19. Finally, final presentation

It was a sunny Wednesday, I woke up with the sound of the birds...
Ok I was trying to be funny. I did not woke up with the sound of the birds.
First I woke up with the sound of my alarm which is very annoying.
Then Nil called, she asked if I am coming to breakfast or not.
This happens every morning, every morning we call each other and ask each other if we are going to breakfast or not.
Every time we convince each other to go to breakfast.
It is a very good habit to go to breakfast because it makes you more energetic and you go to every lecture by the help of breakfast.
Then Ayşe texted me about out meeting at 8.00 am in the cafeteria so I had no excuse to spend more time in the bed.
I got out of the bed and got ready and run to the cafeteria.
Nil was waiting for me and no one was there so I took an açma and coffee and then Ayşe and Bahar came.
They also got their açmas and coffee and our meeting started.
Everything was clear and fine, we have gone through for the last time and then we were ready.
After NS we went to the English class.
First there was the Truman Show presentation.
They were really nice and actually watching them made calm because I realize that there nothing to be worry about, we are going to stand there and we are going present what we have prepared.
It was our turn.
We made a good start I guess.
I tried to slowed down myself according to Sonja's advices.
Everyone in our group was aware of what they were doing and did not become nervous.
Therefore I think we made a very good presentation.
Just a small confession; we managed to meet more for our practice presentation but although we could not meet a lot, we were well organized and we did our best.
Thanks to my teammates for being nice all the time and my friends for listening us with respect...

18. Our final presentation

I don't understand why I am out of luck.
I don't like to be a whiner but I guess I should do it this time.
My close friends know that I am not the luckiest person in the world but I am thankful for everything I have and I good coincidence that I have gone through.
However, when I miss the boat or shuttle for a stupid reason I feel sad.
You might say that these are very little things but when it happens all the time, I feel bad.
So, what is the relation between my luck and Eng 101 presentations, let me tell you.
Our practice presentation was on December 9, which was the next day of my birthday.
I am not a celebration kid but come on, no one wants to work on a homework or a presentation during their birthday.
I did not mention this or complain about this because I had wonderful teammates. I told them about this issue 1 month before the presentation and they accepted to work on the presentation before that day. Our presentation was ready 2 days before the due date.
For the final presentation everything was the same.
I had my high school reunion before the presentation day, which means I was out, I had fun, I saw my friends together. (You might say you could go and see time later but it is not the same, everyone goes to different schools, lots of them are studying abroad so that night was also important for me.)
Anyways, I came back to school at 00.30 and I met Ayşe. We were almost done but we had to add some pictures and talk about some details. I went to her study room, everything was wonderful, we had music and also water. So we started to work. It was 3.30 am when I was leaving and Ayşe was saying that I am going to practice more.
I hope everyone will love our presentation and it would worth...
I know from high school, sleeping is not the most important thing, you could live without it : )

17. About the final presentation

At the beginning I thought that presenting a short story is harder than a movie because you have more to read. However now I think it is harder to present a movie because you don't have everything in front of you. You need to watch and write every single detail very carefully. To catch the small jokes, sometimes you need to go back and watch it again, watch it again and watch it again. Thank god that all the movies that we are presenting are fun to watch and also fun to think about them. Although we shared the topics in our group, we need to be more aware of the general information about the movie. Anyways, enough with the complains lets move on with the positive parts. Our movie is "The Full Monty" and I am watching it for the first time. It was the only movie that I did not watch before so I am a little bit lucky, I am watching a new movie. If you wonder my first impression about the movie, it was very funny but in a different way. You feel sorry at the same time. Also the accent that actors and actresses use is very hard to understand so it was not very easy to follow the subtitles and watch the movie. However I am glad that our presentation movie is "The Full Monty".

16. Mini Christmas Concert

Today I went to the mini Christmas concert at Information Center and it was very nice. I always wanted to talk aloud at the Information Center because I was wondering how it will be like. Last week we stayed until 21.30 and we managed to speak aloud. It was very nice to speak aloud there.

