School: Capital City Public Charter School

Grade: 11

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Interest/Activities:

I love spending time with my friends whenever I can. I sometimes stay after school to play basketball, volleyball, chess or just chill with my friends, besides going home. And on the weekend I would try to make plans to leave the house as much as possible, since I find it boring staying inside when I could be outside enjoying the weather and hanging with people that I like. I like learning how to dance, even though I’m not very good at it, and drawing whenever I’m bored. I always like trying new things and trying to get outside my comfort zone, since I am always trying to gain new experience and just have fun.

Personal Statement:

When I was a kid I felt really underrepresented as an Asian American in society. There was a lack of representation of Asian people in social media or movies, and I was always surrounded by Hispanic, white people and black people but never really any other Asians. Then when I entered middle school, I started getting into anime and from there I started falling in love with the Japanese culture and everything about it, like the food, school and people. But it wasn’t until this past summer that I started to really fall in love with just the Asian culture overall and its people. This summer I went to Asia and traveled around Vietnam and Thailand, and during my stay there, I realized just how captivating the culture really was and how it was different from the American culture. Then when I went to Thailand for the first time, I was able to try a lot of new things like the food, Thai massage, shows, etc. Being exposed to the Thai culture and Vietnamese culture really added to my interest on the different countries and languages that exist around the world.

When I got back to DC, I had decided that I wanted to learn as many languages as possible, because in the future I wanted to travel around the world and if I were to do so, I would need to learn more languages. So when my friend told me there was a Japanese program in DC that would help me learn Japanese and expose me to more of its culture, I jumped to the chance of applying and hopefully expand my knowledge to the Japanese culture in order to one day travel to Japan and interact with the people and culture.