Eager Response

When I checked my email this morning, I was slightly too excited to hear back from Mizue Kido. She was recommended to me by Suzanne and is going to be an amazing resource for me. She was born in Japan and her mother preformed tea ceremonies nearly every day. I'm eager to meet with her and immediately emailed her back trying to schedule a time.

Anyways, that's it for today!

It's Thursday so obviously I'm going to yoga tonight and guess who's coming with me..... +Molly Pritz!!!!!! Killing two WISE projects with one yoga session.

日本
Nippon
Japan

Emails, Emails, and More Emails

I kind of fell behind last week and forgot to email the community members that Suzanne had suggested.  Finally, though, I just sent about 9 emails to various people in the community, including local potters (as Ms. Lutter had suggested) and a Japanese native who moved here during her high school years.

I'm excited to actually start talking to people about my project and gaining first-person information. I also realized that I need to find someone who will be able to perform the tea ceremony for me. Hopefully after talking to many community members, I will get connections to someone who will be able to do that.

 Also, Japanese is really hard to learn. I don't know what I got myself into...

メール
Mēru
Email

First Mentor Meeting

I had my first mentor meeting with Ms. Lutter today. She gave me some good contact information and suggested that I contact local potters and ask if I could "shadow" them or just observe their studio. I think this is a great idea as it would help me gain some more knowledge about pottery outside of the classroom.

I also set a time frame for when I will be making my tea set. My goal is to start the teacups before Spring Break (March 29th). That way, I will have plenty of time to focus on the teapot, which I've heard is the hardest part.

Well, I'm off to go send emails!

陶器
Tōki
Pottery

Peer Review of Blogs

I read Luke's journal today and loved how enthusiastic he was about his project! He already set his goals for which songs he'd like to learn on the harmonica and who he will contact to help him with his project. I also like how he talked about why he decided to get into playing the harmonica and gave us some background information.

I also read Emma Denman's blog. I loved how she wrote really honestly and I could imagine her saying everything she wrote. It was fun to read because of her easy-going tone. Her project (to learn how to sew) seems awesome and I can't wait to see what her final products turn out to be!

That's it for today I think.. I've been using my "Human Japanese" app this week and continuing to read "Liquid Jade" for research.

More to come!

ジャーナル
Jānaru
Journal

Community Help

One of the community members helping me with my project is Suzanne from the East Asia Program Outreach at Cornell. She has recently contacted me and given me emails of numerous other people in the community that will be able to help me in the research portion of my project.

I plan on emailing all of these people tomorrow morning and hopefully meeting them either this weekend or next week!

I'm gonna keep this post short and sweet, and will update once I contact these community members.

研究
Kenkyū
Research

The Joys of Learning a Fourth Language

Ms. G gave me some great material today. One was a Japanese-English dictionary (which will definitely become useful as I get lost trying to learn the language). The other book was a study guide of Japanese language!

I'm really excited to start learning Japanese. Mrs. G also told me about a great App called "Human Japanese". It's an interactive learning app where you can actually hear and see the words as you learn them. Needless to say I've spent a good amount of time on the iPad tonight....

Yoga has been going great. Although I am a little sore today (my teacher really pushed on working on our hip flexors), I have decided to go on Thursdays as well! If any one of my lovely readers is interested in going, you are more than welcome to join me!

言語
Gengo
Language

Live in the Moment

I've spent this week reading a book I picked up at the public library. It's called "Liquid Jade" and is about the ancient history of tea. It's actually really good!

My yoga experience the other day was awesome. The teacher primarily talked about how we need to learn to be present in the moment and remain mellow. I loved that!

ヨガ
Yoga

Officially on my Own

I got exited from WISE today... Exciting!!!!! This week I am going to spend time researching, both online and reading books. I went to the public library over the weekend and found some great books about the Japanese tea ceremony that I want to get started on. I have also decided that I'm going to learn a bit of Japanese!

Tomorrow (and every Tuesday from now on) I am going to start going to Yoga classes through the Cornell Wellness Program. Yoga is related to my project because of the "zen" that it creates.... And I also just really want to start doing yoga.

I'm excited to be able to officially begin on my project and am welcoming any ideas from my readers on research materials!!

さようなら
Sayōnara
Goodbye

Two Week Outline

Hello to my 15 viewers!
Here is my plan for the next two weeks:

Wed. 2/6
Tomorrow will (probably!) be my very last day of WISE class :( I'm sad but very excited at the same time. I'm going to set a solid weekly meeting time with my mentor, Ms. Lutter. I know that we are meeting during second period but we just need to figure out which day of the week.

Thurs. 2/7
I'm going to meet with Suzanne from the East Asia Program Outreach and take a look at the lending library they have there. She is also going to set me up with some local people in the community for interviews and research possibilities.

Fri. 2/8 - Mon. 2/11
I'm going to hopefully meet with some people that Suzanne has connected me with. Some of these people include a local Japanese potter and a Japanese language teacher.

Tues. 2/12 - Fri. 2/15
Throughout next week, I'm going to meet with more people in the community and try and get all of my "raw data". I'm also going to refer back to my bibliography and watch the two documentaries that I found about the tea ceremony.

The next two weeks for me will be research, research, and more research! I'm excited to meet with all of the people that Suzanne is setting me up with and talk to them about their knowledge and experience with the Japanese tea ceremony.

XDXP,
Gossip Girl

Introductory Post

Dear Readers,
This is my first blog post of the semester, with many more to come. If you couldn't already tell by the oh-so-clever title of my blog which I definitely didn't search for and find on google, my WISE project has to do with tea. More specifically, Japanese tea. I'm going to be researching the Japanese tea ceremony and building a traditional tea set out of clay.

At first, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for my WISE project. I was in ceramics first semester and I loved it so much that I decided I wanted to base my project off of something ceramics related. I talked to Ms. Lutter about it and she gave me two ideas: make a tea set or make a bongo drum. I thought about doing the bongo drum but after I heard about a previous WISE student's experience with it, I decided to go with making a tea set.

By the end of the semester, I hope to have gathered enough information about the Japanese tea ceremony and implemented my learnings into the making of my tea set. I want the tea set to reflect on Japanese culture and look authentic. I need to keep myself motivated and stay on track during my project. I tend to procrastinate (a lot...) and that definitely won't get me anywhere this semester.

Overall, I'm really excited to get started on my project! Although, I will miss all of our WISE classes *tear* :(

XDXP,
Gossip Girl