Penshurst

We live in Penshurst suburb, which is located quite close to King Georges road and Hurstville CBD. Although it is not very famous, it is a pretty nice place to live in. If you walk through the penshurst street, the main road of the suburb, you will definitely enjoy the beautiful environment. Many trees grow up quite well and you even can smell the flowers’ flavor. As many other suburbs, the railway station is in the centre of the suburb. You can go to city by train in only 35 minutes. Or, you can select to take bus to other area, such as Bankstown or Rockdale. When you drive through King Georges road, you can find Hurstville Athletic Centre, you can play tennis, basketball, or swimming. Local council spent a lot money on these kinds of public facilities and they make our live more interesting and more convenient. Thanks for our local council provide us a very good community services.
The most important factor for us is that there are three or more public schools in Penshurst. The reason is we have two gorges daughters and they will enroll in local public school in three or four years. Nowadays, they are still study in local child care, Southern Cross Child Care. All teacher are very nice and patient, sometimes they are even better than us. All in all, it is very hard to summarize all our feelings in only couples of sentences. Anyway, we all definitely enjoy our living in Penshurst.

What's a bad day

The day began terribly. My alarm went off and I left the house with only 1 hour to spare before my English class was started.

I got up quickly and spent 10 minutes to wash up and have breakfast, then went to class.when I got to bus station after 5 minutes walk, the bus had gone away.At that moment, it began raining.I wanted to drive to school. So I walked home in rain, unfortunately,I fell down the stares nearby my house and my left foot was broken so that I could hardly move. I tried to ring to my husband ,but my mobile phone was lost. I felt so depressed. Suddenly, my neighbor, Joe, who is very warmhearted, appeared, and he helped me move to my house and lie down on the bed. Then he rang to my husband and my teacher to tell them all what happened.

That was my bad day last week!

My reaction to Annabel's story

When I listened to Annabel's story, I couldn't help to having two thoughts.

First one is I am so lucky and I have never lived on one place where a war happened, and I could be free in my country as a female.

The second thought is that Annabel is a respected girl. Although she was a new immigrant when she was in year 9, she still could achieve great mark quickly, and went on to further study at university.

I have to think of myself. I had studied English for ten years as my second language when I lived in China. Moreover I have high qualification and good working experience which are transferable. So I absolutely believe that so long as I study English hard and I will have a good future in Australia.

My favorite sculpture

It has been one week since we went on our excursion to Bondi beach for Sculpture by the sea last Tuesday. Some sculptures I have already forgotten, but some sculptures always appear on my brain. The sculpture shown on the left photo is the most special sculpture in my memory and it is my favorite sculpture.

I like this sculpture very much because of the following reasons. Firstly, the artist chose the right material with excellent skills and design, which makes the sculpture look like two very real eyes. Secondly, the sculpture matches the environment quiet well . These two sculptures were put on a big rock, inside a natural whole or niche, which makes the whole rock look like a person’s face from any direction. Last but not list is that this sculpture has a good position, in front of the sea; it is only the sea which is stretched as far as the eye can see. Because the rock has formed special lines after being attacked by waves and the wind for thousand of years , in my opinion, the rock with the sculpture looks like a man who has experienced many vicissitudes of life and become wise and farsighted. So I love it!

In conclusion, Sculpture by the sea is a good art exhibition, these sculptures amaze every visitor. I am looking forward to the next Sculpture by the sea in 2010.

Margarita Sampson

The name of this sculpture is Margarita Sampson and it was made by Fiona Hall. The sculpture is mainly black and decorated by red dots. The artist used crochet to construct these organic shapes out of a mix of recycled wool, armature wire and a box of old videotapes.

The sculpture hung above the cliffs, which matches the environment quite well. In my opinion, it is a typical abstract sculpture, and different people have different imagination. When I looked at the sculpture on my excursion,I thought it looked like a bird which was locked under the cliff and it couldn't fly and couldn't move. Because of its shape and colour, it reminded me of a tragic story that my grandmother told me when I was a child. It was about two dead persons that lived in their own ghostly world. When I listened to the story first, I felt so sad and confused. I didn't know why it was so difficult that these dead people wanted to get freedom from their boss who was the owner of hell.

