Andover夏校的第一堂课

4th July

Today I went for breakfast at about 7:30 with Anna (I don’t think it will be wise to knock on Christina or Monti’s door, ‘cause they all have roommates).

After breakfast，I went over to Samuel Phillips Hall for Psychology.

Samuel Phillips Hall from Wikipedia

（Samuel Phillips Hall是Andover校园的六大主建筑之一，建于1924年，由2500多名校友集资修建，以创校人之一Samuel Phillips（1752-1802）的名字命名。现在，这栋孩子们喜欢简称为Sam Phil Hall 的建筑，集中了学校的主要教室。）

Psychology

In class, apart from getting to know each other better through certain games and activities, we did a test, a survey of sorts. Apparently it’s supposed to test what kind of intelligence you have. There were like 20 or so questions like: Do you hum when you wash? Or like, Do you like word games, do you like puzzles? etc.

（Arya一直比较喜欢心理学。参加夏校前，她先是阅读了DK系列中的Psychology；然后，又顺藤摸瓜阅读了弗洛伊德的The Ego and the ID, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis 等书。在坐车上下学的路上，她便听The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes。）

There were 6 kinds of intelligence: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, music-rhythmic, intrapersonal and interpersonal. It turned out that, I, a boy called Kai (I think) and the Harbin girl called Sherry all got the highest in logical-mathematical. A few others, Faith and the other boy Cato and another girl got interpersonal. Faith got verbal-linguistics as well. She told the teacher later that she liked to write some limericks on her own and liked to write short stories and so on.

from Slideshare

We were then went off in groups according to our intelligences. I paired off with Kai. He got zero for both intrapersonal and interpersonal. So you can guess what it turned out. We discussed, as was asked of us. Then I tried to make small talk, and I feel like I can really empathize with those extroverts who meets up with a taciturn person. 

Like, I asked him questions, and told him about my experiences in the past. All he did was smile, laugh, and stare. No words. Not one sentence. So it was kind of relieving when Sherry came to my rescue, and started off a conversation with me.

from clipart-library

Mr. Houldin then gave us our homework (which is to read an article on culture shock and write a bit on how that article can apply to you). We were dismissed at 10:00, and I met Christina on my way out. She had a period 2a class, right after period 1. Apparently, she got SSAT preparation class that clashed with her original period 2 class, so she had to add a period 2a.

I went back to my dorm to put away my things and went to the library with Anna. She just came back from her film-making class. Their homework was to watch the movie ‘a star was born’ and take notes on it. So while I wrote my diary and homework, she watched the movie. At 11:30 we went for lunch, because Writing for Success was at 12:30. We both signed up for Saturday’s trip to the Amusement Park.

Writing for Success

At the Writing for Success class, we started off with sharing our favorite food. Mustafa, who was sitting next to me, loved to eat popcorn. A person said pizza but I forgot who it was. By the way, there is this boy from Turkey I think who’s called Tuna. I know it’s weird, it did take us all aback at first. But, well, it means another thing in Turkish.

Paolo Oliveira/Alamy

（维基百科是这样解释的：Tuna (IPA: [tuˈna]) is a unisex Turkish given name and surname. It means Danube inTurkish.也就是说，Tuna在土耳其指的是，“多瑙河”，而并非它在英语中的“金枪鱼”的意思。这也正是孩子们刚开始一听到这个土耳其小朋友名叫“Tuna”而大吃一惊的原因所在了。）

We had a free writing about the annotations we had made last night. And I shared with Kristel, and then it all went to analyzing the way the author wrote racism. (Kristel said she was named this because on her parents’ wedding day, her father dropped his wedding ring when he was putting it onto the bride’s hand, and the ring was made of a kind of stone called Kristel, so she was called that).

Clubs

Immediately after our class, we were headed off to the school meeting for programs and clubs. I met my tennis coach there，who was also my writing teacher, Mr. Iwaskewicz (I’m not sure whether I got that right). There’s like a whole bunch of kids who were going to tennis. And most of them are GIRLs. There’s like only a few boys who poked up among the throng of medium height girls. There’s this German guy, who Anna told me was in her film-making class (and she thinks he’s quite “pretty”).

by Miniaria

Well, after that, we went to pick our clubs. I actually wanted to go to the hiking club and the computer science one, but considering I’ve already signed up for Philosophy and Photography, I don’t think it really appropriate to sign for another again.

Anna signed for KTV ( forgot what they call it). At that counter, there’s this teacher, thin and stringy, with a bushy black beard and with a pair of sunglasses on his hooked nose (that, is Anna’s filmmaking teacher), who was yelling his head off singing a song and advertising his club.

The most popular was the baking club. There was also a club for anime. Christina and Monti went off talking about the animes that they had watched before, so I drifted off with Anna to the Great Carnival that afternoon.

Great Carnival

Paresky Commons, by David Chase from Schwartzsilver

(Paresky Commons是Andover的主要餐厅，建于1928-1930年，1981年和2009年两次重新装修。)

There was a huge barbecue at the front of Paresky Commons where we used to have dinner. And there was smoke wafting all over the place (I still got that smell in my hair), and the radio was blaring songs while the boys played soccer on the field.

（7月4日是美国国庆日，可能因为这个缘故，学校组织了烧烤大餐。）

Anna didn’t want to eat the meat, and I couldn’t find Christina or Monti. So I grabbed a hamburger and a corn and sat under a tree, eating my dinner (which was continuously punctuated by the flies who just can’t wait to have a bite of my corn).

At night I worked for a bit on my personal statement required in Writing for Success and went to bed after an early shower. (I’ve decided to accept the tap water, ‘cause after thinking over it, it occurred to me that the water at Commons was probably just tap water mixed with ice).