Journal #3

Hi, this is Jin Yang Liu, and you can call me Elva. I am from China. I want to enter the graduate school after the ALP program. And my major in China is pharmacy, so I want to continue to study it in the USA. My hometown is Shenyang, a city in the northeast of China. It’s also one of the co-host cities holding the football games for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. I like shopping, if someone of you want to find someone to go shopping with, you can tell me. And I am crazy about all kinds of food, so you also can ask me if you want to try some new food. I also like to go out to travel or just go somewhere near to have fun. I love misic and movie. I have so many hobbies except studying.

I just have been in the US for 3 weeks so everything is so unfamiliar and fresh to me. When I just got to the airport in LA, I felt a little of strange. There were all people around you saying another language. But what is the most uncomfortable thing to me is that a man was staring me all the time. Anyway he was kind, because he smiled at me, I still could not used to such this thing.

And it is quite different between cities in China and here. There are all houses here, but in China they are mostly flats for people to live in. High buildings can be seen everywhere in Shenyang, but they are merely to see here. The weather here is also not like my city that I used to live in, as it is too dry and has too much sunshine here. I always need to drink water.

There are really some things that seem weird to me. First, when you are going to walk across the street you should press the bottom that is set beside the street. There is no such thing in China, so I am not used to it at the beginning. Second, when I go home, I can see hills along the road, but the grass on the hills is yellow. Why? I mean it is summer now. And then people here tell me that the grass will turn green in winter. However, I still cannot understand things like this. And the traffic code here is different from that in China as well.

But in a word, I like to study here, and I will try to get used to things around me as soon as possible.