Northwestern students and staff took a day out of their busy lives to give back to the community, in celebration of National Volunteer Week. The National Volunteer Week's Day of Service, held April 23, drew volunteers from all over the Chicago area, including Evanston Township High School students and members of the NU community.

NU’s Student Community Service, a subdivision of the Center for Student Involvement, coordinated NU’s role in the Day of Service.

Around 70 NU students and faculty participated in the Day of Service, a slight increase from last year, according to Suzan Akin, coordinator of Student Community Service.

“We had a good turn-out, despite the cold,” Akin said. “Everything ran really smoothly.”

Volunteers met at Norris University Center as early as 7:30 a.m. and dispersed to six different volunteer sites consisting of three Chicago parks, Evanston Township High School, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and the Evanston YMCA.

At the Chicago parks and ETHS sites, volunteer duties included mulching, planting, and cleaning outdoors. Indoor volunteers at the Greater Chicago Food Depository worked on the assembly line, packaging and sorting foods, while volunteers at the YMCA read to children, cleaned, sorted and moved materials.

“It was an incredible bonding experience between the volunteers,” said Bri Zika, a Music sophomore and volunteer at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. “My favorite part was volunteering alongside people I wouldn’t normally volunteer with.”

The Day of Service attracted NU student groups such as ASG, Oasis, and some sororities and fraternities to participate in the event.

National Volunteer Week took place this year from April 18 to April 23. A volunteer recognition reception was held April 21 to honor outstanding volunteers from EVTH, NU, and the Evanston community.

	Natalie is seen wearing her Norris University Center fleece in this photo of her and her boyfriend Jon in China.

China is scary. There is so much to explore and wonder about. This spring, I took two weeks off to see Shanghai and visit Suzhou where my boyfriend Jon works closely with a car-speaker factory. This was my first trip to China, and his first opportunity to be a tourist there. From the moment we stepped off of the plane in Shanghai, until the 19 hour flight back to O'Hare at the end, we were on the go, soaking in as much of the cities and present-day Chinese culture as we could. We were utterly alone in a city of 15 million people that openly plans to become the center of the world…and we had a blast!

All around us people spoke a musical language in which a slight change in tone changed the definition of the simplest words, and ideas (and street signs) were written in pictograph form. Thoroughly modern roads teemed with bicycles, cars, busses, and pedestrians, while tucked away behind unassuming urban walls we discovered peaceful ancient gardens with shimmering koi and mandarin ducks swimming lazily as the city hurried by outside. Street vendors displayed strange looking dried sea creatures to snack on, and ran after us trying to sell imitation watches and purses. We saw sparkling new museums of artifacts that had been preserved from the "great leap forward" and now served to represent all that Chinese culture had been. In one temple, two priceless jade Buddhas had been saved from destruction only because some quick thinking monks had plastered posters of Mao on the glass in front of the altars.

China is scary. With 1.5-1.8 billion people (no one's really sure) and the strongest communist government left on the planet, China's economy is growing and changing at an amazing rate. Someone described the pace of change there in terms of dog years- what it would take us 10 years in the U.S. to build, it takes China only 1 year to accomplish. In an area that less than five years ago had been entirely rice paddies, we passed acres of factories with hundreds of workers each, churning out shiploads of high-tech products while thousands more workers stand in line for jobs. Skyscrapers and high rise apartment buildings lined every street, preserving and improving on the architecture of the

colonial powers that had controlled different sections of the city, but poles of laundry dangled from even the highest condominium windows. 15th century pagodas competed with a bumper crop of building cranes for the skyline. On every city street, in every corner with a bit of earth, were being planted beautiful Azaleas and Magnolia trees in an effort to combat the overwhelming smog and construction dust. We learned that a large island just off the coast of downtown Shanghai was being entirely overhauled into an ecological sanctuary and tourist destination. In Suzhou, a boat trip along the moats to the Grand Canal served to remind me that such amazing feats of industry have been going on in China for thousands of years. China is scary… I can't wait to go back.

Notable News:

Spring Birthdays:

Full-time Staff: April: Suellen Johnson, April 15 • Jerry Jacobson, April 18 • Jenn Williams, April 24 • Judy McHugh, April 29 •
May:Chris Lee, May 8 • Steve Guinta, May 15 • Frank Zambrano, June 12 • Shea Rentschler, June 29

Student Staff:
April: Hillary Levun, April 2 • Whitney White, April 3 • Bruce Brotine, April 5 • Ketice Guter, April 5 • Gregory Carlson, April 8 • Irina Maktaz, April 10 • Tiffanie Martin, April 12 • Maricela Guerra, April 13 • Lee Linderman, April 13 • Andrew Davis, April 14 • Ryan Ferro, April 16 • Sun Park, April 16 • Jason Spitz, April 18 • Seth Meyer, April 21 • Carlos Lema, April 22 • Miguel Boyas, April 30
May:David Sano, May 2 • Jamie Scilingo, May 6 • Rodrigo Lopez, May 8 • Sue Pak, May 10 • Samuel Weiner, May 10 • Gabriel Lopez, May 11 • Christina Bryza, May 12 • Kathleen McGroaty, May 13 • Erica Nunziante, May 15 • Matthew Rouser, May 20 • Michael Jou, May 22 • Nathan Linkon, May 22 • Jennifer Lipp, May 24 • Robby Harrison, May 25 • Michael Duffy, May 27 • Christine Wang, May 28 • Malena Amusa, May 31