Willamette World News

We want to thank everyone for writing this semester for the Willamette World News Blog. There have been so many great issues and hopefully we all learned something new about another country in the process. Being the last issue this semester, we decided that everyone could choose their own subject. There are so many things [...]

A while ago I had a film class in Sweden where my teacher asked the American students in the class if they knew who Stellan Skarsgård was? Everyone said no. This is when we all realized that people in other countries don’t always know about the celebrities in your country. They might have seen the [...]

The 46th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards Ceremony Held in Taipei
The Chinese language film market has entered its most intense season of the year, and was punctuated by the 46th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards ceremony held in Taipei on 28th Nov. 2009. The awards are billed as one of the top three prizes available in Chinese [...]

Every year during Christmas, millions of colorful lights are lighted to decorate my hometown, Medellin. Natives and foreigners come from all over the world to enjoy with the magic of Christmas. They can walk along principal avenues or take a chiva (a traditional bus) to delight with one of the most beautiful Christmas lightings in [...]

A Christmas market originated in Germany and Austria, is a street market associated with the celebration of Christmas during advent, mainly the four weeks preceding Christmas Day. The history of Christmas markets goes back to the Late Middle Ages in the German speaking part of Europe. The Dresden Christmas market, first held in 1434, is [...]

All big cities have their great monuments: Paris has the Eiffel tower, New York has the statue of Liberty, Rome has the Coliseum and Brussels has… the Manneken Pis! Despite its very small size, this statue is one of the main attractions of the city and the people of Brussels are really proud of it.

Plum (or Prunus mume), Orchid, Bamboo, and Chrysanthemum are regarded as “Four Men in Honor” among flowers. They can also be used to describe four characteristics of a scholar that we respect most. (Scholars are called Jun Zi in Chinese. From the very beginning of Chinese feudalistic history, scholars enjoy much higher social status than [...]