UTK is a big school with 60,000 students in total, undergrad. and grad. this public school is not as famous as those ivy league schools, but some of the program is ranked top 10 nation-wise, like nuclear engineering  and #1 region-wise, like logistics.

oh! and not mentioned that it has the largest football stadium among universities, the best (information-wise) library among universities and #1 party school (this is 2003 and 2004 ranking, in 2005, University of Indiana took that crown back). when i talk about this so proudly to a friend, he commended, “so it’s either sport maniac, or nerd or party animal in your university.”  i have to admit that he got the point. then he asked me, “so which one are you?”

well…i do watch football games, but that passion calmed down within 2 years. i only went to one game in my senior year and none in my junior year. freshman year is probably the craziest, that i've only missed one home game. then speak of the library, well, it is cool, and i do went there for study sometimes (meaning i only went there for projects or review with others, and i never went by myself), but i've never used any resources in there. at last, but not least, parties. there's always parties going on campus. they said that the freshman year should be the worst year of parties, but guess what? i didn’t go to one until my junior year, and i can count the number of parties i've been to during this four years just using my ten fingers. yepe, they are that less. so i guess i'm none of the three categories. or i just didn’t contribute to enhance school’s top advantages.

while started university life, i started to live with a “host family” again. i was invited by my high school teacher Mr.Francis, even though i've never had his class. all of his family members are graduated from UTK and he’s so proud of me that i've got the scholarship. so he invited me to live with his family with a cheap rate each month. i think i'm lucky to be able to live with him. since UT requires all freshman students to live on campus, i had my mother signed a letter to give him my guidance and that settled everything. i think i’ve learned a lot of American cultures and how they actually live from them, and i feel so happy to have a pair of American parents and a set of American siblings.

i spent 4 years in UTK and 4 years with the Francis and most of the time, i had fun. i made a photo album at the end, and put all the memorable pictures in it. it was thick and it took me almost a month to finish it, but i think it worth it. my school life in UTK was frustrated with all those classes and credit hours and fun with all my friends, no matter what their nationalities are.

they were right. your undergrad. years should be one of the best periods of time in your life. i always have a smile on my face when think of it. that little country town in the middle of nowhere, but has people with great passion and purest spirit.

sorry that i was caught up by the trips in the summer and the jobs as a new hire, i will continue the summary. XD

so then, after i left utah, i went to tennessee, in where i spent 5 and a half years, which i stayed the longest time and had a lot of things going on in my life. the high school i went to is a Christian boarding school. so no more host family anymore for me, and i started to live in school.

it wasn’t that bad at the beginning. they made me take a qualifying test to determine if i need to be place in ESL. i finished it while still having jetlag, oh and btw, just recovered from the horrible fever while still back in China.

the dorm life was a little different than in China. i also went to a boarding school in Shanghai, with 6 ppl in one room and trained like military. in TN, it was different. there were only 2 ppl in each room and even though there are 2 floors of girl’s dorm, only the first floor is being used and not yet fully occupied. according to the dorm director, only two ppl from different country can live in one room and only seniors can have the room by themselves. i lived with a korean girl first. she's a nice person, but while asleep, she’d like to have her music turned on the whole night. well…they won’t crazy loud rock music, but still, i couldn’t handle having some sound around my ear when sleepy. we were trying to negotiate with each other but apparently, she couldn’t fall in sleep without the music. as a result, i asked the dorm director for another roommate, and she agreed.

since our school has a sister school in korea, there were many many korean students. and again, i was assigned to another korean girl. this time, it worked fine. she's quiet for most of the time and rarely speaks, maybe also because her English is bad. i made friends with Japanese girls more than korean girls. there were only 3 Japanese girls. Megumi, someone i still talk to through emails nowadays, Toyoko, a Shanghainese grown up in Japan and always joke about she being Toyota CEO’s daughter, and Sumika, someone only dates American guys and you can’t recognize her after she takes off her makeup.

在那所学校里，我清楚地意识到韩国人的劣根性，她们欺负日本人，欺负我这个唯一从大陆来的人，和她们的一年半相处简直就是血泪史，像是恶梦一样！以防大家说我也变成愤青，我就不多说了，如果没有她们，我想我的高中生活会更加快乐的。

and in that school, i met with a lot of Taiwanese. i've learned in Utah that u should never talk about politics with them. most of them are nice and they also feel comfortable speaking Chinese with you. most of the time, they treat you as you are from the same place like them. to be specific, there was only 1 taiwanese guy, named Jack, in that school and hence, we became close friends. there was anther taiwanese girl, but since she was born in US and grow up in US, we all consider her as American.

it wasn’t quite happy over there, but i did receive a lot of help. ppl always mention that certain part of US worship white and treat other nations as crap, but in TN, it’s fine. you never feel discriminated by someone. in senior year, i placed top 10 in a math contest held by University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and along with it, there’s this 4-year full scholarship. as a result, i went to UT. i was also accepted by Wells, an all-girl college in New York State where you can take courses from Cornell, and University of Florida, located beside the most beautiful beach and Jack was there. however, i chose UTK at the end. yeah, i admit it that i went there for the $.