White (China, Age 15): English 774

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Use two words to decide  my Chinese school life were happy and painful. I went to 7th grade when I were 12. My school is beautiful, there was a big school with lots of buildings, and two playgrounds, lots of plants to decorate my school. Students were nervous, busy and happy in my school, include me. The life in China made me very crazy and hard,  but I had lots of friends in school, in the China, people don’t change their class, when we walked into the classroom and become classmate in the first year, we will become classmate for all high school day .I spend two years with my class to study, had lots of fun times, so we had profound friendship. In my city, lots of people like to make relationship between best friends, because we think this can make us more connection, so I had a daughter, a granddaughter and got lots of relations when I unknowingly. Lots of time I could hear someone called me “mum” and “grandmother”, that made me feel I were so old. But when I need help, they always helped me, this made me feel warm.

Every morning, when the clock was ringing, my body seems to be solid glued on the bed, can’t move, I were very sad when I woke up.

Every day I walked to school and went back home with my friends, I could see people with different uniform on the stress in the morning and afternoon, because there were other schools closed to my school. Lots of time I recited book and walked with my friends during walking, but sometime, I couldn’t pay attention because it was too loud, there were horns from cars, sound of people walking, talking. When I arrived in the classroom, I need to hand in the homework to my classmate first, teacher will check. If I couldn’t hand in on time, I would get trouble. We had 20 minute for morning read, we need to read whole time, if someone doesn’t read, our class will penalize.

We had 42 students in my class, so there were 42 tables and chairs in the class, some people sit alone, someone would sit together. There were blackboard and project in front of the classroom, teacher could teach us. There were lots of chalks beside the board, my classmates liked to play around, they would pick up the chalks and threw away. Sometimes when I walked into the room, I could see the chalks were flying around, sometime they would hit me, and I got mad, and payed back, because of this, there were lots of dust in front of the room. There were some brooms and shovels in the back corner, every day we need to take turn to clean our classroom, because our teacher said: “ Classroom is our home, everybody need to make it clearly.” Student will help teachers write the homework on the blackboard, sometime they will stand in front of the class to explain our homework, every time I felt sadness when I saw they were writing homework.

My class was a loudly class, there were lots of different voices in my class, people who were talking and playing; people were asking homework; the sound of people chasing and running during the break, that made me feel I agitated. Every day we were penalized, some was because reading, some was because talking and cleaning, our teacher would mad about this, so she would punish us. Some time, she would postpone our school hour; sometime, she would let us couldn’t have lunch. Once time, we couldn’t go on the class, we had to squat and copy the articles on book all day, because there were half of students in the class didn’t do their homework, and we were penalized too much time. I felt mad, not because of teacher, it was some of classmates, I did my homework and always followed the rule, but because of them, I need to squat, and copied the book more than thousand words.

Each class  has 40 minute, during the class, we were always writing, we need to copy the notes on the blackboard, but we had lots of thing to learn, there were lots of thing to copy, teachers wouldn’t wait too many time for us to write, when she filled the entire blackboard, she would rub off, whatever you finish or not, and all the notes are important to study, so after lots of practices I got a new ability that was I could go on continuously copied the hand are not acid, the speed was fast and the words are good.  When I were in the class, I would hold my pen, and couldn’t stop. During the break, I always stayed with my friends, we liked to get water together, and talked together, every time after the text, we will stay together and talked about the text.

Lots of Chinese school has Flag-raising ceremony on Monday. In my school, we need to wear ceremonial clothing and stand on the playground to ceremony. There was grass path on the playground, every time I could smell strong smelling of trampled grass and earth when I were ceremony. After the Flag-raising ceremony, we would go back our classroom and start class.

The crazy thing to me, it was P.E. Chinese boys need to run 1000 miles for text and girls need to run 800 miles. The pass time for girl is 3 minus 20 seconds, every week there were two P.E. class, we needed to run 800 miles each time. Every running time was painful for me, I felt I am died when I were running, I could hear how strong and fast sound that I were breathing, I couldn’t see anything in front of me, just couldn’t see the road is changing, felt the wind was blowing into my face.

The first time knew I will immigrant to the USA, it was one week before I moved, but I didn’t believe in it. But when the last day, my mum called teacher, told her I would drop out of high school after one week, I realized I would leave my school, my city where I have lived 13 years. The last day I were in the school, my class made a farewell party for me, on the day, I left the tears all day, they really touched me. That night when I went to airplant, my friends sended me, they told me “ Be well.” they were sad and cry. I came up and hugged them, I couldn’t stop my tears dropping down, finally I got into the car.

After ten hours in the planet, I were arrived in New York, a strange place  which I would start my new life.

The first place I went when I arrived in New York, it was Chinatown. When I walked on the stress, there was strong delicious smelling around the air, pizza, hamburger. dim sum… all the thing made me hungry. I couldn’t find a bilingual schools, I were crying, I cried whole day, because I were scared, I didn’t know about English.

I didn’t happy when I were going to my new class, because I were afraid, afraid there were all foreign, I couldn’t understand what they were talking about, afraid they would laugh me if I am saying wrong, afraid I can’t understand English, and little exciting, what would my school looks like, who would my classmate.. Finally, I falled in sleep with scare and exciting.

When I walked into my class, that made me surprise. My class was in Math class. Teacher was  stand in front of classroom, there was a smart board that I didn’t see before, there were some tables, four or five people sat in one table, they were looking a big math book together, I could hear they were talking about the question in the book, there was strong smelling from marker. I sat behind a Chinese girl, she was born in here, she knew little Chinese, she helped me lots of thing.

There were lots of challenge to me. Because I am a student who joined this class in the middle of the course, people in the class all had their friends and lots of time, when I talked to them, I didn’t know how to say, so after few time conversation, they didn’t talk to me. The most challenge to me was English. Remember the first English class, teacher read two chapters for “ Romeo and Juliet”, but I couldn’t understand what he said, and I couldn’t finish my homework. Remember the first week in Middle school, everything both were new to me, I didn’t what I should do, each time, when teachers asked some question for class, I both couldn’t understand, I just liked an unhearing person, even I could hear they are talking, but I couldn’t know what they were talking about, I felt helpless. When I had some questions to ask teachers but I didn’t know how to say, something important thing I wanted to know, but I couldn’t ask, during that time, I very wanted to cry. American people like to work on the internet, include the school. Teacher likes student do their work on the gmail, but I never did before, so before they talked me I should worked on gmail, I always wrote on the paper, and then handed in to teachers, sometime, teachers would send homework on the gmail, so I didn’t know that, I got bad grade. After I knew my first grade was very low, asked teacher, finally I knew I need to write my homework on the internet sometime.

I never thought one thing in my whole life before, also I never know I can meet that. The first text in my 8th grade, that was secret and  scare for me, I didn’t know how to do in the text. When I got the text paper, I quickly wrote down anything I know. In the half of the text, I saw teacher was holding a bow of cookies, I thought she ate that, but the next moment was surprise me, she was giving the cookies to the student who was texting! This never happen in China, and I never imagine this scene.

The Time was over very fast, I were graduated in 8th grade.

Because of 8th grade, I very worried about my high school. After a long summer holiday, my high school life was coming soon, I couldn’t sleep. But when I came here, I saw people were from lots of countries. The education in this school isn’t same with another school, they made more easier to make me understand, I can follow the direction, finish all works, this makes me very happy.  In this school, I find my friends, I can talk to them, I don’t feel alone any more.