Memories of the School on an Island in the Caribbean

張貼日期：Nov 08, 2018 4:24:28 AM

Jerry Chou

When I first arrived on the island called St. Kitts, I knew only a few English words, so I could barely speak in full sentences. St. Kitts is a country that Taiwan has diplomatic relations with. The school I went to was called Ross University Preparatory School. The people who study at the university usually bring their whole family there. So, it’s a school for the parents’ children that study at the university and some other people who can afford the tuition. In the first school year I could barely talk to anyone, but with the help of the teachers and classmates I was able to start communicating with others. I learned English both inside and outside the class, such as an ESL course that a teacher had set up for me and my sister, activities that were held in the school each year, and the piano and sports lessons that my dad had me and my sister do, and these experiences are all precious to me.

In the first year the school didn’t really have an ESL (English as second language) teacher; therefore, I only learned how to interact with my classmates during the break time, but in the second year an ESL teacher finally came to work at our school, and that’s when my sister and I started to learn English properly. The teacher taught us by playing board games such as Boggle, a game where you have English alphabets on the dices and you try to spell out the words you already know. This was how I started to learn a lot of my vocabulary.

The activities that the school holds every year were also another way in which I learned my English. The indoor activities that I had done included a teacher who taught language and art classes told our class to perform a small play while some of the students read out the poem. We also learned some holiday-themed dances; for example, on Halloween we danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It was a lot of fun to learn the dance moves. The outdoor activities were the field trips that the school took us to, which were visiting the fruit plantations and going on a catamaran trip to see the great scenery around the island. A catamaran is a decent size boat that can carry 50 to 60 passengers at the same time.

The afterschool lessons were important for me because what I had learned at a young age would be memorable and useful for me. The piano lesson that my sister and I took was a pretty nice experience to have because it was the first instrument that I knew how to play, and it also gave me a chance to perform on my graduation day. The sports lesson that I took were enjoyable too. I learned how to play tennis for two years and it’s an exhausting sport because we had to move our hands and legs at the same time. As for the diving lessons I was scared before I started learning because it seemed like a dangerous sport to learn, but it’s a fun sport once I got a hang of it. The under-water scenery was incredible. For instance, I got to see all kinds of seaweed and colorful creatures.

The memories of both the process of learning English and the activities I had done will always be the best experience and fantastic to recall. I really miss the activities that I have done in St. Kitts because some of them can’t be done in Taiwan, and I would like to go back to the island one day to relive my fun experience there.