Giant panda cub debuts for public
The National Zoo's giant panda cub Tai Shan will make his official public debut Dec. 8, the zoo announced Tuesday.
Free, timed-entry tickets to the Panda House will be distributed via the zoo's web site beginning Nov. 21, according to www.washingtonpost.com. Additional information about ticket distribution and viewing hours will be released later this week.
Visits will be limited to 10 minutes and confined to morning hours at first to maximize the chances of seeing Tai Shan. He usually spends his mornings in the public exhibit area and then goes back to his private den in the afternoon to nap.
Tickets are available at the zoo's Web site , http://www.fonz.org.
GW group holds free language classes
George Washington University senior Andrew Brown, who speaks 12 different languages, founded Global Languages, a new group dedicated to holding free language classes on the GW campus.
For more than a month, Brown and a team of language-proficient student instructors have been holding weekly classes in more than 15 languages, according to The Hatchet, GW's student newspaper.
"I am passionate about foreign languages and cultures. I wanted to give GW students, staff and faculty the opportunity to become interested in international languages and cultures as well," Brown wrote in an e-mail last week.
Global Languages offers 25 basic-language courses a week, in Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, French, Hindi, German, Farsi, Czech, Turkish, Japanese, Greek, Korean, Chinese, Swahili and Swedish. The organization also offers advanced classes in French, Spanish and Farsi.
Brown said within the group's first five weeks, the number of classes offered jumped five-fold. The number of students who attend each class fluctuates weekly, but Brown said, "As word continues to spread about the organization, the attendance and interest for the lessons grow increasingly by the week"
