04/09/09-Annual board meeting of the museum
I was invited to the annual board meeting of Syracuse Historical Museum. The lady that invited me told me that they would have a very interesting presentation. I was there for receiving the honor of being a volunteer in the museum. The presentation was fun and exciting. The guy had a lot of old stuff with him.
He had a couple rifles, clothes, etc. He actually shot a couple shots with his old rifles. I was really fun.
When I went home, I saw this magazine lying on the table. I found an article that I thought was pretty good. It’s an article for volunteers:
Valuable is the work you do.
Outstanding is how you always come through.
Loyal, sincere and full of good cheer,
Untiring in your efforts throughout the year.
Notable are the contributions you make.
Trustworthy in every project you take.
Eager to reach every goal.
Effective in the way you fulfill your role.
Ready with a smile like a shining star,
Special and wonderful, that’s what you are.
04/17/09-The School Spring Concert
The school’s spring concert was held at the school building this time, rather than the First Christian Church. The band didn’t perform because Mrs. Frazer thought the band wasn’t good enough to perform any of the songs. She had students did their instrumental solo since that’s what we have been practicing for Fine Arts Festival for a months. The school choir sang several songs. We used to have kids from Johnson, KS and another home schooler group in the concert. Neither of them came, so the concert was kind of short. I did my violin solo. I think that was the best time I have performed so far. It was raining and thundering outside. But the concert went well.
04/21/09-Emergency Evacuation from the First Host Family
It has been around 8 months since I got to Syracuse, Kansas. So far my exchange student year has been wonderful. I’ve been giving speeches to groups in town, volunteering in several places, and so on. However, for the recent couple months, there’s one thing that bothers a lot-my host mother. She has been suffering a mental depression. She wouldn’t tell me about the reason why sometimes she got so upset, or I didn’t really try to find out. I didn’t ask about it for two reasons. First of all, it didn’t sound like I was involved. Second, I was concerning if that was too personal to ask.
She has been acting weird and being irritating by doing actions that don’t make much sense, and by using sarcastic language. We had had a couple discussions between us. At first, I was trying to improve the situation just between my host family and me. I didn’t bring it to AYUSA’s attention until a week before I left my host family. The reason I didn’t do it in this way was because: first, involving more people means more communication, and also mean more miscommunication. Second, I take that AYUSA would spend a month on this, by then, it would be even more difficult for me to stay in my original host family. For these two reasons, I decided that I wouldn’t get AYUSA involved in this until I am sure I don’t have the ability to work this out myself, and until the situation is crucial enough for AYUSA to react quickly and efficiently after I report the problem. Unfortunately, the situation didn’t significantly improve. So I talked to CR about the circumstances and the idea of changing the place to stay. I also talked to my principal about the idea of changing the place to stay for the next couple months. Amazingly, my principal told me that they already thought about that, and one of the teachers was willing to host me. The teacher is my teacher for Communication Arts class- Jay Hale. I called my CR and told her that I already found a place where I can stay, meanwhile, I told Charles about the situation.
On the 20th of April, my CR went to Mr. Hale’s house to have an interview with him. Mr. Hale told me to call my CR the next day at school. At the beginning, I thought I was just going to stay at Mr. Hale’s house for a little while. But my CR told me that AYUSA was trying to make the Hales a host family. Then, my CR talked to my host mother. She went very upset after the call. During the dinner, she exploded shouting, and yelling. She went furious, and talked about leaving the house. She even had a sack of apple right in front of my face as a gift, saying that she was just trying to be nice, and hope I will have a good time with the gift. This was an offensive action to me, and certainly off the limitation. It was surely unacceptable, and I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore. I have been trying to improve the situation as long as there’s still space, but once the limit was broken, I had to react immediately, and strongly. I called my CR right away, and told her the situation, meanwhile, requested to leave. I contacted my principal, asking for staying in his house and transportation to town with both RD and CR’s permission.
I cleared out my room in one and a half hour. I called it emergency evacuation.
I was glad that I could evacuate from there smoothly. My principle was: Try to improve if possible, react efficiently and firmly once the situation goes out of control.
04/22/09-Clean the highway
My school is in a kind of State Highway Cleaning program. The goal is to keep Kansas highway clean.
The school adopted a section of highway close to the school building. What we do is picking up trashes along the highway on both sides of the pavement. We leave bags full of trashes beside the road, and the highway department will pick them up. Today was the first day doing this. The weather was really hot. The good part is that we had about five bags full of trashes. I was glad that the school is in this program. I think we will continue doing this to make Kansas clean.
04/24/09-The Track MeetThe SCA host an annual track meet in Garden City. There were about 300 students participated this year. I was in the 100 meter dash, and long (broad) jump. I tried something new for me. I sign up 200 meter dash. I was also in the 400 meter relay because Mr. Gould wanted to have a school relay team. I went to Garden City with Mr. Gould’s two kids the night before. We stayed in their sister’s place. We didn’t have to get up early since we were already in Garden City. I don’t know if I placed in long jump, but I know that I got the first place in both 100 and 200 meter dash. The relay team got the second place. The day was intensely hot. It went all the way up to 90 degree. I was about to get burned. It was also a long day for me. I didn’t eat lunch till about 2 o’clock. 04/27/09- The Fine Art Festival
This activity was originally in March. But here were two delays both because of snow storms. The school has been preparing for it for nearly a month. I sang in the Syracuse Christian Academy choir. There were just about half as many students as they would usually have because of the changed date. We were the only choir that performed that day. The Yorks were late for 20 minutes, including Ryan. (Since e lives with the Yorks) Although they have the tendency to be late, this was a little bit off the limit. So I was one of the only two guys that sang. Quite impressive, the voice was nice. We had a beautiful bass throughout the performance. The instrumental solos and singing events were right after the choir. There were several little mistakes at the beginning, but it went through smoothly for the rest of the contest. The score system was unique. Performer would get a blue ribbon if he/she scored from 95 to 100, red ribbon for 89-94, and a white ribbon for 80-88. I performed Concerto in A minor- 1st movement with my violin. I got a blue ribbon, but I knew my skill needs lots of improvement, still. The festival ended significantly early because of the reduction of participants. Some of the SCA students went to lunch together after the festival. Nothing special to talk about, to me, it’s just a musical event.
04/30/09-The School’s Honor Roll Field Trip
This field trip was held for honoring the students that worked hard on school works. There were supposed to be three honor roll field trips. Because the school didn’t have time to arrange the trip at the end of the first semester, the school combined the second and the third honor roll field trip together. We went to Garden City. The first stop in the morning was the Sandsage Bison Range Wildlife Area. The students got on a trailer and the manager of the wildlife area gave us a tour. There are dears, buffalos, and some cows in that area. The only animal that we saw was buffalo. I think there are 66 buffalos in that protected area. It was kind of chilly, but the tour was very interesting for me. We went to the Garden City Zoo during the period between the first stop and lunch. We went a home school mom’s garden in the afternoon. She is exceptionally knowledgeable on gardening. I am not crazy about Gardening, so I didn’t really learn a lot. We will have an end of year field trip. I wonder where we will go.
