What Are The Meanings Of The Following Sentences?

Richard, please explain the following sentences' meaning. These sentences are from "Mrs. Penn' Story" ,
part 1:
(1) Line 57, What is the meaning of women-folks ?
(2) Line 58, "He just dosen't look at things the way we do."
(3) Line 82, "You look at it well."
(4) Line 87, "And their fathers don't have half your means."
(5) Line 91, "She flung open the door to a tiny bedroom."
(6) Line 94, "Sarah Penn threw open another door."
part 2:
(1) Line 25, "If uou are through,"
(2) Line 49, "The barn doors rolled open."
(3) Line 57, "What on earth dose this mean, mother?"
(4) Line 79, "Before them stretched the fields."
(5) Line 87, "his vioce cracking,"
Thank you.

The Chinese New Years Celebration in the Bay Area

The Chinese New Year is a traditional time of celebration. It is the most important holiday season for Chinese, Vietnamese and some other Asian people. No Chinese person can ever forget the New Years Celebration.

In China and Vietnam the New Years season is celebrated for 15 days, like the Christmas season in the United States. There is no official Chinese New Years holiday in the United states. Chinese Americans need more time to celebrate New Years.

Three Bay Area cities are cooperating to expand the Chinese New Years Holiday Season. This year, Oakland began the celebration with a New Year festival on January 14th. This week San Francisco is hosting the Dragon Parade. Next week San Jose will end the holiday season with another Chinese New Years festival.

Bay Area cities are working together to recognize the needs of Chinese and Vietnamese Americans. Now everyone in the Bay Area has more time to enjoy the Chinese New Years celebrations.

Chinese New Year in The United States

Time is flying fast. Chinese New Year is coming again!

This year all the big holidays as Christmast and New Years are falling on weekends. People seem excited and celebrate bigger than the other years, because they have more time to go shopping and cook special meals for the New Years. People invite friends and relatives gather together to make more crowded.

Although Chinese people are living in America, but every year when the Chinese New Years are coming. They celebrate very big. They don't care about spending money for the organizations as parades, dragons and lions perform or firework. They want to keep their traditions and stay forever for the future generations.

Even their culture, they want to keep it, also. They opened scattered many Chinese schools with the tuitions are very cheap. The rich people who are willing to offer their money to the schools to make a fund for school using. Their goal is hope the culture will be eternal existence.

Their community always help each other. They're very united each other. They like to take pride. As we see, most the China Town grow everywhere in the world.

Anyway, Chinese New Year is a very big festival. We can say it expand through out the world and exit forever.

VISIT FAMILY

I was very interested befor I gone to Vietnam. My cousin took me go to airport station about
8pm January 15. The plane started flight 0h 05 am January16. The flight took 14 hours to go to
Taiwan. I was sleep on the plane. I went to Taiwan at 6am ( Taiwan time). I waited to change another plane about 2 hours. At 8am I flought to Vietnam. I went to Hanoi airport at 10.30 am.
I was so happy to see my parent and my brother in airport station. Two days later I went to visit my granmother. She live with my Uncle in the country. It is far about 200 miles from my
parent' house. Now, I stay at home with my parent. This Sunday is Vietnamese' New Year so I very busy. Tomorrow, I going to buy flowers to decorate the house.
I will write more stories next time.
I miss everyone in room 101 morning class.
THANH HOANG

My Opinion

I have studied English at this school for several years. My English is better than before, but I am weakest at listening and speaking. I think this is a problem for most adult immigrants especially those from Asia.
I want to talk to my neighbors and my classmates. When I ask a clerk who works in a hardware store for help, I don't know how to express my meaning. Specifically, when they answer or ask me some questions, I don't understand what they are talking about and it is embarrassing. I think it is because of not having enough practice in listening and speaking. I know many students in our school hope to fully participate in American society as soon as possible. So, I hope that our school and teachers will give us more practice in listening and speaking.

I am very glad that I study in the Advanced Low class now. Our teacher, Richard Blum, has arranged more listening, speaking and writing for our class.

My Hometown, Xiao Liu

Xiao Liu is my hometown in Guang Dong Province in China. There is a small river and there are many hills near Xiao Liu. It was a poor village. Only narrow winding paths went to my village. No large vehicles could get to this village. People had to carry everything they needed on their shoulders or on bicycles. The people of my village had a difficult life, but they were hard working.

People from Xiao Liu like to sing the Kerjia song. They cook special Kerjia food. There are many local customs and traditions Xiao Liu. I grew up in this place and I love it!

Now almost all of Xiao Liu’s young men and women go out to work in Guan Zhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Shen Zhen or other large cities. Only the old men and women still stay home.

I left Xiao Liu fifty seven years ago. Since then I went back four times. The last time I went back, there was a change for the better. New roads were built to our village. Now, cars and trucks can drive to my hometown. There are a lot of new houses.

Mei Fang

My Home Town, Oakland

United States. Many people say this is a bad city because there are gang fights, robberies and drug selling in some areas. I think this happens in other cities, also. I would rather look at the bright side.

