Topical Essay For School

I like sharing what I write, mainly because I like to hear what people think, no matter if it's good or bad. This past week I had to write another topical essay for my English class, and I present it to you to read. Hope you enjoy it, and if you don't, then still leave a comment of your own opinion on what you think I could improve on.

I know first hand the struggles that Elizabeth Wong wrote of in her essay  “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”. For me, it was the smell of the locker room still gets to me. Sweat, grass and mud, mixed with dirty laundry, and covered with what seemed like an atom bomb of about 18 different colognes from the teammates trying to cover their stench up after a game, it still gets to me. FOOTBALL CAN HAVE ITS GREAT MOMENTS, BUT FOR A PLAYER LIKE ME WHO RODE THE BENCH, IT CAN BE A VERY LONG SEASON. 

Dad wanted me to play. I wanted to play. However, I never realized how much pain and work I’d have to throw into ‘playing’, which seemed ironic to me. You need work in order to be the ones that could play. After the excitement of the first few practices wore off, I started to get lazy about showing up on time. The coaches never took notice of my rep-work when I snaked my way through the line of wide receivers going out for a post pass, or a stop-and-go run. As much as Wong wanted to be in her Chinese language class was about as much as I wanted to be on the field when I realized no one was paying attention to me, yet paying attention their already star players. Even as Wong says “I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left from the tip of a moc but”  (24), I felt like I had better things to be doing than running mindless plays, if I wasn’t going to be coached on catching the football wrong or stepping the wrong way.

As Wong states that she sat in a auditorium room with chairs and bad smelling Oriental odors and dreamed of ‘better’ countries and what they had to offer, I sat in a old and smoke filled room with my team mates and coaches watching films from previous games. I couldn’t stand the smell of the defensive coaches’ cigarettes. Waving his hand around in front of the projector screen, I worried he’d eventually burn a hole through it with as close as he got to it. He’d yell out a player’s name, and complain about things like a teammate dropping passes, or not tackling correctly. These guys were twice our age, and ten times more competitive than we were. I suppose that’s because they couldn’t play, and wanted to live through our own glory.

As I started my own season, I had to finish it, per an agreement made with my father. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t hate it all the way through as much as Wong hated her Chinese class and talking to locals in Chinatown.  As my own season ended in November, I rode the bench and got a handful of plays in when we would be up on an opponent by thirty plus points. Yet at the last game of the season, coach started me. He said that he watched me be patient and wait my turn, and decided that I deserved to play. Finally, I was someone who could be counted on for the team. 

Can Airplanes Propel Dreams into Reality?

As a lot of you know, my family and I have adopted from China before, and we are really close to other families who have done the same thing. I read this on a message board from our agency, and as they said, I'm sharing it on the blogs and facebooks. Stories like these really make my heart cry out to these kids because it's not their fault. They're thrown into situations like this, and have to sit and wish for a better life, now knowing that dad and mom (or step dad/mom) don't love them enough to live with them.

This story is copied and pasted verbatim, from the Holt Website, and here's a direct link for those more interested in other adoption stories: Holt

Zhi Needs a Family

By Ashli Keyser, Managing Editor

From China. Date of Birth: August 15th, 1997

The beginning……

In 2005, *Zhi and his father went for a drive. They drove for miles and miles and finally stopped at a bus station. Zhi’s father scribbled his son’s name and birthday on a piece of paper, handed the paper to Zhi, said goodbye and walked away. That would be the last time Zhi would ever see his father. He was six years old.

After failed attempts to locate Zhi’s father, the police officers took Zhi to an orphanage. He was said to be in “good spirits” and quickly adapted to his new surroundings.

Today, at eleven years old, Zhi needs a permanent family. He sees many of his friends go home to families and gets discouraged that no one ever comes for him.

Thankfully, though, Zhi has a little help.

In February of this year, Chris Zhen, Holt’s Guangzhou program assistant for the Journey of Hope program, arrived from China to the Holt headquarters in Eugene, Oregon. Here for a 6-month internship, Chris came to work with the China staff in Eugene. He came to experience the United States….and he arrived with a mission.

“I promised myself that I would try to find Zhi a family,” said Chris, who befriended the shy but precocious 11-year-old boy through his work with the Journey of Hope program.

In an interview last year, Zhi told Chris and his social workers why his father abandoned him on that fateful day five years ago.

After his parents divorced and his mother left, Zhi’s father remarried. “My stepmother decided she didn’t want me anymore,” said Zhi. And so, Zhi’s father made the decision to let him go.

Zhi now lives at a private school. His teachers adore him. “He is able to take care of his daily needs,” they say. “He has set up good living habits for himself and is able to keep things in order. He sticks to his goals and shows respect to others.” Zhi’s favorite subjects are English and Chinese. He enjoys playing basketball and flying remote control airplanes. He wants to be a pilot someday.

“I want to go to the USA when I see my friends going there with their families,” said Zhi in an interview with Chris a couple weeks ago. “I miss them and I want to keep in touch with them.”

When asked what kind of family he might like to have, Zhi’s shy side comes out a little.

“A family who will love you forever will be OK?” asks Chris. Zhi simply responds, “Yes.” When Chris asks Zhi if he would like to share anything else, Zhi just says, “jin kuai,” which means “as soon as possible (to find a family).”

Zhi has experienced his fair share of loss. I think about how wonderful it will be to see him go home to a family someday. A family who will never walk away from him. Zhi understands that a family might be out there for him, and he is eager to meet them.

In the future, I hope to share Zhi’s family story on the blog or in the magazine. Who knows? Maybe one day, 15 or so years from now, Zhi will even write his own adoption story for the magazine…….

The story of a boy abandoned at a bus station, but whose story didn’t end there.

The story of a boy who grows up to be a pilot, remembering the days he flew remote control planes at the orphanage in China.

The story of a boy who goes from playing basketball on the boarding school playground, to high-fiving his friends after making the game winning basket in the championship game.

The story of a boy who went from abandoned and alone, to loved and embraced. From China to America….. and into the arms of a loving family.

Help turn Zhi’s dream into a reality. Share his story on Facebook and on your blogs.

Learn more about Zhi, here

Or contact Erin Mower at erinm@holtinternational.org for more information.

*named changed

E-I-E-I-Oh-No

Hannah decided to play the piano today. She's quite the entertainer! What's insane is that she's getting better at hitting the keys at the same time she sings. Rhythm is key, for this young musician.