However, the sculpture is soft and hangs from the cliff, so it is very difficult for the public to interact with it. From my point of view, the artist just wants to say that making life is a pretty difficult process for any living beings. After a long term struggling with nature, some beings continue to live but some others don't. It's the law of the strongest.

Excursion To Bondi Beach

Make a Smilebox slideshow

My class went on another excursion to Bondi beach to see an exhibition, Sculpture By the Sea, on Tuesday 10th November. I got up very early and dropped my two daughters off at their childcare at 8:30. When I got to Kogarah railway station, most of my classmates had been there for a while. We departed at 9:16am on time as we had arranged.

The first stop was Bondi Juction where we transferred to a bus . Because the bus can only use pre-paid tickets, we had to buy the ticket from a bus ticket machine, which made everyone feel it was quite interesting. It was the first time any of us had bought bus tickets from a vending machine.

We arrived at Bondi beach at 10:15am and started our excursion. We walked along the way from Bondi beach to Tamarama beach. In total there were around 100 art works. Two of my classmates, Anna and Jin and I formed a group. We found sculpture no.5 , which was my assignment, quickly. They took photos for me. We were shocked by the sculptures and the natural views on the beach. We enjoyed the beautiful environment. After a while, we arrived at a flat area on top of the hilll, where there were a lot of sculptures . We looked at these works and took photos of each other happily.We took the opportunity to practise our oral English. But it was a real pity that I missed the first sculpture, Alchemy, which is made by Lucy Humphrey and everyone told me was very beautiful. After lunch, around 12:30pm, we walked to the next stop.

Tamarama beach was the last stop. Because our group was the first group to be at this beach,a fter finishing our assignment,we had enough time to play on the beach. We walked around the beach and played in the ocean. We found some people were lying on the beach and enjoying the sunshine, some children were playing games and some teenagers were surfing. Time went so quickly it was time to leave.We took a bus to Bondi Junction and finished our excursion at 2:00pm.
Although I felt a little bit tired,I was attracted deeply by the art works and views, and I enjoyed myself and learned a lot from the excursion. I am looking forward to the next excursion with my teachers and classmates

A LETTER TO EDITOR

Dear sir,

Smoke Get in My Eyes

We are fed up with people like youself ,Joe, amokers.

Maybe,you contribute alot of money in taxes,however non-smoking protesters also pay a lot money to the goverment,But because of your smoking everywhere, we have equal rights to enjoy the fresh air,can't hardly enjoy that.

Secondly,you can't think that you pay money ,so you can destroy the enviroment.Meanwhile, it is harmful to your health and the health of others.Stop smoking for your own sake and the rest of us.

Your sincerly,

Non-smoking defenders:Jin &May

03/11/2009

Physical Punishment and Children

Traditionally, parents, in China, often punish their children physically. However, in my opinion, it is no good for our kids.
The first reason is that hitting children can be harmful for their personal development. I found some of the children who live around us look very shy. When they meet a stranger, they often hide behind someone. These kids have lost their confidence as their parents hit them often. As time goes on, they are quite fearful to contact some others and their IQ losses a little bit. Some of these kids gradually become negative and they like to quarrel with anybody around them on purpose.
The second reason is obviously physical damage. When loving parents get into angry moods and nearly loose control, their booming power might cause serious physical injuries for their kids, especially from fathers. But it is only the small tip of a huge iceberg. It is more serious that the brain of these poor kids might be damaged. Someone will possibly suffer the damage permanently. Even, we read news occasionally, that some kids might choose to commit suicide to avoid physical punishment.
Last but not least, physical punishment has no use for our children. After being physically punished for a long time, children might feel horrible and terrible when they met with their parents. These feelings can absolutely damage the relationship between their parents and them. Moreover, because these kids can not get enough care from their parents, they might do not trust anybody any more. Much more seriously, they try their best to make some trouble in order to make their parent angry.
All in all, it is something like a war, which is not a good choice for the whole world, for our education of our kids. Physical punishment is not a good choice either. It can only make things worse. What we need to do is to deal with our kids patiently. That is the only way we can make our kids future better.