Week 6

International students are not very common in Chinese Universities. When there are international students in a Chinese University it is because they are there to learn Chinese and it is uncommon for them to have a lot of exposure or classes with Chinese students. Most of the time these international students have all their classes together. These students are typically at private universities, that have a connection with a university in the United States. It is very uncommon for an international student to be see or have class at a public university in China.

Week 5

Valentines Day

Last week was Valentine's Day. There are many similarities and many differences between American and Chinese Valentine's Day. Recently the American version of Valentine's Day has been taking hold with the younger generation. A similar, more recognized holiday takes place on July 7th, however. This is known as the Qixi Festival. At the Qixi Festival gifts are exchanged between boyfriends and girlfriends. The older generation focus on a beautiful, but sad love story associated with the Festival. The fairy tale tells the story of two people who fell in love, a goddess (weaver girl) and mortal (cowherd). The goddess ran away from the heavens and married the mortal. They lived had two children and lived together for years. The goddesses mother learned of the marriage and forced the goddess back to the heavens. Her husband's ox began to talk and told the husband if he killed it and put on its hide he would be able to travel to the heavens to find his wife. The husband took their children and the ox hide and travelled to the heavens. The goddesses mother learned of the husbands plan and created a wide river across the sky (the Milky Way). Unable to cross the river the husband and wife sat on opposite banks. Once a year the magpies take pity on the husband and wife and fly to the heavens creating a bridge, allowing the husband, wife to be together for one night.

Week 4

Colleges in the United States are very different from those in China. To begin with, American colleges have a much greater attendance rate than those in China. Chinese universities are much more elitist, though they are working to get away from this. In 1999 China implemented a higher education enrollment explansion plan to increase the number of students attending Chinese universities. My classes in China were taught in a much different style from those that I am attending here at Akron. My classes were much less discussion based and there were very few online aspects. The Springboard discussion sessions that we have here, were not part of my courses in China. In China, our computer science and technology is not nearly as develped as in the United States. Students in China are primarily traditional students and they primarily all live on campus. This is a very different situation from Akron, where there is a large commuter population. We do not be large areas of space dedicated to parking garages, as Akron does. These spaces would more than likely be filled with Resident Halls.

Week 3

This week has been an interesting new experience for me. On Tuesday and Wednesday the University of Akron closed and cancelled all of its classes. I never had days off, due to the weather, when I was in China. I never experienced severe weather conditions, which required the university to cancel its classes for the day, so having two days off was very new interesting to me.