{TV Review} Abby & Brittany

Abby &Brittany is a conjoined twin, and right now they have a reality show on TLC.  So far they showed their graduation, they went on a road trip, and they went to London and Italy, from their show, we can see how Abby&Brittany's life, their friends and their family.  Most importantly, we can see their personalities and know them better.  

{TV Review} Glee season 4 premiere the new Rachel

I am not a really Glee fan, just be honest with you. At least I am not really crazy for collecting every character's hats, posters, buying their album and their T-shirt stuff like that Or follow them everywhere.  But, I did watched a few of their show and their Glee 3D Concert Movie in the paste, I enjoyed it.  I like a couple of their songs, and honestly, sometimes I feel some of their songs in Glee are better than the original performers. 

{Asian} GANGNAM STYLE!!!

Do you know what is Gangnam style? Do u feel this video is interesting, well this "silly horse dancing" song is from a Korean rapper PSY. It's an interantional hit right now, his video right now has 152 million clicks worldwide, and he is on American TV, on the news, EVERYWHERE. 


and Even celebrities love his style, "British pop singer Robbie Williams, rapper T-Pain and singer Josh Groban have all tweeted about their love of PSY’s video. Then, superstar Britney Spears got a lesson on how to do PSY’s signature “Gangnam Style” dance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday." source from celebuzz.com.

 

{Woman} Rihanna & Chris Brown.

Rihanna is a very popular and well known international singer.  Being famous in such a young age brings her paparazzi everywhere.  I love her songs, and I think she has such a unique voice that nobody has the same voice like hers,  but not until I watched Oprah Next Chapter that Oprah interviewed Rihanna and made me get to know Rihanna a little bit closer. 

 

 

Massage Envy_Facial Part

My family member joined the membership and they have credit they didn't use it, so I went over Massage Envy and I did their 1 hour Facial programme, and the service was excellent, and after the treatment, my face feels so so so good.  I recommend everyone to join or at least to try their first trial session, they have affordable price and excellent services.  I definitely will do my Facial once a month. 

{Hotel Review} Hampton Inn

Type	Franchise
Industry	Hotel
Founded	1983
Founder(s)	Promus Hotel Corporation[1]
Number of locations	1,800+ hotels
Area served	United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Latin America
Parent	Hilton Worldwide
	www.hampton.com   Source from Wikipedia.com

Restaurant Review_Pei Wei Asian Dinner

I always like to eat at PEI WEI, it's an Asian cuisine restaurant, providing not just only Chinese food, but a little bit Thai, a little bit Malaysian, a liitle bit American flavor all mix together and become American Asian Diner.  


So PEI WEI is not your typical Chinese food restaurant in any China Town.  Here is the overview from PEI WEI's Home Page :

Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, TX

                                                                  From Google Image


It's beautiful, isn't it?  Galveston Island Historic Pleasure is one of the MUST VISIT Places in TX.  They have nice beach, nice restaurants around, a them park kids would go crazy for it.   GIHP features features family-oriented attractions including rides, midway games, a wide selection of food venues and retail shops.  A great place to spend the whole day here. 

GreatWolf Lodge, Grapevine, TX (II)

Great Wolf Lodge is a water park resort that has several branches across the USA. We stayed there for 4 days, it's a great memory and kids love it, so if you are thinking bringing your kids somewhere for vacation, Great Wolf Lodge is a great choice. 

 
Location

Charlotte/Concord, NC

Cincinnati/Mason, OH

Grand Mound, WA

Grapevine, TX

Kansas City, KS

Niagara Falls, Ontario

Pocono Mountains, PA

Sandusky, OH

Traverse City, MI

Williamsburg, VA

Wisconsin Dells, WI

From expedia.com Our room looks like this.  

From Expedia.com The Lobby

From Expedia.com The restaurant

From Expedia.com The restaurant

From Expedia.com that's the kids room, so cute!!

From Expedia.com the room

From Expedia.com the room

 

 

From Expedia.com the water park

 

 

From Expedia.com the water park

 

 
From Expedia.com the water park

The one we going is in Grapevine, TX.   Overall, they provide a very good service, Kids will love to visit there and the whole family will have fun.  In this article, I will start with some pictures in the room and introduce the facilities in the hotel.








Hotel Amenities


General

24-hour front desk

Air-conditioned public areas

Airport transportation (surcharge)

Arcade/game room

ATM/banking

Multiple small meeting rooms (never see that, but plenty of public space, like sofa and chairs)

 

Multilingual staff (meet no staff speaking in other languages)

 

Free parking (I don't think it's free)

 

Valet parking

 

Free self-parking? (Not sure)

 

Gym Center

Internet

Free wifi in the room and public places

Parking








It says free in the Expedia site, but as far as I know it's not free, we pay for the parking fee+tips each time if we go out. So make sure check if the parking is free or not if you decide to book a room. 






