Letter from Nisa

Hi everyone.

My name is Nisa and I am a 3rd grader living in the city of Tianjin, China. I have lived in China since before I was one years old, but I was born in Canada. I have always gone to Chinese schools and I will tell you a little bit about what happens here.

In Chinese, I am in "san nian", 3rd year. My teacher, whose name is "Li laosher" (teacher Li), used to teach 6th graders, and she is very strict. We are all a little bit afraid of her. There are 32 students in my class, and about 750 students in our school.

I catch a taxi to school at 7:30 in the morning; the first class begins at 8 o'clock. On Mondays, the whole school meets outside on the playground for what you call "assembly". We sing patriotic songs and here some good words from our headmaster.

The rest of the week we have Chinese language classes, math, computer, science and physical education. We also have a class everyone must take called "character education". During this class we talk about how to be a better person. Our parents like this class, but to us it is sometimes boring!

We also have singing, art and writing classes, and once a week we have free choice of some activities the teachers plan for us.

The worst part of school is twice a year we have very big and important tests. When it is time for these tests, we never have art or music or p.e. - we just use that time to prepare for the tests. We hate it, but our teacher never give up on improving our scores on the tests.

We also have a lot of homework, even in elementary school. School ends at 6 o'clock, and the last hour of the day we spend doing homework with some help from our teachers. Then when we go home, we must finish by ourselves at night. We all hate this part of our school life, too!

But we do have some fun times. We have two long holidays - Spring Festival or New Years holiday lasts for about 6 weeks, and the summer vacation lasts about that long, too. This Spring Festival holiday my family and I went skiing. Sometimes we travel, and visit my grandparents in Canada and Belgium, and sometimes we stay in China and take sports lessons. Last summer I took tennis lessons. I also live near the city Water Park, and we go there to play sometimes. And at home I have piano lessons and art lessons.

You can see that going to school in China is not too different from your school, except I am certain I have a lot more homework to do that you! If you want to write to me, my email address is:

nisablue@hotmail.com