A holiday Full of Food

     Definitely it is a loooong weekend. Four days is a big reward for a whole month tough English study. We should have been to Jasper, Banff or Edmonton; however, the key word of my holiday was food.
     I decided to spend all the weekend with my friends from the same company in Thursday, who are Noodle Sun, Toufu Andy, Rice James and Beef Zhang. Yes, their middle names are the dishes. We rejected the journey to Jasper because all of  us think it is not the best season to see colourful mountains and lakes view. Maybe we can spend one day at Edmonton. So the prime plan is Friday to Edmonton, Saturday to have Hot Pot, Sunday Hiking to the reservoir to make a BBQ, Monday to finish the homework. What a beautiful plan it was! But plan shall always not be ahead of change. We got the information at Thursday night it would be cold and rainy in the last 2 or 3 days. So we immediately changed our plan to have Hot Pot in Friday.
     " It should be a party! We can ask our classmates to enjoin with us." Andy suggested.
     "Yes, exactly!" We all agreed.
     A dinner just became a party. We contacted our classmates separately. The time is so limit that only Lisa would have the time to come. Even though it can not prevent us to have a good time.Beef, shrimp, fish, mushroom...,dozens kinds of Chinese Hotpot classic food prepared. I won't tell you the secret that it is amazing to have Chinese traditional Hot Pot in a cold and rainy day.
   

    Then the next two days was just raining and raining and raining. Our life was smashed by pieces of sleep,breakfast,homework,lunch,homework,dinner,homework.You know, rainy means food and homework.

    When the last day I was waked by the morning sun, I knew there must be some change. It's impossible for us to go outside Calgary so that BBQ would be the best choice. Due to my hiking plan every week,we know the elbow park would be a good place because it served picnic chairs, desks and furnaces for free.After discuss, we decided to backpack 5Km there.Along the way we enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air after rain. Everything had been cleaned including our mind. As soon as we arrived the elbow park and finished the preparation, i had known how many foods and drinks taken with us. Chicken wings, beef, shrimp, fish, bacon ... eggplant ,potato,toufu...drinks..and a big water lemon.Till then i had understood why everyone agreed to backpack to picnic park. We all wanted to enjoy more but kept fit.

     Anyway,four days are not long. Although only staying in Calgary full of food is not fabulous, food is also better than homework. Sorry but i have began to expect next holiday.

Balance of Security and Freedom

When we discuss the success and failure, we must define it is different from winning and losing. Winning and losing is a social concept, which is concerned about the result and always judged by other people or the public. Success and failure is a spiritual concept, which is concern about the process and always judged by the faith and value yourself.If you don't have a faith or standard of life, you would never feel successful.So success is not decided by how much money you have, how happy you are and how many people admire you or you love. It is decided by whether you insist on your faith and belief. In the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, keeping on writing is her success.If you still can not identify the difference between success and winning, you can go to another TED talk by John wooden.The link is as follows:https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success?language=en

In the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert,she used a word "home" to describe her success standard but didn't give us essence of success. In my opinion, the essence of success in psychological layer is the unity of opposites between security and freedom. The feeling of security includes material security and spiritual security. Material security is the basis of our human activity. As a man, the material security is the bread. Without the basic material, success is like a tree without water and sunshine.  Spiritual security is the basis of our social activity.As a man, we have the spiritual security by being loved and admitted. The feeling of freedom is the gift of a man. It is the source to drive us to keep creating. In our real life, these two feelings are always contradiction. For example, nowadays in china, there are more than 200milion people who work in the places thousands kilometres away from home to have a better life but lose the freedom to take care their families. Also we have many examples on the people lose the security of life for freedom. The success of these people is based on balancing the feeling of security and freedom. In a conclusion, success is a dynamic process to balance the unity of security and freedom you need. You will never get failure until you give up to adapt the balance.

I want to recommend another TED talk about success.https://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success

a blind Erhu musician

     The song l chose for my narrative essay is named the moon reflect on the second spring. It was first composed and played by Hua Yanjun, a blind man, in 1940s. I found this song in my second year of collage, when i lost myself in the online and RPG games. At that time i was so negative to life that i can not concentrate to study and was absent at many courses. Then i heard this heart-broken but hopeful song in the campus and deeply moved by the rhythm. I learned from the Internet that although Hua Yanjun progressively lost his sight and drove to poverty and decease in his 30s, he never gave up the love of music. Before his death in 1950, He had composed and played more than 600 songs but only 6 of them were recorded, including the most famous Chinese Erhu song of Moon Reflected on Second Spring. With this in mind, i thought about my life in university. I had no reason to be negative. From then on, i put all my mind on studying and never went to play the games. When i have difficulty or feel desperate, the song will remind me the hard time in the past and i will be recharged by hope and courage.    
    I recommend the song and hope you can find the same feeling with me. The link is as follows:     
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm1mnu-B3LI&index=7&list=RDOF0OCDnQs6M&noredirect=1

Fresh

     Hello everyone, it's my pleasure to meet you in Calgary! My name is zhangjun, I came from Beijing, China. Now I'm working in China Petroleum Engineer Company, which is a subsidiary of CNPC. This time I was sent to Canada by my company and will have 3 month English study and 3 month PMP (project management professional) study.
     In my spare time, I like walking and hiking. Since arriving calgary, i walk 20-30Km around calgary to search new path every weekend with my friends and have had a lot of fun. i also like organising activity and party. We have the party in the apartment and cook by our self. We successfully had a party in last friday and made several great dishes. We are planning to have another party next weekend and welcome to join us!