But today it was totally different. I watched a little video, a boy was playing a flute at Information Center and it was magical. Today I listened the choir and it was also magical. They put a Christmas tree behind them. Little girls were running around while they were singing and two of the girls wore princess dresses so they looked like angels. There was hot wine with cinnamon and it was also very nice. I liked the new year lights at Information Center.

So overall it was very nice to be there. I didn't know all the songs but I enjoyed it a lot. I hope there will be more activities like this one so that we could spread our happiness around.

15. A game called "Go"

I am not sure how many of you heard about Go but it is a board game and usually people compare it with chess and backgammon. However for me it is very different than chess and backgammon.

To play the game you need the board, black and white stones and two players. That's all. If you can't find the board you can draw the lines on the board on a piece of paper and make the little stones with paper. You could continue to play with those primitive ways because these things are not very important in this game.

I hope you wonder what is the important thing about this game? So let me tell you the important thing is: YOU. While playing you show your all characteristics to your opponent. Your every move has a meaning. I hate this question "so what's the purpose of this game?" and I really don't know how to explain this.

At 6th grade, when I first learn how to play this game our instructor told us that your purpose is to gain more area but this is not the case. When you go into the philosophy of the game and when you start to think of the meanings of the moves, you realize that this game never repeat itself and you learn a lot about yourself and about your opponent as you play the game.

14. How I feel about Billy Elliot

Billy Elliot. I watched this movie 8 years ago and I felt very sad about it. I don't know how to explain my feelings but I definitely remember how I feel about Billy. I just can't bear what he has gone through and I thought that this is not fair.

He was just a boy who has passion and a dream. It was very hard understand why his father accept him as he is. I always think that fathers and mothers love their children as they are, nothing will change this. Well maybe if the children is lying or stealing or because of any other bad thing that they did the parents want to warn the children or maybe punish them but they won't deny their child.

During those 8 years I changed a lot but I don't know I just can't feel very comfortable about Billy Elliot. Maybe because I was very young that movie had big effects on me but I can't predict my reaction to this movie.

I will watch it again anyways...

13. New Year

First of all, I would like to thank Sonja because I had fun today. I learned some new things and also I had fun at the same time. We first we played the grammar game and if you are to compete with others then it becomes more fun so it was very fun. Then we ate cookies that Sonja made for us and it was a very kind attitude. I wasn't expecting something like that and I became very happy and someone thinks us and bakes cookies for us. :) . After that we listened 2 songs. The first one called "I'd love to change the world" (so do I) and it was a very nice song. I also want and wanted to change the world but I don't and didn't know what to do and did so I don't want to leave it up to anybody but what should I do? Who is going to change the world if I don't? People even doesn't care about the other people around them. Even no one says "çok yaşa" if someone sneezes. We don't know how to say "thank you" or "özür dilerim" and we are expecting a change in the world. How would the world change if we don't change?
I really don't know. These topics are very hard to understand and it is better not to be mean to world.
but still;
"I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do"
About the second song maybe you might hear from me saying "you may say I am a dreamer" before because I use it a lot especially when I start a silly sentence. Anyways I love that song too so I was really happy during the class. Then thanks to Sonja she let me play Nil's song. If you loved them you could listen more here: www.myspace.com/nilvegitari
I wasn't very happy about the Obama song because I don't like it a lot. Then our time was up so we left class.

About the new year, I don't understand the concept of new year. Maybe we are celebrating new year because we need some things that we could celebrate as a result we celebrate every single, silly thing.

I wish I could make a list that I am going to do and I am not going to do during the new year but unfortunately I cannot think of any. So Merry Christmas to Sonja and an early happy new year to you all :)

12.You can leave your hat on...

