生活里的快乐有时候是很简单的。一封出人意料的邮件，让自己很开心。

世界不断变小，中国人学了美国人的营销，再教给美国学生，美国学生到中国点评美国的广告，再请教在美国的中国老师。自己也觉得很有意思。

Jason,

I was in your marketing class freshman year and now I am ending my semester abroad in Beijing.  One of the reasons I wanted to go was because of you talking about China in class! 

I went to the Forbidden City the other day and looked for the Starbucks, I was going to take a picture and send it to you, but I think it has moved out already.  Which is probably a good thing because it would ruin the ambience.  I did find a small Chinese convenience store/ gift shop on the very outside edge of the city though.  It was funny because before going in I already knew what would be in it, Snickers bars and instant noodles.  I wasn't disappointed. 

The amount of work going on for the Olympics is amazing!!  I drive past the birds nest stadium quite a lot, it is such a crazy building.  I find it interesting that the screens they put up all around it so that people won't go into the construction area have American basketball players on them.  I went to Wushu finals for the Olympic games a couple of weekends ago and the amount of energy was amazing.  All of the people working the event spoke English and were so proud that they were a part of the olympics.  I hadn't heard so much English here before! 

I don't have a TV here so I don't know much about TV ads, but I have been watching ads on busses and billboards.  I have found that quite a lot of ads have European/American looking people on them.  More than I would expect.  There is one for Motorola that I find everywhere.  It is a man with blue eyes, blond hair and a slight beard holding up the phone next to his face.  Why do you think this is?  In some cases I think it is just poor planning on the companies cases and they don't really know how to do business in China yet.  But is there perhaps a feeling of sophistication or something else attached to European images?  I wish I was taking a marketing class here, but the only one they offered was beginner!

I met a marketing graduate student who is studying here last weekend.  Hopefully I will get to talk to him again and ask him what he has found. 

Well, I have to go study for Chinese finals. 

Thanks for reading my letter,

Cait e