Who am I? I won't just tell you that "I am an alien, I am a legal alien, I am a Chinese girl in Newark......" like Sting did his Englishman In New York. I am not a star, that is why I need to tell you more......
I used to have a lot of names......Usually my friends call me Bat (bat girl, that's cool!) or Bear (Maybe it is because I can bear with many things that they can't ....:-)).). But when I am connected to the Internet, they call me chopstick, Knocking, and shang1(not "shan1") kou2 bai3 hui4 (xixi...) etc., etc.......and my parents always called me Jie Wa'er, though they gave me a really beautiful name right after I was born.......Oh, forget to tell you that my "official" name is Jie Yan. In Chinese it literally means a clean face or a pure heart......fortunately, after over two decades of life in this heavily polluted world, my heart is still pure and clean though my face may not be anymore :))
Here are some brief notes of my life:
- I learned to quarrel with my aunt when I was only 18 months old----true or false I cannot tell. This rumor came from my mother. I just keep wondering why I lost this power to quarrel with others when I grow up? :)))
- I left my Mom & Dad at the age of 6 and lived with my aunt, in order to enter an elementary school that won't require every new student be at least 7 yrs old.
- At the age of 12, I began my boarding school life, which made me physically out of my parent's control----but not emotionally. I really enjoyed the independence it has brought to me....
- I always loved drawing the image of people I read from books, mostly by imagination. The drawings usually were done on the back of my exercise books.This had made me be punished by my teachers for N times....however, at the same time, they all agreed that I did have a talent for fine arts......
- At the age of 18, I went to Beijing Normal University, the No. 1 university in educational research in China. But nobody knew that I happily chose this school just because I loved the school's old gate at my first sight : -))......I paid a high price for that since I spent my most beautiful 7 yrs of student life on that campus....
- I studied Childhood Development and Education for at least 8 yrs by now and everybody said to me that I'm attractive to kids. Which is the reason, which is the result, who knows? :))
- I fell in love with the research about children and information technology when I graduated from BNU with my master's degree. That is why I got "married" with Clever Software, a Chinese software company which is well known for its educational software and network products..... Life in there was cool and meaningful when I was deeply involved in a movement called "The Learning Revolution"----a revolution that promote new learning styles in 21 century. Then I felt propelled to find more about the learning revolution around the world. That is why I came to the United States, a place which was called Children's Paradise....
- Now I am an alien, a legal alien graduate student in Newark, University of Delaware. I am working (or I should say playing ) on children's software evaluation. One year has passed, waiting for more surprises of life to come....//@@
Oh..... by the way, I love to do many things, I can draw a little, sing a little, play piano a little, cook a little,...... but most of all, I----
Here is "officially" what I did in the past: