Preface

Lately, the people who have already heard of my plans for the next school year have all been asking me just about the same thing: "are you excited, or are you scared?" It's a perfectly reasonable question, and is seemingly easy enough to answer; It is also perfectly reasonable for people to assume that I feel either excited or nervous about my long-anticipated departure. And yet, as I find myself only 10 days away from leaving my home for 10 months to live in a place I've been dreaming about for the past four years, I struggle to find the words to describe exactly how I feel at this moment. So when people ask me how I am feeling I just respond, "I don't really know... It's still so surreal."

For those of you who do not already know, I'm about to leave the country to spend my junior year of high school in The People's Republic of China. Simply going to China has been a dream of mine for years, and anyone who knows me well knows how long and how anxiously I have been waiting for it to happen. Now that it actually is, all I can really say to myself is "FINALLY!" And not only will I be visiting China, but I will be living and studying there for an entire school year through a high school study abroad program called AFS. Some of you may recall that my older brother, Ian, also went on an exchange through AFS when he went to Argentina for a semester as a sophomore. That experience of his is what compelled me to apply to go on an exchange myself; however, mine had to be in China, and it had to be through this program, but I'll get to why in a moment...

My home for the next 10 months will be in the southernmost province of China, Hainan 海南, in the Meilan 美兰 district of its capital city, Haikou 海口.

I will be attending school at the Hainan Overseas Chinese Middle School 海南华侨中学. However, contrary to what the name may suggest, I will not be attending a junior high school. "Middle school" in China refers to the American equivalent of middle and high school, and is comprised of a "junior middle school" (grades 7-8), and a "senior middle school" (grades 10-12). Another important thing to note about the school is that it is not an international school; The "overseas" in the school's title simply refers to the fact that it is not on mainland China, so to the rest of China it is "overseas." 

Class here is taught in Mandarin, and to my knowledge the student body is made up of locals (except for the few of us from AFS, but I'm still the only American), so that means I will be constantly immersed in Chinese language and local culture. This brings me back to why I chose AFS...

AFS's long-term study abroad programs (semester/year) are not aimed towards language study, and do not cater to American high school curriculums or the college board. I am not going to be put up in a dorm with other international students, nor be isolated from the local community in an international school owned by AFS. The program I'm going on is focused on improving intercultural understanding by providing students with the means and support to be able to live with a local family, go to a local school, and have an authentic, fully immersive experience in a foreign culture. In addition, a student's placement within the host country is entirely random, which allows them to really get to know an area that they probably would not have heard of otherwise (Hainan, for instance). That is why this program is so unique from all other high school programs I have seen. I chose it because it will allow me to experience and interpret Chinese culture first-hand, and not through the lens of some international school in either Beijing or Shanghai where only half the day is spoken in Chinese and the other half is in English. After seeing the impact that just one semester in Argentina had on my brother, I knew that I wanted to study abroad the same way he had.

Now, the reason why I am writing this blog is to document my exchange and share what I learn about in China. Contrary to what I may have told some of you earlier, I am not just writing this to make up for the American Lit. class required of all juniors at my school (although admittedly that is part of it). I was initially inspired to write a blog because that's what my brother did when he went to Argentina. Right now I'm planning on making an effort to post bimonthly, but there's really no way to tell what my schedule will be like when I get there so I cannot promise anything. While I will be documenting my experiences, I am not intent on solely describing what it is like to be a foreign exchange student. I will also try to provide insight into China from the unique position of an American teenager living and going to school there, as well as possibly providing some Chinese perspectives on the US from the outside. My hope is that not only I, but also the people reading this blog, will gain some better understanding of China and how it is similar and different from the US. However, if this is too ambitious, and you, the readers, walk away from this blog at the end of the year having no new understanding of China or the rest of the world, then I hope you will at least enjoy reading about some of my antics abroad.

Also, two things:

1. I'll have no one to edit these blog posts but myself.

2. My English will get very out of practice as the year goes on.

Therefore, I apologize in advance to anyone who struggles to read my writing (I won't blame you if you end up just giving up on it). 

So long!

一会儿见！