淦's blog

We visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house. As a historic site in the New Continent, it can hardly surprise a visitor from an old Oriental empire. But I am interested in Thomas Jefferson himself, and greatly admire that he could read in seven languages. His famous saying “I cannot live without books” is one of the doctrines which I am following.
We departed for Charlottesville at noon and arrived at a street in the historic downtown. Girls soon scattered with their supreme task of shopping. “Shopping is tiring and boring”, I murmured. But later, this afternoon turned out to be a valuable and meaningful book hunt.
The detachment of book lovers, Jackie and I, walked into a plain-looking bookstore named READ IT AGAIN, SAM which sells second-hand books. Immediately the books and their prices told us that we were on a treasury island. The Poems of Robert Frost sells for $5, The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe $12, Max Weber’s The Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism $8. I took these three and three textbooks of Latin. Shortly after I walked out of the store with my prey and great satisfaction, another bookstore, BLUE WHALE BOOKS, showed up, signifying more harvest. I found Noam Chomsky’s Reflections on Languages ($1), Super Review of Latin ($4.50), Cicero’s de Amicitia ($6), Cassell’s Latin Dictionary ($12.5), Selected Folk Stories of China ($3, 中國民間故事選,香港信誠書局,1966) and a history textbook ($2) used in the Nationalist China in 1950’s, which is very rare can be regarded as antique nowadays.

This morning we departed from Virginia Beach for Colonial Williamsburg. I knew Williamsburg last year from a television programme about American history.
We arrived there at 12:30 and spent the next two hours visiting one of the oldest historic sites of the United States. The Colonial Williamsburg looks like a theme park and is much smaller than I expected. It is difficult indeed for modern people to model after the image of living of the colonial times, though there are horses pulling carriage and staff dressed in old British clothing.
We were attracted by the many souvenir shops and he group soon scattered. I hanged around alone and, without the surrounding of Mandarin speakers, felt diving into an exotic atmosphere for the first time, even though I have already been In another country for a week.
To be frank, the Colonial Williamsburg did not give a strong impression to me, a visitor from a country with thousands of years’ history and countless historic sites though this colonial site does worth visiting.
I bought a copy of Virginia Gazette of July 26th, 1776 with the text of Declaration of Independence in it. As a history lover, this gazette is of great value to me. Another thing I bought is a book named The American Revolution: a History.
Francis Bacon said ‘History maketh men wise’. What makes men wise is not the archaic buildings or any forms of historic remains but what we learn from the past, what inspirations and wisdom that History gives us.

It's time to wrte something, or i would have been ignoring my pen too long. This is my third day in the U.S. I'm very glad to be here.
The 13-hour journey from Beijing to Washington D.C. was both tiring and exciting. I've never traveled abroad before and supposed the plane to fly across the Pacific Ocean to reach America. But it was a silly geographic mistake. The earth is a globe, not a flat surface as Map of the World shows. So it's much shorter to fly northward from Beijing, over Siberia, the Arctic Ocean, Canada and the southward to the U.S. It felt great to see these places, which only appeared on maps or text books before, showed up beneath the jet.
We arrived at Richmond at midnight. The apartment is very nice. I am glad that I don't have big problems in speaking English, though it need more time to adjust my Chinese-American-British mixed accent.
In the second day we took a bus tour around Richmond. I should have asked "Where is the city?" since we got too accustomed to see sky-scrapers in Chinese cities and Richmond looks like a suburb according to the size of Beijing. But the city of Richmond is really impressive. It's a nice and peaceful place to live in. All the houses are in certain styles. But in Chinese cities, houses are mostly matchbox-shaped. We visited the State Capitol of Virginia that afternoon. It's a grand building and has many historic remains inside. I'm also impressed by the Seal of Virginia. And the Latin motto SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS is full of the spirit of American Revolution.
The next day we visited the Cabell Library. It is amazing. Actually, it is the BEST library I've ever seen. Our libary in BFSU is too shabby. Mr Dan Ream gave us a class. He's really an interesting person, haha ^_^, humorous and impressive.

I like this new environment very much. My stay here must be as pleasant as the sunshine of Virginia.