五月 15 2009
4月心得
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.
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.
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.
04/30/09-The School’s Honor Roll Field Trip
