Zero (China, Age 15): English 232

I came from China, I was born in a village. Near my house there are mountains, neighbors in there farmed white ducks and brown chickens but it doesn’t smell good, because it has so much animal feces. Every day chickens make eggs but every morning I hear the cock crow wake me up. In my village there are some large field, people planting vegetables and then sell. My village also have a famous mountain, in the top of mountain you can see the sea. In the hillside there is one pond, many small fish and tadpoles on inside, catching tadpoles is hard, when you touch it slips. Summer is very hot, my house has air conditioner but it need much money to pay the electricity company, so, I went to the pond to play with the water and catch tadpoles to make me feel happy and cool.

In China, I lived with my mother and two old sisters. My mother had long hair, she is short. My mother can cook many dishes, every day when I back home I can smell the odor of food and it makes me more hungry. My father work in America,  and he sent money back every month, so my mother did not go to work.

I every day go to school at 7.20, come back home at 4:50. My elementary school is small, has one teaching building and one playground, use wall enclosed. The teaching building only has 6 classes, and one grade one class--1 to 6 grade. In the playground has 3 big willow, tree is green has long wicker,  and when you touch it, it’s soft. It also has 2 ping-pong table in playground, for the recess time. There always has ball collision sound. My teacher was strict, when you come late school you need to stand in the class. When you  did not do homework, first the teacher will use the ruler to hit your hand, then go to teachers office and at the end copy class rules 50 times. If your text had many errors, you will copy the wrong question 3 times and then do it again. Every day we had much homework, and it needed much time to finish. My writing was bad, when I was in 6 grade, I never passed my Chinese text, because all the last question of  the text  were about writing.

        I came to America by aircraft, that was my first time to see an airplane, it was too big that made me feel excited. In New York, I saw much people come from different country, they use english to talk to other people, I could not understand, I felt like an outsider. In New York I ate many food, there is one food I don’t like, it is cheese.

In my home, we don’t have a TV, but I have one computer. My mother wanted me to use computer to study, but I always play game. I went to the new school, and it was too big, many room, I couldn’t find which room I needed to go to. The new school has a large playground, there has one circle track, also has one big lawn inside, students play football there. Beside there is one basketball court. After lunch students went to playground to play, here was much joyful sound. School did not have much homework, I every day went to school at 7:30, and came back home at 2:30, that made me have a lot of time to play.

Some time I go to park with my friends. The park has many trees and squirrels, the bark of the tree is rough, there are many children. The children play with the swings, and when they are high they scream like they are frightened but they are happy. I and my friend play at a lawn in the park, we play game,  the game rule is that one person is the ghost. The ghost has to go to catch humans, and the humans run away from the ghost, if the ghost catch someone than this human become ghost  and he go to catch other human and ghost became human. At the play time, we always are in fierce shouting, it sounds like a fight, but we feel happy. We also played together computer game, we go to internet and download one game, game name is “league of legends”.

Living in America is different from China. Now my parent go to work for money, and they come back very late. Every day i help my parents do house work. I always stay home play computer, not out play, my mother always say “you play computer is very diligent, Why you can not like this for study English? you should be learning a lot of english that can make you find a good job.” but I never studied seriously.

I graduated from middle school and my mother did not go to work because of hand pain. Now I came to new school, I want to learn more English. I make new friends, sometime I have some question about what we’re doing because I don’t know how to do it, and they always help me.