out to see how many people had come. I soon found out that I had to play in front of a full house. I suddenly felt sweat coming down my back and a big wave of anxiety and nervousness attacking me. Before I could calm down, we had to come out to the stage and start playing. I tried to focus only on the music sheet in front of me as if I was simply just practicing in my own room. However, I could feel fear creeping in as the solo part was approaching.

Just as I expected, I messed it up terribly. Maybe it was just me and the audience did not even notice my mistakes, but this terrible moment has become a seriously traumatizing memory for me, even until now. I still fear standing in front of a big audience, afraid that I might have to deal with such embarassing moment again.

 

Lee JiWon / Memory Chain Essay / Thursday 1-3 p.m.

Narrative Composition 201502643  Lee JiWon     Something very embarrassing moment maybe can lead us to change ourselves!   There are a lot of moments when we feel embarrassed in our lives. That moment can be a really trivial one that you almost forget about it after a couple of minutes or the memory can also brand an unforgettable shame on the other hand. Tracing back my childhood memory, there were numerous embarrassing moments and if someone asks me "What was the most embarrassing moment in your life?", I recall the story that I would like to tell from now on. As always, from a chink in the curtains, the sunlight was glaring down relentlessly on my face, that I was shading both my eyes with hands. Regretting not closing the curtains the night before and hauling myself out of bed, I groped for the switch of the bathroom with my eyes closed tightly. As usual in the morning, the heavily drooping dark circles under my eyes and dull looking skin was so shocking and I often felt the temptation to skip the class, too hard to resist. However, my body moved automatically preparing to go to yoga class, and I was humming on my way to that class every Wednesday. Likewise I've been enjoying yoga class, the loveliest time of every Wednesday until then.  Arriving at classroom, it was as usual scenery before class starts, students wearing tracksuits sitting in a huddle chattering on one side and others drowsing in their seats. I kept glancing over behind my shoulder, wondering what kind of equipment are we going to use this week. And when I was about to feel some gloomy foreboding of what was about to come, "Today, we're going to implement physical-fitness test regarding our weight without fat, body fat, waist hip and flexibility etc. Assistant instructor will help you guys measuring each part.", said my teacher. 'What? My weight? My fat? I do not need his help! Who in the world would wish to disclose that she is out of shape to whom she likes? No one ever! ', I was screaming in silence. The famous saying, 'If you can't avoid it, enjoy it!' was rather thought as 'If you can't avoid it, don't make anyone stand behind you in a row! Be the very last to come!' for me. Eventually the distress moment, maybe only true for me, came and I was hoping this whole thing is a dream. It was bad enough to blush in the presence of someone I have a crush on, but his accurate observation was a lot more painful. "You are diagnosed as overweight according to the body mass index and you have an excessive accumulation of fat in the abdominal area." I couldn't help going red as a beetroot. I was so embarrassed at that moment but, at the same time, surprisingly, I was really motivated to lose weight than ever in my life! Obviously, I was really sad and ashamed but, anyway as a result, I was able to lose 10 kilograms by exercising really hard for almost three months. Now when I talk about this story to someone else, I say "You know what? Perhaps it's a better that way, because I succeeded in losing weight for the first time in my life!" Likewise, I believe something very embarrassing moment maybe can lead us to change ourselves, and what's important is that not to be just dispersed but try to find that you can deal with.

Jaeyoung Choi/ Memory Chain Essay/ Thursday 1-3pm

It was another common day after school, my mother had just finished work and asked me and my brother to wait in front of the house, that way she would not go inside and we could complete our chores faster. We were going to the super market to buy food and other materials for school. I have always loved going to the mall or super market because I am always amazed to watch the different colorful shops and the lives of the people surrounding me. I remember my mother would never let me touch any of the stuff that we were or not buying. She would always tell me to only watch but never touch. I have always been a very clumsy person, in other words, I am never surprised that I lose or forget something.

 

That day, as I was pretending to be only watching and when my mom turned to see something else on another hallway, I decided I wanted to "see" thermos. My mother and brother were distracted asking a worker about the price of something they wanted to buy. I was behind making sure I would be caught touching things. Finally I decided to carry one. I remember it had many silver layers, and it had pink and purple colors in the outside with a floral pattern. As soon as I grabbed it, the many silver layers just dropped in front of my eyes. I swear, everything had just moved in a very slow camera motion. The sound of it breaking was horrible.

 

My mother turned, my brother started bothering me by saying that I would be punished. I was still very shocked from what had just happened. I was still carrying the pink and purple floral layer, and because I was so scared, I just say down and started crying. My mom told me to stand up, that it was okay and she paid for it. I think it was a good idea to cry because that night my mother didn't punish me, the only thing was that I was never allowed to get near any stuff even at home.

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재영