This title may not be very appropriate, because I mainly want to write about the things happened the last week. But because this is probably the last time I sitting on Berkeley’s campus to write a blog, I would also like to talk about what I have seen and thought in the past five weeks.

The recipe I chose last week was fish-flavored shredded pork. This is a typical Chinese dish, belonging to Sichuan cuisine. The ingredients it needs are pork, carrots, black fungus, bamboo shoots, eggs, ginger, garlic, starch, cooking wine, salt, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, and oil. After I had chosen the dishes I wanted to cook, it took me two days to go to Trader Joe’s and Temescal farmer market separately.

Last Friday, I spent a morning with Leo visiting Trader Joe’s, and we drew this map together. I think it’s easier to get fresh fruits and vegetables and packaged snacks, they’re right at the entrance and on the aisle shelves. Compared with that, we have to go to the other end of the supermarket to get the packaged meat, vegetables and fruits, and I think it is maybe because it’s more convenient to keep the refrigerator against the wall.

In the supermarket, we managed to find almost all the ingredients we need for our recipes, except for black fungus and bamboo shoots.  After we asked the supermarket staff, she told us that she had not heard of these two vegetables, so we think that the United States probably does not grow these two kinds of food. But because we have found all the seasonings, the lack of these two ingredients will not affect the taste of the food too much.

We observed the packaging of meat and found that some of them were sealed and some were packaged in boxes. They often had the name of the product on one side, and the content of various ingredients on the other side. Some of them also have safe handling instructions diagrams, and whether meat is organic or not will also be clearly marked on the packaging. The prices between organic and conventional produce do have differences. For example, the price of the organic chicken is 8.23 dollars, and conventional chicken only costs 6.38 dollars in similar packages. Similarly, in the case of similar packaging, the price of organic eggs is $4.29, almost twice the price of ordinary eggs. I think organic chicken looks fresher, but it’s probably because of a psychological effect. Eggs don’t look different from each other in appearance, but in our country, the yolk of organic eggs is usually a bit yellower. From the packaging point of view, organic meat and ordinary meat are still very different, because usually, organic food packaging will be greener. Unfortunately, without the pot, I cannot buy the ingredients back for a taste comparison.

We took a lot of pictures of fruits and vegetables. After sorting them out, we found that the origins of these products were from the USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Costs Rica, Canada, Peru Guatemala, Vietnam, and Ecuador. Most fruits and vegetables are grown locally in the United States, accounting for about 60 percent. There is also much produce imported from Mexico, accounting for about 30 percent, and the remaining 10 percent comes from other countries. The supermarket marked out the origin of all the produce. We also found the produce department manager with a bag of green beans and asked where the food came from. At first, we saw the word Guatemala on the package, so we thought it may be originated from Guatemala. But the manager told us it wasn’t. The package was just packaged in Guatemala and transported to the supermarket. As for the place it locally grew, the manager also didn’t know. However, because this bag of green beans is too expensive and we have no chance to cook it, we finally put it back quietly. To avoid the staff in the produce department, we waited for over ten minutes before putting the beans back in place smoothly.😂

In the last, we went to the packaged food aisle, because we thought it’s not enough to just check on four products, so we checked the ingredients on seven items. Then we found that the corn-based ingredients were scattered in the ingredients list, and did not appear at the top of the list.

There is also an interesting thing that happened in the supermarket. A Chinese came to us for help twice because he couldn’t speak English. The first time he couldn’t find noodles, so we took him to find all the basic condiments and ingredients he needed; the second time was that because he didn’t know that the eggs in the supermarket could only be purchased in boxes and didn’t understand the English spoken by the staff, so he placed six eggs directly in the shopping basket, and we helped him translate what supermarket staff wanted to express. When we were looking for ingredients with him, I chatted with him and learned that his daughter is studying summer school here. He had just arrived in the United States to visit his daughter that day. Because his daughter was in class, so he first came out to buy the ingredients himself. No wonder he hasn’t had time to download the translation apps on his mobile phone.😄

Leo, Siji Wang and I chose to go to the Temescal farmer market on Sunday. We arrived there at about 10 am and I think the farmer market is much busier than the supermarket. First, we drew a map of the market, and then we spent more than an hour in it. I think the biggest difference between a farmer’s market and a supermarket is that it’s open-air, The stalls are covered by a few sheds. Besides, most of the vegetables and meat are not packaged here, and some fresh meat and seafood are kept fresh with ice. The third difference is that many stalls hang large signs, often with the names, photographs or pictures of the farms. The fourth one is that, different from the separate pricing of all commodities in supermarkets, the prices of some food in the farmer market are written together.

