Chinese exchange student,  Alice Song, is the only girl at St. Louis U. High

By scanews staff

        Wearing a pink coat with a cute smile, Alice Song walked towards a host of strangers waiting to meet her for the first time.  Alice, 16 years old, is an exchange student from Nanjing Foreign Language School, and she travelled over 17 hours in actual flying and many hours in changing flights at two airports and yet she did not show any sign of fatigue,  but carried with her a composed manner when she arrived at the Lambert Airport on January 29, 2002.  Although this was her first time to travel alone and to a foreign country,  Alice said that she was not scared and many people showed kindness and helped her to get to the right gate boarding for the correct flight.  After she was enrolled in sophomore classes at the St. Louis University High School for a week, she commented that everyone is so helpful and SLUH boys behave very gentelmen like and she does not feel awkward although she is the only girl there!

       St. Louis U. High and Nanjing Foreign Language School are sister schools and two top students selected by Nanjing Foreign Language School annually come to St. Louis to study for a semester.  They attend regular classes and live with host families. This program has been a wonderful experience
for Chinese exchange students as well as for American students and their families.  All of them have enjoyed the opportunity to better understand the different culture and to  mutually benefit from learning each other's language.  All four families that have willingly agreed to host Alice have a son studing Chinese. 

      Chinese exchange students were expected to be here in early January,  only the lucky Alice was granted visa and her classmate failed to obtain a visa after three attempts.  Was this due to the tough policy in issuing student visa after the September 11 attack?  Alice said that she will treasure her experience in U.S. and will write a diary to take home and share with other classmates who did not have the opportunity, nor the luck to be here.

       Alice speaks very good English and has adjusted well both in classrooom and at social life.  She started learning English since her 5th grade and majored in English at the Nanjing Foreign Language School which is an elite school specially strong in foreign language training including English, German, French and Japanese.  Not only are there native teachers in each targeted language, but  actual situations are created for students to use their language skills.  Alice is well equipped to join classes at SLUH and feels easy about geometry and biology, and maybe less so in English and American History.   Teachers and students at SLUH predict that she will be a 4.0 student just like her predecessors.   

       The Principal of SLUH,  Dr. Robert Bannister toured China last June with 18 students and the group was led by Dr. Ching-ling Tai, the Chinese teacher.  Every other year Dr. Tai organizes a tour for students who study Chinese to visit China and to tour 7 capital cities.  After the 2-week tour, many of them fall in love with China and many of them return to China afterwords.   Her former student, David Snodgrass (1996), not only is working in Beijing, but is getting married to a Chinese this coming Chinese New Year.  What a vivid demonstration of people-to-people contact!