National Security Language Initiative for Youth Chinese Summer 2018
It's Only Been A Few Weeks But So Much Has Happened!
Hello! Welcome to another blog post!! There have been a few more developments in the last couple days, so I'll let you guys in on the deets. I liked the format I did last time so maybe I'll do that again.
1. Student Webinar! - A couple of weeks ago we had our student webinar! No new information per say, but it was mainly a recap of the parent one with a few added details. Stuff like contact numbers, medical insurance, gifts for host family, etcetera. The highlight of the webinar had to be meeting our resident director (RD) and seeing everyone's faces. Our resident director is named Wujun (or June for short). She is a native speaker originally from China, but lost and recently rekindled her talent with the Chinese language. She is currently a student at UC Irvine. Seeing her and actually hearing what she does made me think if that was something I could do for iEARN when I'm her age! After the formal lecture part was over, they turned it over to us for Q&A. When they did this, they turned on all our video cameras so we could see each other! As Bethany said, "It was cool to put faces to names".
2. Package Arrival - Probably a week or so after the webinar, I finally got the NSLIY package! This was going to be my first vlog, but the package was a bit underwhelming. All it was was a physical copy of our handbook (linked in the last post) as well as our textbook. Cool stuff for me, but I doubted it would make an interesting video. 3. New First Vlog Idea and a Call to Help - Now that I had to come up with a new first vlog, I thought it could be a good idea to just do an intro to me! Just a basic video saying who I am, what NSLIY is about, etc.. A pretty bland video to start with, but I thought I would need some practice filming/editing before I left. I have a free day tomorrow (no exams!!), so I enlisted the help of my mom to film. Should be out soon (I mean it this time)! As for the call to help, I haven't decided on a video editor yet! I have tried 2 computer programs, and picked the one I liked best. For me that was Filmora, but I have not purchased it yet and am still open to suggestions! Feel free to comment below, and remember I will be using a Windows laptop :) 4. Stickers!!! - If you know me, I like to switch around my laptop stickers a lot. Probably not the most economically sound idea, but I like to think I've developed a nice relationship with redbubble.com! For my Taiwan trip, neither I or RedBubble disappointed. If you couldn't see from the oversized photo beneath the title of the post, my laptop is lookin pretty Taiwan snazzy. My favorite ones I got have to be the "Bubble Tea Runs Through My Veins" and the I heart Taiwan with Taipei 101 as the "i". 5. My Recent "Personal Investments" - At age 15, I finally received my first debit card!!! It's been a while ride of many purchases this week, most of them under the excuse of "preparing for my trip". Some highlights of my shopping spree have been: my first pair of Chaco's, my amazing laptop stickers, and of course, another travel journal. 6. PPLP is In Session! - PPLP, for those who don't know, stands for Pre-Program Language Preparation (someone should make a boom for all these acronyms). This basically is a 5 week, loosely structured course for beginners and experts, created by the RD, to get you language-ready for your course and living in the country. For us, there are weekly assignments usually consisting of a written/spoken exercise and something from the book. We are also required to sign up for 2 office hours with our RD, 30 minute video calls with her and 1-2 other students. Knowing me, I signed up for 4. This is the first week, so I have already completed one written assignment and one office hour segment. Our written assignment this week was to create a 7 line introduction about yourself directed towards your host family. We also had to read about 20 pages of our textbook. Office hours turned out to be a lot of fun! I did mine this week with Bethany and Sophia. We had to each read our written assignments for this week aloud and then act out the dialogue from the textbook pages we read. We also did some speech and pronunciation exercises. Afterwards, Bethany, Sophia, and I all chatted on our Messenger group chat, creating backstories and drama for each one of the characters from the dialogue. It was a lot of fun overall :) 7. OPI from Hell - This morning was the dreaded Oral Proficiency Interview. I decided to try to make the best of it and go in with a positive attitude, but was quickly reminded of the horrors of my limited vocabulary as soon as the phone rang. The OPI is divided into two parts: the question-asky part and the roleplay part. First were the questions. I don't think I've ever said or will say “我听不懂” or “我不明白” in my entire life XD. Next was what I was most worried about, the roleplay. Before she read it out, I was trying to think of the situation, but it could've been anything. I was one of the last OPIs so I heard about the roleplays other people had to do. They ranged from "Vacation in China" to literally IT tech support on a computer. Finally after all of the nerves and the worries, she read out my roleplay: "You are in Beijing at the airport and you are trying to get back to New York but your flight was cancelled. Ask the counter associate 3-4 questions in full Mandarin so you can try to get home" W h a t. I was so shook XD. My extent of knowledge in transportation is literally "我今天坐飞机去中国", Today I fly on a plane to China. Now I'm supposed to talk to the counter lady about a cancelled flight? I barely remember how to say airport lol. Literally my best question I think was asking about the weather in New York. Sad, I know. So the OPI was a bust, but at least I'll show improvement! 8. Party Evites - After my crushing OPI defeat today, I wanted to do something productive, so I got most of my sendoff party details hammered out and sent the evites! I invited 26 people, and I think 6 have replied yes so far! To be fair, it will be in the summer and it is the first day. Other than that, today has been a good day (or should I say yesterday because I'm currently writing this at 3AM). 9. Santa Fe - On a way more serious note, the Santa Fe shooting did happen this week. It gets more and more scary as they continue to happen, as I keep on feeling like someday it could be my school. At the one in Parkland, I had a friend who went to that school. Now this one in Texas, one of the students killed was an alum of the YES Abroad program. For those who don't know, YES abroad is another exchange program through the State Department, which sends teens to Muslim-majority nations all around the world for an academic year, aimed at increasing ties between them and America. They are basically NSLIY's sister program, so this hit very close to home for me. The student's name is Sabika Sheikh and she went to her native land of Pakistan and returned home to a "safe country". Months later she was killed at a high school very much like another. All I am asking is that sometime in your day today you take a minute to send your prayers to this girl and her family, they really need it. Rest In Peace Sabika. 10. We are less than a month away! - As of the time I am writing this, it is currently 27 days until PDO!!! Needless to say I am excited out of my mind, but it has also been a very busy time in the Fisher family. Vaccinations, signing things, writing things, notarizing forms, re-notarizing forms, we are doing it all. If you ever have any NSLIY questions though, I will always have time to answer them. Feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email! I also added a feature onto the blog that allows you to sign up for emails whenever a new post comes out! Check it out below! Other than that, thanks for reading and have a good day!
2 Comments
There have been a couple of moments throughout this process where there's been a realization that I'm actually doing this... and I just had another one!Hey guys! It's been about a month since the last post and I wanted to catch you guys up with some of the recent developments that have unfolded since the last post! There has been a lot more logistics and stuff from NSLIY that we got so stay tuned for that too! I looked at my stats for the first time before I wrote this and realized a lot of people are actually reading! Thanks guys! Anyways I guess I'll just go topic by topic:
That's about it! Thanks for reading it all, I know it was long! There is one more thing though: Don't forget to leave a comment! If you have any questions or if you just want to leave a nice note, just go for it! It's nice to read people's comments and for me to respond to them, since I get to see that people are actually reading! Sorry for posting this late in the night and thanks again for reading! |