Room Amenities

Premium television channel(s) Basic channels only, Premium needs to pay extra

Video-game console

Complimentary newspaper

Air conditioning

Phone

Voice mail

Refrigerator (In some room, they have a full size of refrigerator, but some are just half size)

Coffee/tea maker

Pay movies

Daily housekeeping

Private bathroom

Hair dryer

Shower/tub combination

Flat-panel television

Iron/ironing board

Dining

Camp Critter Bar n Grill - This restaurant serves lunch and dinner. Guests can enjoy drinks at the bar. A children's menu is available. (Food is good here, good price)

 

 

Loose Moose Cottage - This buffet restaurant serves breakfast and dinner. (Buffet is $20 for adult, $10 for a kids; It's a bit expensive, we didn't go there)

 

 

 

Starbucks - This coffee shop serves breakfast only.

 

 

 

Pizza Hut Express - This restaurant serves lunch and dinner. (cheap price, a pizza can feed the whole family, not a bad choices)

 

 

American VS Taiwanese (I)

I have lived in the USA for the fourth year, the first two years I was living in Florida, and latter I moved to Houston and stay here untill now. 

However, USA is not the first foreign country that I have ever lived with.  I lived in the UK for two years for my study, I did a master degree in bussiness over there, I will say British culture and American culture, they are completely different, I personally more preferred British culture I feel more like me.  So when I first came here, I need lots of time to adapt the culture.  Here are what I found some of interesting culture difference:

Teavana--Telling something about American Tea Culture

Drinking Tea plays an very important part of Chinese eating habits.  We normally drink a hot tea after eating all the meal for helping digest or just have a hot cup of tea in the afternoon tea time. 



Tea is better than Coffee in some research, it shows that it can prevent cancer and anti-aging. So it is a very good stuff and I encourage all the American or the whole world can drink more tea.  Tea is cheapter too. in Starbucks, an iced coffee is like $3 or $4, but a big cup of tea of $0.99 and it is healthier. 

From Kung Fu Panda to know chinese cultures

I like Kung Fu Panda this series, right now it has already panda 2 comes out.  In every Panda movie contains rich chinese cultures inside, and uses an interesting element which is Chinese kong fu to let American or the whole world know about Chinese culture.


Start from the Panda 2, I watched this movie twice.  I like it. This movie talks about " inner peace" this time.  " Inner peace" is a very chinese philosophy stuff, which is hard to understand.  Even me sometimes dont know how to reach "inner peace" or how to get" inner peace".  From this movie, we can see how Po gets inner peace in this story. 

Introducing a new learning chinese website--BBC Learn Chinese with free lessons

Well untill now I don't feel a lot of people interested in learning chinese.  So I will bring up more interesting stuff in terms of culture background or just write something is totally different.  Write more my personal life so you will know chinese culture better. 


Anyway, today I am going to introduce a new website, Learn Chinese with free lessons from BBC , well BBC learning series is all good quality, and I think that's the best learning a second language programme.  They have 10 short videos intorduced to learn a little bit vocabulary, grammar. They also have stuff for kids to learn, stuff for culture background, stuff for writing and etc.  So I am trying to do is to give you variety of websites for you to choose and see what others explain and teach you.  It gives more tools to try which one suits you best. 


I will say learning chinese series  is now stop.  My next article I will try to write something more different and more interesting. 


Kai

Introducing Taiwan (I) Knowing Taiwan from Podcast!!

Today, I would like to introduce two interesting podcast related to Taiwanese culture.  I would like to give u a little bit cultural background for the people living in Taiwan now. 


The first Podcast is called "What's up in Taiwan", and it's produced by Kuang-Chong Yu. Right now he is living Taiwan.  He is actually a very famous music producer in Taiwan. He came up with this idea is back to 2007, he said that " One day I watched a foreigner being interveiwed by a television news reporter while exiting customs in CKS Airport; she said she couldn’t find any tourism information about Taiwan in all of the traveling agencies in her country. That’s when I came up with the idea of doing this podcast, I like to introduce this interesting island, especially from a foreigner's perspective".


So there are totally 21 Episodes, and in each episodes, they interview travellers in Taiwan from different backgrounds, might be a students who wants to learn how to speak in Chinese, or a business man has business in Taiwan, they all share their lifes and struggles in that episodes. Even though they already stop interviewing new people,  it's great tool for you to get to know an insight view of Taiwan.  All episode you can find on itune or from their website.   


The second Podcast is hosted by a linguistic student in Taiwan,  He is doing his Phd study right now.  In his profile picture, he looks like an American to me or from Australia, anyway, he is not Asian that's for sure.  I believe his mother language is in English, just happen to him that he is really interested in learning a new language.  He is mainly in Chinese Mandarin. 