Oakland is more than one hundred years old. It is the capital of Alameda County. There are many interesting historic buildings. One of them is the Oakland Museum. Lake Merritt is a good sight seeing are. Furthermore, the city has a wonderful transportation system includes BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the Bay Bridge, the Port of Oakland and the Oakland International Airport.

I think that not too many cities can compare favorably with Oakland.

I live close to our school. I enjoy living right here because of its convenience. There are many different kinds of shops and restaurants that you can choose from. That is why I am content with my new hometown.

My hometown- Taishan

My hometown is Taishan City in Guangdong province of China. My hometown has beautiful beaches and hills. One of the beaches is on Shang Chun Island. In the summer, a lot of tourists visit the beach. The beach is public property. Everybody can swim or surf at the beach. There is a restaurant near the beach. The restaurant has delicious seafood. There is also a spa. All the food is inexpensive.

People can hike up the hills and see beautiful trees and flowers there. People can walk on the beach or climb up a hill to see the sunrise.

In the city center, there are a lot of stores and supermarkets. It's very convenient to buy clothes or food. The clothes are inexpensive and nice. The food is fresh and delicious.

Many people who were born and grew up in my hometown have moved to different countries. Some of them ended up living in The United State and some are living in Canada or Australia. Many live in other foreign countries. My hometown is sometimes known as "the city of the overseas Chinese."

The United States of America

The United States is one of the richest coutries in the world. The United States has a high civilization.

The United States is the 3rd bigest countries in the world. It's a diverse country. There are a lot of different kinds of people that moved from other coutries to here with the goal of making their life better. Some people came here to study.

There are 50 states in The United States. Every state has a different kind of weather and character. Let me descibe some of them.

Florida always has hot weather. People can plant special fruit like jack fruit,Vietnamese kiwi, longan, guava, green mango.

Minesota has snow in the winter. In the winter the snow covers the road. It looks beautiful. In the summertime it is terribly hot.

Oh! Talking about Hawaii, most people know it has a very nice climate. There are four main islands in Hawaii. Honolulu is on one of the islands. I went there last year. There are beautiful beaches in Honolulu. Some people told me that they like to visit Hawaii because Hawaiians treat the travellers like a "King." That is very true!

The United States is a dream country so that many people want to settle here for a better future.

My Home Town

Saigon is my home town. I lived in Saigon for the first 24 years of my life. I escaped from Vietnam in 1987.

Saigon is a trading center. It is one of the busiest cities of Vietnam. Saigon is always crowded with people walking around.

There are two seasons in Saigon-wet and dry. It has a very nice climate.

Talking about Saigon reminds me about the famous market named "Ben Thanh." There are a lot of yummy kinds of food and delicious desserts. Let me name a few: rice cake with special sauce; three colors of beans served with coconut juice; ice cream inside a fresh coconut shell. Oh! I crave the food over there very much!

In my home town, the neighbors are nosy. They like to meet and gossip about each other. They're very frendly.

After 12 years I went back to my home town. My home town had changed. It wasn't familiar to me. It was not like before when I lived there.

Hawaii

We got up early on the 10th of January. As we started our trip to visit Kauai in Hawaii, we felt excited and smiled all the time.

On the first day of our trip, we arrived in Kauai after 6 hours of flight. I felt hot once we got there .

It was sunny and hot in Kauai. We saw almost everybody was wearing T-shirts in the airport. We picked up our luggage and rented a car. We drove and looked at the map to find out how to get to our hotel. The road was curvier than in Oakland, and we saw some wild chickens walking on the road side. I looked through outside the car window, and I could see that there were beautiful beaches on our way to the hotel. the beaches are all public property. After that, I also could see that there were waterfalls in the hills. Kauai has a lot of trees beside the roads, too.

We got to the hotel after about 30 minutes. It was great that there was a big beach in the back of the hotel. We saw the sunrise at the beach. The beach had beautiful blue waters. We saw beautiful hills, beaches, canyons and trees on our helicopter flight.

Kauai is really a beautiful island. Here is a picture of Kauai.

Difficult to Learn at The First Time

When I first learned to cut hair. I had to practice on a doll. I just cut her hair little by little each time. After the third semester, I started to practice on the people's hair. I really liked it because I could see the styles. I was very satisfied with what I have done, because I didn't know better.

Finally I got a license and then I went to work. It was a challenge for me. Everyday I met many customers and they had differrent kinds of hair. I didn't always do a good job. Sometimes, I felt frustrated because I didn't have enough experience. I couldn't always make the custormers very happy with my work.

I needed to improve my skills. I became a helper in a salon. I helped my boss to do colors, perms, shampoos or whatever she needed. I tried to do very good job. I paid attention to what she did. I was loyal worker so that she showed me and gave me many chances for cuting customers' hair.

The saying "experience is the best teacher" is indeed right!

Gradually, I became an expert hair dresser. And now I 'm a professional hair dresser.

Trip to Vietnam

This Sunday I will go to Vietnam.

My cousin will take me to the airport around 7 p.m.

I will stay in Vietnam for a month.

I will read the Room 101 Blog while I am in Vietnam. Please write interesting stories. I will write some stories from Vietnam. Send me questions and I will try to answer them.

Thanks, I will come back on February 19.

See you guys then!