If you watched the movie you might understand the title but if you didn't let me tell you the topic of this post: it is going to be about the movie called "The Full Monty".
That movie will be the topic of our final presentation. I watched it on a Sunday night at our Information Center. I learned something because of this movie (thank you very much Ayşe, again), we could watch some movies online in campus by using Information Center's website. I couldn't believe this until I managed to open the movie. Also I thought that I can only watch it at the Information Center but then Ayşe told me that I can watch it everywhere at campus so it was a little funny. I couldn't watch the last 10 minutes on Sunday night and I was wondering what happened at the end and then Ayşe told me that I can watch it everywhere so after NS I went to my room and watch the end.

It was a very sincere movie. It was not like the Hollywood movies. Even though it is hard to understand the accents, if you get the jokes it became very funny. I don't know how classify this movie (please don't say, then don't classify it let it stay alone) but it is separated easily from the other 'funny' movies.

For our final presentation I will again present the characters but also this time rather than symbols I will be presenting the background of the script writes and the director so that we could make an overall glance on the movie and we could find an answer to this question: "Why those guys used gender issues rather then other popular topics?" .

11.Into The Wild

I watched the movie called "Into The Wild".
I have lots of comments and dozens of ideas about the movie but I don't know, I am afraid to be misunderstood.
Anyways, I don't want to write "oh everyone should watch this movie, it has lots of important things and bla bla bla" but, (here comes the but) there is a quote that I would like to mention which is:
“Happiness only real when shared.”
Sometimes people use these kind of slogans in the advertisements and we make fun of them.
We shouldn't do that because this is so true...

I feel very happy when somebody share his/her happiness with me because some people only share their sadness.
I think we should share our happiness too so that people around us also become happy.


P.S.: I realized that I used so many "I" in this post, I am not a selfish person but I used lots of "I" in this post. (Should I use "I"?)

10. Something about our presentation

We did our presentation and now I am writing what I feel about our presentation.
As my classmates know, we presented a short story called "The Man Who Was Almost a Man".
As I mentioned during our presentation first I don't like the story because I didn't read it carefully. But then I read it carefully and I found it interesting. I tried to understand Dave etc etc.

Let's move on with the presentation...
Ayşe, Bahar and Onur were in my group and we worked a lot on our presentation. We met 3 times. Some of them were not very efficient but even those meetings we came up with lots of different ideas.

It was really easy to share who is going to present what, we were very kind to each other.
Moreover everyone did what they supposed to do so I was very lucky, responsibility is the most important thing with those kind of project.

In addition to these as a group we did our best.

For self evaluation, I guess I should be honest to myself.
I have problem and I don't know how to fix this and also I guess I don't want to fix it anyway because I feel comfortable that way.
For every kind of literature analysis, I cannot find the right answer. I have my own truths and it is very hard to find the "real or literature" truth. First I found my own truth, then the teacher says the literature truth and s/he convinces me and we move on. This has never changed. It was like this in middle school, in high school and I was very hopeful about the university but NO, I am still the same and I don't feel sad about this. For example when we read a poem, everyone make the same comment about an obvious symbol but then I make a totally different comment. Fortunately or unfortunately (depends on you point of view) this situation was same with my analysis on Dave.

About my use of language and fluency, I guess I did well. Of course I had some errors and spelling mistakes but overall I guess I was fine. Also I am sure that our final project will be better.

Thank you everyone for listening us and preparing good presentations....

9. Killing us softly

Well I did not blog much lately so I feel a little strange so I will start with something personal.

I realized that I watched this movie in 11th grade with my marvelous English teacher. She was the best teacher I have ever had. Also this is true for most of my classmates. Then at the end of 11th grade, she left school. She was too good for us I think. Anyways I just remembered her when I saw the video and I felt different. Now she has a baby isn't it wonderful?

I would like to answer this question: "Do you feel that the media reflect or create the ideal image of beauty in our society – or both?"

