Apr 12, 2024

Today we had a really rare sun eclipse in all lower 48 states, and the next one would be in 28 years. We had glasses to filter 99.999% of sunlight, and only in this way can u directly look at the sun. Imagine next time, when we watch the nation-wide eclipse again, it would be more than 20 years away. It is interesting that sun eclipse is connecting people in the ancient time and us, and we are all amazed by this wonderful work of God.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we had the last one of our three guest speaking series. To learn more, go to my previous post at here.

Wednesday

Today we had Daliya’s dad’s chapel talk, and the story of how he became a Christian was really interesting, especially since BTA is teaching the East Asia Unit right now. Mr. Smith did not have a happy childhood – his mother and father fought every day. Their marriage was in a hurry, and thus miserable. They divorced when Mr. Smith was taking high school, and his high school was not fun either. After working for some years, he only became more fragile (afraid of a lot of things) and began to wonder what is the meaning of doing all these things. He then quit his job, trying to defeat his fears by directly facing them. For example, he was afraid of sharks, so when he heard people saying this sea has sharks, he jumped in and swam with sharks. He was also afraid of speaking Chinese, so he went to China, learned emergent Chinese, and experienced life in China. He got to know about Taoism (which basically says following nature) and Buddhism (getting rid of desires), and he followed Buddhism: had his hair shaved, did silent zen (not speaking all the time) for 4 weeks, and eliminated his goals and purposes. His life stayed like that until his stepmother called him to look after his father, who was ill, and he went to Israel. There a Christian talked to him and gave him a Bible. He was afraid of this book at first, but he decided to face it and finish reading it, just like he did with sharks. Then one night he had the vision, and he was sure he met Jesus.

Thursday

Today I had my first experience of symposium night, and it is a must-have mixed experience. It is hard, for sure, but the seniors are in the meantime so good in the symposium, and it definitely shows their hard work during the whole school year. So the form of a symposium is basically the same process in university. You first choose your topic in September, and then write a short paper about it. You then gradually add more things to it and make it a research paper with 20 or more pages. Finally, for symposium night, you need to prepare for a 6-minute introduction of your topic and be ready for a 10-minute defense of your topic in front of judges and all the guests. It is stressful, and you can even feel the denseness of the air. There are some breaks in between, but no one talks, no one moves. But even if under such pressure, the seniors did a really good job. Keziah talks about how technology harms democracy because it steals time from us to think about real problems. She has abundant sources and references, and whenever the judges ask her questions, she can just pick up several relative sources and research to prove her ideas. Both John Li and Elsa Tate merge their experiences in the research and analyze the problems from both sides of view. John Li talks about the problems inherited from culture and history and how this influences the current education system, Gaokao, and further harms thousands of students’ minds. Elsa talks about how the Chinese government is made up of history by filtering and designing the historical images and thus shapes national identity — patriotism on false values.

Friday

Today we had an almost empty school, as both seniors and juniors did not come to school today. The senior room is empty, and the break is also quiet. It is a weird feeling, and it just seems the school lost an important part of its liveliness (probably also bc I only had 2 classes today).