Tuesday, April 30, 2013
French is still hard (with a little more lighting)
French is hard.
Just throwing that out there. I haven't taken it in two years because I suck at it, but I agree with the girls in canada that french is hard.
Anyways moving on to my project...
Lighting is fun. Im working at Vincent Lighting in solon. The section that I'm working in is a rental division where its basically a giant warehouse that stocks and rents lighting equipment for special events like weddings, corporate events, parties, some theatre stuff, and an occasional concert.
I'm gonna summarize yesterday in this post.
Day 1:
When I arrived yesterday, I was supposed to meet up with JT who runs the rental shop and is supposed to be my supervisor, but i quickly learned that he was going to be gone all day returning a truck of gear from columbus. Luckily I already knew Scott, one of the production people, so he introduced me to all the people that I didnt know. They all seem pretty nice. Its a pretty relaxed work environment overall.
As we got into the day, basically everyone who worked there had to leave because they were all going out on projects, and that left me with gabby, who is actually also a hawken grad. Even though this wasnt really the plan, I was able to learn a lot about where stuff goes and procedures because there was not a huge amount going on in the shop. Lots of paperwork. To keep track of inventory, everything gets signed in and out, and when its a big rental, that means signing in like over 100 pieces of equipment.
Later in the day Tori, the asst shop manager, came back and asked for my help to go downtown to st. joes high school to pick up some rental equipment. I got to ride in a big truck. that was fun and it was a nice break from signing in old rentals. The one part that sucked was that when we were about to start loading the equipment onto the truck, we were opening the trucks lift, which is made of two very heavy steel plates. my hand slipped and two of my left fingers got crushed in between the plates. yep. it hurt. a lot. theyre still black and blue. but what can you do.
I'll leave it at that and end on a rhyme.
Until next time...
which will be tomorrow. because i have to write bog posts. so excited. yay.
French is Hard (Featuring lots of Brazilians)
First of all:
French is hard.
Madi and I started our classes today, and we were both placed, after thorough placement tests, in a class called French Communication Intermediate 1. Our school is super old on the outside but super chic and sexy on the inside and there are basically more Brazilian students than anything else. Bring on the Portuguese.
Anyway.
This morning we woke up in the home of our host family in the little room we share (I'll post pictures when I don't have limited WiFi like we do at home) and we met our new sister, the German student who is also living with our host family. Her name is Leah. Now I have two sisters named Leah. We ate nutella toast and bananas for breakfast and she walked to a bus which drove us to a train which dropped us off somewhere where we walked to school for our first day of classes (yesterday was orientation).
Along this ride we also met Marcel, who is, you guessed it, Brazilian, and speaks about four languages fluently (maybe more, we lost count). He's super nice and his host family is in the same neighborhood as ours. There are a lot of exchange students living in our neighborhood, but only one other American! He's a guy from Florida and has a terrible French accent.
So back to my original point: French is hard.
It didn't take us long to realize that all of the students placed in French Communication Intermediate 1 aside from Madi and myself speak very fluent French. Comfortably. They would probably disagree with this observation, but I mean they were joking to each other in French and understanding each other's jokes and laughing hysterically at full speed. We were a little (very much) left in the dust. This was three hours in a classroom easily half the size of any Hawken classroom with the same number of students, in not more, and all we could do was listen and comprehend and pray that we wouldn't be called on the respond rapid-speed to a question.
However, Madi and I both agreed that our comprehension skills sky-rocketed just in one day. There was not a single word of English spoken throughout the entire class. If you asked what a word meant, it was described to you in French. While this is slower and can be more frustrating, we quickly realized that that's how everyone learns their first language. When you're a baby and you don't know what someone says in English you don't have someone to translate it into baby thoughts for you.
I digress.
The second important part of our trip thus far is the new friend we've made! Later I'll post a picture of Amanda, who is our new....wait for it... Brazilian friend! She's attending ILSC to learn English, and while her speech can be pretty broken, we love her! She's not in our classes, and yet we keep running into her. Today we left La Basilique (see tomorrow's blogpost for that stuff), and we happened to see her tying her shoe or something at the bottom of the steps.
Which leads me to my final point. Montreal is huge. Large enough to get extremely lost (see tomorrow's blogpost for that horrific story). However, it's possibly the biggest example of a small world I've ever seen. I'm constantly seeing people I saw a few hours before, or seeing a woman we saw in line at the bank at work at the café that evening. It's bizarre. Maybe we're just crazy, but we also see tons of dopplegangers. We're convinced that for every American there's an identical Canadian....French Canadian.
Everyone hear speaks French. I mean....everyone. A huge portion of the people don't even speak English (i.e. inconveniently, as we learned, the bus drivers....), but it's been great practice. We've ordered so much delicious food in French that we've pretty much got the restaurant environment covered. There's so much to learn, and we've almost never seen a more beautiful city. We're in love. Quelle belle ville!
Well, as I said, we're at home now and we can't upload photos here because of the WiFi limits, but we'll be sure to add them tomorrow when we're at school. Also tomorrow we'll post about the cathedral and how we got disgustingly lost, and if you're lucky, it won't even be in French!
