Hey!

I’m Leticia Yim and I am a freshman. I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. A fun fact about me is that I love to travel even though I have motion sickness. Over this summer, I traveled to Sydney, Australia for a week and this is a photo of me in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In the past, I have been to a couple of countries including, China and Japan.

I am interested in East Asian Languages and Societies because my parents and relatives are all from China so I have been exposed to Chinese culture my whole life. I want to learn more about how this culture has transformed throughout history. I’ve also been studying Mandarin for the past 10 years so I want to learn how people in China developed such a complex language and how it differs from Cantonese. This class sparks interest for me because I also want to learn more about how China, Japan, and Korea became the country they are today.

The main topic that has intrigued me the most would be how similar Kanji and Chinese characters are. It was interesting to see how the Japanese used Chinese characters, changed it to make it simpler to write, and turned it into a whole new writing system. It was also interesting to see how most Kanji characters have multiple meanings to it, including the original Chinese definition. I personally think the teaching method of this course is good for me because all the topics for each country are spread out and it’s not crammed into one lecture class. Like for example, the information for the writing systems was separated by three lectures by country. This made it easier for me because each class was only focused on one topic for one country. My approach to learning in every course, including this one, is to take it slow because it takes time for me to process what I’m learning. Sometimes the lectures can give a lot of information so I need to take it one topic at a time because if I don’t, it can get overwhelming and stressful. I think this class doesn’t challenge me to change how I think because I am full Chinese so I am open-minded about others who are coming from, not only the East Asian backgrounds, but also the others as well.