My summer vacation and other matters

Let me tell you about a few interesting movies.

Wild is a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. It is based on the true story of a woman, Cheryl Strayed, who had many troubles in her life and decided to walk the Pacific Crest Trail to find peace with herself. The Pacific Crest Trail is more than 1000 miles long, and she took about three months to walk it. The walk includes a desert, mountains, and forests, and she came across rattlesnakes and other animals.

Attack on Titan is a Japanese action movie about people living in a city that has been walled off to protect the people against giants who eat them. I saw the first part, and I believe the second part is playing now.

Ant-Man is very funny and very exciting!
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My summer vacation and other matters

The summer vacation began in the 2nd week of August and finished yesterday. It sounds like a long time, but there were many things to do. At my university, we had many meetings the first two weeks of the holiday, and we also had an English Camp for two weeks at the end of August and the beginning of September. There was also a conference at KGU and then I had another conference in Osaka. In the end, I only had two days of real holiday.

Anyway, I managed to see some movies and get a lot of work done, so I feel pretty good about the holiday overall. In particular, I enjoyed the conference in Osaka. It was held in the new Osaka-Ibaraki campus of Ritsumeikan University, which is very attractive and has good facilities. I also found time to see the first Attack on Titan movie in Osaka Station City. It was quite an interesting movie.
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Welcome to the new semester!

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Writing IV! Writing IV will be similar in some ways to Writing III but different in another way. First, the similarities:

• We will continue to write on our blogs.
• In particular, we will continue doing Juppun ha Juubun.
• We will continue to do some reading and write book reviews.
• I'd like you to continue to write diary-type posts whenever possible.

It will be different in one major way:

• While continuing to emphasize writing fluently and in reasonably large quantity, we will focus more on accuracy. (That means that several people who got a high score in Writing III will get a much lower score in Writing IV, unless they make a great effort to improve their accuracy.) We will do this mainly through the use of writing models. You will use the models to find words, phrases, and sentences that you can use in your own short essays.

A general piece of advice:

• The 2nd semester has a few interruptions, especially the campus festival and the winter holiday. Every year, several students lose their way during those times, some getting a low passing score and some failing. Please be aware of those dangers. I suggest that you write a lot of diary posts and book reviews in September and October to cover any missed classes or assignments later in the semester!

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