Love Yourself

Today is Valentine’s Day, the day that’s considered to be the most romantic. People used to write love letters to one another, and soon they became love text messages, love emails, love Tweets, and love Facebook statuses.

The thing is, you also need to remember to love that most important person in the world: yourself.

So for today, we’re going to write a love letter to ourselves.

1. Write to your past self. Do you remember how you were like five years ago? Ten years ago? Fifteen years ago? Or back when you were a child? What are the things you wish to tell your younger self?
2. Write to your future self. Maybe five years from now, ten years from now, fifteen years from now? What are the things you wish to remind your future self?

Happy Valentine’s Day. Love yourself.

Stereotypes?

By Christopher Chao

List five stereotypes about the opposite sex: 

1. Women are weak;
2. Girls like to gossip;
3. Mothers are more tender than fathers;
4. Grandmothers can cook very well;
5. Women always want to be a bride and get married.

List five stereotypes about religion: 

1. The Catholic Church are like little boys;
2. Buddhists are vegetarians;
3. Muslims are extremists;
4. Atheists want to burn churches;
5. Religious people only believe in their God.

List stereotypes about people outside of your race: 

1. All white people (Caucasians) have blond hair;
2. Black people are good at sports and music;
3. All Latinos like Mexican food;
4. All Japanese people are ninjas;
5. All Koreans eat Kimchi.

Have you ever suffered from prejudice or changed your mind about a stereotype? 

I went to Michigan with my father. We wanted to buy women clothes for my mother in Taiwan, but the salesperson, a white female, didn’t want to help us. She just left. Later, a black woman came to help us. My view on white and black people changed that time.

Being Educated = Greedy?

I have a teacher who graduated from UCLA and is teaching English part-time because he said that he liked to help people who wanted to improve their lives. I thought that every well-educated people just wanted to have a great job with good pay.

Disneyland and Google

By Christopher Chao

I was born in the US, but the majority of my life was spent in Taiwan. Because Taiwan and the US have a special relationship, like Japan and Korea, we have a US military base in Taiwan, and the US government supports Taiwan in defense against Chinese invasion. So I think most Taiwanese have good impression of the US.

When I was seven years old, I went to Disneyland with my family. That was my first impression of the United States. Big food, big cars, everything was big and friendly. When I grew up, I learned that Disneyland was not the real situation in the US.

Every country has a good side and a bad side. For me, US is better than Taiwan.

When I was living in Japan, I missed Taiwanese food. Food in Japan was very delicious but too expensive and came in tiny portions. Then I came to the US. The food is very good, bigger portioned, and cheaper. I think the usual meal size is three times bigger than that in Japan and Taiwan.

I am most thankful for my family, my friends, and Google.

I thank my family for raising me, I thank my friends for taking care of me when I left my family, and finally, I thank Google for giving me the key to learn about the world.