The first few days of school

Hello, all! I’d like to update you on the first few days of school that I’ve had here in China.

The first day of school. I’m usually nervous about it, but those old feelings of anxiety were NOTHING compared to this…. I felt like I was going to throw up! The first thing was the assembly. The head of the school basically welcomed us back to the school and introduced the new staff members. The returning students left with their houses and the new students were sorted into houses--- yes, like in Harry Potter! The four houses are Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. I’m in Wind and luckily my friend Connie, who’s also a staff kid, is in it as well! She’s from Scotland. We stayed in homeroom (with our houses) for around and hour—we got our planners and supplies and did some other things. Then… it was time for the school day to start.

Since we had the assembly, we started in 4^th period at 11:00. It was drama for me! What happened in that class was that we chose if we wanted to take art or drama. However, the two subjects were together for the day. It was a double period, which I didn’t mind, since I really enjoy drama! We split up into groups and talked about protest in art forms. The people in my group were Coco, Preston, Lukman, Nicholas and Julie (the last two are 9^th years). I have to say—highschoolers are the same everywhere! Luckily after this I had lunch. We got there first, since the drama building is quite close to the restaurant! Following lunch, we had a double period of English. All we did was an assessment of our English skills with a written test and then a speaking one with a partner out in the hallway. There are 14 people in my grade! xD All in all, it was a pretty easy day schoolwise.

Now, onto day two of my high school experience in China. The day always starts out with 20 minutes in homeroom with our house. We took a quiz thing about the school to try to gain points for our house. After that, it was double drama first period! :D 

There are 11 kids in my drama class, mixed years 9 and 10. We started out with typical drama games and exercises, which are always quite fun. (: Then, we started to talk about our what our unit is about: Protest. We broke into three groups to come up with ideas of what we can do with that theme. After coming back together, the class unanimously decided the Protest topic we want to do is child soldiers, particularly in (the?) Congo. We went back into our smaller groups and came up with four words that the topic made us think of and three images. After sharing these with the class, she broke us up into two groups for freeze frames. Freeze frames are a frozen scene, like when you pause a movie you’re watching. We had to do three of them regarding the topic. My group’s first scene depicted children playing games without a care in the world. OnOn  and I were doing a clapping game, while Lukman was on the other guy’s back (ahhh, I can’t remember his name! Dx) pretending to shoot at Hye Kyung, playing war as children always do. The second scene was the most powerful in my opinion. Lukeman had ‘guns’ at the backs of Hye Kyung and I, while the other guy was blocking OnOn, our mother in this scene, from reaching us. I was turned around part-way, straining out trying to reach her. I think that if we include it in our performance, it could be a really powerful image. The third scene we did was depicting Hye Kyung and I as new initiates at the camp for child soldiers. Lukman and the other guy were the older children—hardened soldiers. Hye Kyung and I were on the ground, huddled together. OnOn was another soldier, trying to slap Hye Kyung. However, I was block OnOn’s arm to save her (Hye Kyung). So, overall, I really have enjoyed drama so far!

After drama was break, which we needed to make it all the way back to the building! (Drama is super-far away from everything, as is the restaurant and the art building!) Next up for 4^th period was English. Basically, we did the same as yesterday—tested for proficiency. Luckily, we finished up and were sorted into the different levels: A (highest level), B and C. I was in A, obviously, since I’m a native speaker, hahaha. There are only 6 people in the class—Coco, Hye Kyung and I (the girls) and then Lukman, Preston and Kevin (the guys).

5^th period was next, at 11:55. This was Chinese class! There are only four of us in this class, since it’s the lower levels of Chinese (B and C) and most of the Koreans take Korean instead of Chinese. It’s me, OnOn, Lukman and Preston. This was quite a confusing class, since it was conducted in all Chinese! It was fairly fun, though. At first, the teacher drew a character on the board then erased part of it and we had to go up and try to draw the rest with our eyes closed. I managed to get it on the first try (purely luck)! :D After this, we played a pretty amusing game. You had to tell sometime to touch something on either themselves, someone else or in the room. For example, Preston made OnOn touch Lukman’s sock and she made him touch the light on the ceiling! This was all in Chinese as well, but they had me do it in English. Preston and OnOn got into a bit of a war… he tried to make her touch his butt, though she wouldn’t do it, so Lukman did it instead! xD It was really pretty funny.

Following this, it was finally lunch! (At 12:50 =.=) After lunch was science. We’re covering units of physics, biology and chemistry this year. First up is physics—we studied the basics of waves. It was really easy because we did that in science last year! The last class of the day was math. Ew. He gave us worksheets of logic puzzles, which were pretty easy once you figured out the patterns and such. There’ll be three classes that we’re sorted into—Math Studies (lowest level), Standard Level (I assume I’ll be in this) and Higher Level. After school got out, I went and visited Mom and her remaining kids, just like yesterday! I love the staff children… sooooo cute!

Overall, I think that I’ll be able to find my niche at this school! About the demographics of the school—mostly Asian, I’d say. Everyone in the class is Asian except me—I bring diversity! xD Coco lives Hong Kong/Canada (though full Chinese ancestry), Preston is from Germany (Half Chinese, half Viet) and I’m not sure where Lukman is from. I think we have a few more Chinese in the class and the rest are Koreans.  .I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to many of the Koreans yet, except Jun. It’ll be interesting to see how our class dynamic is throughout the year! There’s definitely been some groups from choosing seats in class—the Chinese native speakers, the English speakers, the Korean guys, the Korean girls. However, everyone in my class seems quite nice. I already feel comfortable speaking up, thanks to the super small class size! 

Love y’all! Keep in touch—email me, Facebook doesn’t always work! (Wow, I just spent almost an hour on this post. O.o)

Emily

My schedule! (Or time table, as they call it here! xD)