I wonder who could say that "No, media does not create the ideal image of beauty."
Media creates almost all of our ideas. Media manipulates us. How can we deny that media does not affect us? It is impossible. I am not watching TV at Sabancı and also I don't read newspapers a lot. I just check the news and move on. I feel like I am changing. I feel like I don't judge or criticize people, ideas or any other thing that I judged or criticized before. This is because I am far away from the mass media.
As mentioned in the video, Killing us Softly, advertisements sell products. However also advertisements sell values, images, concepts of love and success. Unfortunately this is true and some of us don't realize this before someone mentions this. This is very sad. If media has the power to change our values then media must have the power to change our ideal image of beauty.

I always believe that today it is very easy to become beautiful because media gives us the formula, if you become skinny, if you have a small nose, if you are tall, if you have big eyes, if you have long hair and if you smile all the time then you are beautiful. It is that easy.

If you are fat, if you have big nose, if you don't smile, if you are short then sorry; you are ugly.

It is very hard to find a fat top model or it is very hard find a fat girl on a billboard. So sad...

We don't watch fat people in a Hollywood movie.

Why?

(irritating silence)


For me, no one is ugly because we are all different.

8. Tough Guise

Today we watched "Tough Guise" and to be honest I wasn't expecting a film like this. Usually we watch boring films in class (I know that I am generalizing but I am doing this to exaggerate :)). However "Tough Guise" was very interesting, funny in some ways and heartbreaking.

"Tough Guise" was very interesting because I never realize the change the size of the toys. Maybe because I wasn't a kid in 1970s but I felt sorry about it. I should have realized it before somebody mentions it. He was right!! As the girls become smaller, boys become bigger and bigger and bigger!! UNBELİVEABLE. We as the girls; go on diet, sacrifice, eat less and spend hours in the gym to look smaller. Why are we doing this? Because an anonymous power* force us to do this. But why actually we are doing this? Don't we have brain? Does the shape of our body controls everything? Why do we care about how does a skinny jean looks like when we wear it? I could pretend that well I don't care about it, I can eat what I want, I don't need to spend my hours in the gym but this is not case, unfortunately. Sometimes even I am thinking how do I look like. This was the case of a girl but how about the boys? It seems like the boys don't care about their physical appearance but I think this is not true. Especially in high school and in college they do care about their physical appearance. When you go to fitness center in SU you could see more boys than girls.

"Tough Guise" was funny because the music video where black boys act like a Italian gangster and then white boys act like them and it looks very funny. Well the concept at the beginning is very funny. Why do we have classifications like Italian gangster, black boys and white boys. There are all people and these properties shouldn't make them different from each other. Anyways the video was very funny.

"Tough Guise" was heartbreaking. I slept at 4.00 am yesterday and I was planning to sleep after the lessons but when I got back to dorm I couldn't sleep because I felt sorry. The statistics made me very sad. I could guess that men are more dangerous but the statistics shocked me.


*I don't know who imposes us the men are stronger than women but I don't think it is only the media so I will think and read about this issue more and write another post. Wait for it! (I felt like 6 billion people are reading my blog :))

7.Perfecting lives with strangers

Hello everyone,

There is a band called Little Joy and they have song called "with strangers". It is a very sad but in a way peaceful song. "with strangers" is my favorite Little Joy song and in that song Rodrigo Amarante says "perfecting lives with strangers."

It is always the same story. There are strangers, then they are friends, then they are strangers again.

I hope none of my friends don't read this post, if they do they will make fun of me but this line "perfecting lives with strangers" is directly related to the Reality TV. Those people in the Reality Shows are strangers and we are perfecting our lives with them. It doesn't have any difference.

I hope you will have a very happy evening.

6. The Secret

I don't know why I wrote "THE SECRET" but it is not a secret that I have fraternal twin sister :)
Because we don't look alike very much, it takes some time to convince that we are actually twins.
I don't know how to explain this but, we are totally different. I mean if I am white, she is black.
There is a huge gap between us but it is not in a bad way. I love her, she loves me and we always respect to each other.

