Question of the Day: Are you or have you ever gotten addicted into any virtual reality games such as World of Warcraft, Runescape, or Sims?

*Readers wait patiently for the blogger who has been MIA (missing in action). Suddenly…*

I see her! No, no, that’s not her…YES IT IS!!

*Wendy stumbles into blog post* OH! There she is!
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You can imagine how alarmed I felt when I connected to the Internet in our cozy little place in Shanghai, China and found out that Blogspot, along with several other sites like Facebook and Youtube, was blocked off!! What’s more, my beloved Pandora refused to work, saying it could no longer provide service to me since I was outside of the USA. :(

Thus, my daily blogging ritual (and other Internet rituals except for email) was put to a halt for an entire month.

But, as you can see, I back now! HURRAY! *fireworks* Did you miss me? =D Well, I must say that I missed you all, and am so happy to see that none of you gave up on my blog, despite my sudden disappearance.

To put it very simply, my vacation in China was…BUSY! I kept a journal of events for -almost- every day we were away and now the pages are all filled up. We stayed for 1 week less than we usually do, and therefore had to cram all of our to-do’s, to-go’s, and to-eat’s all in just a matter of approximately 3.857 weeks, according to my handy-dandy Blackberry calculator.

I cannot possibly copy my entire leaflet of records into my blog, so here’s a rough breakdown of what I did, week by week:
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Happy Wednesday–no, no, I mean Thursday, everybody! :D This always happens during the summertime. Now that I don’t have school and other activities (sluggish Mondays, Piano Lesson Tuesdays, you get the idea) to distinguish my days between weekdays and weekends, they just all sort of blend together. Now, I have to look twice on the calendar to know what day it is. Do you guys have this problem too when you’re on vacation?

Today feels like a pretty chillax day, so I’m going to keep this post equally laid-back and devote it to letting you guys get to know me better. Thanks to Amanda Sablan for tagging me:
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Sorry for the lateness! Orientation really wore me out and so I’ve just been resting the past couple of days. I can’t really sum up all the puzzle pieces that make up College Orientation in just one blog post, so I’ll briefly go over just a few of the highlights:

1) The first day was all about preparation for the second day (aka Registration for Classes Day).

2) It was literally session after session after session…two hours on alcohol abuse, thirty minutes on meal plans and dining services, one point five hours on campus safety. Don’t get me wrong, all that stuff is important and I learned a lot, but honestly, after that fifth session of simply sitting in my seat in the Auditorium and nothing else, my legs were about to start jerking and convulsing at any second.
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I usually don’t write about politics, but recently my AP Government Comparative class studied China’s public policy. One of the biggest issues we discussed was China’s infamous one-child policy. I would like to address both the pros and the cons of the policy and then discuss my own position on this matter. Feel free to support, qualify, or refute my position or create your own stance by commenting below. Any feedback is welcome! All information below is either through my own personal knowledge that I have gained from my AP Government class or from Wikipedia. ;]

Basic Overview: China has had a communist regime since 1949 when Mao Zhedong took control after defeating the Kuomingtang. Everything, including the media and economy, has been controlled by the government. In recent years, China HAS taken some steps towards a more democratic state but definitely cannot be officially titled as a “liberal democracy.” There is no doubt that the government has severely oppressed the citizens of China in numerous ways, including the one-child policy. The one-child policy states that a couple may not have more than one child, excluding some situations such as minority families or parents with no siblings. The consequences of violating this law usually consist of drastic punishments, ranging from alarmingly high fees to forceful abortion.
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