NY in my eyes

NYC: With whom you can’t help falling in love

Far from Columbus and just way north of Knoxville Tennessee, we finally made it here in NYC with Mike rejoining us today.

To be honest, it didn’t turned out as I imagined to be. I mean, the Statue of Liberty is not as tall and grand as I thought, the streets are so dirty that seem a little “China”, and I see much of the New York that was and will never be in the fancy movies. I had expected NYC to be the city which in the movie ‘I am Legend’ still glows as a metropolis after complete devastation.

But I must confess that New York is a city that you cannot turn your back on. From the moment I saw the bright ‘I Love NY’ T-shirt under the Statue of Liberty, to the moment that night fell on the brilliant Times Square, I must say, I LOVE NEW YORK! New York is such a city that you can list a thousand reasons that you don’t like it, but you just can’t help falling in love with it.

Next time when I get a chance to visit New York again, I wish I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to enjoy the love of this fascinating city.

Below is just a hint of the pictures we’ve taken:

I came up with this idea to do the O-H-I-O thing under the Statue of Liberty. Seems like we’ve made it unique and good-looking. Seems like we've been labeled as Ohio State already.

This is the ruins that the tragedy of September 11 left in Manhattan. With great grief and respect for the citizens of New York, I admire the courage and resolve to move on and start reconstruction.

This is THE most famous Times Square. It's most fascinating with the background of night. I've never seen more shining and impressive lights. The scene also reminded me of Spiderman fighting Green Goblin at the very place I was at.

Wise men say

Only fools rush in

But I can't help falling in love with you...

The Big Apple:NYC

Why is NYC been called "the big apple"?

Today with Shrine's help, I figure it out.It came from a old song in 1920s, which is popular in 1970s. It's ture meaning is that NYC is very complicated, contained all kinds of people and all kinds of things, just like a Mexico food which is been called "big apple".

Actually, it is complicated.

We only spend one and a half hours to walk in the street of New York city, and during that short time, I saw all kinds of people. Rich man, poor man, black/white/yellow skin, I saw someone selling bags and clothes in fake brand in the street, I saw a policeman ride on a horse, I saw a man wearing woman's suits stalking down the 8th Ave, I saw three people offering "free hug" and "free kiss" to whoever passed by, I saw some kind of stars are making MTV in the Time's Square and the fans just kept screaming.....

It's really wonderful.

Some day I'll come back here, at that time, I'll know more about NYC.

How big is the "big apple"? Next time, I'll figure it out.

Ohio--Tennesse

Since my computer always have some problems with the wireless connection, I can't post the blog for a few days. Actually, I have many stories that I want share with you, but one's time and energy is limited, so I just put some pictures on the blog, and let the pictures tell the story...

(1) TV station! Beautiful news reporter Andrula told us many things about how to made a news

(2) How is the weather like in Columbus today? I'm Miss Weather!

(3)Moving pictures of the Plizer Price in history museum.

(4)P&G!








（5）We have an wonderful speech in Tennersee
(6)Smoky Mountain! It's really great, we've arrived the top of the mountain

(7)Frank, who help us in many ways in Tennessee.

the trip to the School of Public Affairs at OSU

John Glenn’s School of Public Affairs

As it is known to all of us, the U.S. is the most developed nation in the whole world so that stepping on the land of America has always been one of my dreams. Fortunately, the WHU and OSU’ collaboration on this summer program helped me realize this dream. I am not willing to pretend myself to be tranquil, as even until now I am feeling a little bit surreal – surreal but nice.

During the ten days trip there are quite a lot of wonderful experiences that I have never had in my life, such as the tour in the Air Force museum and the visit to City Hall and State House, which helped me better understanding the American political system. Furthermore, I found out the serious reason that should mainly announce for some conflicts between Western world and Chinese government: the fundamental opposition between power-centralization and decentralization. Absolutely there are advantages and disadvantages in those two styles, thus it seems like a waste of time to discuss the controversy or about which type is superior to the other.

However, one point of commonality that I should have to mention and highlight is the special recent experience – the excellent lesson in the John Glenn’s School of Public Affairs at OSU.

Some history:
As a national heroic character, John Glenn is well-known for being the first American astronaut that traveled to the outer space in 1962. He was born in the early 20th century and now lives at the age of ninety. In retrospect, his whole legendary career seems like an introductive movie about how to become an American idol. During the WWII, John Glenn attended the U.S Air Force Army and was trained to pilot fighters. Then he was awarded for many times because of his supreme fighting ability that might originate from his desire of flying in his childhood. In the 1960s, he was selected to participate in NASA’s program of sending humans to space. As it is known to us, the program achieved success in 1962 and cheered up the citizens so much that they lauded John Glenn as national hero. Several years later, like many other idols, John was elected a Senator and started to focus on public affairs until now.

Although public affairs include manifold aspects such as economy, policy and welfare, its main subject is to distribute limited resources to maximize the utility of community as a whole. To achieve this goal, the department of public affairs should concentrate on working out some strategies and encourage people to get involved with the country “actually”, which means not only a member of the society but a host as well.

In my point of view, the core spirit of the public affairs investigation is that “everyone should contribute to achieve harmony”. Though the fundamental duty of John Glenn’s school is to do research to offer some efficient suggestions to the government, it seems more important and necessary to guide civilians to actively care about social issues. In modern society, while accompanied with the improvement of technology, we are facing more challenges and more new problems than before. For instance, wars happen every day in different areas on earth; new sorts of dangerous diseases appear; the exponentially increasing demand of fuel constructs an ironic comparison with the tremendous amount of wastrel (something that has not been properly used). On the other hand, drugs, violence, divorce and some other social problems jeopardize the origin of human virtues.

Thus no matter whether we view this from a material or spiritual perspective, our homeland is in serious crisis of which a solution can only be provided by all people’s effort. The country of origen is irrelevant. To protect our beautiful blue Earth and our bright, high-level and promising civilization, we will really need everybody’s effort.

One drop may not be powerful, but billions of drops together may become oceans; an individual’s effort may seem useless, but a whole community’s effort can create a giant wave of positive change.



Yisiwei Zhu
Francis 31/07/2008
posted from the hotel in Piscataway, New Jersey

Pictures sent tonight from Stucco Jones

Conversation through Poetry

Jirayna Singleton
English 367
Professor Lohre


The group of Chinese students that Nadira and I had for the discussion was wonderful. The group discussion went smoothly, and I learned a lot from the students. I was amazed to see how each of them knew the Chinese poems by heart and could recite it without making a mistake. The person that I got to know best was Jerry because he was the one that explained what the poems actually meant, and he was very patient with me and Nadira when we were trying to read the poem out loud in Chinese. The only difficult part about reading the Chinese poems was when we had to say them in Chinese because it was hard to pronounce some of the words. The real challenge came when we had to read the American poems, because reading them was easy, explaining them was another situation in itself. The poem that we read was The Blessing, and when the students asked me to explain certain lines, Nadira and I had a hard time explaining and breaking it down because we weren’t exactly sure as to what the poem was about. Despite that everything went well and we had a wonderful time, and I believe that the students had an excellent time.
I learned a lot from these students. I learned that we (Americans) are ignorant about people from China, and that we need to learn more before we pass judgment. I found these students to be excellent examples of China, as they were polite, intelligent, and just absolutely amazing. I wish that I had more time to speak to them because there is so much that I could learn about them and their culture.