I was a discussion leader in the conversation class, and my topic is “Child Abuse”. Child abuse is a big problem in the world. There are cases of child abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and other forms of maltreatment. The U.S Department of Health and Human, services report that for each year between 2000 and 2005, “female parents acting alone” were most likely to be perpetrators of child abuse. I agree with this report because single mothers have a lot of stress. Japanese child guidance centers throughout the country recognized and took action in a record 59,862cases of child abuse during 2011. Sometimes, I saw child abuse news, and the parents killed their children. I feel sad every time I saw it. Why do abusers abuse their children? I think they were abused by their parents, so they don’t know how to love the children. Therefore, children didn’t notice it, so their people around them must help their children. However, it is difficult that we judge a beginning of abuse, because each parent is different to educate their children. I will judge it if I saw many bruises on their body, or they show me S.O.S signs. I think we should take abuse education more and more. School is not only to study but also to learn society. Children lack social education, so when they grew up, they make big mistakes, such as abuse. I can’t understand abusers’ feeling because I don’t have children. However, we have to help children, and stop the abusers. The topic is difficult, so I think about it deeply.
I went on a totally amazing Southwest trip with my classmates. The trip was my first time to go to the Southwest so everything was new to me. Sarah, Anikke and Bethany came with us. They made our trip more exciting. I’m happy I could go on this trip with them and I had a lot of great experiences. First, I really enjoyed New Mexico. It was chilly but not too cold. I went to the Old Town in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I liked the Old Town because there are many cute things and good restaurants in there. For example, I found a gate that was decorated with a lot of red chili peppers. I had never seen anything like that before so I was very surprised and it looked like a lot of flowers from a distance. The red chili peppers were absolutely gorgeous. Not only that, I found a great restaurant. I forgot the name of the restaurant but they have really delicious Mexican food. They gave me some Mexican chips for free and recommended that I eat the chips with honey. I really like Mexican chip