Speech contest

Today, the Bekka Japanese language program organized a speech contest for the international students of the Bekka program as well as other international students who are currently studying at Tokai University.

There could only be one person selected to represent class 3 and 4, so yesterday, everyone presented their speeches in class in front of everyone... and I was selected to participate in the official speech contest that would take place the next day. (today)

I've done many speeches in class and I've even participated in a Japanese speech contest already, back in Canada. And ever since I was young, my mom had me read the lectures or prayers at church in front of everyone. So talking in a mike in front of a crowd isn't that big a deal for me now.

However, that doesn't mean I wasn't nervous. I was scared of two things: 1) going completely blank during my speech. It happens to everyone. You're talking and then all of a sudden your mind goes blank and you can't remember what you were talking about. 2) I was scared of going over the time limit. If we talked for more than 5 min, we automatically had points deducted.

Fortunately, none of those things happened. I did stumble a bit on a few words, as you'll see in the video below that I've posted. And personally, I don't think it was the best presentation I did (I think my presentation in class was better). But other than that, it went fairly smoothly. And... drumroll... I got second place! I received a nice certificate and a bookstore giftcard worth about 100$. I don't think I'll use it all before I leave so I'll probably end up giving it to my brother for when he comes in three years.

The 1st place winner was a Korean, who has already entered university. He's probably been here a few years now so I don't feel bad losing to him. And my teacher said that in her mind, I was the winner, so I can live with that : ) I was glad just to participate.

So here is the video of my speech. Enjoy!

For those who don't understand Japanese, here's a little summary in English:

Everyone has had the misfortune of losing something at one time or another in their life. For example, their cellphone, car keys, or wallet. But those things are fairly easy to replace. However, there are some things you can't replace. For example, my mother suffered from a very rare disease and had to have both legs amputated just below the knees. She was a very active person and being unable to do the sports or activities she used to do was quite hard to accept. Because having legs is normal to us, we live without really being aware of what we have. But if something happens and we lose our legs for some reason, only then do we realize how important our legs are.
Of course, nobody in the audience is losing their legs right now. But there is something that you are losing right now and you're not even aware of it. And that's the planet Earth. Due to human activity, natural habitats are being destroyed, greenhouse gases are being emitted, and the planet Earth that we know is slowly dying. But when will we become aware of that? When we'll only be able to say : "Why didn't we do something earlier to prevent this?". If we don't want to end up like that, we have to do something now. For example, walking or taking the bus instead of driving or reducing our water and electricity consumption. If you think about it, those things are not really hard to do. And if everyone did it... However, let's start by thinking : "What can I do to help the Earth?".