His podcast called " Forever a student" (I guess he has been a student for a long long time) and right now he is in Taiwan and he has this blog " Forever a student".  Even though in his podcast, he only has 8 episodes, and mainly is introducing learning a simple language or a difficult language, (Well, in his opinion, he thinks Mandarin is a difficult language but you can of course listen to his explanation).


In his blog, there are more stuff you can see, he shares his learning journey of learning in Mandarin, and it's fab to see this from a linguistic student website, I think that will really helps you guys learning in Mandarin. 

Introducing China(II)_Are you interested in having business in China?

Today I want to introduce a podcase is for people who want to have businesses in China. It's called AisaBizBlog from Rich Kuslan, you can download in itune or you can visit his website. In his blog, he talks discusses " vital business, legal and cultural issues that affect your business in Asia, with a speical focus in China".  There are 41 episodes disscuessed that pretty much can give you "some idea" about having business over there. 


Rich Kuslan is an American, he is a white guy from New York and he is a laywer, I think he has an office somewhere in NY.  According to his blog, he seems have lots of experiences in China and Taiwan. He also speaks in Japanese too.  I guess he is quite familiar with Asian country.  Unforunately, his blog has not been updated for quite a while, and I also joined his tweeter but he seems not using it for a long time.  However, I think his podcast is still worth to listen and so does his blog.  Please do visit and use is podcast as a source if you are interested in China.

Introduing China (I)_I want to see China!!

Today I am gonna introducing one podcast is about his experiences of living in China.  This podcast called, old world/new world couple, life in Shanghai China.  I don't know what is the host name, I guess I will call him Mr. old world, you can download his podcast on itune. Unfortunately, he has no website available so I cant give you his link. 

This guy moved from Buenos Aires to Shanghai China in 2009, in his podcast he gives detailed life of living in Shanghai from picking up in airport, health issue, destination, culture, food, impression and etc. Anthing you can think.  He total has 135 episodes recorded so far. 

Learning Chinese for Beginners_Lesson 7_How are you ? and what is your name?

In this lesson, I would like to give you guys more vocabulary this time, the vedio I am using is from World Learner Chinese, they have 4 podcast in itune and 3 vedio on youtube now but most of the learning materials are quite old like about 3 years ago.  I like thier sites especially about the forum but their last post is 3 years ago so that means basically no body is using that site anymore. 


First Vedio : It's a little bit long, but most of the time spend on explaining the vocabulary. 

Second Vedio: how you said that what is your name in Chinese?

Question:

1. How to say Good Morning in Chinese?

2. How to say Good afternoon in Chinese?

3. How to say Good night in Chinese?

4. How to say " what's your name in Chinese" and how to answer it?

5. How to say " Nice to meet you in Chinese"

6.  Is there another way to say Good Morning in chinese?

Anwers all these 6 questions in the comment I can offer you 15 min free skype Chinese lesson.  I can check your pronunce and practice the conversation or basically you can ask any questions related to learning Chinese, please take chances and hurry up answer all the questions. 

Learning Chinese for beginners_Introducing one website_Emory College Language Center

Just let you know that there are some websites that I won't introduce to you.

1. The wesbite I PERSONALLY won't use to learn in Chinese if I were a self  learner. 

2.  There are tons of chinese learning websites, I ONLY introude you the sites that are accurate, clear and full of learning materials.  I dont like waste of everybody's time. 

3.  I only introudce you Free sites.  If it's not free, I probablly won't include in my learning material.  My theory is that there are plenty of good and free learning material online, why not use it first and wait untill YOU are 100% sure, you love Chinese this language, then invest yourself for improving this language.  Part of the reason I say that is because that's the way I learn a language.  I always join a free course or use a free material if I can, then untill I learn a period of time, I 100% sure I like that language then I go purchase more materials. 


4. THEY MUST BE INTERESTING. I THINK THAT'S THE KEY.



Here I want to introduce 3 apps from Emory College of learning in Chinese.  All 3 apps are from iTune U.  I want everybody to do some revisions from those 3 apps. 

1.  go iTune U and type Emory College Language Center Mandarin Chinese-Pinyin.  There are 5 episodes. 

2. Emory College Language Center Mandarin Chinese-Numbers. Emory college is very fouced on Chinese characters learning. They don't teach separately, pinyin and chinese characters.  So in this learning numbers app, you can see what the chinese characters are.  It's short, and I just want you to have a sense of chinese characters.  For example, how to write one in chinese character.


