20120711 part two Aaron

20120711 Wetland visiting

This project attracts me most. Wetland research is really cool! What's more, it is all for environment and the future of Earth.
       The farm is large and what we have tour is the part of whole system, without the whole wetland. In research center, we got to know Professor Brown and his students. After that, we were carried by a "truck"

 then we going around by "truck"

It is a great fun to learn more. When talking with one student, I knew that this summer is unusal that it is much more hot and droughtful than ever before.

  the project
with the basin collecting the run-off that meanwhile being used as buffering area, wetland can clear by microorganism.

 after that, we are reaching our terminal of the journal. What has represented is great amazing that hardly can you imagine without being here.

All in all, WHAT A GREAT DAY!!

The greetings from Professor Hancock and some observations about Amish culture

I have written a personal statement and sent it to Professor Hancock.He replied me and gave many suggestions on my draft personal statement .
Also,he wrote that " Please express my warm greetings to everyone in the summer program as you prepare to return home, especially your Wuhan teachers for a safe and happy journey back home. Zai jian."That was really nice.So i decided to post it on the  blog to make sure the greetings are sent to everyone.
Yesterday,we went to the Amish Country and had a great time there.The animal below is called "Yangtuo" in Chinese.I don't know what it is called in English.I think it is a dorable animal because it always wears a naive and peaceful face.It is so lucky that i can see it in Amish Country.

The faith of Amish people impressed me a lot.They refused to use electrocity and any other modern facilities.They would rather spend more time hanging out with families than surf the Internet and make the phone call.They attach more importance to the face-to-face communication with people.It may be hard for young generations .As a result, about twenty percent of the youth chose the modern life style instead of the conservative life style.Even thouth,they show respect for different faith .They encourage people to believe in their religion.Meanwhile,they can understand the different choices.Their culture is compatible .I think that is the reason why Amish culture can exist so long .

Schiller Park and Shakespeare

Today we got to the Schiller Park,although most of us thought it's Shakespeare's park, and we watched a drama written by Shakespeare. The picture was shot there. However, it's easy to find out that my focus is not on the stage. It's not a mistake. What i want to convey is that people take Shakespeare as a entertainment. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare is great, and his drama is elegant. many people think they are not fit to Shakespeare.

In my opinion it's not natural for people to be rejected by art, art is made for people, that's what art is. The drama is wonderful and attractive, but it doesn't mean people must sit formally there on a hard chair, look directly to the stage and listen very carefully, although they should do it if they want. 

We can see a lot of people sit on the comfortable chair, play with their dogs, whisper to each other, and walk around everywhere. I think they are really enjoying the art instead of be the slave of art.

Baseball Class Tomorrow

Hi everyone.
Tomorrow, at 9:30, I'll be teaching a class about baseball. I have taught literally thousands of Wuhan University students about baseball and I'm looking forward to teaching you, too. To do this, I'll need a little help. I want you to spend some time finding out about baseball before you come to class. Some questions I'll need you to answer:

How many players are on the field during a baseball game? What positions do they play?
How long is a baseball game?
What kind of skills do you need to play baseball?
How does a baseball team score a run?

After lunch, we'll go out an play baseball together--it should be a lot of fun. Monday night, you'll get to go to an actual professional baseball game in our beautiful downtown ballpark! If there's one thing I know about baseball, it's that the more you know about the game, the more you'll enjoy it. See you tomorrow.

How I admire the countryside in Ohio

Today is the most exciting and fascinating of all of these days in Ohio. We went to the countryside in Ohio inhabited by those people who lived as their ancestors did in the past. The Amish people don't use electricity, telephones, automobiles, televisions and cell phones in their daily life. As we can see, they lived a life very peaceful, all the Amish love their families, I think their happiness based on their self-dependence and freedom. I admire them very much, how I hope that I can live a peaceful and free life as they do one day.

The most interesting thing is that I saw many horses on the farm, I love horse very much. They were kind to people when we touched them gently. But I was so sad to see that those horses  belonged to the farm, they had no freedom to run freely in the grasslands, they only could be alive for twenty years. When we sat in the buggy touring around the farm, we were told that the horse was nearly sixteen years old,  it means that it should work to death.

On our way home, XIAO YA said she wanted to be a farmer as the Amish did in the future, I can understand her, because I believe everyone loves freedom and peace, if we can live together with our family in an area where is full of happiness, peace and freedom when we become old people, I think it's the last expectation of people's life. I love it !

Campus Information Hunt Team 8

   This was the first class we took in WPOSP.I should say that it was an interesting class and very useful as well.Unlukily,we just finished one of our tasks,but we surely found something interesting while we were hunting the information.
   Our task was Science and Engineering Library.Actually it was easy to know how to get there from the map,but it was difficult to get into the library for the library was being built at that time.Luckily,we found a man sat on the stone chair in front of the library reading newspaper,and asked him for help.When we entered the library,we got what we needed directly from the girl standing at the counter.She answered our question friendly.Then as we were all interested in the digital union which was on the third floor so we went upstairs.In the digital union,we found a girl working with her computer.We asked her why it was called digital union,cause we were all curious about that.But she missed our question and thought we were asking the way to Student Union.She was very enthusiastic a nd led us to the first floor showing the way to the Student Union.She even drew the way on our map.Though it wasn't our task,but thank you very much.
   Our second task was OIA.On the way to get there,we asked passerby how to get there ,and we added extra questions which we all wanted to know their opinions.For example,which one do you like best,James or Kobe.Well ,of course ,they gave us different answers.A family from Texas even talked a lot about football,interesting wasn't it?We don't see football games frequently in China.
Though we didn't have enough time to visit the OIA,we learned a lot from our wonderful exploration.

Group member:Sophie Liu,Chaomeng Lin,Zheng Xu,Tianyu Lei

the Ohio Historical Society Museum

Today is the SGO’s day! There were five small group activities today and I am lucky to participate two of them. On the morning, I went to the Bexley Elementary and High school with some of us. The school is very lovely and the principal was very kind. In the afternoon I went to the Ohio Historical Society Museum, which contains lots of funny things.

I want to talk about something about the Ohio Historical Society Museum because it was so nice that make me feel like our museums in China should really make some improvement.

First of all, there’s a shelf beside the door where contains many reading materials. So when people enter into the museum they can find out information about the museum and the exhibition immediately.

Secondly, the Ohio Historical Society Museum has many small screens and when you push the button below, the short video will be played and you can get information without bothering others. I know there are some museums have similar systems, but most of them still rely on guiders to introduce the museum and give out information. This is not efficient at all because the guiders have to repeat same words day by day, which makes their job bored. And visitors can not explore their own way to tour because they may not get enough information without guiders.

And the last one, which is also the most impressing one, is about the village. The Ohio Historical Society Museum built up a village to tell people how’s it like to live in the 19^th century! That is tremendous because this village is consisted of real functional buildings and people can walk into the rooms and sit on the chairs and imagine the life of their ancestors. Rick told me that to build a village like had took six or seven years and cost a lot of money. But I think it’s worthy because of the educational meaning. If this village did not exist, then I may not learn so much about people’s life back in 19^th century. But now, I may never forget the village which show me how living is in earlier time for Americans.

Thanks for taking us to the museum! It’s a very nice experience.

Here's some pictures about the village.

This is the Ohio Village School.

What surprised me is that there's a small black board on every desk and some of them contains words, as if students have just finished their class.

These two are some inside stuffs in the Female Seminary. I met a lovely girl who dressed like a lady in old time. She told me that this is a school for girls who were born in wealth families. They came here to study how to be a real lady and eventually, became  good wives.
 Learn something everyday!