My First Day at CTY CTY 夏校第一天

Today we woke up and I ate breakfast, because it was my very first day at CTY! It’s a special summer program that you actually have to take a test to get into, so I was excited to finally be there. We checked in, but we arrived a whole 30 minutes early, which made me a little grumpy — mostly because there wasn’t time for me to have cereal. Instead, I had something plain and unseasoned, since we didn’t have time to fix anything better. Cereal definitely would have tasted way better than plain food! But I’m not blaming my mom — she was doing her best with the time we had.

When we got there, I met my first PT, which is basically someone who volunteers to help out the students. His name started with a “K,” but I honestly can’t remember the rest! My class is called Scope, which is all about science and microscopes. First, we took some notes explaining what “Scope” is all about. Then we played a game with a mystery picture — we had to guess what it actually was. It looked a lot like marshmallows mixed with rocks, and I thought it might be rough sandpaper or something like that. But here’s the exciting part: we still don’t know what it is! We’ll finally find out tomorrow, because first thing in the morning, we’re going to do real microscopy. I can’t wait.

One of the coolest things is that every class has its own code name. Since letters like C, D, E, and P all sound the same from far away, we use the military alphabet instead — so D is “Delta,” A is “Alpha,” and so on. Our class, Scope, is Sierra, which is totally fine by me. Poor Physics got stuck with “Papa,” which I think is the worst one! My personal code is S3 (Sierra-3). The codes go Sierra-3, then Sierra-5, 6, 7, and up — but there’s no Sierra-4, because that student hadn’t arrived yet today.

The schedule is amazing too. We get activities and recess breaks every hour, which adds up to five breaks in total — so awesome! Even though the day was a little longer than my regular school, only by about an hour, it was honestly a thousand times more fun. For lunch, we even had chips and tacos, and they came with a “spicy” sauce that turned out to not be spicy at all. They were so good that I actually got two! I can’t wait for tomorrow, because we’re getting burgers and fries. Just in case, though, I still keep some noodles in my bag — you know, in case I ever don’t like the lunch.

All in all, today was such a fun day. My only wish is that I could’ve had cereal for breakfast instead of the plain stuff — but I’m okay with it. I’d better get a good night’s sleep tonight, because I’ve got microscopy to look forward to in the morning!