Friday in San Francisco

Today is Friday, the happiest day of the week. Tomorrow we have no school, and tonight my older sister comes to see me. She has been in the United States for three years already and lives in her dorm at her junior high school in San Jose. Every weekend she comes up to visit me.

I live with Mrs. Ts'ung, who is a friend of my mother. She has three daughters, who are all in college. I have my own room and eat dinner with the Ts'ungs, but breakfast and lunch I make myself.

At 6:30 I get up and put my doll away. School starts at 8:40 and walking to class from home takes only three minutes, but I like to mess around in the morning, so it's best to get up early. Around 7 o'clock I go to the kitchen to have my breakfast cereal and make my lunch. They have lunch at school but it has this meat. Every time I eat it I start burping in social studies class, which fills my whole mouth full of this meat flavor. I'd rather make my own sandwich instead.

Breakfast usually goes like this. I eat two spoonfuls of cereal and then put the bread in the toaster. Two more spoonfuls and the toast is ready. Spread some jam on the toast and have two more spoonfuls. I eat very slow. In the meantime the Ts'ung daughters come in, have a quick breakfast, and then rush out. I'm the first to come and the last to leave. When breakfast is finished, I wash my bowl and see what I didn't put in my diary the day before. At 8:25 I leave for school.

I started this school only in October. In May Mom brought me to the United States and began looking for schools for me. But no public school would accept me and so in September I was sent to a private school. There was a lot of work and they didn't have ESL (English as a Second Language). I didn't understand anything and cried when I went back home. Mom went to the public school authorities and told them about me and then they let me in. She stayed with me for another week and then went back to Taiwan. I still don't understand too much, but I can't cry, because otherwise I can't go to school.

I am in a special class in the fifth grade. We have only three Americans. There are three kids from other countries, and all the rest are Chinese. Some are from Taiwan like me and live in New Chinatown near the school. Our first class is reading and we split up into sections, depending on our ability. But this other student who speaks Cantonese and me are not good enough, and the teacher lets us find a tape so we can listen to a story. If she catches us playing, she will find a classmate with good English to talk to us. They usually are impatient with us, so I'd rather listen to the tape.

Spelling class is a little better. It is part of the ESL program, and the teacher is very patient. First she explains the word in Mandarin and then in Cantonese.

Arithmetic is my favorite class. Today we study how divide thousands. I studied this in the second semester of the third grade, and it's very easy. We separate into two groups and I am in group 1. When I was in Taiwan, I never thought I would like arithmetic so much.

Then comes lunch and I eat my sandwich and hurry off for my flute lesson. My mother wants me to study the flute because most of the other students are American and this way I will have more chances to speak English and won't speak Chinese all the time. Classes are every Tuesday and Friday and who knows, maybe my English will get better. But my mouth can only do one thing at a time. If I speak a lot of English in class, I won't become a good flute player. If I concentrate on the flute, then music class won't improve my English.

At two o'clock we have social studies, and then the last class, physical education. The only thing I know in social studies is that we're now studying the American Revolutionary War. I don't understand the teacher or the book, but the teacher wants me to sit and see if I can improve my English listening ability.

It's good I didn't eat at the school cafeteria today, otherwise my mouth would taste like meat. My classmates say I burp in social studies because I don't like the class. Maybe they are right, because after class I don't burp at all.

I don't like P.E., because I can't kick the ball far. In softball, the two batters in front of me are very good, and so I get nervous.

After being in the U.S. for over half a year, I have become a little fat. Although I eat a lot of bread and milk, the real reason I think is because I am nervous all the time. P.E. class makes me nervous, listening to English makes me nervous and when I get nervous, I eat snacks. I never ate them in Taiwan.

School lets out at 2:40. Most of the time I don't have homework, which makes it better than Taiwan. I come home, watch a cartoon, take a bath, watch another one at 5 o'clock, and then at 6 have dinner with Mrs. Ts'ung.

After dinner I go to my room and read a storybook that my sister borrowed for me from the Chinatown library. It takes about two hours for my sister to get here from school, so she should be here anytime. Tomorrow my sister is going to take me to the library and then to buy bread, ham, milk, eggs. . .

This type of ad has now become commonplace in the World Journal.

Young overseas students learn to take care of themselves abroad. （Photo courtesy of Rern-Ziahn.）