School: Jackson-Reed High School

Grade: 10^th

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

Japanese Zodiac Sign: Boar (2007)

Interests/Hobbies: I like hanging out with my friends where we play card games and watch TV. I play soccer recreationally and am not very good at it but I have fun. I also watch soccer and other sports like F1. I play video games in my free time. Some of my favorites are Overwatch, Apex Legends, Splatoon and Pokemon. I always loved traveling to lots of places in the world especially with my family. Learning about other cultures has always excited me because knowing how other people live their lives can help improve mine. Some countries I’ve been to are Spain, Canada, France, Portugal, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Japan.

An issue that matters to me: An issue that matters a lot to me is immigration. It affects me on a personal level because my dad is an immigrant from Spain and my grandparents on my mother’s side are both immigrants from Puerto Rico and Cuba. I also grew up going to an elementary school in Columbia Heights where a lot of my friends were either immigrants or came from immigrant families. My mom also taught ESL to adults who were mostly undocumented immigrants. I think everybody deserves a fair chance at a change in life and an opportunity to grow.

Favorite Food: My favorite all time food is steak but I really like all kinds of food. While I am allergic to shrimp, crab, and lobster, I can eat most other seafood which I love. Some of my other favorites are octopus from when I visit Spain in the summers to visit family, and mussels.

Aspirations: I want to go to college in computer science and hopefully work at a technology company like Google or Apple. I recently built a whole computer by myself. I’m already taking computer science classes in high school right now. I have also always thrived in math, taking PreCalculus in my sophomore year. I hope to be able to also study that to a certain degree in college.

Why I’m doing Japanese Plus: I am motivated to do this program because I have had experience with Japan in the past and I want to get back into it. In the summer of 2018, when I was 11, I visited Japan. I was there for 3 weeks and we went to tons of cities across the country. Some places I went were Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Tokoyama, and Nagoya. I also visited the house of a family with a kid my age who lived in Japan who was friends with my mom. Later on in 2019, that same family came to visit the US for 2 years and we got to show them around DC. I had a Japanese tutor for months before the pandemic and I was making good progress but eventually the tutor moved away and couldn’t teach me anymore. Then the pandemic happened and I couldn’t get back into doing Japanese. But I hope through this program I can continue to learn.