This is an Asian market that I found while walking my parents around and outside campus, it is on 11th Ave. The sign reads “Ya Zhou Long” and on the top in English it simply says “Eugene Asian Market”. When deciding where to find characters in Eugene, an Asian market immediately came to mind, as in one of our first lectures, the fact that there are many Asian markets in Eugene came up, from there I found the closest one to me which I had already known about since as stated before, I had walked passed it with my parents.

This is a picture of a Korean Presbyterian church in Eugene. This church is on Taney Street, near Malabon Elementary School. I think the sign is written in both Korean and English to make visitors of different cultures welcome. Even if you are not Korean, you could feel comfortable entering this church knowing that it is not exclusive. On the other hand, if you are a Korean person in Eugene, you could take comfort in knowing that there is a place of worship that welcomes you. Because the church was not open, I wasn’t able to go inside, but I looked at the church online to see if there were any more pictures.

This one depicts a beautiful arrangement of fruits, vegetables, and flowers laying at the alter inside the church. While I am not completely sure the occasion that this arrangement was made for, Presbyterians will place flowers in honor of a person or for special occasions like Easter.

So far, I have only been taking notes in a notebook in class instead of on a laptop. I think this has helped me focus and remember the class content. The only times that lecture is not clear is when Professor Idemaru goes really fast and I’m not able to write down everything on the slides. This is hard because with some of the more difficult content I need to write down all of the details and bullet points, but they go by too fast.

-Audrey Andrews

1.)

a.)

b.) This photograph was taken at 1930 Franklin Blvd right outside the Cafe Seoul Korean Restaurant.

c.) This is an interesting sign because it’s an example of Hangul’s western influence. The Hangul means (and reads)  “Restaurant” and is borrowed from the English language. We learned about loanwords in class and how it comprises of 3% of the Korean language and has been adopted into Hangul since 1945.

2.) 

a.) One thing that has stood out to me so far is the fact that Hangul is an SOV language whereas English is an SVO language. Being surrounded by Hangul growing up (and not being a native speaker), I had not noticed this to be the case, but it makes so much sense.

I think the biggest challenge for me so far has been understanding grammatical jargon and associating them with different East Asian languages like “agglutinative” or “inflectional” language.

I feel like I learn the most when I run through the slides on my own time so I can go at my own pace and digest the material.

Hello, everyone. I am Nan Li. I am a transferred student from China. My major is Business and a minor in Japanese. I am really interested in reading some detective novels and collecting models. My favorite author is Higashino Keigo (Chinese character is 东野圭吾), his books let me feel powerful, especially for the results of a story, you could not imagine what will happen on the last. So, I decided to study Japanese and hope that I can read the novels in Japanese. Except that, I really like animals. I have a black cat in my apartment, he is a boy and his character like a dog. The name of my cat is cat egg (Chinese character is 猫蛋). He really enjoys observing people’s behavior and emotions and so smart. I enjoy time with my cat.

So far, I really like studying this class. I feel interested that different cultures, customs, writing systems from different countries. I think the most important one for me is summarizing the notes after class and remember what let me confuse, and then find the answer. In my opinion, this class is fun and a litter challenge for me, before I did not know the difference between the writing systems from Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Even though they have Chinese characters, the meaning is also different. But I can try my best to study it.

Hello everyone, my name is Blanca Ding and my Chinese name is Yiru Ding. I come from China and I am a sophomore majoring in education. I am very interested in Japanese and I am struggling to explore it.

After entering the sophomore year, I clearly felt that the pace of college life began to change. Maybe because I lived in the dormitory in my freshman year, I could only feel the convenience and relaxed daily life. But sophomore life may have obvious differences, I am looking forward to.

I have two cats. They are my family. I need to give my mother a reason before I choose to adopt them. My reason was simple: I needed a few living creatures in my house. Last holiday I brought them back to my country to take them out to play, and to my surprise, I was worried that they would vomit and defecate on a long flight. But they didn’t. Instead, I got airsick at first.

The reason why I choose this course is that I am studying Japanese and I am very interested in the traditional culture of Japan and Korea. My favorite Japanese director is 是枝裕和である, and I like his storytelling and presentation. I just want to know more about the culture of the country I am interested in, which will help me to watch movies and read books.

