Zhang Yi

It’s a nice day. We take our trip to the University of Virginia and Darden Business School. Before that, we go to pick the peach first in an orchard. It’s totally free for you to eat peaches in the orchard which is quite different from China. In China, the host of the orchard will charge you every little thing you do in the orchard. But here, you can eat as many as you can!

UVA is great. I still remember when I first come to VCU that the campus and the inside infrastructure were much better than Fudan University. But UVA is much more beautiful than VCU. Thomas Jeffison designed the main building for UVA. That’s why so many people still call UVA the university of Jeffison.

Darden Business School was my dream school. Now I realize that why America business education is the first class education worldwide. Darden was glamorous. It has beautiful gardens, fabulous meeting halls. Everything inside was delicate and nice. You can walk inside and no one will stop you. But in China, the gate guard will suspect you as a thief or something like that. That’s the difference! The poorer the country is, the less human rights you have.

Though it was not the first time for me to watch a live jazz performance, I still like it so much. Actually, I preferred to think of this performance as a intro-class of Jazz music to a short performance. I really learned a lot about Jazz. I usually go to some pubs or clubs in China or just enjoy Jazz CD at home. I can remember a lot melodies of good Jazz music, but I just cannot remember who played it because I never think too much about Jazz or Jazz culture and history. For me, Jazz is just one kind of music I can relax myself with.

However, after the performance on that night, I became so keen on Jazz. I really like its style of improvision. You can fully express yourself, your idea and thought in a free way just like water flows. When I was a little girl, my only interest was to play the Jazz drum. I used to play with chopsticks and hit the bowl after having meal. It was so funny. Unfortunately, I gave up playing drum just because I had so many home assignment to do when I entered the secondary school. I just want to say that the Jazz performance on that day re-light my passion for music, for Jazz drum. Thus you can imagine how excited I was after the performance.

We took a lecture about art the other day. It was so amazing! We do not offer the art practise in Fudan University, not to mention drawing pictures in classroom in front of the whole students. It was my first time to watch the whole process of drawing a picture. I thought it was so magic. Actually I am not good at painting at all. So you can imagine how amazed I was when professor turned the craft picture into a so mimic portray just as a real photo.

What was more exciting was the lecture in the afternoon. It was about acting. To tell the truth, I seldom draw my attention to acting in China expect those theory I see on television. I never take acting seriously when I am in China. But here, I am surrounded by the art. You can tell that how much students love art in VCU. You can see graffiti everywhere and almost everyone can play some instrument more or less. There is even a great theater for acting major students in VCU in which they can fully enjoy acting performance. I found that the college life in America is so colorful in that it is all the students who organize various kinds of activity and develop the social life. It is not done by anyone else. All are done by students themselves.

College is kind of a small society. It helps you adapt the real world and become mature. Thanks to all the self-doing things in America, I can probably see why so many American college students are so outstanding and independent.

Finally, we were so lucky to go to the library’s home, Dan Ream’s home for the native family visit. Dan’s home is typically a middle class home. Located in the forest on a hill, the house was not big but very comfortable. Near the house, there are several swimming pools and a natural swallow lake. The drive path was narrow because residents don’t want someone outside the neighborhood to come in. It is an area for all these residents. They want peace, not traffic.

The family was very nice. They not only provide us with typical American food which was very delicious, but chat with us a lot about American life and American culture. They were very curious about China. The first picture they can think of China was the foundation date of the new China. Of course we talked a lot with them about the recent development of China and Shanghai. I like the decorations inside the house which made the house looked very comfortable. I cannot help but feel grateful to their kindness. I would be very please to host them in China should they came to China in the future.

It’s our free day today. I decided to go to the Carytown again. I have no car and I don’t want to bother those interns. Thus, I have to walk there, on foot! To my surprise, Carytown’s out of the map, maybe ten blocks away for the GRC. You can seldom see people walking on the street. Almost all of them drive. Finally I got to the Carytown and I found it was not very far. It’s only about 30 minutes walk. I suddenly thought up with a cause why Americans are fat. Perhaps because they drive too much, sit too long. On one hand, they complain about the soaring gas price, on the other hand, they are so dependent to driving. Instead, if they walk to some places. They will both get jogging exercises and save the gas money. It’s really a bargain!

I was told that the deadline of the paper was this Friday! This Friday, how can we make it with high quality only in 4 days? I thought we are supposed to write our papers at the end of this trip. But on Friday, even before we set out for New York!

I need to day a lot of preparation before the paper. Four days is by no means impossible to hang on a high-qualified paper. We need to attend the lectures everyday and have activities every evening. What is worse is that we have to think of any words or sentences by ourselves. If we want to quote some one’s words, we must note what it comes from. If we can’t change the deadline, the only thing that we can do is to stand up late and cram for the paper there days. Thus, I highly think that we need more time to write paper or let us hang on the paper after we go back to China.