The 33rd Friendly Greeting From Shirly,China,Sun, April 2, 2006

Hi,Dear Friends

How are you? Is there anything special on your side? Hope you are well and enjoy your weekend.

This week, our company organized employees to donate money to plant trees in Inner Mongolia to block desert from Northwest to Beijing. Our big shareholder and its 3 son companies will plant 3,335,000 square meters trees. Within the first 3 days, our company has completed for 233,450 square meters. My money amount is listed on No.4. In our company, the higher position a person on, the more money he donates. The general manager is always the No. 1. Instead of forcing anyone, we wrote the names of the people who had donated in the first time on the bulletin board to admire them. The others would follow us voluntarily.

We donated money to help the others after the company started to make profit. As the delegate of the company, I sent some money to the Red Cross 3 times to help the people who were suffering the tsunami, flood and in the poor mountains in the Southeast Asia, Guangdong and Guizhou in 2005.

Does your company do the same thing? Do you take part in this kind of thing to help the others?

A funny thing this week is that I got an answer from a teaching site of a famous art college in my city to my application to be a full time student there.

Since the art college in Shenzhen University stopped to start its art graduated student class according to its plan last Sep. for no people enough applied it. I wondered whether I could become a student full time in the teaching site if I applied to retire from my current position. The answer is: Firstly, I have to take part in their exam as a high school student except the painting ability itself. Secondly, I must present all of their lessons except art lessons, such as politics, Chinese classical language and literature, and so on...Oh, my God, they were something I had been tested and past the exam 20 years age when I entered the university and then I taught in the college.

My art teacher was angry for he thought that my painting level is higher than his students who are on the second grade in the same college. However, my heart is peaceful. Even, I felt it is a good thing to give up this place to learn. I am not the person who wants to waste my time on those lessons that I can teach, I do not like their formalistic educational style, too. I feel that if I was a student there, my created mind would be killed by their education way. So, I’ll have more time to go to the nature, to learn and to feel via my own mind with more freely style if I give up it. I will certainly have the other better opportunity and choice to learn art in a wider world. Even though I can not enter an art college in whole of my life, I can found a better and stronger financial base to support my own art learning with the time in the art college. This is just the opportunity cost, right? : -)

I am just a learner on art, music, English and the work on the web site. Anyway, I would really like to do a little bit things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be An Electronic Bridge Of Culture Exchange, Friendship, and Language Learning. During the process to help the others and to improve myself. :-)

I do appreciate your understanding, directions and supports. I do hope to get your great help continuously now and in the coming time...

If you have any questions, comments and suggestions, please write to shirley@ebridge.cn , or shirleyz004@haoo.com, You are welcomed to publish your opinions in the forum,too. :-)

--Shirley
Written and Edited On Sun, April 2, 2006