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By Miguel Gracia
Grade 4
My school is called Instilling Goodness Elementary School. It was founded by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. If he did not buy the old Hospital, what kind of place would it be? City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB) is very beautiful. It has good weather, and fresh air. It has peacocks, rabbits, deer, and many different kinds of other animals. Nobody is allowed to hunt in CTTB, so the animals can wander freely among the trees and grass.
I like my school, for it is different from other schools. Our school is a Buddhist school. Every week we have three virtue studies classes. We memorize "Standards for Students", do meditation, and study the Buddha's life. "Standards for Students" tells us how to be truly humane, it comes from the words of Confucius. I also learn Chinese everyday. In Chinese class, I learn how to talk, listen, read, and write Chinese. To learn Chinese is very important, if you can speak Chinese, then you can speak to many people in the world. In about every five people one is Chinese. That is why Chinese is so important. Chinese is my mom's first language. When I was three, I only knew Chinese. But now I know more English than Chinese.
My school has very few students; K-12 grade only has around 80 students. These 80 kids are all boys because this is a boys' school. I think that the students in my school are kinder than the students in other schools. I think that because I once went to a public school called Yokayo; there, people would laugh at me and say bad words. Here students don't that.
This year, there was a big earthquake in Port Au Prince, Haiti. My class-4-6 grade, started to collect money so that we could give it to the United Nations or the Red Cross. We made lanterns and sold them. We used the money we got from selling the lanterns, and put it with the money people donated. There was a big lantern that Ms. Zephyr and Mr. Kellerman both paid $250 for, it was a total of $500. At the end, we had collected about $2600. Ukiah's Red Cross came and took the money away to give to Haiti. He also let us go on TV. I think that this year I did something good.
CTTB has good air, green grass, good food, and good books. I was only three when I came to CTTB, I have already been here for about six years. I like CTTB, and hope that I can always frequently visit it.
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