-Claire (and Madi in spirit)
French is hard.
Madi and I started our classes today, and we were both placed, after thorough placement tests, in a class called French Communication Intermediate 1. Our school is super old on the outside but super chic and sexy on the inside and there are basically more Brazilian students than anything else. Bring on the Portuguese.
Anyway.
This morning we woke up in the home of our host family in the little room we share (I'll post pictures when I don't have limited WiFi like we do at home) and we met our new sister, the German student who is also living with our host family. Her name is Leah. Now I have two sisters named Leah. We ate nutella toast and bananas for breakfast and she walked to a bus which drove us to a train which dropped us off somewhere where we walked to school for our first day of classes (yesterday was orientation).
Along this ride we also met Marcel, who is, you guessed it, Brazilian, and speaks about four languages fluently (maybe more, we lost count). He's super nice and his host family is in the same neighborhood as ours. There are a lot of exchange students living in our neighborhood, but only one other American! He's a guy from Florida and has a terrible French accent.
So back to my original point: French is hard.
It didn't take us long to realize that all of the students placed in French Communication Intermediate 1 aside from Madi and myself speak very fluent French. Comfortably. They would probably disagree with this observation, but I mean they were joking to each other in French and understanding each other's jokes and laughing hysterically at full speed. We were a little (very much) left in the dust. This was three hours in a classroom easily half the size of any Hawken classroom with the same number of students, in not more, and all we could do was listen and comprehend and pray that we wouldn't be called on the respond rapid-speed to a question.
However, Madi and I both agreed that our comprehension skills sky-rocketed just in one day. There was not a single word of English spoken throughout the entire class. If you asked what a word meant, it was described to you in French. While this is slower and can be more frustrating, we quickly realized that that's how everyone learns their first language. When you're a baby and you don't know what someone says in English you don't have someone to translate it into baby thoughts for you.
I digress.
The second important part of our trip thus far is the new friend we've made! Later I'll post a picture of Amanda, who is our new....wait for it... Brazilian friend! She's attending ILSC to learn English, and while her speech can be pretty broken, we love her! She's not in our classes, and yet we keep running into her. Today we left La Basilique (see tomorrow's blogpost for that stuff), and we happened to see her tying her shoe or something at the bottom of the steps.
Which leads me to my final point. Montreal is huge. Large enough to get extremely lost (see tomorrow's blogpost for that horrific story). However, it's possibly the biggest example of a small world I've ever seen. I'm constantly seeing people I saw a few hours before, or seeing a woman we saw in line at the bank at work at the café that evening. It's bizarre. Maybe we're just crazy, but we also see tons of dopplegangers. We're convinced that for every American there's an identical Canadian....French Canadian.
Everyone hear speaks French. I mean....everyone. A huge portion of the people don't even speak English (i.e. inconveniently, as we learned, the bus drivers....), but it's been great practice. We've ordered so much delicious food in French that we've pretty much got the restaurant environment covered. There's so much to learn, and we've almost never seen a more beautiful city. We're in love. Quelle belle ville!
Well, as I said, we're at home now and we can't upload photos here because of the WiFi limits, but we'll be sure to add them tomorrow when we're at school. Also tomorrow we'll post about the cathedral and how we got disgustingly lost, and if you're lucky, it won't even be in French!
-Claire (and Madi in spirit)
Monday, April 29, 2013
Day 1 Shop Photo
Since "a picture's worth 1,000 words" this is the equivalent of my blog posts for this week...
This is a small corner of the shop at Vincent Lighting Systems
Day 1
Wow. I really can’t believe today was the first day of
project. Time really does fly! I am super excited for my project to go
underway, and can’t wait for all that is to come!
For my project, I will be revisiting my past field trips I
took while at Hawken Lower School. Prior to each visit, I will record my
memories and impressions from each trip, interview classmates and teachers, and
research the place I am off to visit. Then, when I return, I will record my new
impressions of where I visited, and compare how my outlook has changed over the
years. Some of my trips include: the West Side Market, Hastings’s Dairy Farm,
the Cleveland Art Museum, Botanical Gardens, Rainforest, Cleveland Orchestra,
and much more!
I chose to do this project because I feel it will be a nice
way to conclude my 15 years at Hawken. I am sure there will be a lot of reminiscing
between surveying my classmates, talking with old teachers, and thinking about
past memories. The greater focus of my
project, however, is to try to pinpoint the benefits of experiential learning
and propose how I believe these trips impacted the way I see the world. So I
ask, what better way to investigate experiential learning than by means of
experiential learning?
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Welcome
Seniors and Senior Project Proctors!
Seniors, I trust that you're excited to get your projects underway! Your advisors and other members of our project group are looking forward to tracking your experiences and progress during the course of your project.
Reminder to seniors:
You must post to our blog 3 times per week (M,W, F) providing commentary, updates, and stories about what you are doing or learning. Posts should be approximately 200 words. In addition, you must post a RESPONSE to another person's blog (not in your group) once a week. That's 4 posts each week!
Feel free to provide pictures, videos, and/or audio from your project.
Learn,
enjoy, and share your experiences!
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