The first topic I choose is the city I live in, which I found it's the most integral part of my life in the U.S. I'd love to write something about what I discovered in this city so far and also trips with my friends and my host family.
Well, grass is always greener on the other side, but honestly speaking, I knew nothing about Portland nor Oregon state before I saw Alex's posts on his Facebook. From that time on, I realized that the Reed program is really a fabulous chance for me to learn more about the U.S, and I had a strong sense of feeling that I could make it, for me, I might see Alex again, which is unbelievable.
So, let's talk more about the cute city, Portland.
Portland sits just to the south of the confluence of the Willamette and columbia rivers, it's situated approximately 70 miles from the Pacific Ocean and connectes to the Pacific via the Columbia river. Compared with cities such as LA, San Francisco, or even Seattle, Portland is really a small city, it is renowned for its amiable, everyday civility, for its fantastic public transportation, parks, museums and bookstores. The parks contain more forest than any city in the nation. I've been to the Mount Hood cabin trip with some of other language scholars during fall break, we went fishing and went hiking, which reminds me the twilight movie, bunches of green, tall trees standing around me made me feel I am the first woman leading in the vampire movie and my Edward is going to show up in a second.
Speak of the cabin trip, I have to say that it's definitely a good trip I have ever had, I love hang out with my close friends and have fun with them, and that time five of us lived in a gorgeous cabin with cute balcony, dwarf floor and fantastic hot tub. It rained a lot those days, so most times, we enjoyed the warmth of the hot tub in the rain, and the rain washed out our face, that's really a strange feeling.
Portland rains a lot, I heard about this before I came here. While Portland has 82 days per year when the sky is blue and the sun is shining, it also has, on the average, 82 partly cloudy days and 220 cloudy days per year, with 165 of those coming with at least some precipitation. Everybody I met told me that it's going to rain a lot since the end of the October, but fortunately, it rains a lot in the night, and the rain will stop in the day, which made me feel happy, cuz I don't want to use the umbrella on campus, btw, people here wear raincoat or waterproof clothes rather than use an umbrella.
Portland is known as the "city of Roses," and it possesses the ideal climate in which to grow these lovely flowers. I heard that they celebrate with a party called the Rose Festival every June. The event includes three parades, a carnival, the crown of the queen, and a visit from a dozen ships from the U.S Navy, U.S coast guard. Unfortunately, I'll go back to China that time, but who knows, maybe I'll come here again some day. An, we went to the Rose garden at least, it's the oldest public rose test garden in the nation. The roses begin to bloom in May, and the time we got there in August, they reached their peak I think. Those are really pretty flowers with several different colour, I like pink one the best, btw.
The entire Portland Metro area is an attraction, full of interesting things to watch, do, hear, and taste. Getting to these attractions is usually very simple. I really enjoy the time walking in downtown, which is encompassed in our Southwest Portland section, is agreeable for walking, and even if the weather is not entire cooperative, cuz the distances are relatively short. Usually, I'd like to take the 19 bus for about 30 minutes from Reed and get off near pioneer square. Pioneer square is a kind of land mark of Portland, I've been there several times, especially on Black Friday night when they lit the giant Christmas tree in the centre of the place. So walking further south or north down the six Avenue, you will see many department stores, fashionable boutiques, restaurants and cafe along the street. Pioneer Place and Nordstrom are the highlights of downtown shopping and on the north end of downtown, there is the main Powell's City of Books, which is the place I like most. And btw, the food carts close to Powell's are really fantastic, I've tried Chinese food and Thai food there before, which tastes not that authentic but who cares, just take the food and find a place in the nearby park, enjoy the view while chatting over the food, sounds so relaxing, but who knows, maybe it's not the food and the view but the person sitting next to me made me feel so amiable.
Thanks to my friends and host family, I had the chance to get to know the city more intimately during the first semester. We've been to several attraction such as the Oregon zoo, Pittock Mansion, Chinese garden sitting in China town and the famous 23rd Avenue, etc. Henry Pittock, the founder of the Oregonian, the city's daily newspaper and the largest paper in the state, built himself a mansion 1000 feet above the city. I have to say that the view in Pittock Mansion was spectacular, standing on the top of the hill next to the mansion and thinking about I'm the king of the world, such a pretty thing! However, the reality is the weather of the day we went there is foggy, which was not a bad thing, cuz it made the sunshine arose in folds and I felt like this is a wonderland.
Unfortunately, comparing to the Chinatown in LA, San Francisco or Seattle, Portland's Chinatown is kind of disappointed me, it's small and empty, made no difference between the outside of the town, apart from some Chinese restaurants. It's worth mentioning that The Chinese Garden sitting at the north end of Chinatown is a double-walled oasis built in a traditional style with extensive help from Portland's Chinese sister city Suzhou. So it just looks like a small Suzhou garden, which integrates the elements of water. stone, light, shadow, colour, texture and fragrance to form an enclosed small world that mysteriously feels as though it unfurl the entire universe within its walls. So it's not a bad idea hanging out there, it's reminds me I've been to Suzhou three times before.
So above are what I can think about so far, I'll add whatever I find interesting in the later time!
