Diandian, St. Brigid's House
Vth Form Boarder from Yantai, China

Classes:  American Literature, Faith & Church, US History(AP), Chemistry(AP), Precalculus Honors, Latin 3 Honors

Extra-Curricular Activities:  Red Key, The Beacon, Abbey Singers, Community Service, Basketball, Golf, St. Brigid's Representative, Model UN

Three adjectives to describe you:  Friendly, Interesting, Confident

Favorite Movie/TV Show:  Pirates of the Caribbean

Favorite Abbey Tradition:  Assemblies on every Monday and Friday in the auditorium where everyone meets together to talk about sports scores, birthdays and upcoming events

Favorite Memory at Portsmouth Abbey:  Broom Ball!!

Favorite Part of Going to a Boarding School:  The Abbey is like a big family, everyone knows each other so well.

Favorite Class and Why:  History, it's very interesting, and it makes you see things from a different point of view by learning more about the past.  Mr. Gittus' class is great!

Favorite Teacher and Why:  Mr. O'Connor - his Humanities class was one of the best class I have ever had. He brought me to a different world of English literature. I can now see things that I could never see before in the simplest word.

Favorite Dorm Memory:  St. Brigid's Apple picking in the fall!!!

Favorite Dining Hall Meal:  Buffalo Chicken Pizza, popcorn chicken and carrot cake

If you had to give advice to a new student, what would it be, and why:  Everyone on campus is willing to help you, just ask! Don't be shy.

Why I chose PAS:  It's just a great place to be: beautiful campus, great teachers, delicious food and a very friendly community.

PAS is:  Amazing.

Favorite thing about living on Aquidneck Island:  It's a beautiful small island with everything you want -- great restaurants and nice stores.

Most important thing you've learned at PAS:  A good start is always important.

February 21, 2012

It has been a very warm winter for Rhode Island with only one day of snow! Everything went very well here at the Abbey and a lot of fun things took place. I went to the MIT Model United Nations with twelve other students from the Abbey. We were representing Bangladesh and Zimbabwe at the conference. It was a great experience: I learned a lot from the conference (especially about how the UN actually works) and met a lot of friends from around the world! There was also the International Food Night that took place last Thursday. It is a tradition that international students from different countries cook their hometown food at the dinner. I was glad to be able to cook some authentic Chinese food for the entire school and I got to eat a lot of delicious food from other countries. The school's winter musical, Oklahoma!, last Friday was another highlight of the winter term. It is always nice to see your friends perform on stage; they really did a good job and the show was very funny. Time flies when you are having fun - it is almost the end of winter term with exams coming up next week. I can't wait for spring to come!

December 22, 2011

The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas break is one of the most exciting time  at the Abbey. A lot of things took place over these three weeks. We had our Christmas semi formal dance and it was very fun. Everyone dressed up very nicely and there were great food and awesome music at the dance. We also had our annual Clothe-a-Child competition between dorms. This competition is between dorms to raise money to support local families with warm winter jackets. Each dorm had different fund-raising plans - there were bake sales, raffle ticket sales, cotton candy sales and you could even pay a dollar to take a picture with Santa! My dorm (St. Brigid's) proudly won the competition with the most money collected. The Christmas concert on the last day of school was another thing about that Abbey that you should not miss. The Student Council had a little dance performance on stage with Christmas songs played in different languages (I was part of it!) and the school's performance groups including the Abbey singers, both a capella groups, Pro-Deo and drama work shop - everyone had great performances at the assembly!

October 16, 2011

I can't believe it's  the second month of fall term already. Everything is going well in the school and time seems to pass by so fast. I'm used to the way my teachers teach and really enjoy all my classes, even though the workload is tough. The weather has been really nice so far. The temperature was still around the 70s during the first weekend of October. I went down to the bay to take some photos and the water was actually not cold at all. There were also a lot of games going on, so I went down to the athletic fields and watched my friends' games. It just feels nice to walk around campus on a sunny Saturday afternoon.  I had a sleep-in on Sunday since we had our first Sunday night mass. It's one of the changes that has taken place this year and it was very nice to have a good rest after a week of hard work.

I stayed on-campus for the first long weekend and it was a lot of fun. I went to Custom House Coffee, which is about a 20 minute walk away from campus, with my friends last Saturday. We had fresh fruit smoothies and did some homework and it felt great just  to walk around when the weather was beautiful outside. We also had a fun Harry Potter Movie night in the common room of my dorm. We watched the first movie of the series and Mrs. Bonin, our houseparent, made all kinds of delicious baked treats for us. The long weekend was a good break during the busy school season. I caught up with my work and had a lot of rest.

Advisory grades came out last Tuesday. They are the grades your teachers give you after 1/2 of the term so you can have a better idea of how you are doing so far. I always found them really helpful. We began to read Hamlet by Shakespeare for American Literature class and I love the story. I hope you have a good weekend and I look forward to seeing you during our admission Open Houses!

September 30, 2011

The first few weeks of school were very busy but I really enjoyed them! It was so nice to meet with my friends after three months of vacation and it's always exciting to start a new academic year. The weather has been very nice and warm so far. As a Vth Former, I now live in one of the newest building on campus--St. Brigid's House. It's a gorgeous dorm, and I even have a sea view from my window. We went on an apple-picking dorm trip last Friday to a local farm about 15 minutes away. It was a lot of fun. Each of us got a bag to fill up and there were all kinds of apple trees in the farm. The apples are very delicious! Nothing is better than having absolutely fresh apples in the fall. Although the courses are a lot more challenging compared with my classes IVth Form year, I love all of them and am looking forward to a very productive year. Besides academic work, there were also a lot of fun things going on. We had our annual activities fair, where we sign up for all kinds of clubs. I joined the Beacon(the school newspaper), the Abbey Singers, the Model UN Club and a new club this year--the photo club. We also had our first tuck dance("Tuck" is the name of our students' center)-- The Raven Rave. The music was awesome and everyone enjoyed it. Looking forward to a beautiful October!.