The teachers chaperoning the exchange students can be seen sitting in the back of class, listening in on classes and comparing teaching methods and styles. They can also be found in the Media Center, planning out their trip to Washington D.C.

The Chinese exchange students are taking a variety of classes, from College World Studies to freshman English to TV Production. Jennifer’s current favorite class is College Physical Science, which makes sense because she takes many science classes at her school too.

All of the exchange students take physics and chemistry courses in tenth grade in China. That’s two science classes compared to the one that the majority of WHS students take each year. Along with those subjects, the Chinese students also take English, Chinese, math, history, politics, geography, music and gym class.

Because the exchange students are taking the trip during their school year, they have to keep up with their classwork. So along with the homework they get from WHS, they have to do their Chinese school homework and classwork.

They seem to manage their workload pretty well, so they still have plenty of time to experience new things here in the United States. They have visited colleges, gone shopping and visited Salem with all of its Halloween festivities.

As for the hurricane, they enjoyed having the days off, which never happens in Beijing. All of the big storms, which are rainstorms that cause lots of flooding, happen during their summer vacation. There is occasionally a snowstorm, but it’s never big enough for school to be canceled.

During the days off, we carved pumpkins, something they don’t do in China because they don’t celebrate Halloween. It was fun and a nice way to spend the break.

The exchange seems like a success as the students are merging their Chinese backgrounds with American culture. The only problem that I can see is how the Chinese exchange students aren’t branching out to make new friends but stay closely together.

However, this problem seems to be almost unavoidable. The Indian exchange students also stayed together, not making too many friends outside of the Wayland High School students participating in the exchange.

I think that this problem can be fixed if both WHS students and the Chinese exchange students put a greater effort into building friendships. These friendships are so cool because you become friends with someone on the other side of the globe.

Hopefully before the Chinese exchange students leave this problem will be fixed, so when they leave, they’ll have fond memories of all the friends they made.