diary---1/4/2021 Today is April first, April fools day. When I was a little girl in my primary school, we used to make a joke with each other --- ‘hey, look! your shoelaces are untied!’ And if the child looks down upon his or her shoes, we would laugh and say 'APRIL FOOL' Today I also wanted to make a joke, and I thought really hard to find something I can do to be fun. But I got nothing in mind. In the end, I gave up and admitted that I am a person who has already get rid of the vulgar taste and at the same time hasn't developed a sense of quality humor. I have grown up and turned up to be a boring, realistic adult. But this may not a fair comment to me. I still love comedy and cross talk. I enjoy the sense of humor in a different way. I am on the train back home now. And I just have replied some penpals of me. Yes, I got some penpals these days! I am really excited about this, for last time I had a penpal I was a pupil and we communicated in Chinese. This time I got a German friend who is one year younger than me and also loves dogs, the snow in the winter, and the sea scenery. Ok, I will stop here because it is not so convenient to type with the laptop on the top of my lap.... haha, can I count this closing sentence as a kind of humor to celebrate April fools day? Wish everyone in the world happiness and fun.

diary --- 31/3/2021 I woke up from a nightmare this morning, immersed in a sorrowful mood. In the dream, I lost my dear grandma. I video-called her immediately on Wechat. And she was making breakfast and boiling eggs for our dog. I asked about her health condition and remind her don't forget to shut off the gas and look out for cars when crossing the street or walking in the community. She said OK and smiled, eating her breakfast. We chatted for a while and then ended the call. I can't tell her about my dream. It is not a smart thing to do to tell a senior something about death. The whole morning is blue and sad till I delivered the lesson to my students. When I was a child I can cry for such dreams and seek comfort from the adults. But I am not a child anymore and I know clearly tears are no use helping such a situation. Death is the unchangeable destination of every creature, including me and my grandma. I have always been worried about her cardiac disease and this has a lot to do with my choice of working in a colledge of medicine. I just want to know more doctors and set up more connection with doctors. After class, I came back dormitory and chatted with my roomate. She told me about her grandma, who has been past away last year at her ninetys. My grandma is only at her seventys and I believe she can live 20more years to see my children growing up. We can not decide the length of life, but I just wish I can. And what I can only do is to spent more time with her and take care of her. By this thought, I really need to buy a good apartment as soon as possible, so that my grandma can live with me if she want and she can enjoy the seaside scenery with me. I love her, very much. After all, she brought me up.

diary---30/3/21 I slept for a long time last night and this morning, from 8 pm yesterday till 9 am this morning. Showered, dressed, ate, and now I am sitting in the library again. I think today's weather is hot. These days I have been thinking and wondering about the little apartment I am going to live in. I really want to have my own apartment even though I have to bear a burden after that for about five years. I wondered about life in that apartment with my dog, harry. I will rearrange that apartment and decorate it as my preference, making it a wonderful, comfortable, and convenient home for me and harry. Each morning I will walk my dog by the seaside and evening in the park. I will play the fetching ball game with my dog, as well as frisbee catching. During the daytime, if I don't have class, I will study at home with my dog sleeping at my feet. I will stand up to strech my body and roll my neck occasionally, and my dog will definitely get excited about my sudden move and give his ball to me, staring at me hopefully and waiting for me to kick the ball. Yes, I certainly will satisfy his desire and play with him for a while. I will buy a big desk for me to study by and another long desk on the left for me to put my books and laptop on. I will have a bookshelf to collect my reference books and novels and dictionaries. And all that furniture will be put in a corner of my room, which is the study corner or my mini-study, with bright and eye-protecting light. I will plant some flowers and potted plants on the windowsill. By the way, the shan-wu-gui (a kind of herb which looks like a round turtle on the ground with green vines and leaves) which I planted about four weeks ago finally sprouted yesterday and keep growing. So I guess by the day I move into the new apartment, I can twine its vines on the windowsill's guardrail and let it keep growing there.

diary---29/3/2021 The temperature is climbing little by little and day by day. Today I just wear a shirtdress sitting in the library by the window, from where I can easily enjoy the beauty of green leaves swinging slightly over high trees and the soothing sunlight passing through the thick leaves, glittering, and gild them. I can hear the sound of cars and the voice of chatting, the birdsong in the wind. THIS IS SUMMER, I thought. I had a class early in the morning, and it is a great one. My teaching design of 'debate' did help students to think critically and express themselves in a more logical way. So after this successful class, I was really happy, excited, and satisfied. I went for a walk after lunch at the seaside, and practice my harmonica for a while. You can only play harmonica by the seaside in the daytime, not at night, for last night I did so and was warmly welcomed by hundreds of mosquitos. Anyway, I enjoyed the charming tune of the harmonica and the melody of 'Spirited Away', 'me and my country', 'jasmine flower', 'The Butterfly Lovers', and 'Oh, Susanna', and so did the passengers. While I was playing the harmonica, I saw a little child passed by staring at me and I replied with a wink. I just don't want to give myself too much pressure to earn money to write papers and to work hard. I mean, I just do what needs to do and I do those tasks by heart. After that, I will spend my time searching for interesting knowledge and study by my own pace and enjoy my leisure time. This is the first time I try to write some lyrical sentences in my diary, and I guess this is just because I am really in a good mood today and I read another book by Sarah Waters, Tipping the velvet. I have become a big fan of Sarah Waters since I finished reading the book Fingersmith. So much for today's diary. I want to talk about Sarah Waters more next time.

