Published on 03 July 2010
The 10-month odyssey of Jinxi Han, a young female exchange student from Shandong Province, China, just ended as she returns home to be reunited with her family. It will resume when she returns again later this summer to begin her college phase. By Greg Hugh, Staff Writer
The 10-month odyssey of Jinxi Han, a young female exchange student from Shandong Province, China, just ended as she returns home to be reunited with her family. It will resume when she returns again later this summer to begin her college phase.
Map of Shandong Province
Jinxi was born and raised in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province which is situated in the eastern part of China on the lower reaches of the Yellow River where it overlooks the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago across a vast stretch of sea. As an only child, Jinxi considers herself as coming from a middle class family where her mom worked for a British company and her dad for a Chinese steel company. She attended a boarding school and shared a dormitory with seven other girls and had a large extended family with many cousins.
Jinxi’s journey began over a year ago as she responded to a poster circulated by The Laurasian Institution, a U.S.-based, non-profit, organization announcing a cross-cultural education opportunity to attend high school in the United States. As a youngster, Jinxi hoped to attend college in the United States after she graduated from her Chinese high school so she chose not to waste any more time with continuing with her education in China and decided to apply for this opportunity to study aboard in the United States for one academic year.
The Laurasian Institution accepted her application and she passed the necessary test, but before she could be enrolled into the program, her family needed to accept the formal terms of a contract that included the fact that she would not be able to return home for the entire school year nor could the parents visit her in the United States. There were also other stipulations about host family arrangements, required orientation, code of conduct and other pertinent matters. Once this was all agreed to, she was told that she would be attending a high school in Minnesota and who her host family would be so that they could begin correspondence with each other.
The first stop for Jinxi in the United States was Seattle, Washington where she spent 12 days at the University of Puget Sound where she received an orientation on the American way of life which she says was staffed by some amazing students and a great bunch of volunteers who taught her some real basics that included football with which she was not familiar.
Jinxi then prepared to continue on to her final destination which was Minnesota where she would be attending Patrick Henry, a public high school situated in south Minneapolis, where the host family mother, Donna Kelly, ironically, was a teacher of Mandarin Chinese.
Jinxi, second from right, and Kelly family
It didn’t take long for Jinxi to adjust to her host family and neighborhood. She was graciously welcomed into the Kelly household and she considers the parents as her American Mom and Dad and both of the daughters as her own sisters.
Because of her interest and skills in tennis, she immediately made friends via the tennis courts which also helped her when she began school at Patrick Henry High School where she made it on to the tennis team. While Jinxi thought she might be one of the few Asians to be attending a Minneapolis inner-city, she was quite surprised at the number of Hmong students that were students but nevertheless made the transition regardless of the ethnic makeup of the student body. She commented that perhaps she could have prepared better if she knew this beforehand and not assume that the student body would be a typical high school composed of a typical student body
Whatever other apprehensions she may have had adjusting to life in the United States, they must not have bothered her very much since being the only international student at the school, completing her senior year, Jinxi was able to letter in tennis, make the National Honor Society and was elected Queen of the Senior Prom.
When asked what she thought of her cross-cultural education program, Jinxi stated that it was awesome and she would strongly encourage all students to experience it.
Jinxi at her hight school prom
While Jinxi’s primary purpose for attending high school in the United States was to obtain as much cross-cultural experience as possible, she had little contact with the Chinese community but did occasionally meet with a fellow exchange student who was attending Eagan High School. Jinxi did have the opportunity to participate in a few Chinese cultural events at Patrick Henry where she met Zhao Ben, a Chinese guest musician at the school who taught Chinese music to students of Ms. Kelly. These students and Jinxi were able to spend two days with Zhao Ben at the Concordia Villages Weekend program, where the staff was primarily Chinese people and everything they did was about Chinese culture and language.
On another occasion, Huang Ningsheng, a martial arts artist visited the school and worked with the students, He was also teaching at the camp on the weekend program.
Jinxi also attended China Day at the University of Minnesota, where she was able to see many high school students from a number of other schools from throughout the Twin Cities area do Chinese performances thus providing her with a view of a broader representation of students that were interested in Chinese language and culture.
She did manage to see Minnesota’s Chinese community in action when she attended A Passage to China that was recently held at Mall of America which was organized by the Chinese Heritage Foundation and China Insight. She was able to represent Patrick Henry High School and The Laurasian Institution since they were both participants in the event that celebrated Chinese culture and history through many interactive activities.
Continuing with her dream to get her college education in the United States she applied to seven U.S. colleges, of which only two were outside of Minnesota. She was accepted by five of the seven colleges and has decided to enter the College of St. Benedict located in Collegeville, Minn. when she returns to Minnesota later this summer from her family reunion in China.
Photo credits: Donna Kelly
Category: High School
