The Life in the United States – It’s Worth It!

Have you ever thought about being an exchange student? Trips, new people, emotions and impressions! These all are so exciting, right? Be an exchange student now – change the world tomorrow! But if you go to the United States of America, you should know how to be in unity with other people as well if you want to succeed!

- "GET DOWN, GET DOWN!”

- "HOLD ON!”

- "GET DOWN!”

These words are probably stuck in my head forever. They seemed to be the most often used  words during the whole activity. This was completely amazing! Falling into the water, jumping over the water, and rowing-rowing-rowing, rowing like crazy. Of course we couldn’t move even a couple of feet without working altogether. We had some rough situations, but working together we made it! That’s how we learned this very important lesson: united we play, united we win. That was the purpose of the whole activity and this is the purpose of the exchange program between different countries. To make us band together. I hope that this lesson will be always in our memories.

Homecoming Week

Homecoming week is a wonderful tradition of American high schools. This is probably one of the most exciting events during the school year. People dress up as different characters, trying to be "as wacky as possible”. You can see Spider-Man walking in the hall, Alice from the Wonderland sitting in your classroom or even meet your teacher in mismatched clothes. Almost everything is possible! One thing you should know is just this rule: "Do not mind how you look like, just make everybody laugh!”

So I decided to dress up for  the Character Day. As you have already guessed, this is the day when you have to represent a character, and it doesn’t matter, which one you want to be. I had a really rough time thinking who I wanted to be. But I got great advice from my friend, who said: "This is the easiest thing ever.
You are Russian, so just be Russian!” I dressed up as a Russian soldier! I wore this big fur Soviet soldier’s hat with a star, which I guess is the most famous Russian souvenir, and I had a long-sleeved shirt called telnyashka on, which is the uniform shirt of the Soviet Union Navy. This was a great choice, because many people during this day were asking me: "Are you really a Russian?”, and when I told them: "Yes, I am” they wanted to know something about my country so I got to know many new people and made many new great friends. I had great impressions and a lot of amazing experiences that day. I guess, it could be so much fun to try to make something like this in my home school, too!...

Walker Valley High School Drama Club Presents:

Bram Stocker’s "Dracula”!

"All the world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players”... This is a quote from Shakespeare. It is very true-to-life, right? However, according to this quote there are some people who are placed on two stages at the same time. Of course, I’m talking about the noble art of Drama!...

Each year the Walker Valley Drama Club stages a play. For some reason, it used to be only comedies, until this year we decided to stage a classical, the most famous vampire story ever...the story about Count Dracula!

To be honest with my readers, I didn’t even think about being the character of any play in the Drama Club. You know, the main problem of an exchange student is an accent and the Russian accent is especially strong. But when I heard that the Drama club is going to stage Bram Stocker’s "Dracula”, I thought: "This is my chance!” Dracula was originally from Romania and the Russian accent is very, very similar to Romanian. Moreover, Béla Lugosi, the famous actor from the original movie "Dracula” who was considered to be the best performer of the Dracula character and who was the creator of this character on screen, was originally from Hungary (which is very close to Romania) and had this kind of accent too! So this was perfect for me.

Of course, even if your accent is necessary, the audience should be able to understand you. So I also practiced the right pronunciation of English words . Most of my friends were in the play too. We had a lot to do: create decorations, print posters and practise our acting.

But we worked very hard for almost two and on half months. And finally the day of the performance came!

Everyone was a little bit scared. We had never had a play of such level before and we wanted the audience to see that Drama Club can do serious plays, not only comedies. So everyone was going to do their best. And we succeeded!