When David Kay of West Windsor returns to the Peddie School in the fall for his senior year, he will have plenty of stories to share with classmates. ##M:[more]## Kay recently returned from 10 months of study in Beijing, China. “We visited Tibetan monasteries, hiked from village to village in Yunnand and rafted down the Mekong River,” says David. “I saw more of China than most Chinese see.”
SYA (School Year Abroad), which ran from August to June, is just one of the junior year abroad programs for high school students with options of France, Spain, China, or Italy. The goal as written on Peddie’s website is to “develop near-native fluency in the target language while increasing their cultural awareness.”
David’s schooling began at Dutch Neck Elementary School, but he left after first grade and opted for home schooling. After a year of home schooling, he attended Princeton Friends School and continued there until eighth grade graduation.
When Chinese language was offered to David in fifth grade, he figured “Why Not?” and began the studies thinking it would only be for a few years. “The class was in traditional character set and, in my opinion, overemphasized handwriting,” he says. He applied to Peddie School because of their German program but learned during the interview process that the program was cancelled. “I resorted to Chinese for two more years,” he said.
He began studying with Mr. Yuan Gao at Peddie and was one of 10 students who traveled to China with him in the summer of 2004. Gao inspired David to study in China to achieve fluency in Mandarin.
His first trip to China was several years ago with his family. “My dad was on a business trip and dragged us along to visit Shanghai and Beijing,” he says.
His father Ken is Korean. He is chair of Jumpstart New Jersey Angel Network since his sale of Ebudgets, his successful software company, to Microsoft. His mother Kerry is from Australia. She volunteers at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital and is interested in alternative healing and martial arts.
His parents met in Chicago when they were both working for software firms and relocated to the West Windsor area when Ken began working at Bristol Myers Squibb. Their other children include Michael, who recently completed eighth grade at Grover Middle School, and his sister, Jackie, a rising eighth grade student at Princeton Friends School.
David was one of 47 other students from the United States in the China program. Some stayed for only half a year. All students lived with Chinese host families and some were lucky enough to have a host child who acted as a translator. His “host brother” was a college junior who had studied in England when he was a high school senior but did not speak or understand much English.
“In order to survive in Beijing I had to learn Mandarin fast,” David says. “My first few weeks were rough and I was frustrated and tired from not being able to communicate.”
He studied English, mathematics, Chinese history, and Chinese culture in English. “Chinese courses were in Chinese,” he says. “They included writing and speaking and we were tutored one-on-one.”
During the winter, David’s mother and sister visited Beijing and were there in time for Chinese New Year’s celebrations. They stayed in a hotel not far from David’s host family. As a result of the trip and not being able to talk to the host family, his mother recently began studying Chinese with a private tutor.
David’s plans include the continuation of Chinese studies and is looking at colleges with Chinese studies. He plans to return to China during his college years and has already found a volunteer job as a translator at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. “I would recommend the program for anyone interested in an adventure,” David says.
For information about the program, visit www.sya.org.
