Zhen Li

For the Community Project. I choose to take part in two events. They are “Earth day Fair” and “Elizabeth River Clean Up”.

For the Earth Day Fair, it’s an interesting event. It combines the games and protecting environment. There were a lot of tables. Every table has different topics and games. If I can visit more than 6 tables, they will reward me a plant. I visited 7 tables and get the free plant as reward.

The first table I went is a table with a lot of professors there. One professor introduced a lot of different kinds of stones, such as the stone with “gold”, the stone from volcano. Another professor also introduced a lot of insects, some of them I never seen before.

Then I went to the second table that let us draw. They wanted the audiences to draw something sustainable on a bag. I draw my name and a sun.

The third table, one girl introduced some knowledge of fertilizer and soil. And I got a bag of free fertilizer.

The fourth table, they wanted me to write down how could I do to reduce pollution. I wrote “Drive less”, but actually I don’t have a car in America. May be after going back to China, I can make it.

The fifth table, they wanted me to write a letter to government to ask better environment. I followed the example to write a letter to government.

The sixth table, they gave me some soil and seed, ask me to mix them up. I believe I can let the seed grow up and get my own flower.

The seventh table, they asked me questions about our earth. I learned some interesting knowledge from them.

After I got six ticket from each tables, I used the ticket to get a free plant.

For “Elizabeth River Clean Up”, it’s an April 18th morning. I arrived there with my roommate Roy at 10 am. First, we went to signed in, then we get our equipments, which include a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, a clip and two rubbish bags. Then we started our trip to find rubbish.

There were already many groups of volunteers. They are working along the river. Every group take a piece of area. Many of groups already collected a lot of rubbish when we get there, some of them even had a half of rubbish bag. Roy and I decided to work hard to catch them up. We walked fast to find an area that didn’t be taken. Although we walked fast, we still look around to search the rubbish and tried not to miss any of them.

Finally, we found a place with a lot of rubbish. That place is already in the river. We walked carefully, and tried to get all the rubbish in that area. First, we saw a lot of bottles there, they were all piled up in a corner. We guess it’s the water push them together from upper reaches and the water also crimped the bottles a lot, which made them looks like a thin sheet of paper. Then we met the biggest rubbish in this trip, a plastic pipe. That plastic pipe was very hard, and stick in to a died tree. Our clip doesn’t work for it. I just used my hand to pull it put. It’s a very long pipe, our bag is even too small to put the whole pipe.

After clean that area, we decided to finish our work. We start to go back. On the way go back, we found some rubbish which were ignored. We put them all in our bags. In the end, we checked our bags. The rubbish is more than half of the bag. Roy and I feel really happy. We contribute our strength to protect this river, we feel so pleasure.

In conclusion, I like such event and thanks for such organization. “Earth day Fair” is an event that not only give me pleasure but also the knowledge of our earth and our environment. I was attracted to choose this event, because it looks fun. But, after I go there, I found it also taught me a lot. “Elizabeth River Clean Up” is different. This event let me feel I do contribute to protect our environment, I know I did something meaningful. Our earth need to be protected better, since there are more and more pollution or some other effects. I hope more such meaningful event can be organized.