In addition to these differences, I also noticed that there are many different kinds of peaches on the market. There are three peach stalls in this market and each with dozens of different peaches. In one of the peach stalls, it has twelve different kinds of peaches: Artist Queen, Cpal, Snow King, Arctic Supreme, Spice Zee, Flavor King, Flavor Queen, Honey Royale, Candy Heart, Zee Lady, Fantasia, Zee Glo. There are also a wide variety of products in this market, including seafood, beer, fruits, vegetables, eggs, olives, cloth goods, honey, flower, sauce & juice, ice cream, bread, and rice.

Siji Wang bought a box of strawberries, so we asked the vendor about the distance the strawberries were transported by the way. The vendor said he drove about 80 miles from the farmer’s market and drove for about an hour and a half. We also tried to find the ingredients for our recipe here, but unfortunately, we still cannot find the black fungus and bamboo shoots. And I think the ingredients in the farmers market are more expensive. For example, The pork tenderloin we found in the supermarket is 7.79 dollars for 1.28 lb. and the pork we found in the farmer market is 14 dollars for 1 lb.

After going to the supermarket and the farmer market respectively, I think if I have time, I will choose to go to the farmer market. Part of the reason for going to the supermarket is convenience. I prefer the farmer market because this direct-production and direct-sale method are more reassuring to consumers. If you are worried about the quality of food, you can also ask the growers directly. Compared with supermarkets in the United States, Chinese supermarkets sell similar goods, but the scale of the supermarkets tend to be larger. In China, two or three-layer supermarkets are quite common. The Chinese farmer market is quite different from that of the United States. On the one hand, our market is indoors, so it tends to be damp and the environment is not particularly good. On the other hand, the Chinese farmer market is open every day and do not have a time limit. Because I don’t like the environment of the Chinese farmer markets, unless I want to buy special fresh ingredients, I usually choose to go to the supermarket.

I chose to make fish-flavored shredded pork when I had a dinner last week.  Last Saturday we not only made dumplings, but also made some traditional Chinese dishes. With the ingredients I bought, I cooked the dish successfully.

We mainly talked about food safety issues in the United States last week. In fact, not only in the United States but also in China, there are also food safety problems. For example, some small workshops and factories not only produce food in the environment that does not meet the hygienic standards, but also use gutter oil, and even use non-fresh ingredients and leftovers, which will cause great harm to the human body. But this is different from the food safety problem in the United States. The food safety problem in the United States is rooted in food sources. Several of the largest food companies in the United States have mastered almost all of the production of vegetables, fruits, and meat in the United States. Their internal operations are very complex and even there are many illegal deals. It is difficult for consumers to know the real information about the food they buy. I think like ordinary people, we can not rely on our strength to make changes to this phenomenon, the only thing we can do is to minimize the purchase of substandard products, such as reducing the purchase of mass-produced ordinary chicken breast.

Except for what I learned in the last week, I would also like to say some other things. In addition to my studies in recent weeks, I have also visited many places, such as Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Union Square, Silicon Valley, and Stanford. Because I do not have enough time, there are still many places I didn’t go. Nearby places like California Academy of Sciences and far away places like Yosemite and Los Angeles, I really want to Universal Studios and Disneyland😭. Although there are many opportunities to come here in the future, I still feel a little pity.

Through these weeks of study and life in the United States, I have also found that both China and the United States have their advantages. For example, China’s takeaway and online payment are developed. We can pay online mainly by WeChat and Alipay, which can bind bank cards, and these apps also carry their online wallets. Although too much reliance on online payment will lead to some personal information insecurity problems, since these apps themselves don’t have any information leakage scandals that damage their reputation, so using these apps for daily payment is indeed recognized by most Chinese people. With online payment, we can save the trouble of carrying cash and bank cards every day. We only need a mobile phone to solve everything, which further reduces the risk of being stolen. And the United States has done a lot more in social welfare facilities than China. After my observation, I found that almost all toilets in the United States are equipped with disposable cushions, and also have special places for the disabled. China’s welfare facilities for the disabled are not in place, so wheelchairs are seldom seen on the streets. Even if there are, people sitting in wheelchairs must be accompanied by their families. A large part of the reason for this phenomenon is that China’s welfare facilities (including those for the disabled) are quite inadequate, and it is very inconvenient for the disabled to live by themselves.

