11. Response to Chenlong Wang's blog

In Chenlong’s blog, he wrote four main differences between Chinese education and American education which have big difference between mine. He wrote some details about his experience in both education systems. For instance, he listed four main differences like, the difference in examination system, purpose of education, lecture style and TA’s help.

I totally agree with his ideas. I have studied in Chinese university for a year and half, and I knew the differences that Chenlong wrote about. In China, most of the students in university do not pay much attention on everyday studying. They will just try their best to pass the exams at the end of class, instead of learning more knowledge. The purpose of education in China is not to teach student how to solve problems, instead, they will just post some questions, then post the answers. Instructors in China are not as obligate as Americans. For example, most instructors in China only read PPT in classes instead of communicate with their students in class. And they just leave the class as the bell rings at the end of classes, they do not answer students questions in terms of hurrying to catch buses to go home. And there is no TA in universities, at least in my university. So when we have questions in class, we find nobody to tend to help.

This is the current phenomenon in universities in China, and that’s why more and more students go to the U.S. to fulfill their dreams.

10.Educational systems

     Nowadays, there is a hot debate that whether parents should send their kids to the US to study or not in China. Most Chinese people agree that the educational system in America is better than that in China. Students in China will under more pressure to attend universities than peers in US. But is that true? In other words, do students in the United States face less pressure and could easily get high scores in classes? I don’t think so.

I have been Minnesota a month and a half. From my own experience, I found, though there are many differences in educational system between China and America, there are still a lot of commons among them. Let me just compare the differences. First, students in primary schools do have more homework than their peers in the US. In China, due to the big competition in attending good universities, not only parents but also teachers start to pay much attention on primary schools. Thus children have a lot of homework to do every day. On contrast, pupils in America are lucky, they could not be pushed so hard by their parents and teachers. They could do whatever they want and develop well during years in elementary schools. What’s more, there is a big difference between Chinese students and American students in university. In China, when students have enrolled in university, they do not work as hard as they do in high schools. Most of them will take classes for granted, for they think they have accomplished their mission that they have already attended colleges. On the contrary to Chinese students, the American students really work harder than Chinese us. I have experienced the situations both in China and here.  I found that if you do not work hard during daily studying, of course you will not get higher scores in the end. Therefore, I have to study very hard to keep up with my American classmates.

The similar thing in both educational systems is that, students are all demanded to work hard in senior highs to attend good universities. 

For a better life in the future, no matter where we study in, it is vital of importance for us to make full efforts to studying.

9.What do people live for?

    This is a video that impressed me a lot. The first time I watched it was in Chinese Facebook – RenRen shared by my friends. Shocked by the true story, I really wanted to share it with my friends on Facebook. But for the story happened in Taiwan and the language is not English, so I just want to find the English edition so that my foreign friends could understand it. It was hard to find it until tonight, when I just skipped over the Twitter, I found my favorite singer – Nichkun has shared it on Twitter. Despite how grateful I was, I just shared it here as soon as possible.

     This is a true story happened in Taiwan.  Five Taiwanese, average aged 81, one of them has cancer, one has hearing problem, the rest of them all have heart diseases. But during 6 months preparation, they circled Taiwan in 13 days, just to accomplish their best friend dream the one has passed away. 

     The reason why I choose this video is that everyone will have the time that feels depressed and has no motivation to live, including me. Especially when I just came to the US, and I met a lot of troubles every day. To tell you the truth, I really wanted to give up when I just arrived here. Due to the video, I found that I could do my best not only in China, but also in the United States. So why I choose depress? Like the old man in the video, they have dreams, they knew what they should do. And I knew why I came to America to study. So there was no excuse for me not doing the best.

      What do people live for? For me, I just wanna try my best to do best in classes, make more friends and to understand America better.

8. Reading Response #2

    This news is about recommendations that the DGA-Dietary Guidelines for Americans makes every five years.  This year, DGA suggests people eat more fish and seafood, as well as having healthier diets like eating breakfast, eating less sugar and salt and avoiding fast food traps.
    In this passage, DGA gave guidelines like controlling caloric intake, increasing the calories you burn by moving more and sitting less, and eating more fruits and vegetables and cutting down on sodium, sugar and fat.

    In my opinion, this article suggests Americans to have healthier eating habits like having breakfast, eating more fruits and vegetables and cutting down the consumption of soda and sports drinks. And the guidelines are only small part of the efforts to address epidemic obesity in the US, which includes new food labeling that will help consumers to know how much of sugars, sodium, fat have they take while eating the food. It also concludes the First Lady's Let's Move campaign that encourages children to become more active.
    The reason why I choose this article is that the DGA has been making suggestions for American people about eating since 1980. It really made a great contribution to help the Americans have better lives. It reminds me that, as the economy develops so fast in China, we have neglect a lot of things such as making people have better eating habits. As is known to all, nowadays, there are too much problems on the quality of food in China. It has becomes concerns that could we Chinese eat higher quality of food and do not have diseases? As a result, we Chinese still have a long way to improve our life standards and make ourselves really happier than before.

7. True Friends

When I watched my best friend’s blog, I found that she celebrated Spring Festival in the south of China. But in her description, though it was happy to see her grandma, she still missed her boyfriend and the food in our hometown. After seeing that, I began missing her now.

I am the person who is not good at talking with people. For I am introvert, I did not make so many friends. But as another one and me become friends, it is hardly to see we break up relationships with each other. That’s why you could see some friends and I have been friends at least 12 years. Like the friend mentioned above, she was my high school classmate. The reason why we became good friends is that once we become deskmates, we found that we have a lot of common interests and we were all the persons who didn’t like too crowed. At the time in high school, we had more assignments than in university, but I was also very happy everyday, because I can chat a lot with her.

As time passed, I find that most of my friends are all the kind of speechless or just do not talk too much in public. But when we hang out together, we always talk a lot with each others. I firmly believe that the reason why we became friends that has nothing to do with money it is our similar personality that let us come together. Another reason is that my friends always could have good effects on me. Though everyone has pros and drawbacks, during our time that we spend together, we will find each other’s drawbacks, and we could help each other to correct it. Then we could make progress in the future.

As a good saying goes, ”a good friend is a mirror of yourself”. I believe so!

6. Life in Minnesota

     January 9th is the day that I arrived in Minneapolis. Today is February 9^th; it means that I have been here for almost a month now. Looking back the days I spent here, I found that I have began to adjust to the life in the United States.

     For this was the first time that I started to live in a brand new place alone. I was a little afraid of the city and the people here. Because first, my oral English was poor and I had very little vocabulary. It would come into misunderstanding of what people were talking about and even could not find the right places. Secondly, when I settled down, I found my roommates are three American girls. Due to the culture differences between China and the U.S., I was anxious about saying wrong   words that would cause misleading between us and  destroy the relationship between us. What's more, I always worried about my classes. As what I mentioned before, with my poor English, I did not know if I could understand what the professor taught in the class. Last but not the least, as is known to all that the weather here is extremely cold, though I love snow very much, I was not sure if I could get used to the climate here.

     As time passed, I realized that the concerns above all were not obstacles and just became easier to be coped with for me. Though, I still have problem talking with people, it was not so hard for me to talk with roommates or just ask how to go to some places. I have also found that my roommates are those who are really not only sweet, but also helpful and kindhearted. They help me a lot to overcome my difficulties adjusting to living here and make me feel like that I am part of them. Sometimes we chat with each other and even held parties. I am thankful that I have so great roommates! To tell you the truth, I still have trouble in understanding the professors’ words in class. But I am trying my best to catch up with other classmates. At last, I have to say that I hate walking outside in the day which has a temperature is minus 20 centigrade. I am waiting for the spring!  

5. Shocked by the Super Bowl!

"I gotta feeling...

That tonight's gonna be a good night

That tonight's gonna be a good night

That tonight's gonna be a good good night"    ----from Black Eyed Peas

  Wow! Tonight is awesome! Because this is my first time to watch a real football game, and it is the Super Bowl!  My roommates held a party just for Super Bowl. Thus we watch it together. Though I am not familiar with the game's rules, I found that it is the most popular sports game among the North American audiences, and last year it became the most-watched American television program in history.

The day on which the Super Bowl is played is now considered a de facto American national holiday, called "Super Bowl Sunday". It is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day. That's what I all knew about it.

  I am not an expert on the rules of the game, and I even can't spell the full name of the teams that attending the game, but there is one thing still impressed me a lot. That is the halftime show which is performed by some popular singers and musicians.

In today's show, it was my favorite hip hop group “Black Eyed Peas” and Usher who performed on the stage! It was amazing and fantastic! All of the audiences were very excited about it not only in the stadium but also at my apartment. We yelled and song along with the TV. I have never watched a show like this before. I love it! I love Super Bowl!!!

4. Holidays——Spring Festival

Today is February 3, it is the first day of Chinese New Year. This is the holiday that we Chinese most celebrate in our country. The other name of it is Spring Festival.

Like western people will prepare a lot to celebrate Christmas, we also have sorts of traditions to celebrate Spring Festival. As is known to all that the festival begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese calendar and ends with Lantern Festival which is on the 15th day, but we have to start preparing for it two weeks before the New Year comes. In my hometown, sweeping away any ill-fortune and waiting for the good luck, everyone must clean their houses, including windows, doors and even the ceiling. Not only kids but also adults must buy new clothes, because everyone must wear new clothes in the first day of the year. We also buy and cook much food before the holidays. The seniors will cook steamed buns in different shapes and fry fishes in advance so that we could have enough time to enjoy time with family members on New Year’s Eve. When it comes to the New Year’s Eve, family members will come together and make dumplings together. There are various kinds of stuffing for dumplings. You can make different tastes. We also put dates or coin into dumplings. And if you eat the coin one, it means that you will make a lot of money in the new year. While we make dumplings, we will watch the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. This is as important as making dumplings in China. Though the shows on it are not wonderful than before, we just can not neglect it because everyone will talk about it in first day of  the new year. So if you want to keep up with times, you must watch the gala on TV.

Above all is how we celebrate Spring Festival.

“母亲的勇气”

Great Mother！