Flying High, Gateway Orientation, and Names to Faces • 飛得很高，參加說明會，同學長什麼樣子

Hello, my name is Halden Levin, and you are listening to Little Dragon’s Journey. 你好！我叫李靜辰，你正在聽小龍的旅程。

Transition Music（音樂）

This is a blog post I shared in 2018:

Flying High, Gateway Orientation, and Names to Faces

“Flying High

Today's the day. I'm currently flying from North Carolina (RDU) to New York (LGA) to my Gateway Orientation at Long Island University. I woke up at 5:00 am, went for a quick jaunt around the neighborhood, packed a few more things, and headed outside for a quick photo shoot. The airport wasn't too busy on a Wednesday morning, so I made it through security and checked my bag pretty quickly. Currently, I'm in shock because I just realized that I'm going across the globe to China for over a month, and now I'm in New York. It's all very real. I'm not sure what to expect today or tomorrow or the next, but I'm up for a few surprises.

Gateway Orientation

Upon arriving at LGA, I met people going to China and some going to India and even someone going to Finland. The students I met are from all across America! There are students from DC, Washington, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Vermont, New Jersey, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, Virginia, and the list goes on and on. I hadn't realized until after the plane ride, but there was a girl from North Carolina on the same plane as me named Isabel who also received a NSLI-Y scholarship and is going to India. She is also going to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which is the school I'm attending next year. It's truly a small world after all.

So far, I've learned that this Gateway Orientation is for NSLI-Y scholars going to Bahasa Indonesia, China, and India, as well as other AFS students going to countries outside the NSLI-Y program. Today, we have a session about introductions and orientation rules, a session welcoming us to NSLI-Y with AFS, and a session on our life as Americans and intercultural learning. Tomorrow we have even more orientating with sessions about language learning, goal setting, the US Department of State, safety and support while abroad, sharing our experience, cultural immersion, travel safety, cultural resources, and a celebratory toast and group photos to top it all off. On June 29th, we wake up at 5:15 am and head to EWR in New Jersey for our flight to Beijing, China. Phew... that's a lot.

After talking to some of the other NSLI-Y scholars, I realized something that wasn't fully apparent before. There are people all across America who are passionate about language and love to learn and can speak eloquently about themselves. We all work hard and seek opportunities, but we still put one leg in front of the other as everyone else does. We still have to go through security at the airport as vexing as it is. We are unique, but everyone is unique. It is a matter of actions instead of just words. Being passionate and intelligent, but at the same time, being willing to work hard and make it through conflict. Nothing is perfect, we are not perfect, but we all desire, and hopefully try, to be the best versions of ourselves.

Names to Faces

Before the NSLI-Y program, the group of NSLI-Y scholars going to Chengdu, China set up a group chat. Today, I played the ultimate matching game in matching names to faces. One of the first people I met going to Chengdu was Elijah from Missouri, and then I met Trey from California, Meredith from Virginia, and Marria and Micah from Indiana. My dorm mate at the Gateway Orientation is Nurie from Georgia. She's incredibly animated and friendly and fluently speaks Korean and did a research project on Disney Princesses and feminism.

I also met Leia who went to Chengdu last summer. She is my small group leader for the orientation, and she's been giving some pretty great advice about handling spicy food, running, and learning Mandarin Chinese and Sichuan dialect. Another NSLI-Y scholar I met is Daniel who goes to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. It's a small world again. I even got to meet some of the people going to Indonesia, including a girl who lives in Calgary, Canada. All in all, I met many interesting people from pretty diverse backgrounds.”

Alright, so that’s the end of this blog post, which I wrote in 2018. We’re kind of coming to the close of the current NSLI-Y program I’m a part of. It’s a pretty crazy feeling; we only have about one more month left in Taiwan before we head back to America and start preparing for college and life, life after this wonderful gap year. It’s really interesting reading this blog post I wrote and feeling the excitement I felt going to China three years ago in the summer of 2018. The whole sending off experience I had in 2018 was totally different from the experience I had this year, due to the pandemic, of course. In this blog post, I mention going to the Gateway Orientation in New York, which is what normally happens, but this year, due to the pandemic, we did an online/Zoom orientation. It was quite a bit different; it wasn’t nearly as long as the Gateway Orientation that I experienced in 2018, but it was harder to I guess to connect… we didn’t have the opportunity to connect with other NSLI-Y students which we would normally be able to do in non-COVID times.

I’m still incredibly disappointed that the only groups able to travel were the two NSLI-Y cohorts in Taiwan, but I completely understand why the students learning Korean and Russian and Arabic… there might be others, I know Turkish is an academic year program. I know they weren’t able to travel due to safety concerns, but I hope that in the future they will find other opportunities to use the language skills they’ve gained this year because studying abroad is an incredibly invaluable experience that I hope every student and every person has the opportunity to do and experience.

Another thing I really want to mention reading this blog post is I think the demographics of the NSLI-Y program is quite interesting. I honestly don’t know a lot about the demographics. I’ve looked before to find the data, but there’s not really a whole lot of data on NSLI-Y alumni and current NSLI-Y students. I remember reading once in the past, maybe I’m remembering wrong, I remember reading that the average NSLI-Y applicant is a middle class white female, and it is true that more females apply for NSLI-Y than males, which is interesting. It could have to do with level of maturity, as females do tend to mature a bit faster than males. Honestly, I’m not positive. When it comes to the middle class, white part of the equation, I think that has to do with outreach.

When I first applied to NSLI-Y, I went to a rather large school in a small city in North Carolina, and I learned about NSLI-Y, not through my school, but actually through my sister’s school, which was the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) at the times (I also attended NCSSM). NCSSM is a public boarding school in North Carolina that focuses on teaching STEM and preparing students to go into the STEM fields. Since NCSSM is a very well-resourced school and is a school you can only attend by application, a lot of students from NCSSM take part in the NSLI-Y program. NCSSM also does a great job sharing about different opportunities students can take advantage of, so I think it’s really important that students who come from schools with less resources and who come from backgrounds that are historically unrepresented are informed about NSLI-Y and know that this is a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of.

And I know some students don’t apply for NSLI-Y because their parents are not comfortable with them studying abroad. In that case, you could talk to NSLI-Y alumni and/or have NSLI-Y alumni talk to your parents because there are a lot of NSLI-Y alumni who, as a result of their experiences living abroad, have gone on to continue to work for the government and continue to study languages and currently have really wonderful and stable careers.

The one thing I want to say is that I think it’s really important that students with disabilities, persons of color, students who come from historically unrepresented backgrounds are informed about NSLI-Y and about how they can engage in this opportunity because it’s truly invaluable.

Today, I just decided to talk off the cuff a little, so that’s why I’m not speaking quite as clearly, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at. I think that’s all for now. 謝謝你們，拜拜！

Transition Music（音樂）

Please visit haldenlevin.wixsite.com/littledragonjourney to access the transcript of this episode, and know you are always welcome to contact me through my website, email, or social media. Thank you for joining Little Dragon’s Journey. 謝謝你們參加小龍的旅程。拜拜！