Besides, I would like to talk about the problem of people’s courtesy in China. I have admitted that there are differences in people’s courtesy of China and the United States. I was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, and In recent years, I have been studying at Beijing’s University(not Peking University), both of which belong to the developed areas of China. I stayed in the urban area when I was in my hometown, and I stayed in school when I was in Beijing. So I have no intuitive feeling about the people’s courtesy. But once you go to the edges and suburbs of the city, to some scenic spots with a large flow of people, or less developed areas of China, you can feel the differences in people’s courtesy. A big reason for the low courtesy of the people is the lack of education. Many people without a good education will be difficult to have a higher courtesy. China’s education is also a big problem: On the one hand, China has a large population base. Although China has a nine-year compulsory education system, the quality of education cannot be guaranteed, nor can it achieve full coverage of the population. On the other hand, compared with developed countries, China’s investment in education is not high, and How can a country that does not pay enough attention to education have the ability to improve its people’s courtesy? Moreover, the lack of education of the citizens will not only bring about the problems of people’s courtesy but will also affect the social atmosphere, the academic atmosphere, and the scientific research atmosphere. I think this aspect is something the Chinese government should consider and adjust accordingly.

In the end, what I want to say is that I really like to write blogs. I can express my opinions freely on this platform. Even if there is no blog homework in the future, I hope that I can stick to write blogs.😊

Last Sunday, five people from our class formed a group and went to San Francisco to visit two museums, the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Before I go, I did some research on the museums’ websites.

After reviewing the website of the Asian Art Museum, I knew that sponsored by the Target Department Store, the museum is free on the first Sunday of each month. But there are still some exhibitions that are not free, like Tattoos in Japanese Prints, which require additional tickets. I learned that there are more than 18000 objects online, and we can view the collections we are interested in directly on the official website. There will be information about the collection’s places of origin, materials, dimensions and some other related details on the website. And I also learned that there are more than 2000 artworks on the second and third floors in the collection galleries. The collections come from all the major cultures of Asian, so I planned to visit these exhibitions. The museum also organizes many events that allow families and members to participate, which is really fun. But unfortunately, I don’t have much time to participate in these activities.

Because the Museum of Modern Art is very close to the Asian Art Museum and we are all very interested in it, so we planned to visit here in the afternoon. For this reason, I also checked out the website of this museum. I learned that the tickets for young adults is $19, so I brought my passport with me when l bought tickets. In the website, I saw an article named The 6 San Francisco Museum Exhibitions You Can’t Miss in 2019, and it mentions“Andy Warhol-A to B and Back Again” at SFMOMA, so l planned to go there.

Because the free tickets for the Asian Art Museum are limited and are on a first-come, first-served basis, so we set off early in the morning.  We first walked from the residence halls unit 2 to the subway station in downtown Berkeley, then arrived at the museum by subway.

I saw a lot of interesting things at the Asian Art Museum, such as some religion-related sculptures and weapons called kris.  What I want to talk about is an Indian sculpture. Its name is Krishna overcoming the serpent Kaliya, which is from about 1400-1500 AD.  From this statue, we can see that an Indian god is dancing on a half-human snake, he grabbed the snake’s tail with one hand and stood on the upper part of the snake with one foot.  This snake’s hands are folded at the top of the head, showing its awe of God.  There are five waves underneath it, which means they are probably in the river. I think this sculpture does reveal in a certain sense the plight of India’s most sacred river the Ganges and its tributary Yamuna River.  These rivers are now heavily polluted, but their important religious implications urgently require people to pay attention to its environmental problems and take measures to improve them in time.

