Wonderful life in America

Zhuoliang, China

This exchange program is awesome and I love it, the hardest thing I did was I missed the flight when I came to America. I was very scared my mind was empty and don't know what to do. That day I flew from Hongkong to Chicago and then I was going to Newark, after I arrived in Chicago Airport, we need to pass the customs, but there were a lot of people on line, so I waited for 50 min to pass the customs, but my other next flight and this flight is only 45 minutes intervals. So I missed my flight and I was upsetting and asked for the next flight. Unfortunately, the earliest flight to Chicago was tomorrow at 10:30. And the next day, After I arrived I was picked up by an officer from CIEE, I was told that I missed a trip to New York City, because at that time other Foreign Exchange Students were in a one day trip in New York City, so I upseted again. But no matter what, I had been in USA safety, my parents were relieved, and encouraged me it was okay. This was my most hardest thing so far.

After my first experience, I realized I was totally independent, and I need to know how important to solve problems by myself and responsible for my actions. I was more positive and open than before, because before I came to America, parents took care of what should I do and what not to do, but now I feel like I am more mature, before I did a decision I would think about what's the results and what will happen if it fail, and then decide, so I was not more naive. But I still exciting I've been travelled in 8 country in Europe, but never came to America, I was so curious to found anything difference.

I joined in a wonderful basketball team, we practised every single day in a gym and we are not individual anymore. We are a team, a team I will never forget, we all love basketball, our team called Warriors and we all warriors, we all have the some goal, we believed we can create miracles, we can feel teamworks power. I love my team! I've watched the NBA since I was in primary school. And one of my favourite players is Carmelo Anthony, during a break, my host family took us to Denver Pepsi Center, and I can watch he played a real NBA game, I can't believe but it happened, I love basketball!

Skiing was the most exciting thing ever in this year. I lived in Southern China, so there is never been to the snow. So I didn't know how to ski, but now I live in Colorado, there are lots of magnificent mountains and deep snow, it's great to ski. So my host family took me to Loveland Ski Arena and I took a ski lesson, there was a small group and coach paid more attentions to everyone. Actually, I fell a lot during the lesson, but I never gave up, what I was thinking about was everyone can ski in the mountain looks so cool, I had to learn it, it's not hard for me. And after that, I love skiing so much, ski should be the new sport I had ever did. And now I can ski pretty steep slopes . So it would be the most exciting thing I've done.

New hobby I had was playing chess, chess is petty popular in America, because I don't know how to play chess, and feft like it should be very hard, but my friend who is from Slovakia taught me how to play chess, I got the basically rules in 5 minutes and felt like chess was really fun. Couple weeks later, our school opened a Chess Club, anyone in our school could play chess with each other for competition, and who won a game would have 1 point in the standings, and every month's first Saturday would be the day we play chess. Now I'm the second in the standings, I improved my chess skills every time I play. I love it!

I did a lot of community services too, such as raking leaves for seniors, packaging the presents to the Mexican Children for Christmas, helping church's decoration and baby sitting.Volunteer Experience is very important during my exchange student time, helping the people who need help will make me feel happy, I am glad to help people and do some community services during my life. I like people who feel warm and happy after I did my volunteer works, when I was raking leaves for the seniors, I felt like what I did was just can help them solved so problems which was always confused them. But now, they have me, a person who can help them, I felt like I was needed at that time. I've learned how important those community services were, I can use my heart to do something which I willing to do and it was helpful, and people got helped. To do something good and valuable.

This year I learned that America is a incredible and awesome country, the people are kind here, I made many friends, and learned so much creative thinking, learned the new culture like what people do in some special festivals. Teachers are great in our school and me and my friends participated in many interesting activities. So I love my experiences and would like to shared then all to my friends after I come back!