Week 9：Akeelah and the Bee

• 　　Akeelah and the Bee is a story of a eleven-year-old African-American girl who was not interested in school but was good at playing Scrabble and always get good grades on her spelling tests. As a result, her teacher encouraged her to attend the spelling bee competition in her school. Without a doubt, she won the competition and inspired Dr. Larabee, a English professor teaching in UCLA. Even though Akeelah got the champion in her school , she didn't want to join the further competition because she didn't want her peers to make fun of her any more. In the end, her oldest brother, who was in the air force convinced her and she finally won and got the ticket for the next competition. However, she also faced some difficulties during the process. Her mother didn't agree her for practicing so hard for the spelling bee because she thought that studying were much more important than this competition. Moreover, gibes from her second brother and her peer never stopped.

•      Akeelah lived in South Los Angeles with her widowed mother and her siblings. The community they lived in was a African-American community which had lower income and worse public security than North Los Angeles. Akeelah didn't like to go to school because she was not interested in school courses and also because some of her classmates always make fun of her. She really loved playing Scrabble because it was the game her late father had taught and played with her when she were little. She was really lucky to met her homeroom teacher Mrs. Cross, who noticed her talent and recommended her to sign up for the spelling bee competition in her school. However, Akeelah had weak self-confidence and decline her teacher in the beginning. When she finally plucked up her courage and won the competition, her talent discovered by Dr. In the beginning, Larabee. Dr. Larabee wanted to coach Akeelah and help her to win the next competition; however, Akeelah refused and thought that she could coach herself by her own way. After Akeelah joined the next competition and met Javier and his club, she learned that she really needed a coach and taught her how to "spell". She went to Dr. Larabee's place again and bagged him to coach her.

week 8 : Dr. Muhammad YunusｘDr. Lin Hwai-min

I went to a speech yesterday, which was given by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. Even though I have two mid-term exams this week, I still think it was a great and inspiring speech that I learned a lot from him and the well-known Taiwanese dancer, Dr. Lin Hwai-min.

     Both of them were professors in Universities in Bangladesh and Taiwan; however, they chose a totally different ways from others because of something they think is important. For Dr. Yunus, he walked into poor villages and founded the Grameen Bank for poor women. For Dr. Lin, he quitted his teaching career and founded a dance theater.

     From their speech, I learned that how passionate and hard-working a person can be; I learned that perseverance leads people to success; and that, be positive is extremely important if people want to do something successfully.

Week 7: Tomb Sweeping Day

　　After six hours of classes, my spring vacation finally came. Since the Tomb Sweeping Day is during the vacation, my family and I spent a whole afternoon sweeping graves of my grant grandfather and my grandfather a day before April 5^th. I seldom go grave-sweeping with my parents because I don’t like the smells of incense sticks and the heat of burning paper money. However, since I was free that day, my dad asked me to go with them so that he could teach me some traditions and customs that I should know.

　　We went to my grant grandfather’s grave first. My grant grandfather died four years before I was born so I don’t even know his name. However, my dad told me that he was a very long-live person who died at the age of 99. And then we went to my grandfather’s grave. I also know very little about my grandfather because he passed away when I was only six years old.

　　My dad tried to teach me some customs I must understand when going to graveyard all the way; however, I just kept trying to recall the memory of the time my grandpa and I spent together.