Sunday, February 11, 2007

Speech Comm.

Entering my third week in Uni now. I have my daily class schedules, my ID number and the number password for my uni webmail all memorized =) That’s a lot of numbers.. I guess that means as long as I don’t to do anything/ convert those numbers as in math, geo, algebra etc. I am fine with numbers. Lol.

Even though we haven’t started anything really challenging yet in any of the courses I’m already starting to enjoy them. Everything is just so different in comparison to home schooling.

Only one thing is seriously eating at me atm: SPEECH COMM….

Deep deep down (as my bro says) I love the class. I love listening to my classmates, the first week when we did “Introducing ourselves” (all except me) and last week when we did “Experiences” (in the end of this post I have to mention a few really good ones my mates presented.). This week we’re moving on to a third topic (Presenting something meaningful to us) and I’ve yet to even do a single presentation!

I prepare the speech and everything (he tells us to prepare what we are going to present at home before coming) and then as I sit in class and watch a few of the other girls going I keep telling myself “Ok, after her I’ll raise my hand and get this over with.” The next girl goes and I tell myself the same thing till the teacher is announcing what we have to do for next class before bidding us adieu. Then I realize that I’ve yet again let a whole class slip by without participating. It’s really frustrating, especially since I at least show minimum participation in all of my other classes.

What to do, what to do, what to do….

Anywayz,

Today two girls gave really good presentations. Their English wasn’t great great but they tried and the experiences they told about were interesting.

The first girl told about the time she and her family went to Thailand when she was 13 years old. She said she was a Pepsi addict and every day had to have a couple of bottles/ cans. One night she opened the fridge and found there was no Pepsi to be found. She started to cry. She asked her father to go and buy some (the store was 20 km away and it was after midnight) but he refused. She then took her brother, who was 7 years old at the time, and snuck out. They walked all the way to the store and just as they walked in the last bottle of Pepsi was being sold she said to a “Black Man”. She asked the store keeper did he have anymore Pepsi. The store keeper replied no. Her brother then turns to the black man and says: can you give that Pepsi to me? The black man replies no. The girl said she kicked her brother and told him when he speaks to people he should have good manners with them. She turned to the black man and says: Hey nigga, can you give me that Pepsi?
The black man stared at her before asking what did she say. So she repeated it thinking it was a term of high respect and that he either didn’t hear her or misunderstood her accent. (Btw, the girl is Emirati) the guy was shocked and kept asking what did she say so she kept repeating. He got really angry and dropped the Pepsi on the floor. Told her he wasn’t going to give her that Pepsi and instead he was going to ‘show’ her something. At that point he pulled out a knife. The girl took her brother and ran. They ran and ran but of course being just kids they couldn’t outrun the guy. He caught up to them and slashed her brother. Thankfully another guy came and rescued them from the angered black man.

We have to state the lesson(s) learned from our experience at the end of the presentation. She said the lessons she learned were: That Pepsi isn’t the most important thing in the world and to never say a word she doesn’t know the meaning of.

The other girl’s experience was about the first day she got her license. She said that morning she was so happy that she begged her father to let her start driving that day. He refused. She said she sat in front of him in the living room of their house and begged from morning till late afternoon. Finally her mother came in and said she wanted something from her friend’s house. The girl told her father she would get it for her mom. The father said fine, but he had to go with her. She said ok but if he saw anything she did wrong to either tell her quietly without shouting or wait till after she finished driving cuz if he shouted at her while she was driving she’d get nervous and get into an accident. Her dad said fine. So they were off. They got there safely and all and when they arrived at her mom’s friend’s house she wanted to park the car inside of the lady’s gate. Her dad told her that was “3ayb” and that it was better to park the car beside the house outside the gate. The girl argued that when the lady comes to their house she parks her car inside their gate so it would be ok if she did it also. The father refused. The girl was angry and instead of pressing the brake to stop in front of the house she pressed the gas by mistake. She said their car went right through the lady’s front gate. The whole gate (cement, bricks and all) came crashing down on their car. It totaled their car. (here the speech comm. Teacher asked the girl – she’s our student union president- what her dad said about that, it being her first day and all and already in an accident.) she said he remained silent and then she added “kil minh” (It was all from him or rather it was his fault) so like of course he’d be silent. The teacher asked how long did her father remain silent.. She said he remained silent till she went inside drank juice and calmed down.

Can u guys imagine the embarrassment though? Not only getting into an accident on ur first day out but totaling ur car AND demolishing ur mom’s friend’s front gate (for all of my readers who might not know, around the houses here in UAE are really big cement brick gates.. kinda like fortress walls surrounding the whole house)

Gosh, there was another experience presentation one of my mates did that was good.. now I’m too tired to write about it. I’ll save it for another time.

::Yawns:: I am so looking forward to a cold Chocolate & Caramel drink I had this morning at the uni. I’m going to order the same – minus the z3tar and cheese sandwich- tomorrow inshalla.
God, talking about a future breakfast, I’m really REALLY tired so it’s off to bed for me before I start singing or something else weird!

2 comments:

Badra said...

Hey girl! Thanks for sharing the experiance,,,i was kinda disappointed when u left that teaching job cuz the reading was Very interesting to say the least..thanks for keeping the blog going even though ur a busy college student :)later...

El Hazard said...

Lol, didn't think I'd actually see u leave a comment =P

Would u believe that I first started this blog right before the end of the summer with the intention of blogging about my uni experiences in the fall? Just goes to show things don't always work out as planned...

"Busy" college student.. Ha ha HA! I spend more hours on my laptop than I do in course lectures and homework combined so u have nothing to worry about. (unless of course I lose the will to write =P)