written by Cameron ‘Clatts’ Latta.

A big hello to all the parents of the current Chinese exchange students!

My name is Cameron to give you the identity of this (maybe) mysterious writer for today.

The day started off great, as Tom (my exchange student) and I woke up, ate a wonderful Chinese breakfast, and went to school.

Excited to be at school for the first to periods, which looked like it’d be from 8 to 11:30, I was ready.

The first class for my group, consisting of Emma, Nate, Tyler, Izzhan and I, was English, where they were writing a math journal, which was pretty cool at the time (for me at least, but I’m easily excited :).

However, we were told two things at the beginning: 1) no phones, 2) we had to sit in the back and there was nothing planned for us. Having decided not to take my backpack, which contained all my books and other day stuff, because it was too heavy at the time from other stuff I had bought and not unloaded, I was suitably miserable for around twenty five minutes, where I then proceeded to sit by Tom because my group was too boring (aka, they weren’t talking to me or engaging my attention).

Five minutes later, we (my group) were out the door so we could head to an activity that had been planned for us, thus eliminating my boredom for the moment. It turned out to be a graduation of students participating in Sino-Japanese program. For those of you who don’t know my family, I was dreading this because in the last three to four weeks, I have gone to three or four separate graduations, this being the most recent.

However, back to the ceremony. As I mentioned, it as both Chinese and Japanese, so the understanding was not the best amongst our group. There was really dramatic or classical music going along with the speeches, which actually complemented some of the speakers quite well. It was also a small class of maybe fifty graduating, so it was interesting to say the least. The first speaker, the head of the school I do believe, spoke for a very long time before starting to hand out the certificates, of which I have photos of this part. It also seemed that the male graduates had a female speaker, while the females had a male representative, but I don’t know if that was just coincidence… Another coincidence, the male seemed to speak in Japanese mainly and the girl in Chinese, but I may not have been listening to the correct portions of their speech…

Regardless, the ceremony was the same for both, and the second speaker came to the stand. In the middle of his, thankfully shorter, speech, the microphone actually messed up and his voice became much quieter, must to my hidden amusement. This man seemed to be giving out special awards and, soon, we were on to our third speaker.

Then a presentation began, showing the graduates journey from middle to high school (again, can there be a little more originality? What if we reversed the order, and put it from high school to middle school?). After this presentation, a group of six or seven (there’s a picture with them…) students stood and began thanking their teachers (I think…), while the presentation showed their photos and some text.

Remember earlier when I said the music complemented some speakers really well? Well the second person from the right was really passionate, and it went very well with the music. After the thank you’d were said, then there was a part where all the graduates stood up and went to the stage, and three sung to be crowd. It was very emotional I’m sure, but nothing I hadn’t really seen before. And then we were done! No more graduations for me!!! Haha!
After this (it ended at roughly 10:50) and some four square, we headed back to the classrooms where I believe English was still in session, but I was not totally sure… Anyway, my group (still consisting of the same people as earlier that morning) just sat around as they studied, and eventually we went out for lunch at Tiger Pizza. I don’t know about you, but this was the first bit of American food we had had since the beginning of the trip, and I are like a ravenous dog, downing as much of the free soda as possible (which usually costs extra for refills, but didn’t here) and sticking as much of the gory, greasy, and utterly delicious pizza in my mouth before I couldn’t fit anymore in. Suffice to say, I got three slices of pepperoni pizza and two glasses of coke. Very fulfilling.

Afterwards, the group and I returned to the school, where Tom and the other Chinese students entered their classroom and we went to play soccer. After joining the team of six American exchange students versus the six Chinese students on the field, we were able to play a fun game. With people from other groups having joined us, we had a good team and managed to win 5-2, much to my excitement, not to mention I actually helped our team as a defensive player.

Afterwards, my group returned to our classroom at the end of geography class, where they were having presentations to learn that Chinese math was next. Naturally, being the only lover of math in my group, I stayed as the others left, exclaiming that I wouldn’t understand it. With honors precalc behind me and knowledge of both Mayan and binary math, I was confident I could do it. Safe to say, I utterly dominated the classroom. Finishing the two problems on the board and the first three problems from the sheet given to me in my mind alone (the fourth requiring a calculator for sin/cos/tan), I showed just how much mental math prowess I had while quietly keeping my pride to myself. I was the man.

At the end of class, I was exuberant and able enough to teach the class sigma, and I walked out like a pro (after being give a rather difficult problem by the rest of the class and being able to do it, albeit with difficulty), and headed down to the rest of my classmates to show just how “awesome” I was.
Sadly, my peers didn’t see the “amazingness” that I had some and for the large part responded with “you stayed in there?” Followed by “don’t ever say that in my presence again” when I stated that I loved math, and so stayed there for it.

After that, the school day was done, and we went to the basketball court, where I watched as they played and we eventually went to the park. There, we placed tags on us and played runningman, where we had to pull off the tags of the other team without getting ours pulled off. Despite brilliant strategy on my part, our team still posed both games before people started to leave.

When we were the last people in the park, Tom and I went home with his dad and had dinner, where I then retired to my wonderful room, where I proceeded to write down my day for this blog. Now, I’m sipping tea as I finish the blog.

Happy days, and see you all when we come back!

Cameron ‘Clatts’ Latta

P.S. I hope you all enjoyed my post, and can read it with a smile!
P.P.S. Sorry if there are typos. I wrote this on my phone since i don’t have my computer…