The Museum of Modern Art also has a lot of creative and imaginative works, and many of the collections have left a deep impression on me.  I have two favorite collections, the first one is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.  The first time I saw a photo of this work is in the art class of junior high school, our teacher showed us this work as a typical representative of modern art. At that time, I felt that I could not understand it. Of course, I still can’t understand it now. 😄 But the significance of this piece is probably to tell us that art is about imagining.  This work is a urinal, and Duchamp only wrote the words R.MUTT and 1917 on it. Another piece of my favorite work is Brice Marden’s Cold Mountain 6(Bridge). The entire canvas is covered by cluttered and disorderly black and gray lines, these lines are not uniform in thickness, but the whole presents a strange beauty. This kind of black and gray line also reminds me of the cursive in Chinese calligraphy. And in fact, the author’s inspiration for creating this painting did come from Chinese calligraphy and the works of the Tang Dynasty poet Cold Mountain. In my opinion, the cursive script is also the most expressive writing style in Chinese calligraphy, so many calligraphers like to use cursive to express their feelings.

In the museums, I did see something related to what I have learned in class. For example, I saw a half-male and half-woman Indian statue, which I believe is a propaganda of a concept of gender equality. And there are also many such words on the steps of the Museum of Modern Art: ‘What is FEMINISM now?”Why do WOMAN earn less?”Is health care gendered?’······Black words on the yellow background, very eye-catching. This is also a way of promoting gender equality.

This weekend, in addition to visiting two museums, I spent a day in the Six Flags and strolled around Union Square on another day, which made me feel the culture of America more deeply. On the street of Union Square, street performers are often seen performing impromptu performances. For example, I saw a street performer performing a percussion performance with a lot of broken iron yesterday, and three children playing violin and viola ensemble. People gathered around the performers and cheered constantly. I really like the freedom, enthusiasm, and creativity of the atmosphere here, which makes me feel that life here is full of passion and joy. Compared with that, I can seldom see such performances on the streets of China. Even if there is, unlike the cheerful atmosphere here, there are often a few onlookers. Moreover, it is often felt that the performances of these performers are more for the sake of earning a living than for the love of music, so their music naturally does not have a touching power. And I have never seen the impromptu performance on the streets of China. So I hope that China can be more open in these aspects of art. After all, the place full of artistic atmosphere can often make people feel the passion of life.

China has a museum that is similar to SFMOMA, it is the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. It was established on October 1, 2012, and was converted from a power plant. It is the first public contemporary art museum in mainland China and was once the “city future pavilion” during the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. The Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art is much smaller than SFMOMA, and there are fewer exhibits on display. But in any case, this is an improvement for Chinese contemporary art.

Last weekend, our group went to the Oakland museum of California to visit an exhibition call Question Bridge: Black Males.  The area of ​​this exhibition is not very large, and the main color is black, only a few faint white lights are hit on the wall.  This design is genius, because black fits the theme of the exhibition, and it is also a color that allows people to think and reflect on themselves in silence. The two walls I saw when I just moved into the exhibition hall also left a deep impression on me.  One of the walls has a question: “What does it mean to be your true self?” Another wall written a passage that Morris Brent once said. And the wall is full of many people’s answers to this question and this passage. This form is very novel to me because there are very few such interactions in museums in China, few museums can actively lead people to think.  Even if there is such an interaction, there are very few people who really get involved seriously. Because we are used to hiding some of our thoughts in our hearts and not making it public and share with strangers.

I think it is good for me to see such an exhibition at this stage of my life. Because as a 20-year-old college student, I am in the process of shaping my three views, that is, world outlook, outlook on life and value. As we continue to grow and our thinking ability matures, our way of thinking gradually forms a system. The answer to the question “What does it mean to be your true self?” is actually to be aware of one’s own identity and to think about what kind of person we want to be.

The protagonist in the movie Dope is also facing this problem.  Malcolm is a black man, born in a low-rise neighborhood and study in an ordinary high school.  In his living environment, there are bullying, drugs and violence.  So he is also faced with the question of how to choose his own life, what kind of person he wants to be.  Just like the people around him, entering the gangsters or living a mundane and difficult life, or entering the higher education institutions to continue to be a promising person.  Malcolm is determined not to take the usual path of most black people and most people around him, he wants to go to Harvard. Even if his counselor is not optimistic about him, even if he is covered with the labels of the black community(eg. Slums, rap, drugs, hooligans, street fighting）, he is still full of positive energy.  Even if he was accidentally involved in the fight against drug gangs in a party, he did not enter the gang to bury his future, and find reasons for his own self-destruction. On the contrary, he deals with dangerous people without entering the gangsters, and still pursues his own Harvard dream and advances with pressure. It’s definitely not easy for Malcolm to do this. At the end of the film he asked:”So, why do I want to attend Harvard?If I was white, would you even have to ask me that question?” The pressure on black people in American is far from what we can think. But as for Malcolm, he is both a student “A” and student “B”, and both a geek and a menace. I believe he is strong enough to strengthen his beliefs and goals, and really understand the meaning of the question “What does it mean to be your true self?” and get his own answer.

