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Published: February 20th 2006
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This has been one of the longest, most busy days yet. I'm not even sure where to start.
It was my first day of school today. I woke up at 6:10, put on my sparkling new uniform, ate a quick breakfast (egg sandwich, soup, and boiled milk w/ sugar), and headed out the door. My host dad drove us to school.
The one rule that has been stressed, and repeated, and seems to be the most important at Jing Shan High School is that one shouldn't be late. With this in consideration, I was slightly nervous as my twin sisters and I approached the school gates exactly four minutes after school was supposed to begin. No one had ever told me the consequences of being late; I was left to use my own imagination here. My host sisters went off to lock up their bikes (they brought them in the car so that we could all ride home), and I made my way up to the second floor to find my classroom.
Luckily, no one seemed to really care that I was late. The teacher gave me a look as I walked in the door; I'm not sure
Nicole giving me a look
Apparantly I'm the only student who thought that getting the uniforms was really exciting. I took a lot of pictures. if this was because of my tardiness, or because of my foreign-ness, but no more was said on the subject. I sat down at the back of the room with the rest of my American classmates, and soon we were called to the front to introduce ourselves.
I had only prepared three sentences, which I was told was enough, but I wasn't sure I wanted to waste all of them on the small class, when I would also have to present myself to the entire school at a later time. I certainly didn't want the kids in my class to realize that this wasn't coming off the top of my head. If I want people to speak to me in Chinese, I have to convince them that I do, in fact, speak at least a small amount of Chinese. I ended up saying that I was Pei Yu Yan (this is my Chinese name, given to me by a friend on my last trip to China), that I was 17 years old, and that I went to Newton South High School (a sentence that I'd only learned how to say on our way up to the teacher's stand). It
wo jia
Here's a picture of my appartment from the outside. went pretty well. I had used 2 out of 3 of my sentences, which I figured was good enough.
Soon, Zhao Lili (Ashley, a teacher who came to South in the fall) came in and called the American students out. We were led to a medium sized auditorium, full of students. It wasn't as big as I'd expected-- I had thought that I would be presenting to the entire school. As it turned out, of course, the entire school was watching us on TV screens in their rooms. When we finally got up to the stage, I ended up saying a total of FOUR sentences! It went something like, "Hi. I'm Pei Yu Yan. My English name is Jill. I'm seventeen years old. I'm very happy to come to Jing Shan School."
Afterwards, the principal of the school told me that my Chinese was really good! That was really exciting. Apparantly my group did a good job... that's what Zhao Lili told us, anyway. I'm certainly inclined to believe her.
After my first class, I was told to switch into another classroom with fewer American students, because there weren't enough desks for me in the old room.
Fruit
My family is constantly feeding me. I decided to take this picture one day when they actually brought the entire fruit bowl into my room for me. They always want to make sure I'm comfortable, here. I ended up in my other twin sister's room, and it turned out that Maggie, another American student, was also in that class.
The kids in my new class are really friendly. I sit in the far back, right hand corner, and there are two kids who I talked to a lot. The boy who sits on my left showed me a lot of magic tricks. I think he was eager to have an audience, and as for me, I was happy to have someone to talk to. The girl in front of him was also very nice. She asked me a lot of questions about the United States. All of this was in English. I'm really hoping that by the end of the year, my Mandarin will be good enough to switch over. I'd love to be able to talk to my classmates in Chinese.
It turned out that the one class I'd missed when I was still upstairs was English. So I sat through math, history, physics, and chemistry, not having any idea what was going on. Next we had lunch (we ate in the teacher's cafeteria), and then PE. PE was kind of interesting. First, we lined up in rows, stood still, and turned around when the teacher called things out. Then we walked back and forth in lines, and later we ran a couple of laps. The teacher then called out that all the boys could go play basketball. I thought that this was a little sexist, and Maggie joked that the girls would probably all be instructed to play jumprope. Which turned out to be exactly the case. A few girls opted out of the jumprope, however, and we started our own mini game of basketball. I'm not the best player ever... but it's always good to break stereotypes.
After school, I biked home, which was quite the experience. There are bike lanes, here, but there are often cars parked there, or busses pulling in, so it's definately not as easy as it could be. I don't think it's any harder than it is biking in Newton, though, since we do have the bike lanes, and everything. I started to get the hang of it, and it was really very fun. I'm looking forward to biking in, tomorrow morning.
Lastly, tonight my host mother gave me the first of what will be nightly Chinese lessons. Some of it was review for me, and some of it was easy, but at one point I was supposed to be memorizing work-related vocabulary-- words like engineer, nurse, and doctor-- and it seemed just about impossible. I was supposed to be able to look at the character and come out with the right word for it, without looking at the pinyin. Basically it was comparable to looking at an unfamiliar scribble, and trying to remember a certain nonsense syllable that corresponded with it. Normally I would have just dismissed these vocab words, deciding that it would be better to focus on words used more in everyday life, but my host mom was insistant, and I forced myself to memorize them, which, in the end, was quite satisfying.
We have people over right now, and I keep hearing them say things like "she doesn't eat meat," or "in America...etc." or "she always says 'I'm full,'" and I know they're talking about me. I'm sure they have no idea that I can understand it at all. I wish I actually knew what they were saying.
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sarah
non-member comment
wow!
i am VERY impressed that you can understand some of what the family and friends are talking about! your school sounds like a lot of fun, and i'm glad that you are getting used to it! by the way, those uniforms are amazing! i'm really glad we don't have uniforms here though.... have tons more fun!!!