Anyways, we ordered pizza and we were about to eat it. Then one of our friend realized our photos on my sister's table.
In the photo, we were 5 years old and we were dressed the same. I was taller than her, my hair is lighter than her hair and we look like strangers. Our friend said that "I couldn't decide which one of you were adopted." Then she looked at us, suddenly said that "I think both of you were adopted, it must be a joke that you should be twins." It was very funny at that moment. Then my twin sister said that this could be a very popular Reality Show like The Truman Show.

This is another eng 101 related and not related post.

PS: I am definitely sure that now everyone's working for the first math midterm but I just wanted to write this. Good luck everyone.

5. Everything about enthusiasm

This is going to be my first post which is not directly related to English 101 but it will be related indirectly.
To start with: what is enthusiasm and why enthusiasm? Who can be an enthusiastic person?
According to dictionary.com enthusiasm means: "absorbing or controlling possession of the mind by any interest or pursuit." For me it enthusiasm is more than this and I believe I could explain this by answering the question: "why enthusiasm?"
Enthusiasm, because it is the only thing that makes me move on, that wakes me up, that provides fresh air and everything that helps me to live and who can be an enthusiastic person? I wish the answer could be easy and safe. But no, unfortunately if you are patient, if you can fight with anything and if you could stand straight against anything you face then you be could enthusiastic.

Today, especially now, I don't feel enthusiastic anymore. You could ask you are not enthusiastic about what? About anything or about everything. It is now very hard to eat. It is now very hard to think. It is now very hard to talk.

But why?

Because whatever I do, does not fit to this world! If I try to be sincere, it does not work. If you want be happy in this world, you should be nasty. Being nice to the world, to the people, sometimes even to the animals doesn't work.

As a result of this unorganized post if you don't want to be disappointed don't be enthusiastic!

4. About English 101

Now I am very happy because we have an exact question: "What have you learned, improved and/or become more aware of so far this semester in ENG 101?"

As Janbek mentioned, English 101 is familiar to me because the syllabus and the expectations are very similar to our english classes in high school. Therefore it did not take time for me to get used to the English 101. As a result I am very happy and comfortable in the English classes. The first thing that I learned from the English 101 is how to write an e-mail to an instructor. The word document was very essential. Before English 101 I usually end my e-mails by saying "Thank You". However I did not know that this is very impolite. I always think that it was a very polite way to finish an e-mail, but it wasn't. Of course there are some more important things that I have learned in English 101, but I cannot think of them now. The thing is I don't feel what I have learned which is wonderful. I will probably realize them as the time goes by, when I face with the difficulties of Sabancı University. That's it for now. Afiyet olsun!

3. War Photos

In class Sonja showed us some photos and she asked about three things listed below:

1) What you see

2) Questions / issues that arise

3) The role of the photographer

 Therefore I will upload (if I could :)) some photos and respond to these questions.

http://www.treehugger.com/nuke-war-h001.jpg
1) In this photo I see the smoke of a nuclear bomb. If I did not know that it is a nuclear bomb I would probably think that it look nice but unfortunately it is not a natural event, it is a bomb.

2) I think this is the whole idea of war: Why a person kill another person? I mean maybe you would be that much angry at a person so that you kill him but during wars you don't know your enemies in person. So how come you could kill someone even you don't know his name? What kind of commitment is this? In this photo, a person doesn't kill another person, a person destroys a village, a city, lots of families, trees, maybe ducks or any other thing that you can think of. It is very hard to accept this truth.

3) Here the photographer is on an airplane I guess because the smoke and the photographer are at the same level. I cannot make an assumption if he could stop those people but I guess he can't because they are killing a society, it won't be very hard to just kill a photographer.

