Introduction about myself

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog! My name is Xinrui Wang and you can also call me Shirley. I am excited to join this class and meet you guys. Let me briefly introduce myself first.

I come from China and this is my third year in UBC. I am in the faculty of arts and I major in Economics. In my leisure time, I enjoy drawing, singing, and reading. This is also a motivating factor behind my choice of this course. When selecting elective courses, I opt for those aligned with my interests and hobbies, ensuring that attending classes doesn't feel like a mere task. This class reminds me of a similar course I took when I was in high school at Langley. In the class, the teacher asked us to choose the books we wanted to read, and then write down the insights we read in the books. Looking back, the pressure to study after I entered college was much greater than in high school, so the time I had to read was also reduced. But once I have time, I like to sit by the window, enjoy the sunshine, and read a book quietly by myself.

In my spare time, I also like to play with my puppies. You cannot imagine what a lovely dog I have. His name is "Duo Duo" and he is six years old right now. He was a stray dog and was brought back by my grandmother. He was really a tiny dog when he first came to my home, he even didn't open his eyes. However, his naughty character has not changed since he was a child. For example, if we do not put the chairs at the dining table back in place after a meal, all the leftover food on the table will go into his stomach. Because he loves to eat, his weight is also a long-term concern for us. Although we control his diet, he is still on the fatter side than other puppies.

In addition to eating, he also likes to enjoy the sunshine, which is very similar to me. Whenever I read a book by the window, he would stay next to me and bask in the sun with me, so since he came to my house, I may have spent more time with him than I have with my parents. Reading alone can sometimes be boring, so with the companionship of a puppy, the gentle sunshine is not so drowsy for me. This is also one of the reasons why I chose this class. I think it is cool for everyone to read together and exchange ideas, which makes reading not boring and also allows us to understand different perspectives and ideas.

Okay, I believe you should have a preliminary understanding of me now, so I would also like to say some goals that I want to achieve in this course. A large part of the reason I chose this course is because I like reading, so I think my goal is not only to get a good grade but also to learn more from different books. We mentioned romance studies in the first class, it is a discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak a Romance language. This is also an area that I have never been exposed to before, so I am also very interested in it. I am also looking forward to reading novels which are originally written in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The question I want to discuss is: Do you like reading alone or reading together? What type of books do you like to read?

Thank you for viewing my blog and I look forward to meeting you in class!