My Experiences on Rope Course

What was the experience like for you?

It was a great experience for me to have outdoor activities in a language class. Instead of sitting inside the classroom and listen to lectures, I personally found that outdoor activities work more effectively for learning and reinforce the relationship between classmates.

 Were there any benefits to you as an individual? 

I learnt “teamwork” and “leadership” from this rope courses. As the mentor said, there are two types of leadership among the group of us and I found out which category I belongs to.

 What were the benefits to us as a class? 

We learnt how to work together as a group to solve problems. We also learnt that gathering ideas from each different individual is the best way to cope difficult tasks. It even embedded us with the value of trust through the “commander and tank” game whereby we need to trust our partner’s instruction while we were blindfolded.

Compare and contrast how this activity relates to the themes in Ch 4? 

This activity portrayed the “can-do” spirit which is one of the themes in Chapter 4. We tried many ways in crossing to the boxes using a wooden plank which seems impossible for us and we finally succeed after many times of trail and errors.  The theme of “equality of opportunities” also can be found in this rope course as we have equal chances to play the game in “commander and tank”. However self reliance is not found through the rope course because we work as a team throughout the activities. 

Is this activity uniquely “American” or is this something your culture has or could have as well?    

I don’t think that this is a uniquely American activity because I had done 2 out of the 3 activities in this rope course back in my country.



Homecoming Football Game

    October 2nd 2010, homecoming football game organized by UW-Eau Claire was held in Carson park which is few miles away from UWEC. I was assigned to watch this football match as this it is one of the activity for my ESL class. However, this "football" game is different from what we define in Malaysia. We said "football" which is the meaning of "soccer" in the United States and soccer is more popular compared to football in Malaysia. So, this is the first time I attended and expoesd to a football game.
     I saw many of our University student wearing UWEC t-shirt and painted their face to support our UWEC team. Some of them even wearing blue and yellow colour suits and girls with gold legging! The park was crowded an hour before the game starts and many alumni came to watch this game too. As I can see, most of the Americans were fanatic in football games. Everyone shouted loudly to cheer their team and I found some cheerleaders standing in front of the seat to perform and cheer their teams.  Basically this game's duration is 60 minutes which was divided in to 4 quaters, 15 minutes each. There is a 15 minute half time break after a 30 match. I found that the game was exciting and I stood there throughout the game.
    American football consist of 11 players each team on the field and they have a lot of substitutes. I was surprised to see that there were more than 30 players include the substitutes!The field was marked with a line in every five yards from the middle field which is marked " 50 yards" and the number reduced to 0 as the line approach to the side of the field. One of the team is offence and another is defense.
    The rules are simple, The team that takes possession of the ball which is offense have 4 attempt which is to advence the ball at least 10 yards towards the defense zone.When the offense succeeds in gaining at least 10 yards, it gets a first down. If the offense team succeed to gain starts a new set of four downs to gain yet another 10 yards or to score. However if they failes to gain 10 yardsin four downs, the oppse team will possess the ball and become offense instead of defense side. Thre are many ways to score, such as 6 points for touchdown, 3 points for field goal and 2 points for safety.The most interesting part in the game was during the overtime when both team's score is the draw and UW-Eau Claire team had to try their best to score. At last, UWEC beated UW steven point with 20-13.
     As a foreigner and stranger to football, I personally feels that American football is an interesting game and I started to love football! This is why Americans love football a lot too!

Manhia's Story

An adventurous immigration story was told by a girl named Manhia. She is a Hmong who had been staying in the United States since she was born. Manhia's immigrant story starts from her parents. She stated that their family immigrated to the United States as refugees due to the Vietnam War. It was her parents who move to United States in the 1980's. Her parents used to stay in Laos before the Vietnam War began. However, their life faces challenges during the war.

 Vietnam War involved the United States, Thailand, Laos, Russia and North Vietnam. The preludes to the Secret War were differing opinions by political parties on the governmental structure that would reign in Vietnam. The United States needed to find a way to help the fight against communism. Thus, they started to recruit Hmong people and provide military weapons to them, trained them and paid them. In spite of entering the army force and facing the plight of war, Manhia’s father decided to leave Laos and escaped to another country to seek their fortunes. They crossed over the Mekong River and lived in Thailand for a while. During this time, Manhia's second oldest sister was born.

In December of 1975, Hmong refugees were granted asylum at this time under the Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 that brought the Hmong refugees to the United States. Manhia was born in the United States and stayed in this country for two decades and their family still maintains their own culture although they were here in the United States for a long period of time. This is the greatest immigration story that I has ever heard.