Beep! Beep! Beep! He jolts out of bed, shuts of the alarm clock and hastily pulls on his school uniform, smiling down at his school’s logo. Walking alongside his host sibling on his way to WHS, his mind races with thoughts of how he will be introduced, greeted and treated on his first day, both nervous and excited about the start of this new journey.

Sophomores from the Beijing Jingshan School Yuanyang Branch and their teachers visited Wayland for about two months and are leaving today as part of the Wayland-Jingshan Yuanyang School Exchange Program. While here, they stayed with host families and took classes at WHS to experience the American lifestyle.

“Our students came to the United States for two months and had classes here,” Ming Xie, an English teacher on the exchange said. “They lived with the host families, which for both of them was a kind of new experience, so both [the exchange student and host] learn a lot.”

In China, the students had to apply to be accepted into the exchange program. Once evaluated based on academic levels and personalities, six were chosen.

Exchange student Tom Yu explained that he decided to participate in the exchange program to experience meeting new people.

“[The program] also taught me how to communicate with others because the language is so hard for me,” Yu said. “In this new environment, I had to be more friendly and more warm to others.”

The language and communication proved to be a challenge for him.

“Besides language, we had to say, ‘Hello’ to everybody or try to communicate with everybody,” Yu said. “I’m sometimes a little shy, and here, there’s a [need to break the ice between people].”

Yu believes the exchange program is helpful in many ways. Not only does he get to learn new things and experience a different lifestyle, but he also had a taste of independence.

“We learned how to be independent while we’re in a different country, where we lived without our parents,” Yu said. “We had to deal with stuff by ourselves, so this was a good experience for us.”

Comparing the school life in China to school in the United States, exchange student Allen Jiang found similarities and differences. Jiang considers the teachers and amount of homework assigned relatively the same, but he noticed a difference in the classes here in the diversity of the courses offered in WHS.

“Wayland High School has a lot of classes, and we could choose classes such as art and business law. We can choose by ourselves. I think that is good,” Jiang said. “Students can join different levels too, to help them learn better.”

Yu believes there’s a difference in how teachers care for their students in the United States than in China. He sees teachers in the United States more as instructors who pass on knowledge, while teachers in China are more like parents who always take care of their children and keep an eye on what they’re doing.

“[In the United States,] if you have any questions, you should go and ask [the teacher],” Yu said. “Nobody will pay attention to your study specifically but yourself.”

Ming has a different perspective as a teacher on the differences between school life in China and the United States.

“Here, students have different kinds of activities in class, and the teachers have different kinds of teaching skills, which we might learn and use in the future in our own classroom,” Ming said.

The students are thankful for how friendly, understanding and considerate their host families have been.

“They want me to enjoy and to learn their lifestyle,” Jiang said. “I also got to achieve a lot of my dreams, dreams like going to an NBA basketball game!”

They are appreciative of their fellow exchange students and teachers, which they think of as their “family members in America,” but they are also very grateful for all the help they received in Wayland.

“I want to thank Wayland High School on behalf of our school,” Jiang said. “They provided our studies and host family. Because classes are in English, we can’t understand all of it, but the students are very friendly and always help us to understand.”