diary 28/3/2021 Today is even warmer than yesterday, so I wear a T-shirt sitting in the library --- usually, it was cold and raw in a library, for there is little sunshine and I have to stay in one position for long while studying. BUT today is really warm, and I don't need to wear my coat. Today is Sunday, I have a lot of tasks to do: first, to manage the class materials for the coming week(and to do some research about debate skills); Second, to make a plan for the coming month, April; Third, to review the past grammar lessons and prepare for tonight's lesson; Fourth, to finish today's task of vocabulary (especially the roots and affixes and expressions) Yesterday, I receive a psychological consult, and my therapist really helped me a lot in having a new perspective over my reflection and memory. For the next few years, I am going to receive such a consult once a week. And I'm quite confident to live a better life through this treatment. These days I have been lazy and lacking in diligence, lying on the bed doing nothing but watching videos from my smartphone. So I think it's high time for me to restart a healthy and diligent life. Well, let me finish here and set out to do the tasks.

diary-27/3/2021 Today is Saturday. I am writing this diary in my university's library. Today is a nice day --- good weather, warm sunshine, and several happy things to do. My life has experienced a lot of changes since the last time I wrote something in italki as a diary. At that time, I was a postgraduate student who was about to graduate and was working in a private high school as an intern English teacher, living a hard life and suffering a lot of pressure---the burden of work and the uncertainty about the future. Until today I remember clearly the heartbroken midnight my mind just broke down and I burst into tears, crying for half an hour and going back to work the other day pretending nothing had happened. After that, I went to HK to get my stuff and books and to deal with graduation affairs. Because of the pandemic, I have to stay in quarantine for two weeks and another two weeks after coming back to the mainland. So totally a month's quarantine. That was an unforgettable period of time, but I met many nice people and I really respect the friendly and self-giving, and hard-working attitude of those workers and volunteers in their positions to combat the epidemic. And after that, through another period of a hard time, I finally got this job in this university and in this seaside city which I love deeply. Prices are low here and the foods are delicious --- especially the great beef and seafood. The weather here is generally warm and slightly moist --- dry enough to sleep in a dry bed but moist enough to enjoy a good skin condition. There are many parks, hills, mountains, rivers, woods nearby my university, so I also want to live in this area and I'm planning to buy an apartment this year. This city is just so great and so suitable for me. It just likes what I have dreamed about since I was a little girl. So this is my life and I hope I won't be lazy and will continue to write a diary in italki again.

Though I will not let my children go into such a school （because I think it is good for them to learn how to communicate and make friends with any gender）, I think it is generally fine to educate children in single-gender schools. When I was a little girl and I first read the novel, Jane Eyre, I was shocked by the abuse in Lowood school，a charity school for girls. The teachers were hard on those girls and physically punished them. If the school for girls is just like this---full of unfair rules for girls to be an obedient wife or mother and no independent soul, it is definitely as bad as some '女德学校' in China(which though hardly can be found but still exist, and some stupid parents send their daughter to learn so-called traditional knowledge in that school, while the fact is those poor girls just be forced to accept the idea of male superiority. To avoid misunderstandings: such schools are a rare aberration and individual phenomenon, and are severely criticized by society). But Jane grew up to be a great independent woman who has her own career and pursues her own love bravely. One of the reasons is that she met a lot of nice people in Lowood and they influenced her with the independent spirit and the persuing of knowledge. So my opinion is that the form of school is not the matter, but the content and spirit of teaching in a school. Here I want to share another kind of girls' school in China. Have you heard the name of Zhang Guimei? She is the headmaster of a high school for girls in the mountain area. Their parents are farmers and they don't think education is an important thing for girls, so they just let their daughters stay at home helping with housework and waiting to get married and do housework and farmwork in their new 'home'. But Zhang Guimei said 'no'. She tried her best to persuade those parents and let girls go back to school home by home. She set up this high school for rural girls and encourage and help them to study hard to get good grades.

Hi, everyone. Today, I came across a grammar exercise question: [I'd like to go out with you, ______?] the blank part should be a disjunctive question, and I should choose the answer from A. wouldn't I? B. would I? my English teacher said the correct answer should be A., wouldn't I? but I think this is weird because I think there is no need to question the willingness of myself, and would I? could be considered as a request or demand, so I choose B. would I? WHAT IS THE CORRECT ANSWER, AND WHY? Thank you very much!

how should I understand this sentence? what does the 'with equal zeal' mean? [Some worry genetically imperfect workers could be targeted with equal zeal as more employers get access to their employees’ genetic records.] origin text : Preventing genetic discrimination Reporter: Huge corporation using genetic data to weed out imperfect humans: it’s the horrifying premise of the new film Gattaca. Some worry genetically imperfect workers could be targeted with equal zeal as more employers get access to their employees’ genetic records. So the vice president Tuesday called for a federal ban on genetic bias in the workplace.