Easy Life in the Wonderful and Wild West Virginia

        "Country Road" is an everlasting song sung by John Denver which reflects the cozy and easy life in the heavenly West Virginia. As these sixteen visitors came to West Virginia, they immediately began to feel the hospitality of its people and the beauty of this Appalachians land. Marshall University is located in the downtown Huntington with a compact and beautiful campus. This Huntington-Charleston metropolitan area holds half of the population in West Virginia and is undergoing dramatic economic changes. Though it is the first time for some of these Sinopec scholars to be in the States, they quickly adjusted their life-pace with this training program. They were quite happy with the fact that this heavenly place gave them plenty to study, live, think, and enjoy. They were greeted with "How are you doing" by people they even didn't know. They paid frequent visits to parks, riverfronts, bridges where they let themselves immersed by the flavor of nature. "I don't feel the high pressure of the big cities here", some of them happily said, " which is good for my training here."

        They moved into the University Courtyard Apartments the second day they landed in the States. The apartment is highly furnished and looks very nice. Two people share a bathroom and one living room, and they each has a private and comfortable bedroom with cable, phone line and other paid utilities. Such an arrangement is on the whole good for keeping a quiet and private environment for their personal life and for sharing common interests when parties or  gatherings come in. They live pretty close to each other, and all their colleague buildings are just a few walks away. They competed against each other in playing tennis, swimming but helped in studying and daily life. Never was a sad expression written on their face.

        Some of them, such as Mr. An even have the chance of living with a native junior student from whom he hopes to improve spoken English though his is good enough. They also have the chance of witnessing the September 11 Events and the consecutive live reports from CNN and MSNBC. It is so fortunate for them to spend Christmas and Halloween holidays with traditional American families. They have experienced western life as well as western education.

        "Easy life, hard work." As one of their mottoes goes.