tuanzi

In the last 4 months, I almost finished my first semester in Millersville. During the first semester, I adapted the different kind of life in America University and made friends with local students. I also had a one-day trip to New York and spent three days in Philadelphia. I had good memories in my first semester in Millersville and looking forward for the next semester.

In the first semester, I had three academic class and I also took the ESL class, my schedule was full of different classes, which gave me a different kind of life. In China, I only went to library for only two times, in Millersville, I almost went there every day. Professors were always willing to help me working through the language barrier, they gave me extra time for different form of the tests and provided extra office time for me and I couldn’t pass the class without their help. The writing center was a good place to help me familiar with the invisible rules of academic writing and helped me check the grammar for the essay. My ESL teacher Janet and Maria love teaching, they do their’ best to make us know the meaning of each words and how to use them.

 

For this semester, I thankful for these people who help me to adapt American life in my first semester in the Millersville. I really enjoy studying and living in America. Next semester I will have more academic classes and it is a big challenge to me.  I hope I can do a better job in the next semester.

Homestay village

In the last three weeks, we kept going to homestay village to see old people and have conversation with them to build a connection in America. There’s historical experience shacked me and impressed me a lot. I’m glad I have this experience and have a good time in the village. I think it’s wonderful memory for both me and my partner.

My partner is Kit, a smart lady who is already 98 years old and still have passion of the life and doing exercise every day. She and her husband have lived in China for 2 years and after 80 years she still remembering some Chinese during the teaching. She said she left her house in 1948 and never came back. She repeated it again and again to show she could not help but she must leave. After leaving China, she went to japan and lived there for almost 10 years. She have three children and the experience lived in a foreign country made them have a better understand to the differences between cultures.

   

The experience of learning Chinese was both painful and interesting, she enjoyed it and she c   an easily communicate with local people at that time. At the end of first visiting, she said “Yi Lu Ping An” to me which surprised me a lot. After so many years living in America, she can still use it properly and it’s not easy for a foreigner to know the meaning of Chinese idiom. This idiom is used to hope you have everything good during the way back home and it’s common to say it to a leaving people in China.

We found out that her grandson worked in the same university to my father’s best friend. Although they are in the different system but it is still an interesting coincidence. We exchange the personal information at the end of third visit. I want to keep connecting with her and make her feel like a lot of people care and love her.

On October 27, we went to Lads Valley Village & Farm Museum for our third field trip. We switched the field trip in the afternoon to have more time for us to explore the old German culture. The village maintains the furniture and tools the 18^th and 19^th century people used and the workers in the village tried to make the atmosphere so that we are in the past. It was a wonderful trip to let us know how Lancaster Germans lived.

We first went to the museum and saw a video about the history. It introduced how and when the Germans came and how they lived. After watching the video, we saw some exhibits in the museum including a very thick family bible and I swear that was the thickest bible I have ever seen!    Kristin told us that the bible will contain the family tree of the family.

     

 

After viewing the exhibits, we started our exploration. We went to a house which has an old specialist who can make shoes by himself. Although it didn’t look very fashionable, he used the leather and wood to make it and it had good quality. Since it’s hand made just for you, it must be very comfortable to wear. Then we went to a small house with people making the lace which is very delicate. The old man must be very good at it, he just took two hours to make a Christmas tree!

                 

At about 4pm, we finished all our exploration in the farm and we got in to every opened house to see the construction and decoration. We went to the store but didn’t find anything good to buy. Kristin paid about 10 dollars for this trip and it’s definitely worth that price. We came back to the school at about 4:30 and it’s really a tiring but interesting field trip.

Panda is a lovely animal with white and black fur covered all over the body. They are as big as American black bear but covered in black and white. They spend 12 hours in eating bamboo and the amount of the bamboo they eat every day could add up to 28 pounds. There are serval panda protection bases in Sichuan that have special people who learning feed animals to take care of giant panda, from daily eating and drinking to pregnancy and helping to raise baby pandas.

