By Elyse Hill
Several Lindblom students traveled to China this past summer. Four of them went to the capital city, Beijing (Seniors Samiyah Mubarak and Yuwa Edomwande and Sophomores Kamari McElroy and Kennedy Graves), one went to Nanjing (Senior Raven Nash) and two to Hanzhou (Seniors Sharon Guan and Maria Valenzuela).
One student in particular, sophomore Kennedy Graves shared her experiences during her trip to Beijing.
Kennedy said that she learned a lot in China. When she and her classmates arrived, they spent a lot of time during the first week learning about Chinese culture before they were immersed into it. After that, they went on field trips to popular tourist attractions like the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square.
She learned Chinese from a teacher who is a native Chinese speaker. Kennedy said this enriched the knowledge she already had of Chinese from Lindblom. Kennedy has been attending Lindblom since the Academic Center, so she is already ahead in Chinese for a sophomore. “I learned about tones, stroke orders, and how to make the characters look beautiful,” Kennedy said.
She said that she only met college students planning to study abroad in America. She didn’t really have any interactions with high school students. The students from Lindblom were learning alongside other American students from all corners of the United States. She made valuable friendships with them. She also became closer to her fellow Lindblom classmates.
In her culture classes, Kennedy learned about Chinese paper cutting, Chinese fans, nunchuks, Chinese dance, and so much more. She learned that when you enter a palace, it is customary for a person to step in with their right foot first. “It’s more than just eating with chopsticks,” Kennedy said.
Visually, according to Kennedy, China was not that much different from America. Sometimes she even forgot that she was in another country. The country isn’t very diverse, so she did feel like she was the odd one out at times. But her biggest takeaway from the trip was the ability to deal with different kinds of people; this is an important skill to have in the workforce. Kennedy learned to accept different cultures and their ways of life through her time in Beijing. The experience will more than likely be one she is very fond of during her time in high school.
Several Lindblom students traveled to China this past summer. Four of them went to the capital city, Beijing (Seniors Samiyah Mubarak and Yuwa Edomwande and Sophomores Kamari McElroy and Kennedy Graves), one went to Nanjing (Senior Raven Nash) and two to Hanzhou (Seniors Sharon Guan and Maria Valenzuela).
One student in particular, sophomore Kennedy Graves shared her experiences during her trip to Beijing.
Kennedy said that she learned a lot in China. When she and her classmates arrived, they spent a lot of time during the first week learning about Chinese culture before they were immersed into it. After that, they went on field trips to popular tourist attractions like the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square.
She learned Chinese from a teacher who is a native Chinese speaker. Kennedy said this enriched the knowledge she already had of Chinese from Lindblom. Kennedy has been attending Lindblom since the Academic Center, so she is already ahead in Chinese for a sophomore. “I learned about tones, stroke orders, and how to make the characters look beautiful,” Kennedy said.
She said that she only met college students planning to study abroad in America. She didn’t really have any interactions with high school students. The students from Lindblom were learning alongside other American students from all corners of the United States. She made valuable friendships with them. She also became closer to her fellow Lindblom classmates.
In her culture classes, Kennedy learned about Chinese paper cutting, Chinese fans, nunchuks, Chinese dance, and so much more. She learned that when you enter a palace, it is customary for a person to step in with their right foot first. “It’s more than just eating with chopsticks,” Kennedy said.
Visually, according to Kennedy, China was not that much different from America. Sometimes she even forgot that she was in another country. The country isn’t very diverse, so she did feel like she was the odd one out at times. But her biggest takeaway from the trip was the ability to deal with different kinds of people; this is an important skill to have in the workforce. Kennedy learned to accept different cultures and their ways of life through her time in Beijing. The experience will more than likely be one she is very fond of during her time in high school.