How I Got to China

       Becoming a School Year Abroad China student has been so far the hardest accomplishment I’ve made in my lifetime. I was first told of the program one day in Chinese class sophomore year. Teacher Yang told us that, as a member of this program, we would have the opportunity to live in China for a semester or whole year, study Chinese and receive high school credit for Math and English at the same time. As teacher Yang finished telling us about the program, the class became quiet. Not one person was talking, and for a class that talked incessantly about small matters such as who was going out with whom, even while a test is in session, this was quite a remarkable event.

       So if I were to apply, get accepted, and maybe get a scholarship, I would be able to live in China for a whole school year. Wow . . . the same China I had read and heard about in social studies class. The same China with a building and a picture of a Chinese guy hanging from it, who I now know is Mao Zedong. As I was the only student to raise their hand in class, in response to teacher Yang’s question of who was interested in participating, I received that School Year Abroad catalogue and application.

       As soon as I got home, I told my mother my sudden interest in the program and what it had to offer. As a member of this program, not only could I receive high school credit and learn Chinese, but also I would be able to see, in person, the many important and historical landmarks of China. As well as, have the opportunity to assimilate myself with a culture that has remained intact for thousands of years. From that day on, as usual, my mother was behind me at least one-hundred and fifty-two point five percent. I was hesitant to fill out the application, not for academic reasons, but for fear of rejection. It seemed nearly impossible to become a part of something so great, yet I felt as if I had to out anyway; after all, you only live once.

       Throughout my lifetime before now, faith was one of the many things I lacked. So here I was acting on faith, a week before the application was due. About one month later, I found out that I had been accepted into the School Year Abroad China program. Two or three weeks later, I found out that I was getting full tuition paid, but still there was one problem – the plane fare. Many thanks to the recession at hand, times were rough, which was often reflected in the household. I remember a time, when there was no food for almost a week. I remember often, bringing home food from the restaurant that I worked at because the fridge was bare. Another thing, I also remember, I bringing home the restaurant’s napkins to be used in lieu of seventy-nine-cent toilet paper we couldn’t afford, because that seventy-nine cents had to be used as bus fare. To put it plain and simple, no pun intended, there was absolutely no way that the plane fare was getting paid.

       I almost ‘flipped.’ Even though I had a job at the time, my mother didn’t, and what made the situation worse was the fact that although she was applying at several places, was well qualified, and was scoring, high on tests, no one could afford to hire her due to the recession. On top of that, my job was paying only six dollars an hour, which wasn’t much given the pending situation.

       In spite of the hard times, we as a family made it through. With the monetary help of my grandma, cousin, and aunt from Baltimore; my mother’s friends; and my fifty to seventy hour checks while attending summer school at the same time we were finally able to come up with enough money for me to actually participate in the program, even when I had been accepted, it seemed, a long time ago. Speaking of good news, a few days later, my mother was finally hired. Through a dependable group of friends, family and a newly acquired sense of faith, I was able to, thankfully, study Chinese in a new city.