The situations of panda is not very good, there are only 1800 wild pandas in the world. At the beginning of the 20th century there is no concept of protecting wildlife resources and animals in China. So at that time, people destroyed a lot of habitat and even hunting pandas for their fur. Now we recognize that they are rare animal and if we don’t protect them they will disappear from the world. We are returning farmland to forest now and set protection base to protect them.

They are the natural treasure of China, which it’s irreplaceable. Pandas are also the Logo of the WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature. It’s the most powerful symbol in the world for species conservation. I am proud of China to make a such rare species so popular in the world and successfully protect them.

In China, we have MidAutumn Festival. In the Lunar August 15, everyone has moon cake as their dessert, besides this we do several thing to celebrate this Festival. This tradition started in the Tang dynasty, a lot of poets saw the fantastic beautiful bright moon and made poems about it. The things they do in the Lunar August became a tradition.

 

Since the waves are very big in the Lunar August 15 a lot of people go Zhe Jiang to see the bore, it’s not very safe. Although the Government did a lot of things to make the crowd, its still a lot of hurt or killed by the big wave. We also paint lanterns in that time, it means family reunion and we have the tradition for a whole family to see the moon together. Another we do during that time is guessing riddle, young people do it together to show they love each other, and if you get the right answer, you will get treats from people wo set the riddle.

 

There also have a story for this festival called ChangE flying to Moon. It’s a story about a beautiful girl choose to fly to moon to protect her family. Since that story the moon became more bright than before.

On the Oct 6th, we went to the Cherry Hill Orchards to pick my own pumpkin and see a lot of different plants. At 9:30, we left school, 15minutes later we arrived at the Cherry Hill Orchards.The sun was shining so hard and the temperture was increasing. We went to the pumpkin field and since the boys didn’t want a pumpkin, I pick a large one which about 20pounds.

After picked and paid for the pumpkins, we went to the market to recognize different kinds of plants in America. It’s my first time saw the Mums a kind of flower which easy to live and have different colors. The name of pumpkins are also different, in China we also called squash and gourds pumpkin, and from the trip I know that American only called orange one pumpkin.

 

After finished finding the plants, I saw a ice-cream shop beside the market. I bought a blue berry ice-cream which is mixed by vanilla ice-cream and frozen blue berry. This is my first time see people mix these things together to make ice-cream, she used a machine to mix them together. It tasted really good! After that we went back to the Millersville.

In the last Friday 22 sept. we went to the weis market and some shops around.We also planed a wonderful night out with two  movies and the dinner. We planed back to school before 11pm and we successfully did it.

We found something different from the shops in China. The size of the cheese, and the oeooesoni which I never saw in the Chinese market.

In a shop called Big Lots, we saw the fire place. In China I rarely seen it, so it’s weird to see a big fireplace in a normal small supermarket.

Though this trip we know how to find a movie fit myself and how to take a bus.Beside the Zihao Missed the bus, it’s a wonderful trip.

And afternoon I receive my new computer and I’m happy it could come to me so quickly. which I brought it in Thursday.

In the last Friday 22 sept. we went to the weis market and some shops around.We also planed a wonderful night out with two  movies and the dinner. We planed back to school before 11pm and we successfully did it. We found something different from the shops in China. The size of the cheese, and the oeooesoni which I never saw in the Chinese market.

Though this trip we know how to find a movie fit myself and how to take a bus.Beside the Zihao Missed the bus, it’s a wonderful trip.

In my first week of class, I went to a baseball game and caught a ball! That’s Amazing! The Lancaster team won at last, and in that game I really felt how exciting could American people be! they just like they are play the game themselves . The player even have a home run in the middle of the game which made me crazy. From the game I learn the rules of the baseball game and get the hotdogs and soda. That’s a wonderful night, hope your guys could have the chance to see the game too!

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