Cici Liang is a sophomore exchange student from the Guangdong province of China, and agreed to the exchange student program to better her understanding of the English language as well as learn about American culture. She figures that there is no better environment to do so than America itself, and no better people to converse with than the Americans themselves.

Liang  enjoys the pleasant views in Westford that are a peaceful contrast to her province back in China. She describes it as having “…rural areas, with also big shopping malls … not really any elements like Westford.”

She says that she appreciates that the houses here have lots of surrounding grass, trees all around town, and a few animals here and there. But what really catches her eye is the sky.

“I really like the clouds and the blue sky. I don’t really see that in my home because there is a lot of pollution,” Liang said.

Fascinated by her first experience with snow, Liang mentioned that her city doesn’t see much, if any, snow or ice during the winter months.

“We got a little bit of ice last year and we were so excited because we have never seen that before in our city for so many years,” Liang said.

She was excited when she saw snow for the first time and described it as beautiful, especially along with the evening sky.

Regarding education in China, Liang said that she didn’t learn much about American culture in school and so she had to research some facts prior to her visit. In her school in China, they have two major topics : the arts and the sciences. The arts encompasses subjects such as social studies, history, and English; while science covers the sciences and math. Science is interesting in China because, as Liang describes, they study three topic per year, for three years.

“We learn biology, physics, and chemistry each year, and high school for us is three years,” Liang said.

Liang said that here in America there are “extra activities” to better our comprehension and understanding that isn’t available in China.

“Here I think the education is more creative, as we didn’t have any assignments involving narratives or comprehensive writing. […] In China, we just learned the theories that our teachers tell us to do,” she said.

Liang mentioned that one of the major differences is that fact that students, instead of the teachers, move from class to class here. She also finds that Americans in general are much more friendly to each other. Even when walking down the hallway students say hello to each other.

Liang’s exploration of American culture wouldn’t be fulfilled without trying the local cuisine. When asked about any interests in food Laing had an interesting answer.

“Food back home, already has lots of the American foods,” Liang says

So she doesn’t have any interest in fast foods. Even so, Liang says that since the culture in the US is largely diverse, she has been trying out different cultures of foods whenever she can. Staying ever so positive, Liang says “I haven’t found any dislikes [in food] yet.”