I was so delighted to have a unforgettable summer in England, I made a lots of friends from different countries, had fun with people from all over the world. It was a meaningful experience that it improved my English, social intercourse and my body.

I still remembered my ambition before the trip, I promised to my mom that after I came back English will no longer be a problem for me, and now I can proudly state that I fulfilled my promise. For this trip, it's not only a chance to practice my English or make friends with foreigners, but also a challenge for myself since the trip wasn't very propitious in the beginning.

1. My experience in London

The adversity started while I was passing the customs, I thought I answer all the questions perfectly, but still the inspector didn't allow me to pass, and he even made a phone call to someone, I was anxious through the overall process, but finally I passed it.

Then I started registering as soon as I arrived at my school, I got my name card first, and the my bank account, and signed up my sport for the three weeks, all of these went pretty well until a teacher asked me to download an app called "remind" in order to receive the messages from the school, I didn't know how can I download apps on my phone because that is the phone my dad used before and hadn't been used for a long time, and my parents didn't teach me how to download, so in the next three weeks I had to acquire information from my roommates.

The language I spoke on the first two days was Chinese and a little bit English in order to answer the questions from teachers. I knew I can't spend all the time with the Chinese, because the only thing they do was playing games, so if you were in TASIS that time, you could always see I walk alone on campus, the life on the first two days almost killed me, but China has a proverb called: "You can only see the rainbow after a storm "

This proverb inspired me to pass through this period.

I felt really regret on the second weekend there, because that weekend the weather became bad. It rained and the temperature decreased. 

I thought the weather resembles that of in Beijing, although it rained, the weather won’t be very cold, so I still wear my T-shirt while others wear their jackets. As a matter of fact, I was totally wrong and I caught cold. That's why I was regrettable.

2.Life in my dorm

At first I would like to start with my dorm-parents, Mr. Charles and Mr. Seth. 

Mr. Charles is an old man, but he was still very healthy because of his good habit, he slept very early at night and also get up early in the morning, he was very virtuous. He stayed in Beijing, the city I live now for three years, and we talked about the city, once he told me he liked Beijing Opera very much when we were eating supper. 

My Chinese friend seated next to me don't know what is it at first, and he thought Mr. Charles was talking about Beijing Duck, a kind of food, and he said: "Yes, it's very delicious." And me and Mr. Charles didn't know what he's saying, and he repeated again and again, how embarrassed it was！

And Mr. Seth was passionate and helpful. He always helped us. Once my charger was broken, so he lent his to me. I appreciated him so much.  

I didn't live in two people's room. Instead I live in three people's room, with a Russian who is called Mark and an Italian, Federico. I didn't talk with them in the first two days, and then one afternoon Federico wasn't in our room, and Mark felt very bored because only he and Federico found the same interest which is football, but I kept in silence all the time although I’m also a football fan, I knew all the football stars they talked before, but I just didn't claim that. I thought I was ignored by them.

Then Mark started playing football in our room by himself, and I just couldn't suffer from keeping silence any more, and I motivated myself to speak with him, finally I opened my mouth.

Another story is that Federico had a good friend who is also an Italian called Stefano, he lived in our dorm too. Stefano loved singing loudly very much, and was a very outgoing boy.

They thought I was not good at English at first, so they used Google Translate, once they translate "I'm going to eat in the dining hall" to Chinese, and it said "Wo yao chi can ting". I laughed, and they didn't know why, I told them the sentence which was translated means I want to eat the dining hall, it also made them laugh.

Mark is a very naughty boy. He had two main friends in our dorm, one is Alexander from Russia, the other is Mohammed Kazakhstan.

They always stayed together, sometimes Mohammed came into our room quietly, and suddenly he screamed and it really scared us, this made me and Federico really upset, then Federico requested them to be quiet, but they didn’t listen. After this issue, the relationship between Mark and Federico started to broken. These happened on the second week. Moreover, on the third week, there was something else happened that made the relationships between the Russian speakers (including the Kazakhstan the Russians) and Europeans (including Federico, Stefano, Francesco who is also an Italian and a Spanish that I will introduce him in the next paragraph) thoroughly broken.