 

http://www.treehugger.com/nuke-war-h001.jpg
I don't want to make personal response for this photo because it just make me think that soldiers are also human beings and they need something to relax. This photo says us that they relax by listening the radio. You might wanna check this out:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/war_tech_gallery_09.shtml

http://www.startrekexhibition.com/storage/004VietnamWar_468x382.jpg
1) I see that some soldiers are carrying another soldier hardly. The black soldier looks very tired, his expression is very impressive. The one on the right is not aware of that he is carrying another person. He looks like he just carries an object. The two soldier on the left were just looking forward and they look like they became heartless. Also at the back we can see two helicopters.

2) This first question arises in my head is, is he dead or not? What happened to him? I know this is a war everything is possible but what exactly happened to him?

3) The role of the photographer. I really don't want to comment on this but I feel like I have to. What was his aim? I guess he was very close to the soldiers. He was just doing his job I believe. I took my first photography lesson at 9th grade and we talked about this issue. At that time I was certainly agree with the idea that the photographer should stop taking photos and help the soldiers but at the end of that lesson they convince me not to think of it. Therefore today after 4 years I still don't think of it. Maybe because Turkish people are tend to be more obedient, I don't know. 

2. Reality TV

   "And as in reality, so on "reality TV." How long until the first TV death? How long until the second? By the end of Orwell's great novel 1984, Winston Smith has been brainwashed. "He loved Big Brother." As, now, do we. We are the Winstons now."  (Rushdie S, Reality TV: a dearth of talent and the death of morality, 2001)

In 9th grade, I read 1984 in Turkish just for myself. I liked it a lot but when I was in 11th grade I read it again for the English lesson in English and it was totally different. The parts I liked, the parts that I underlined and the parts that made me think of were different. In 9th grade the only thing I remember is; I was sorry for Winston and Julia and for the end (the part that Winston says that "I love Big Brother"). But in 11th I started to think of some other things like freedom and rebellion. 

Why do we obey the rules of the society? The simple answer is we have to. But why really? Don't we have the chance to rebel? The answer is controversial. Sometimes we have the chance to say no. For example when Sonja give us some homework we can choose not to do. But then we have to bear the consequences. 

My father says that "itaat et rahat et" (obey and be comfortable). I believe this is the simple rule for everything. It works in school, at work, with your friends, with your family and with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Unfortunately the system does not give us the chance to be ourselves or we can't choose what we want to do at the moment. I mean why do I have to go to every lecture or lesson in school, take notes, do homework and then get a job, maybe get married, have kids, have grandchildren and live happily after rather then spending our days just doing nothing in way or doing everything meaningful?

Why do we have to have labels like engineer, economist or social scientist? We don't learn anything because we want to learn. The system force us to memorize some of the information and then after the exam the same system force us to forget those information to replace them with the new forgettable information. We are all systemkids and it is very hard to change this truth.

If Winston did not rebel he wouldn't suffer for anything. He would still be eating those terrible food, living in a terrible house and also he would still be ugly. But because he rebelled, they tortured him, they intimidated him. As a result "Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me….”(1984/George Orwell) 

As a result, we can see the systemkids on TV especially in Reality Shows and only the systemkids are watching those shows.

1. About the road watchers

Last week Sonja told us about the road watchers, the guys who sit beside the road and watch the road regularly. Maybe it is because I am a little optimist but I always thought that those guys are waiting for a service bus to come and take those people to work. 

However Sonja told us that this is not the case. During the lesson I confessed that when I was 5 or 6 years old, I used watch the road, the people passing by and everything that you can see through window. Maybe some of you don't understand what is the point of watching the street but I don't know how to explain this to you. 

When I go back to my dorm after the last lesson I remembered something else that could be shocking for Sonja. My high school was also in Kurtköy and 5 years ago I was a prep student who was new in the school and also in the city. Everyday we had at least 4 lessons English and after a while it was getting a little hard to be concentrated. 

After 1 month I found myself counting the trucks. Sometimes 100 trucks passed by the road sometimes only 50. It depends on the day. Thursdays and Fridays were always the busiest days. I don't know why I was counting those trucks...

So the concept of 'road watchers' is familiar and normal for me.