Having the western food

On Dec.22 I have been to a western food restaurant with my classmates like Jessica, Grace, Katherine, and Chris and the grade 12 mentors like Mona. The restaurant’s name is “TACOS” which is a Mexico food restaurant, and it is located at Zhujiang Road. We have attended there at about 6 p.m.
We have eaten the traditional Mexico foot like the “Beef steak with rice”, “Mexico Tacos”, “Mexico Seafood”. I have never gone to a Mexico restaurant in my life, so that day was my first time.
In Nanjing, there are not any restaurants can cook the most traditional Mexico food, most of them just cook the food and mixed a lot of Chinese styles, these make us can not feel the true feeling of the Mexico food cultural. To these food, I feel very strange, also I just feel so so about it, I have ordered a food named “Mediterranean Meat Sauce With Rice”, the way that make these food is too different to me, the rice are under the sauce and it made of any curry and many pieces of sausage in the sauce, it tasted a little bit spicy and bitter, so that is so different with the Chinese food that I eat everyday, we do not use the curry in our food. The environment is wonderful the Mexico Western’s view comes to my when I went to this restaurant at the beginning. There are many foreigners there, the service is passion.
I recommend any of you can to enjoy your free or hungry time, which is a really nice place, I will go there if I have more money in my pocket and enjoy more kinds of food there in the future.

The art journey of me-----in Wu Weishan's Exhibition

On Dec.4 2008, we had been to a very famous Chinese sculptor's exhibition named “the sculpture exhibition of Wu Weishan”. This exhibition was showed to the public at the Nanjing University’s Art Building.

Most of the artwork is traditional artwork in this exhibition, and most of the Artwork was made by one sculptor-----Wu Weishan, just little of them were made by any other artists.

Through all the exhibition I have seek a lot of things, for examples their connotations, their ways of how to make them, their value to the public. From all of these sculptures, I also have found my favorite one, the “Lao Zi”. This sculpture was made by Wu Weishan, in 2006, it was put in the lobby that made me found it very quick. It is a back and brown sculpture.Weishan used a lot of straight lines to make this artwork and this artwork has many edges and corners that show the power of this artwork. He also used many streamlined lines on the body of it-----Lao Zi's clothes. The artwork was made of bronze, so it also gave me a steadfast feeling of the artist.

The artwork made me think about life and how to be a smart person in the world, Lao Zi ’s idea was the most modern idea not only in the past, but also in now. I think about the “empty” in his idea-----do not worried about the life too much. The problems would come forever, the most important thing is to try your best to fit the world. This artwork reminds me of the water flowing the river, the water just changes its shape when it faces many barriers.

It relates to the event that happened in my other class, and that was about me too. We are in GCA now. this is a new environment for us. We haven’t had classes full of English to study everything. That just like the environment that we couldn’t change. Some of my classmates just complain how terrible they are now to their friends, but any other classmates did not do that, they just change their way that how to study better, then they changed themselves and been successful in GCA. This artwork also has a lot of intentions:
1. To show the traditional way of art in China.
2. To show the ideas of Lao Zi.
3. Teaching us how to use a smart way to live in the world.
4. Wake up the old way of sculpture of China, and show it to the public, make the citizens be proud of our own culture.

I like this artwork, because of its connotation. It not shows the rational way of sculpture-----make everywhere on one artwork so specific, and make each details so similar with the real thing. That is the western way of sculpture making. We often ignore our own culture our own way to do any thing. Each country’s culture have its excellences we must find them, study them, develop them. I will never forget this exhibition, this journey in my life.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY (10hours due by Feb.8)

I attended the badminton club of GCA when the term was begin, I have got 46 hours activity time this term for my physical activity, I had special experiences in this club I think, and the supervisor is Leo Qin and Mr. Harris.

We have two places to practice and enjoy our badminton club time, first is the Nanjing Normal University, we played there every Saturday afternoon from about 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. the payment of the club is 20yuan. The other place for us to practice is the Nanjing Foreign Language School’s gym, which is free for us at each Wednesday’s night from 7 p.m. to half past eight.

Badminton is my favorite sports, I love it since I was a little boy, and I practice a lot when I was young. I can play both the single badminton play and the double badminton play. Tim is my classmates, and he is also a badminton club member, he can play the badminton very well too. I often practice with him, although I can play better than him, but he never give up for each goal, and he often to be the partner with me to play the double badminton play. We like to help each other to improve our skill in many ways. Our proprietor is Leo Qin, he also can play the badminton very well, and he often helps each of us to be better than before. I was chose to a member of GCA badminton team and joined a match at Nanjing International School. I attended the double play with Abby, she is my classmate, and my best friend, also she can not play it very well, and often made some mistakes that I thought very stupid, this caused we lost lots of points, but she never give up to be a good player, when our final match began we lost all the match before it, so she ran out of the gym and cried for a long time because of her guilt. I was sorry to her too, and I ran around the school to find her, finally I sad to her “I do not care of the result, you are my teammate, you are my friend, compare with my own win, I would rather fail with you, just try your best!” she showed me a smile, and finally we had won the only match that night.

At 14th of December our club held a match that every GCA students can take part in it, I joined it too, and got the gold medal at the end of the match, I was so happy that day, I had never thought that I can achieve the NO.1.

Today I still practice a lot to be better and better, I have learned a lot from the activity. Never give up although you can not do the things very well at the beginning. Practice more to be successful. Never blame your partner, they want to win too, they need encouragement.

This activity also helps me to keep health, after training, I have found I get stronger and stronger than before, I have not got sick for about 1 year. A healthy body is also a necessary condition of our university life in the future. On the other hand, if I have a good badminton skill in my life, its also good for our healthy life.

The activity match can test my result of training, it also a stage for us to communicate with each countries’ students and make more friends not only in China, but also in too many foreign countries. It is important for our job in the future.

I love badminton; I love our Badminton Club; I love the members in our team; I will continue to do this physical activity next year!

Guest Artist

Last Monday, Zhao Bing was come to our school to do a speech for us, he is an famous landscape architect in Nanjing forestry university. He told about the Gardens of Suzhou, about its structures, sights, shapes, and textures. I have learned a lot from his speech.

I can find a lot of things that i have ever known in the past. There were many main topics in his speech, like what is a "garden"？How many kinds of gardens in China? What the meaning of garden in the past. Why Suzhou gardens can give us a special feeling. What things in the gardens make it more traditional?
In the western countries garden means Gen and Eden, so there was many similar with Chinese meanings. In the Chinese gardens we have Empire Gardens, Private Gardens, Temple Gardens, Scenic Gardens, four kinds of gardens.
Suzhou's gardens attract all the people in the world, why? All the gardens were created in the city we can find silent in the noisy city, which is another view for us. We can find the history's culture in these gardens. The gardens just like landscape paintings, the poetries and it was also created by the lands' unique culture. All of them give the people a fantastic feeling that whey will never find in other countries.
There are also many special stones in the gardens, in Chinese we called it “Shuo Shi”, it means the stones up one by one and make the view of it be seemed very comfortable. In Suzhou gardens, we can find this view frequently, then we can find many stones named “Taihu Stones” too, these stones use its changes in its shapes, unique thin body change the feeling of the visitors too.
I have learned a lot by this speech, I know why the Suzhou gardens are amazing sights to the people from all over the world let them come to China to see them, I learned why does them get the lasting appeal in traditional culture of our country and makes it so attractive.