60 Minutes Post

          I watched the segment on the kid that plays chess and that segment interested me greatly. To begin, I find it crazy that he can play chess so well. I have tied to play chess in the past and I am absolutely terrible at it. There are so many rules and tricks to the trade that I find it very difficult to keep up. Not only  can I barely keep up, but he keeps up while having his back turned and playing ten games at a time! This is just crazy to me.
          By speaking out loud and not looking at the board, he tells his opponent what move to make for him. I just can't comprehend how he manages this. His opponent would say what move they made and then he would give his next move. He didn't even have to watch the board to know the position of the pieces. He automatically processes the moves and the board in his head.
          Not only  can he play the game while not watching, but he won each game he was playing. He knew exactly what moves to make to win the games and accomplished it flawlessly. He was considered a child prodigy, and almost beat the world champion at the age of thirteen. He is amazing and I think he is going to go very far in life even if it's only for plying chess. With all of the publicity for his mad skills and the cash prizes for tournaments, he is set for life.

China Research Post

          In a couple of my letters I read about a day celebrated in China called the Qingming Festival,

or Tomb Sweeping Day. To me this sounds like another name for Halloween. When I hear tombs, I automatically think of mummies and scary things, usually associated with Halloween here in the US. To my surprise, it has nothing to do with Halloween. It has everything to do with the Chinese Memorial Day.
          The Qingming Festival is a time set aside to tend to the graves of ancestors. It is also used as a time to get outside, enjoy the greenery of springtime, and to spend time with family and friends.

Flying kites is also a fun past time for the Chinese. They do not only fly kites during the day, they attach little lanterns the their kites at night and fill the night sky with glowing light.







 "China Qingming Festival, 2014 Tomb-Sweeping Day, Pure Brightness." China Qingming Festival,
 2014 Tomb-Sweeping Day, Pure Brightness. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

"Int'l Kite Festival Held in E China (2)." - People's Daily Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.

"Tomb Sweeping Day in China." PocketCultures RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Service Learning Project

Jessica Hamer and I worked together on a common interest of ours. We came up with an idea on how to help out wounded warriors in America. A lot of soldiers that return for the war with injuries cannot provide health insurance for themselves and/or their family. Jessica and I wanted to try to help out as many of these veterans as possible. So we came up with a plan to have an event where we collected baskets from local businesses and raffled them off. We would also have food donated to our event and collect tips for it. All proceeds would go towards the wounded warriors. We made a presentation with statistics on soldiers and more information about our event we wanted to have. It is posted to Jessica Hamer's blog here.

China letter reaction

Receiving letters back from the students in Chine has been an amazing, unforgettable experience. I have been emailing a few of them back and forth and getting to know more about them and their culture. When reading their letters, I was expecting to read about how strict their country is and how they don't have any free time and how they make no choices themselves. This, however, was not what I read. China is very strict, but people there do have free time and they can go out and do whatever it is that they need or want to do. They have a huge test, which I did not know about until this project, that determines what they will do with the rest of their lives. This astounds me. School is much more structured, as I assumed it would be, and students care more about their grades than a lot of kids here in the United States. I was surprised that a lot of them had siblings. I had heard about the law stating you could only have one child and I found this was not the case for any of the people I received letters from. They had a lot of questions to ask and many pertained to my many jobs. They didn't know how I have time to do everything I am involved in plus work as well. They had many questions on if I liked my jobs and how I picked them. I also had a lot of questions about hobbies and books. They were curious as to what else I did in my free time. In one of my pictures in my autobiography, my family and I were at Hershey's Chocolate World. They were amazed that my family could travel so easily. Whenever we wanted to take a trip, we could. they never said this, but I'm assuming they can't just travel to far away places at the drop of a hat.

Out of all of my letters, not one person compared me to an actress or a television show. They were all able to basically tell me about myself just from my autobiography. It was amazing how much they could tell about me just from reading it. They don't seem to be very judgmental, which surprised me
slightly because people here tend to judge harshly and quickly. It made me feel so great to see how excited they were to read our papers. It was very humbling to read their responses and to understand some of their thoughts. This has been an amazing experience and I hope to continue talking to them and expanding my knowledge on their culture. Maybe one day I'll go visit them in China.