For me, my living environment is not so complex, but the identity cognition and life choice are also important to me. It can be even said that they are questions that should be focused on at this stage of my life. Now is an era of developed communication, people have access to a variety of information channels, and will be subject to a variety of temptations.  Many people of my age will make different life choices because of the various temptations in this society, and some even ruin their own future. I want to talk about a very strange phenomenon in China. There are many popular stars in China whose acting or performing skills are poor and have no professionalism. However, through the company’s packaging and fairly good-looking faces, they can receive a lot of love and get a much higher salary than the average working class. This makes many young people start to wonder: Why I have to study hard for more than sixteen years? After graduating, I will become an ordinary working class, but I can not even earn more than the stars with low literacy (The scores of cultural courses required by Chinese performance schools are very low). So many young people even give up their study and began to be an internet celebrity, imagined that one day they will be welcomed like stars and earn a large fortune. Many people just because of this eventually achieve nothing. In my opinion, if a person really wants to achieve something, there is no shortcut. We must first recognize ourselves, understand our strengths and weaknesses. And then define our goals, refer to the opinions of the people we trust, our mentors and friends, and firmly follow the path we think is right. Once we start to work hard, no matter what people around we say, no matter how difficult it is to advance, and no matter how many obstacles do we have to face, we should not give up easily, just like Malcolm in the film. Even sometimes, it doesn’t matter what our identity is. What matters is that we dare to fight. After all, our fates are in our own hands, as I heard in the exhibition:”No one going to give me freedom. We have no excuse but to own a sense of freedom, to own a sense of possibility, and to own our future”.

At last, I want to mention a song that is important to me. Maybe it shouldn’t be said to be important, but it left a deep impression on me and made me think a lot. It is Life Is The Only Thing In Sight sang by Weize Cai. I especially like these lyrics in this song:

Who can frankly say goodbye to past stupidity?
Only before tomorrow
Who is not excusing the time to squander and decadent
Before yesterday, only yesterday （my translation is not very good, the original lyrics are beautiful）

Two parts of the lyrics are particularly touching. The first one is “Frankly say goodbye to the past stupidity”, This is something I have never been able to do completely. But I believe this will be a big or small challenge for anyone. People often think that if we had done something in the past, then I could have done something at present. But the truth is, as long as we work hard, there should be no pity. And the most important is the present and the future. So what we should d is to sum up the experience of past failures and make it a boost to our future progress, rather than always living in the shadow of the past and self-blame constantly. The second one is the word “excuse”. People don’t like excuses, but they have been comforting themselves through excuses. How contradictory we are. On the one hand, we want to achieve a better self, and on the other hand, we always excusing ourselves from what we have not done. But we can only grow if we really find our mistakes and are brave enough to recognize and correct them.

For most Chinese, we have no religious beliefs. But we must believe in ourselves, face our own past and our own shortcomings. Only in this way can we have a clear self-awareness and find our way forward. In my opinion, this is my spiritual belief.

This Friday, we went to The Oakland Museum of California, and watched the exhibition Queer California: Untold Stories. There were 10 people in our team, we took the subway to Oakland and spent an unforgettable day together. Actually, many of us were more interested in visiting another museum: the GLBT Historical Society, Archives and Museum in the beginning. However, since the next week’s fieldwork location is also in the Oakland Museum of California, we finally chose to visit Queer California exhibition. Since we cannot visit the GLBT Historical Museum this time, I plan to visit this museum next time when I go to the San Francisco.