Now I'm going to introduce the Spanish, his name is Erik, who is very justice. On the weekend on the second week, many people in my dormitory lost money, including Federico, Stefano, Erik and me. I lost 30 pounds during the school trip. I didn't bring them and put it on my table, and after I came back, I can’t find them, and my friends lost them in the same way, but different time. Erik believed it was Mark who stole his 60 pounds, and as a friend of Erik, Federico was affected by him so he hated Mark more deeply. 

More seriously, we discovered that Mark was a dirty boy. He threw his clothes everywhere, 

and threw all the snack packaging he ate into the crack between his bed and the wall. Of course Federico and me was annoyed by this, but I didn't state that. Federico stated, and I think you should know what happened next. 

On the last day, after Mark leaving our school, Federico finally released himself, he said to me: "Yeah！Mark has gone."

3. The school trip on weekend

The trips in TASIS was pretty well, the first time we went travel was the second day, to Winsorb, a small town, the main issue is shopping, the reason why our teacher chose there is because the school wanted to make sure we got all we need for the three weeks. We were required to make pairs at least three people, my companions were two Chinese. We got all we need, and then went to a Starbucks in order to eat our lunch.

We had to choose our trip by ourselves except to Winsorb which I have mentioned before and the London Walking Tour on the last day. For the first weekend, I chose cinema on Friday, Harry Potter Walking Tour on Saturday and stay at school on Sunday because the only choice for Sunday is shopping, but I didn't want to go shopping.

On Friday evening, I went to cinema and watched Incredible II, a cartoon movie, it was a cartoon movie, and was about Superhero beat the evils, it not only gave us massive visual impact from the amazing skills of the superhero, but also were not lack a sense of humors.

On Saturday, I went to the Harry Potter Walking Tour, two guilds leaded us to walk through all the place in London which the film was made. All the students and teachers were divided into four groups as the same name of the four department in Harry Potter, I was in Raven claw, the department could get points if somebody in the department answer the questions correctly, I used to think I was a great Harry Potter fan and know almost everything about the film, but I couldn't answer any questions.

On Sunday I stayed in our campus, I played basketball with my friends all day, and got a lot of fun.

For the second week, I chose Thriller, a theater to watch music opera there on Friday. We departed very early from school, it took a long time to reach there. The opera is about the most famous singer in the world, Michael Jackson, it's amazing. But when the opera finished, it was already half past ten, moreover I felt carsick on the bus, so I went to bed as soon as I backed to my room.

On Saturday, I went to British Museum, I visited the gallery of China, Africa, Greece and Rome. I learned a lot of historical knowledge, I saw the Chinese porcelains, the tools and clothes in the Africa, the Greek myth and slavery in ancient Roma.

On Sunday I went shopping in Greenwich. But I bought nothing, I spent all my moneys on eating. At first I went to a Chinese restaurant. The food was good, but the service was bad, and then I bought some chips in McDonald's.

On Saturday of the third week, we walked around London, by following our dorm-parents, Mr. Charles was old so he didn't take part in the trip, so Mr. Seth took us to sight Buckingham Palace, The Big Ben and The London Eye.

4. Sports, free time and food

In TASIS we can play sports every afternoon. It was a chance to made friends with others, I met almost all of my friends during sports. The only thing that is not good was if we chose a sport to play on Monday. We had to play it for whole weeks, so we had to consider carefully. I chose basketball on the first and the third week, and football on the second week.

Basketball is a sport I played really nice, I always defeated my classmates in school very easily, although there were some players played as well as me, but they couldn't defeat me, I was proud of that. But after I played with the foreigners, I discovered that basketball was not a game play by yourself, you had to share the ball, I often scored by myself in China, but it was not fitted at here, the players defended very well that I had to pass the ball, this embodied specifically on a Turkish, Emir, he shot the ball every times if he had the ball, but he couldn't score every time, although he had a mighty personal ability.

