October 19, 2019 Breaking Curfew Later, we all retreated to the dormitory. After spending just a few days there, the hallway of beds had become somewhere of a new home to us. I had left clothes all over the floor, like Mom hated for me to do. The twins had manifested posters of their favorites bands and plastered them to the walls, much to their parents’ dismay, whom had left on another operation right after dinner. Thomas, beside me, had changed the white coloring of the old bed sheets to an evergreen, while his sister opted for a light purple color. This was all fine and dandy, as Grandma had told us, as long as we reversed them before we returned home.
August 17, 2019 Stumbling Sophomores “Come on, I know you don’t want to, but he really wants to meet you,” Angela pleaded as we walked out of the double doors into the fading afternoon sun. Not a cloud was in the sky, but all my books were in my book bag piled high. It would be, as usual, another long day at the library for us.
January 9, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Buzz About Buxibans Not less than twenty-four hours after touching down in Taipei the second time, I was sitting in a lecture hall among forty other men and women. Some of them were the same age as I was, while others were older with far more teaching credentials than I had. Exhaustion filled me, mostly because I’d spent much of the night chatting with my roommate and one of my now good friends, Rona, after she arrived as well. We awaited our training leaders to start what would be a week’s worth of learning how to teach and more about the HESS curriculum.
November 21, 2018 Travels from the Time Vault: Greece When I was sixth grade, my history teacher introduced us about ancient civilizations. We learned about the rich ancient history in Africa, India, China, Aztec society, Incan society, and then we came to the Romans and the Greeks. I’ve always been fascinated by mythology, and Greek mythology is without a doubt my favorite. It was also around the same time that Rick Riordan released the first of his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which I still love to this day. I could open up one of those books now and feel the same amount of joy reading it as I did the first time I found them. Sixth grade was also the year that I traveled to Greece.
October 3, 2018 That Time We Hid a Kitten In Our Apartment During university, I’ll admit: I did a lot of weird, out of character things. One time, I stole Santa Claus and hid him on campus. I’d go lay out on Chapel Hill and watch the stars when I couldn’t sleep, sometimes till the wee hours of the night. I often tried new things and much to my dismay, liking them was a hit of a miss. And a lot of the time, it didn’t take too long before I realized how much I really disliked something. But the time my roommate and I adopted a kitten and hid it from residence life for a week was definitely not something I regret doing.
September 19, 2018 Where (And How) to Learn Languages Abroad About a year ago, I began seeing a tutor to learn a fair bit of Mandarin. The whole situation lasted about five months, before things were cut off and we both went separate ways. In that time, I made it through two and a half textbooks. So I like to tell people I learned what I like to call “survival Chinese”. I can order food, drinks, read numbers and basic signs, and ask for help for specific things. I recognize about 40% of what is said, and from what I do know how to say, I say it correctly. Only 50% of the time. Like I said, survival Chinese. I’m proud of it, even if I didn’t get as far as I originally intended to at the beginning of it all.
August 25, 2018 Why We Need Mentors One of the most influential teachers I have ever had was in consumer education class in high school. I remember taking the class mainly…