大家好！

My name is Rooke (林如琦).  I’m a freshman at the University of Oregon planning to major in Chinese.  I started learning this language my junior year of high school when I traveled to Taiwan as a foreign exchange student.  Living with host families and making friends through school and Chinese class, I started to explore more of what the country had to offer.  I toured the city nearly

One of my host families and I on the top of a mountain.

everyday, finding new places to eat and shop.  After returning home for my senior year of high school, I decided that I wanted to continue to study Chinese and language.  I am excited to be taking the EALL209 class and I already really enjoy what we’re starting to learn.  Some of my goals for the near future include developing my Chinese fluency and further exploring Asian culture so that I am able to talk and relate more with my Taiwanese family and friends.  I would love to revisit this part of the world after learning so much more about it!

Hi class!

My name is Audrey, nice to meet you! I am a sophomore here at the UO, and one thing I value are my jobs. They are both very important and enriching for me, as I get to work with kids and new college students. As a City of Eugene Parks and Rec employee, I have the opportunity to spend time with middle school students at an after school program called “BEST”. As a First Year Interest Group Assistant, I get to be a part of freshmen’s first term in their new college! Both jobs are exciting in different ways. Below is a picture of me and all the other FAs at the end of an eight hour training we had a couple weeks ago. The picture is small, but I’m in the top row on the left!

The reason why I am interested in Eastern Asian languages and societies is because I know nothing about it! Growing up in the North American public school system, I was taught all about American and European history and culture. I never got the chance to learn about anywhere in Asia, let alone Eastern Asia. I am very excited to be in this class because it’s a chance to learn something I never have before, and from what I’ve already learned from our three classes, I am thrilled for the rest of the term!

So far, I like the structure of the course, however I struggle a little bit with the differences between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean because I have never studied these languages before. Looking at the differences between them has been a little confusing to me because of my lack of experience. I like the way Professor Idemaru teaches because she checks for understanding with the iClickers. This works with my own learning approach because I like to quiz myself and check for my own understanding. So far this class has not really changed how I study, but I do appreciate the reading quizzes because they encourage me to keep up with the reading assignments.

Hello everyone, My name is Sakura Yoshida but people call me Sakky for short. I’m from Seattle Washington and this is my first year at UO. I was born in Untied States but both of my parents are from Japan so I have been speaking Japanese through out my whole life. I’m interested in learning about the East Asian languages and societies because I have grown up speaking Japanese at home and wanted to learn about things I don’t know yet. I’m also interested in leaning about the cultural differences between Japan, China and Korea. I have not decided what to major in but is really interested in majoring in Japanese so I’m really excited to take this class.

I have not come across any questions at this time as it’s pretty straight forward on CANVAS and in class. I would describe this teaching method of this class as interactive (in class) and self reflecting (reading quiz).  I describe my learning approach as organized and study my notes. In this course I have been doing that, but it is hard because of all the traveling. It is challenging at times because I only know Japanese so Korean and Mandarin is hard.  I prepare my self by been proactive in my learning and showing up and listening to the class as much as possible.

I play on the women’s soccer team here in UO. The picture is my team after we scored a goal. Come check out our game if you guys are interested in soccer! We have many home game coming up against other great school in the Pac 12!

Hello everyone, my name is Raymond Pan and I am exploring student here at the University of Oregon in my first year of college. To answer where I am from is truly one of the most difficult questions to answer. I was originally born in New York in one of the Chinatowns there, and would then relocate to many states within the United States. As a baby, I’ve been to North Dakota, Alaska, and lastly California before I was shipped off to China with my aunt to live the village lifestyle with my grandparents. After those four years of being in China, I was then taken to live in the United States in Redding, California. Due to this, I am able to speak two languages which are English, Mandarin Chinese, as well as a dialect of Chinese native to the province of Fu Jian.

During the summer, I spent the whole four months working as a waiter at my parent’s restaurant. This is by no means a hobby of mine since no one wants to work ten and a half hours per day. However, from these experiences every summer, I was able to meet new people and improve upon my awkward communication skills a miniscule amount.

This will be my first time going to college and since I did not participate in Introduction which caused me to be super confused my first day here. I ended up meeting a new friend who introduced me around campus and answered one of my biggest questions; where is the nearest Chinese market. It’s important because I love Lao Gan Ma with rice.

I decided to take this course because of my interest in Asian culture, history, and also the relationship between the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese people and how them coming into contact with each other changed their society and languages.

Personally, I love the way this class is structured as it is so organized and makes information in this class easy to learn. At our dorms, we are to read the daily readings for the next day of class. Upon arrival for the next day of class the professor reviews that information with a lecture and provides us Iclicker questions and quizzes to access our knowledge retention. Since this is naturally the way I learn things, through repetition, I feel like this class will be interesting and is for the benefit of our learning career.

Me being the antisocial, awkward person I am, I do not have a lot of hobbies besides being a certified nerd and dog lover.