Although I was good at basketball, I was not good at football, I was always the last one who was chose by two captains on Monday and Tuesday. I had poor personal ability in football, so the only position fitted me was defender. Unfortunately, I was the only defender in my team on Monday, so every time our striker loses the ball, the enemies scored in an extremely easy way, the score stopped at 8:2 at last, we lose the game. 

Luckily, Mark, Federico, Stefano, Francesco and Erik were all in my team, because we were roommates, they did not blame me. On Tuesday, still I was a defender, but today I got a very powerful partner defend with me. He was Erik. He was not the defender, but he came back to defend spontaneously after we lose the ball, I was not stressful because of him, and I discovered I was actually a good defender, I could follow the ball handler at high speed, everyone noticed that, so on Wednesday, I was number eighteen whom chose by the captains, and on Friday I was number ten.

We only had one hour to play sports under the control of our teachers, and we had at least three hours' free time to do whatever we want. I always spent this three hour on playing sports. There was a big basketball court next to Orchard which is a dorm's name. All the guys in Orchard could play basketball very well. I had fun with them during the free time, there were a lot of Turkish in Orchard and I got close with one called Emerald basketball became an integral part of our friendship.

The food was delicious. We had BBQ and burger each Tuesday.

5. Classes and studying hall

All of us had a major and a minor class, my major was English program and minor was Coding. Classes started at nine am, each class took fifty minutes, and everyone had a different schedule, for me, I had my minor first that finished at 9:50, and then I stated my major class at 10 am, and finished at 13 pm. We had 20 minutes break after 10:50, and then another 2 class with 10 minutes' break.

The biggest surprise was that my Coding teacher was Mr. Charles, and he taught us a Coding program called Scratch, developed by MIT. This program had a powerful system that could do whatever we want, I did a ball game, a rock paper scissor game and a cat catch rat game, it was funny.

People who studied English program did a text at the beginning in order to divide in six levels according to our grade, the levels were A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2, A1 was the lowest and C2 was the highest. Emre and me was in B1, Federico and Erik were in B2, Mark and Francesco were in A2.

My English teacher is called Ms. Sylvia. My classmates were an Italian, a Japanese, a Mexican, a Russian, a Arabian, a Swedish, a Swiss, two Turkish and two Chinese (besides me). I clearly thought that the classes in England were better than in China, because we had classes in an really relaxing way. Ms. Sylvia was a high academic standard teacher. She leaded us play games all the time, and then my English improved a lot. In China, the class was very boring because the only thing we did was to solve difficult math problem, recite 100 English words within one day, and after these there was big exam waiting us.

We had a studying hall every Monday to Thursday, from 7.pm to 8.pm. We had to write our homework. It's not very hard. It usually took me just half an hour to finish mine, but I had to stay in my room for another half an hour without watching on my phone or talking with my roommates, it was so boring.

6. The riverboat

In TASIS, the riverboat was the best activity.  It was special for me because it set on the last day night. We had to say goodbye with each other. All students and teachers get on a boat, and we went sightseeing on Thames river.

We could not only see the beauty of London, but also had a DISCO party. Our school had hold a welcome DISCO party before, but neither me nor other Chinese joined it, This time I danced from the beginning to the end, after that I felt very exhausted. I had changed. I used to hate dance very much because I thought dance was for girls, and now I totally changed my opinion.

Although the riverboat was the only time we spent together，maybe somebody among us would never see each other again anymore, but no one was grieved. In contrast, all of us had a really good time, we hugged withour friends, teachers, and even strangers. We cheered, we screamed. It was unreasonable to say we were going to say goodbye. All my friends get the contact information each other except me. If we were true friends and treasured each other deeply in our heart, why we need to get the contact information?

7. The end

I still remember August the 6th , the date we left TASIS. I left at 5 pm. Most of my friends had left, I took their farewell with all of them.

After I got on my plane, I calmed down myself and started to recall my experience. I had not mentioned a lot of issue happened in London, and also my friends. I remember the kindness of Mr. Charles, the enthusiasm of Mr. Seth, the peace of Federico, the passionate from Stefano, the justice from Erik, the mischief from Mark......

