JRock in America

Another topic in my paper is the role of Asian music in the America Society; one of the most popular genres of Japanese music is known as JRock.

There is one organization (started by Japanese artist Yoshiki) that works to promote this genre and keep the fans together known as JROCKREVOLUTION. The organization also holds concerts and serves as an agency for many Japanese artists who want to become famous in the United States.

Anime in America

One of the topics in my research is the influence of Japanese Animation and Manga in America.

In youtube you can find the Anime Documentary it explains the start of Manga and Anime and their influence in their home country and the world.

Anime documentary part 1
Anime documentary part 2
Anime documentary part 3
Anime documentary part 4
Anime documentary part 5

Random Acts of Kindness

After clicking all around the website I found the stories of different people who committed small acts of kindness. They were really small things like looking for a little brother's toy or staying with a friend in his house.

With a roommate like mine I do random acts of kindness all the time, like helping her with her Japanese homework to making tea and taking care of her when she is sick. I do enjoy helping her, because when I need it she is there for me too.

One million monkeys typing

The one million monkeys website lets you add on to stories started by other writers.

The story I choose went through a lot of changes; first it was about the main character telling a stranger a secret, then the main character discusses how he or she made some mistakes and was the genius in the junior class. From then the story changed to some time machine that can only go backwards and not forwards, so the character has to live his or her life all over again.

My snippet put the story back into track and gave it a start to a story
http://www.1000000monkeys.com/snippet.html?branch=14810

English vrs other languages

U.S. refuses to participate in International Mother Language Day until it's celebrated only in English

This article came to my attention when I read "U.S. refuses to participate in International Mother Language Day" Why, once again, will the U.S. refuse to participate in an international day designated by the UNESCO? The answer was just because is not in English.
I understand that many immigrants (being one myself) bring their own language to this country and try to impose it over English. I do not agree to this and I am all pro making English the nation's official language, but why not celebrate the different languages and cultures that make this country.

We should not forget that the United States was founded by immigrants. We all together natives and foreigners make up this country. Many even if is not the majority speaks a mother language other than English and is really important to them. Is not fair that they are not given the opportunity to celebrate their own modern tongues along with English which they also use.

StoryCorps

When we were told to do this assignment I was not sure what to expect. First I did not know what the NPR was and why would they have stories about people. After my friend told me that the NPR stands for "National Public Radio" then it made more sense and I decided to listen to a conversation between Nick Shepard and his friend Hugh Ryan about Nick's first meeting with his biological father.

Their meeting was pretty casual and not what you would imaging from movies or TV. Something that intrigued me the most was one of the questions that Nick asked his father besides generic sickness or the reasons why he left; it was to take a picture of him. Even though Nick says he does not want his biological father in his live right now, he still took a picture of him. Also he declared that he felt like he had "made a peace with a part of myself that I never expected — that I never even thought possible."

I was raised with my father, but I do have friends that were not raised by their biological parent (s) and I always wonder how would they feel and how will it be when they meet their biological father or/and mother? I hope it can be as casual as Nick's or better.

Six words to define my life

In the SMITH magazine website there is a section called "Six-Word Memoirs". Here people describe their life or an event of their life in six words. I decided to give it a try and I never thought that it would be a difficult task. How can I summarize my life in six words? After a lot of thinking I asked those that know me the best to each give me a word that would describe me or my life. From those I selected six and this is what I came up with:

"Older sister is pretty and loyal"

Most of my life I have been someones older sister always giving them advices and making sure they are fine. I think the only one who does not treats me or sees me this way is my own younger brother (I guess is because he thinks that he is so much mature than me). Also I am always loyal to those who I care about.

This exercise makes you think a lot about who you are and what have you done in your life. It may look simple but reflecting about your life is not always an easy task.

Vocabulary and Rice

I never thought that learning new vocabulary would not only help me and my knowledge, but could feed people around the world!
In the website FreeRice, I donated a 1000 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program by giving the meaning of different English words. When I was done with my task it showed that my level is 20 out of 60 but the best one is 30, so I do not think I did that bad.
I'll tell my friends about this website since as I said before you not only learn your vocabulary level and new words, but you help stop hunger around the world.