CEI 2017 Student Evaluation

Students Evaluation (extracted from the daily reflections of students)

S3 Jeanie Yung

I have several expectations throughout the journey. The first one is to learn the independence while leaving our hometown, another one is to be a responsible leader-in-chief.

In the first place, this is my second time leaving hometown without my parents supervision. In Oct 2013, I went to Melbourne, Australia for exchange programmer. From the last experience I am expecting myself to be more independent and less homesick. Last time when I was in Melbourne, I cried because of homesick. Hope I won’t have this problem in this whole journey.

I was not expecting to be a leader-in-chief when I first joined this programmer until early May 2017. I was confused and frustrated, at the same time I was stressed. But I have expectations on being a leader-in-chief. I hope I can be a role model in the team.

From finding location, to meeting friends and learning the socializing skills to bring a better at atmosphere to the whole team is undoubtedly important. I am not expecting to be a “big boss” in the team. I don’t want them to feel like they are under my control, and to remember my position at the same time.

Other than my position, I hope I can learn to be self confident while presenting to students from different countries. Despite having a non-native English accent, hope I can learn or listen more native English accent so as to improve my English speaking skills.

Through presentations and conversations with other participants in CEI, I’m looking forward to spreading the importance on horseshoe crabs conservation. I will share my experiences on horseshoe crabs artificial rearing at school, what we learnt in this rare and unique experience and future expectations of horseshoe crab conversation. I am expecting to know more about the culture and traditions from other countries and take serious actions on protecting the environment.

S2 Leo Chan

At first, I was quite excited and nervous when I received the topic as I have never done researches on fireflies! Since this is the first time I do so, I gave all my effort with countless hours on our project.I paid a lot my effort and always be the initiative one to take the duties no matter how tired I was and how well my work turned out. I just wanted to try my very best to do so and the result was great! What I learnt was the skills for presentation and it did help quite a lot on my further presentations.

I gave up my free time with my friends too. As I heard from the experienced ones in CEI, I knew the course would be hard and we have to give up our free time That’s how the Primary School teacher taught me: Sacrifice. We stayed after school for our project, even when we were at home, we had to do many preparation work on our project. At the end of each examination, when everyone was supposed to have fun and relax, we stayed at school and practised. Although this seemed very bad for us and the teacher obliged us to do it, I enjoyed so much during the course of the study.

Now we have completed the whole work and we have overcome the most challenging part, that is the presentation. We enjoyed ourselves for this five-day trip. For me, I keep looking back and thinking myself in the US.

S1 Vincent Yik

Today was the last day in the CEI meeting. We had many activities like attending the lectures, joining group activities, meeting many friends, joining some filed trips in volcano, farm and farm market. I felt very excited and delighted.

On the day we had presentation, I was very nervous because it was the first time to present to foreigners. Although I was very nervous, I had enough preparation. So we could answer many questions. Also, the alumni and the judge eulogized us. I also learnt the presentation skills and how to make the PowerPoint from other countries.

That night, we had the cultural night. It was cool. All the people from other countries had many performance like dancing, learning other languages and playing the piano. Our group performances were skipping and dancing. We had rounds of applause. After that we went out to dance with friends from other countries, we learnt various kinds of culture among participating countries.

P6 Doris Cai

Firstly, before taking part in the CEI conference, we prepared hardly. We had meetings almost every week. We practised a lot to get a better performance than in the preparation. Although it was very tiring, it was a very meaningful task because in our frequent meetings, we got a very good performance in the presentation, we were awarded the compliment of the conference. I also thought that our presentation was good because we worked together diligently especially the preparation of the Question and Answer session. We helped each other to get the best answer. So the conference invited us to present to all the schools again. It was glorious to our team. I hope I can have the best performance.

Also, we had some field trips. Although I thought it was too short, we had seen many beautiful scenes. When we went to the Mount Hood, we were playing snow war, I felt very happy. It was my first time to touch snow. The surface of the snow was very interesting. We played the snow war and everyone got wet. It was very ridiculous because our bodies were all wet.At the presentation part, we presented very smoothly and clearly. The judges also appreciated our presentations. We all felt very pound of us. We were one of the best teams in the conference. I didn’t expect to get that good results. I was really surprised when I knew it, I was very pleased to this result. I thought it was great as it was the first time I joined the CEI.

Last but not least, the feeling of my whole CEI trip was cool. I like CEI very much because I can make many friends from other countries in this conference. I can also learn their presentation skills, such as pace and eye contact. I really hope I can join CEI next year again because I want to meet my friends again and learn more about the environment.

P6 Matthew Lam

Today was the third day since I attended the CEI conference and it was also the Independence Day of America. I watched the parade and the firework with my classmate. This was my first time to watch the parade in the USA. I had a great time with my classmates.We arrived at the USA on 29^th June. We had different activities these few days, like field trips, presentations and cultural performance. I learnt a lot of things these days. I thought the team spirit was important for a team to work effectively. Our team leader, Jeanie, is leading us to prepare all the work. If we don’t follow her, the team will lose the spirit. We should be smart and careful in the team and do the best.

We have seven members in the group. Each member has their own talents. It was helpful in the team, for example, Leo was good at communication, Doris was good at taking notes. I thought I was good at communication and I could help my classmates when they are in need.

One day when Edwin lost his room key, I and other group members consoled him immediately. Vincent found the volunteer to unlock the door. The others consoled Edwin until he stopped crying. I thought if we don’t have teams spirit, we can’t solve the problem successfully.