I appreciated TASIS so much. This amazing school taught me to widen my field of vision, point my life direction. I thought three weeks was a long period before I came TASIS and I never thought about leaving my friends. The three weeks passed though very quickly. It was sudden to me, when I was seating in front of the computer and writing this article.

I had come back for 3 weeks, I want to use a sentence from the film Lungful panda: 

“Yesterday is a history; tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.”

I'm back now, these happiness won't disturb my study in the future. I'll use the knowledge I learned in London to become the best of myself. 

孩子游学归来，我去机场接他，并与他聊起此行的收获。孩子自己归纳了四点：第一是最直接地提高了英文水平；第二是身体素质的提高；第三是交往能力的提高；第四是独立思考和解决问题的能力的提高。听了孩子的总结，家长甚感欣慰，因为孩子不虚此行。

记得游学中途有一天，孩子打电话说随身带去的接电转换插头坏了，问我怎么办？我心里想这问题应该不难解决，无非就是再买或借，所以我没有直接给出答案，而是让孩子自己想想办法，并鼓励孩子说我相信他有这个能力解决。果然，第二天他再打电话的时候就说已经从其他的同学那里借到了。这是一件小事，但小中见大，反映出孩子遇到困难时并没有坐以待毙，而是去独立思考该怎么办了，而且找到了解决的办法，这就是说孩子得到了锻炼并且自身能力得到了提高。

但是这样的锻炼和提高放在家庭环境中却是比较难以实现的，为什么？因为中国当下的环境造成了孩子和父母的“包办捆绑”模式：孩子上学放学有家长接送，孩子去博物馆去爬山有父母陪伴，孩子的衣物用具都是家长早早准备好了……“包办捆绑”模式由家长主导安排，很少给孩子独立思考和行事的时间和空间，也很少暴露孩子的问题，自然孩子也习惯了被动，习惯了依靠。

出国游学的环境就完全不一样了。孩子独立出行，造成他自觉不自觉地必须独立思考并解决问题。这样一来，孩子的能力就自然而然的得到锻炼提高了，如果家长再注意适当的引导，孩子这种独立学习生活的能力就提高的更快。儿行千里母担忧，把十二、三岁的孩子一个人派到国外，做父母的肯定放心不下，但好男儿志在四方，温室里是长不出能适应各种自然环境的生物的，必需勇敢“残酷”的迈出第一步，把孩子放到海中任由他去搏击遨游。

孩子说，入境安检的时候经历了小小的紧张遇到了小小的插曲，但最终迈过了那道关。孩子以后的学习和生活中这样的关口会很多，但必须经历这样的历练，迈过了一次，第二次就轻松自信许多了。孩子刚去的两天跟我们反馈说没敢跟外国同学说话，更多的时候是独自焦虑中。但第三天孩子就说已经勇敢地开口交流了，我想这就是经历了从风雨到彩虹的过程，走过以后再碰到这样的场景，孩子就知道该怎么办了，就多了从容、淡定和自信。所以，套用一句形象的比喻：是骡子是马，得拉出去溜了才知道。我想这就是海外游学带来的最直接地收获。

孩子从英国的电话中兴高采烈地说见到了大本钟、哈利波特，说篮球场上把同学“帽成了渣”……我想这就是收获，这就说明他已经融入了当地、融入了集体。回家后，我们看到孩子的行李物品收拾整齐没有遗失，这就是孩子自理能力的直接体现。给孩子带去的一次性生活用品，孩子说好多都能用，舍不得扔给带回来了，这反映出孩子具有节俭意识……好多孩子体现出来的能力和品德都令人惊喜，只是过往尚未体现或尚未被发现。孩子的潜力是无限的，需要合理合时去开发挖掘。

孩子游学平安归来，带回了好身体、好成果、好心情，高兴地跟我们说这样的体验很好，很锻炼人，希望以后还能得到这样的锻炼机会。我说：孩子，只要你有雄心有壮志，天高地广任你飞！