3. Emory College Lanuguage Center-Mandarin Chinese-Radicals.  There are total 41 episodes.  It's very short, and this app is OPTIONAL, it's for those who are interested in learning writing chinese characters.  For example, if you want to learn how to write "woman" in chinese character.  Or you want to learn " rain" in chinese character.  I mean you will be amazed how different compared to characters in English.  However, I dont want you to be overwhelmed.  Just take easy, step by step.  Actually, it's very beautiful.  I love our chinese characters. 

Learning Chinese for begginer_Lesson 6 Numbers

I assume that everyone can tell what learning strategies that I am using is that in each lesson I will bring a different tool from different sites or companies or materials for you guys.  I will find all those currently produce learning chinese language companies, and you guys decide which one is best for you.  So far I havent got any money from any websites that I introduced.  I dont know in the future I will want to earn money from this blog I am wrting or not, but so far is not. 


Today, I want to introudce a website that I found it from iTune U.  If you have ipad or iphone, please download their course, its free. Its called Beginners' Chinese-Audio from The Open University.  In each audio, it's not long, between 1min-3min.  In each lesson, they all have transcript. I think that is really important for a self chinese learner. I am also welcome EVERYONE asking me questions regarding any of the webites that I already introduced, you have questions when you read their transcript or you dont understand how their explaination, please don't be hesitate to ask me. 


The Open University has lots of free courses, its worth to have a look, and in their language courses, there are other languages to learn instead of just chinese learning.  The Open University is from UK, and its mainly for distance learning and adult education.  Please do use this free resource online.

Unforunately, they don't put their audio on thier website so I can't show you the sample of learning Numbers in Chinese, so I will use youtube instead, Leaning Numbers from one to ten.

1. I want each of you to memorize it and speak very fluently (means talking in a fast speed without making any mistakes).

2. I also want you guys to memorize the pinyin from one to ten.

 

Learning Chinese for Begginer_Lesson 5_GreetingsII

So far I still open the first 5 people for a free skype chinese lesson, each lesson for 15 min, if you are a self learner and want to find a native Chinese speaker to correct your pronounciation. So please take the chance.


In today's lesson, I want to teach everyone how to introduce themselves, please listen to this  MP3 below:

Greetings II

(This Podcast is from Chineselearnonline Lesson 2 Greetings, please open their page for more learning material and also you can download their free podcast from iphone, it's free)

Every lesson, they have Vocabulary, Complete, Notes, Hints and Tips for you to learn. 

Vocabulary :

i.e. nǐ hǎo
hǎo
nǐ hǎo ma?
wǒ hěn hǎo
nǐ
wǒ
tā
tā hǎo ma?
tā hěn hǎo


Complete :

This is a very good material for you guys to learn.  Every lesson they have 3 kinds of transcript, 1 pinyin transcript, 2 simplified Chinese transcript, 3 Traditional transcript. 

I want everybody to listen to this Podcast without transcript, and then the second time listen to this Podcast with the pinyin transcript, if you want to challenge yourself you can choose either traditional chinese or simplified chinese to read while listening.  This is a very good practice and I want everybody do that for homework. 


Notes :

"Greetings:

Nǐ hǎo

The literal translation is "you good". Many adjectives in Chinese also function as verbs. So here, "good" also functions as "to be good".

Hǎo

Nǐ hǎo ma?

This is asked more seriously than in English, where we casually ask "how are you?" It is usually asked of people you haven’t seen for a long time.

Wǒ hěn hǎo

The hěn has a lighter meaning than "very" in English, so here, hěn hǎo could mean "pretty good." ©2009 www.chineselearnonline.com Lesson 2 Vocabulary & Notes Page 4/4

Pronoun summary:

Nǐ Wǒ Tā

Note: while the pronunciation of tā for he and she is the same, when written there are separate characters for he (他) and she(她).

Tāhǎ ma?

Tāhě hǎ

Xièxie

Xièxie nǐ

Note: When the same character is repeated as in the above example, the second one frequently adopts a neutral tone

Zàijiàn

The literal meaning is "again meet" or see you again (later)

Culture Note: When greeting someone in China, it is common to bow your head. For formal occasions, they will also shake hands as in the West. When businessmen meet it is obligatory to exchange business cards. "


( I copy and paste for this section from their learning material, it's free to download it for everyone, so please do so cus that help a lot for your learning)


Hints and Tips

"Make a list of all the reasons you have for wanting to learn Chinese. Perhaps you could

structure this list into what good things will happen to you if you were able to speak

Chinese. Imagine yourself in that situation - having reached your goals. What would it

feel like? Now make a list of what would happen if you didn’t reach those goals. What

would it be like to be in the same situation but not knowing how to speak Chinese? From

time to time when you get frustrated in your learning attempts (a point we all get to at

some stage), come back to this list for motivation." from Chineselearnonline