C...Y

dc 2 me, it's a much safer and convinient place to live in
so many museums,good places to shop
better arranged city scales...

Exciting!!AWESOME,FABULous...

i've got to say it's kinda complex feeling when we're leaving 4 NY tomorrow. It's been 3 weeks here in Richmond, and i surely have a great time here, and NY, come on, it's gonna be a totall different way of living. So I'm in the middle of wanting to go and wanna stay.
it's a dilemma

Well, maybe i was a bit too excited at Ian's house,another household of ours, and ate too much. What's worse, i caught a cold during the night. The next thing I knewn the morning was vomitting and constantly stomachache.
My roomie called our teacher for help and they got me to Patient First(It was a clinic-like organization co-working with the insurance i signed here in the states,and not until later did I find out how useful the insurance is,since it covered up most part of my expenses which could be as high several hundred dollars)
Well, after several precedures of temperature testing, symptoms requiring, urine testing as well as a blood testing, the doctor at Patient First finally came up with a good news: I'm not infected with any kind of bacteria or anything,maybe it's just because of the serious effect of the cold and stimulates series of upset in my stomach. Thank God, coz otherwise, i might miss the trip to NY and DC LOL

I'm writing this down, coz i wanna compare a little bit about the 2 medical systems I know run in 2 countries.

*In the states, you would have nurses and physicians coming to take care of you(e.g. the blood test and the temperature test), relatively you dont need to do anything other than lay on the bed and keep the pain to yourself.

*However, in China, you've got to climb stairs up and down to finish the tests one by one, and sometimes it takes even more time to stay in a queue which may even worsen the pain.

* In the states, medical insurance(or the medical social welfare) is closely connected to health care and could cover most of the expenses, considering the fee could be as high as $900 a month by a family.

*We've got to admit that the medical system in China is way behind this, and most of the peasants are unable to enjoy the medicine welfares.

Never to be too pessimistic I've got a strong evidence our country is on its way to improve a lot of things,including the health insurance and other social welfares,so Iet's wait and see

P.S.: *many thanx to Our Teacher Mz. Zhang Xiaoyan, our director of the program Hernan, and Julie as well as other interns and students, thank you for helping me out of this situation and the care you gave me really help me recover soon.
*specail thanks to lily, sorry to keep you off the Jazz Class ^3^

Well, I've got to say, besides Busch Garden, doing homestays are the most exciting moments. We were lucky enough to stay in 2 homes. One night we were with John,our intern,who was an Vietnamese immigrant.I was deeply impressed by their hospitality & the traditional Vietnamese food, Asian food, I have to say tastes much better and it's much less oily. I've got to say it's probably the best meal ever i had so far in the states.

not to mention John's little cutie sister~~so adorable

Besides the food,what impressed me the most is that John's family still preserve the Vietnamese traditions.John became an immigrant since he was 8 and still can handle Vietnamese perfectly as well as English; John's younger brother, who came to the states when he was 2, could still follow their traditional buddism beliefs as well as maintain a tight family bond with the other members.
I think one of the major difference between the western families and the asian families is that the latter enphasize more on famliy bonds and inheritage of family traditions.It's the popular western way to let go of their child when they're 18 or up, but seldom the case in Asian countries. It causes trouble because it somewhat make the children more dependent on their parents, but on the other hand, it creates much closer family relationship between generations.As globalization continues,we tend to accept more and more western values, but is it really always right?

Believe it or not, i'm still indulging in the atmosphere of sunny BEACH life. Therefore,I'm still kinda sleepy all day long...longing for the sunshine and Beach hot girls,LOL.
Well, back to reality. We've had some marvelous lecutures on business and international relations this week.Besides that, we've got 2 successful Chinese(from TAIWan), to share with us their successful life here in the states.
I'm typically interested in the IR lectures, well, it's probably becoz it's my major back in the uni, or maybe it's sth. we've covered back in the uni, it's a funny thing to find out how DR. Bill Newmann(who looks like Steve Martin
) can squeeze our whole term course into 2 hours, of course it's a basic outline. From Realism to Idealism, to Constructionalism, we had some good time in discussing those once thought boring topics. I think one of the main reasons i feel this way is that i've got some basic knowledge and the open way of professor asking us to think wild and everything combined.
And I was fascinated by the 2 guest lectures, both by successful taiwanese. One from United Commercial Bank
,
the other is from Philip MOrris

(one of the biggest companies in Richmond as well as the states, and Marlboro
is one of their major product, also their FOOD department is very well-known). the 2 of them shared with us their hardship when first came here as a foreigner and later successfully became elites of their businesses. A good Adaption is everything. Bear that in mind, folks! Dont blame everything to discrimination.