Through this visit, I have a deeper understanding of the culture and history of the LGBTQ community. The path of American gay community to fight for freedom of marriage and equal rights is very rough, and their rights protection activities can be traced back to the 1920s.  At that time, although the American gay subculture had developed, under the oppression of mainstream ideology, gay people lacked identity and group consciousness. Because they were worried about being hurt and discriminated, they would rather choose to conceal their sexual orientation and hide in the ‘closet’. Late on the night of June 27, 1969, the New York police entered a bar called ‘Stone Wall’ to capture homosexuality, which led to the resistance of homosexuals and large-scale riots.  The famous “Stone Wall Event” in the history of gay rights protection is regarded as the watershed of the modern gay rights movement in the United States and the world.  Four years after the Stonewall Bar incident, the number of gay groups increased from 50 to 800, and by the early 1980s, the number was over a thousand.  The stone wall incident finally made homosexuals no longer silent, letting them realize that they will be respected only if they fight for it. This view is applicable to any discriminated groups. In the movie milk we watched this week, the leading character Harvey mentioned such a concept: the “us’s”. The “us’s” includes the LGBTQ’s members, the Blacks, the Asians, the Seniors, the disabled and maybe more. All of us are only likely to be recognized and respected if we go to fight for our equal rights. The process of fighting for rights can never be easy, but only by doing so will it be possible to see the dawn of hope.

My favorite thing in this exhibit is a photo. this photo shows a black lesbian mother and her son at San Francisco Gay Pride, and it was photographed in June, 1984. From this photo, we can see the mother’s love for her child. For a long time, the image of homosexual has been heterodoxed by mainstream views, and many people even feel that homosexuality is a mental illness.  But in fact, homosexuals are also mortal. They are no different from heterosexuals except that their sexual orientation are different from most people.  They have no mental illness and no fault of their own. They have the same abilities as everyone else, and they are no worse than heterosexuals. I once watched a TV series: Queer as folk.  After that, I also watched many gay films and television works, like Brokeback Mountain, Call Me By Your Name.  As I grow older, I am more and more able to understand the implications of these works.  Love can not only transcend gender, but can also transcend time and space.  If we can love, then love more and be more tolerant.

In this exhibition, I also noticed two paragraphs of text relate to what I have learned in the readings and films. The first one is about Harvey Milk, it said that Harvey Milk is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay official elected to office in the State of California. The second one is about the ‘Stone Wall Event’, and it said that members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front(GLF) planned to call their separatist community “Stonewall Nation,” in homage to the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

When talked about whether my native country has a similar place to this exhibition, I was surprised to find that there was no such a place. This made me think about the current situation of homosexuality in China today.  In 1997, homosexual acts were decriminalized in China, six years before the United States.  In 2001, homosexuality was removed from the classification criteria for mental disorders, which was a considerable improvement.  Now on social media, gay or gay organizations can speak on it.  There is no limit to the freedom of homosexuality on the Internet, but there is still a long way to go before legislation can protect LGBTQ’s members.  Nowadays, the biggest source of pressure for homosexuals in China is their family. Many homosexuals choose not to come out to avoid the incomprehension and disappointment of their family and friends. This is also the reason why the phenomenon of “‘Gay Wife’ in China is serious today. However, I believe that with the openness in people’s minds and the continuous development of queer struggle, these problems will eventually be solved. And there will also be more and more queer activity memorials and queer history exhibitions in China, and even in the whole world.

Finally, what I want to say is that what I learned this week made me gain a lot.  LGBTQ is something I was interested in, and through this week’s study, I learned more about the history and culture of this group.  Moreover, the fight for equality and freedom for all mankind should not be the task of only minorities. It should be a responsibility that everyone agrees and works for.

My first week in Berkeley

This has been an eventful week. A week ago, filled with longing and excitement, I packed my bags，prepared to set off for Berkeley, and today is my fifth day here.

Before talking about the life here, I want to say something about our trip to Berkeley. It didn’t go very well because the plane was delayed for four hours and we didn’t arrive at the dormitory until after 11 p.m. on last Sunday. Because it was so late and there was no staff there, we couldn’t even check-in and get our dorm keys.💔 After some simple cleaning and washing, I was finally able to fall asleep at 2 a.m. on Monday. With classes at 10 a.m in Monday morning , I thought that my first day at Berkeley would be a mess. But it turned out that everything was going well, and I have tried my best to manage my life.

