Category: story

Hosting an exchange student

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For the past ten days I’ve hosted an exchange from Singapore. I had such an amazing time the whole summit and I’ll try to write about my favorite parts here.

The first night I waited at the airport for about an hour while my student Randelle and the rest of the Singaporeans went through customs. I had to work on this DBQ for english so I sat down in a seat and worked on it, and this teacher from Lebanon ended up sitting next to me. She noticed that I was writing about the Ottoman empire so she went on to tell me all about Lebanon and its history with the Ottoman Empire, which was actually really interesting. When Randelle got here we went back to my house and showed her around my house. The official languages of Singapore are English, Chinese, and Malay, but all of the Singaporeans that came mostly spoke english and sometimes Chinese. Singaporean accents took some getting used to because they talk pretty fast and occasionally add -Lah to the end of their sentences. At first I didn’t know about the Lah thing so I was really confused.

all of the hosts and delegates when we first met them at the airport

Everywhere we went we were driven around by Melissa, and sometimes her driving was a little stressful. One time we left the trunk open and didn’t realize it for like 10 minutes. Last sunday, which was the second day we were there, we visited Dominion and went to a welcome party at someone’s house. I got to talk to some of the delegates but I mostly just got to know them by playing ping pong. My student really liked Dominion because she thought it was cool that there was so much open space where we live. Singapore is half the size of Loudoun county but has 5 million people living in it, so everything is stacked.

The next day we went to DC and all the delegations shared their cultural display boards. Every board had food from their country near it so it was great because I just walked around and ate. Singapore had these cool plastic bubble balloon things so I spent a lot of time there just playing with it. When we got to DC we were supposed to go the US history museum but it closed early so we ended up just walking around the monuments. By then I had gotten to know all of the delegates from Singapore so we had a great time taking those stop and pay scooters and scooting around on them without paying the fee. Once I picked up one and a siren went off from the scooter so I took a break and then ended up doing it again.

Randelle and the Singapore cultural display board

After DC we went to the Silver Diner and the delegates thought it was so cute because it had the juke boxes you could play music on. The next day I had to go to school but everyone else went to an opening ceremony at Woodgrove. After that we went to a Dominion lacrosse game, which was amusing to the delegates cause they got to see a bunch of kids wack each other with sticks. The next day we had a walking tour around Leesburg and it was so nice out. For some reason the school had some AP US history kids run the tour, and they ended up getting us lost even though we didn’t realize it. During the tour I got to talk to the Chinese and Romanian delegates more and learning about their countries was really really interesting.

Thursday was the assembly for Dominion where all the delegates were forced to do the flag march. I volunteered to hold the flag for Norway, which was actually such a good idea because I made friends with a Norwegian girl and she told me about some hilarious traditions in Norway. After that we went to a bonfire. Towards the end we got bored and began to set random things on fire which was amusing. On friday Randelle really wanted to go to Walmart and she actually spent 50 dollars on Oreos alone while we were there. In Singapore they dont have all of the different Oreo flavors so she promised to bring some back to all of her friends. After that we tried to have a bonfire at my house but we couldnt start a fire so we burned paper towel rolls and set the marshmallows on fire that way.

Saturday was the glow dance which was so much better than when I went last year. The glow dance while hosting is actually so fun because you can talk to all the delegates you already know and its much easier to make friends with new ones. I danced with the Norwegians and also this kid from the Netherlands named Robin who is moderately famous in his country and is a quote on quote rapper.

Sunday I went to great falls and Tysons. At Tysons we had shake shack which I had never had before. Monday was our last night with the delegates and we watched a movie and had burger 21. Everytime we ate out during the summit I had a burger so by the end I was dying. Tuesday night was the farewell dinner where all the countries had cultural performances that were really funny. The Singaporeans left after the dinner and I was so sad.

Reuben (a Spanish delegate) and Paul (a Chinese delegate) at the farewell dinner. I will miss them so much AAAA

I highly recommend hosting to anyone. All you have to do is share your home with someone and in return you get to learn so much and have an amazing time. I was super busy the whole time during the summit, but I was always enjoying myself

Walking in a random direction and seeing where I go

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Over break I went on a lot of bike rides and walks to fight boredom and not get super out of shape. I was going on a bike ride with my friend and we stopped at a playground and walked around for a little, but after a while I suggested that we should walk in a random direction and see what happens. First I took out my phone compass and checked what direction we would need to walk back in, and then we set off into the woods.

We ended up being pretty underwhelmed because after like 3 minutes of walking the woods stopped and we ended up in the middle of a golf course. Old men were looking at us suspiciously so we went on a path instead of just walking across the middle of the green. Soon we made it to a river (the Potomac, we were in Algonkian Park) and walked along that for a while. Once again we were a little underwhelmed cause we had both been there before, and I didn’t really feel like I was walking blindly. I really wanted to find a really interesting place or have something particularly exciting happen, but I think my hopes were too high. Along the river it was super muddy and to spice things up we decided to take a random path back through the woods, but it was even muddier than before and we made it back to our bikes wet and cold.

Overall, this wasn’t a very exciting experience but it was something new that I did so it fits in the criteria of this blog. I kind of want to do this again just to challenge my sense of direction. I think getting lost would be kind of fun, since I can always pull out google maps if I´m getting worried. I recommend this to people who enjoy walking around but want to make a little more interesting.

Dry needling isn’t fun

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This week I tried dry needling. The past few months I’ve struggled with tendonitis in my posterior tibialis (inside of my ankle) and my physical therapist suggested dry needling my calf. Pretty much, what dry needling does is stimulate the muscle so that it completely loosens up instead of being tight. It’s ideal for the muscle to be sort of in the middle between super tight and super loose. You can stretch your muscle and roll it out a bunch to get it from tight to the middle point, but it’s easiest to dry needle and get it super loose and then work the muscle to that middle point.

I left school early, which was pretty much the only nice part of this whole experience, and went to my physical therapist’s. She had me lie down, and then cleaned off my calf and stuck a tiny needle in it after looking for the tightest spot. The actual needle didn’t hurt at all, but then she started moving it around looking for a trigger point, and it felt like my calf had a giant charlie horse that was tightening and untightening. Once the pain stopped and my muscle stopped twitching she would take it out and put a different one in. This all sounds super unpleasant and that’s because it was. The whole time she was really nice and was asking if I was okay. I suffered through it cause I payed money and also because after dealing with my tendonitis for so long I was willing to try anything (I’ve done cupping and shock therapy as well). She did the same thing with 5 more needles and then I did some band exercises to retrain my muscle. When I got off the table I could barely walk because my calf was so sore and had to hobble around for the rest of the day.

This experience was really helpful in the long run because it relieved a lot of the pressure on my tendon, though I would not recommend this for people who have a really low pain threshold, or people who weren’t recommended to do this by a physical therapist.

That’s all for this week’s thing