Then the life here goes smoothly a lot. After good nights’ sleep, I gradually got used to the study and lifestyle here.  I find that I can make new friends and have new experiences every day.  What’s more, I really like the free atmosphere and the warm sunshine of California.  I hope that in the next five weeks, I will be able to gain more new knowledge and become a better self.😊

Talking about why I chose to study at UC Berkeley during this summer vacation, the reasons are as follows: I mean to come to the United States for further study in two years, so I hope to feel the atmosphere here before I make the final decision. Meanwhile, I also want to experience the study and life here. I heard that Berkeley will have Internet classes in the following years, allowing foreign students to study Berkeley courses online in their own countries.  But this is not enough for me, as far as I am concerned, I prefer to integrate into the environment to experience the life here rather than study online.

I hope that I can broaden my horizon here, learn more knowledge and expand my social circle.  What’s more, I know that Berkeley’s students are all excellent students from all over the world. They have too many good qualities worth learning.  I want to know what is the differences between the colleges in our country and Berkeley.  I hope to find some differences to help me make better progress. And in this class, I hope that I can further improve my English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills to help me better integrate into the learning and life here.

In the first week here, we spent two hours watching the film The Big Sick, and I think I relate to Kumail most in this film. Sometimes I conceal some things and thoughts from my parents, but I prefer to call them a white lie. For such things, I tend to wait until it passes before I confess to my parents. I choose to do that because I don’t want them to worry too much about me and in such circumstances, I prefer to ask my friends for help.

Since I have been in the United States for a week, I began to have my own views on this country. In general speaking, I think America is a fairly free country, probably because of its political system. It is really difficult for me to judge its correctness because there are considerable differences in the political systems between China and the United States, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.  But in general, as long as the country can continue to develop healthily, it is the right system for the country.

Because China has so much differences with America, I do have some culture clash moments. For instance, last Wednesday, I was stopped by a student in Berkeley on my way back to the dormitory and he wants me to donate for their project.  After the donation, I received an email saying that they thanked me for my donation and would use it properly to oppose some of Trump’s policies.  I am surprised because this is impossible in China. As an ordinary citizen, it is barely possible for us to participate in upper political decisions. However, honestly speaking, I really like this kind of political freedom. Because the citizens as the foundation of a country, is supposed to be the main body with the most power to decide whether a policy is implemented. I think China should broaden more channels in this regard to let citizens express their opinions.

Finally, I want to say that I am now feeling both adventurous and homesick. Since this is the first time I have been so far away from home and have to spent six weeks in a brand new country, I am full of curiosity about everything here and I am filled with the desire to explore.  But in an unfamiliar environment, homesickness is inevitable, so I often feel depressed at night. But this negative emotion has faded over time, and I believe that in the next five weeks, I will be more adapted to the life here and gain a beautiful and memorable learning experience.😃

 ‘Spider-Man’ is great!

Last Sunday, nine people from our team went to the Regal UA Berkeley to watch the movie Spider-Man: Far From Home that had been run for more than ten days in America. It is a science fiction film and is starred by Tom Holland. We chose this film Because many of us like science fiction and we believe that the movies produced by Marvel Studio must have quality assurance. There is also a Japanese girl with us because she also wants to watch this movie.

Regarding this movie, I want to talk about my opinion about a character: The Mysterio. I think he is a person full of hatred, and the source of his hatred is that Iron Man despised his work and thought he had a mental problem and dismissed him. The mysterio have all along nurtured schemes to got Edith and finally fabricated a charge against Spider-Man before he died. I think these are all out of his revenge mindset. What’s more, I think that before he died, when he ordered to release the illusion, he was already making the video which played in the bonus scene. I really don’t like this character not only because he is the villain, but the more important reason is that I think that a person who always has a revenge mindset is psychological distorted. Such people will cause great harm to society and the others. They may complete their revenge at all costs.

Back to the film itself, fortunately, I didn’t find any misrepresentation, or I am not careful enough. Frankly speaking, I enjoyed this film a lot. Compared with in my native country, I think the biggest difference in watching movies in the United States is that many trailers will be played before the film starts. In China, cinemas also play trailers but often only broadcast two or three. The cinema here will play much more.

Overall, this is a great movie. The performances of the actors are excellent, the storyline is exciting and the special effects are also great. So I would highly recommend my classmates to watch it.🌸

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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