User:Dumbomd/Xiaochen Liu

Xiaochen(Denise) Liu (刘晓晨, January 16, 1990 - Present) is known to most as Denise Liu. Denise is currently a bioengineering student at the University of Toledo. After her May 2012 graduation, she will be attending medical school.

China
Xiaochen Liu was born on the morning of January 16, 1990 in Zhengzhou, Henan China to Jiayong Liu and Qin Wang. Jiayong Liu was an orthopedic spine surgery resident and her mother, Qin Wang, was an English Professor at the University of Zhengzhou. The name Xiaochen (晓晨)） means "morning" in Chinese and was the result of her mother's dream a few days after her birth.

When Denise was about three, her family moved to Zhuhai, Guangzhou which was a budding economic city on the southern part of China. Jiayong found a job as an orthopedic attending doctor at the Zhuhai Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital. The hospital merged with Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2002 and is now know as the Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine Zhuhai Branch.

After moving to Zhuhai, Qin found a job working as the International Business manager at Quanli Corporation. She traveled to Europe in 1996 for a year and recieved a masters degree from the Manchester School of Business. Thinking of Denise's educational future, Qin became an English teacher at the former Zhuhai No. 1 Middle School.

From first to fifth grade, Denise attended Jinyuan Elementary School which was ten minutes from her father's hospital. In 2002, Jiayong became the Vice President of the Hospital and Denise transferred to Zhuhai No. 1 Elementary School to finish her sixth grade. For a year, Denise woke up with her mother at six and had to read English passages until her classes started (the middle school was very close to the elementary school). It felt like torture at the time but it would play a big role in her future.

In 2003, Denise graduated from elementary school and her family moved to the United States.

America
The Liu family first settled in Syracuse, NY where Denise attended seventh grade at Jamesville-Dewitt Middle School. Jiayong was an International Clincal Scholar and continued to refine his surgical skills under the supervision of Dr. Hansen Yuan at SUNY Upstate Medical Center. Taking advantage of the public libraries, Denise spent what is to be her last free summer for the next 10 years watching movies and reading books. It was also during this summer that she played typing games on her Dad's laptop--a cop chasing a thief (she was the thief).

When Summer ended, Denise was to face her biggest obstacle in her life thus far: starting school in a brand new country and knowing little English. For the first month, Denise sat in classes every day listening to "Greek" and could only make simple conversations--How are you doing, the sweater is blue, and such. Her worst classes were not surprisingly: language arts and social studies. Qin had to sit with her every night translating the History of United States sentence by sentence. In addition to English, Denise had to catch up to a year of French since all her peers started learning their second language in sixth grade. Fortunately for her, not only did her French teacher offered to help her after school, she also had a family friend who lived in France for ten years and had offered to tutor her. After three months, Denise finally caught up with her peers in French. Meanwhile, her English improved to where she could understand 80% of classes (the power of immersion) and was able to interact more freely with her peers but her vocabulary was still lacking-she didn't even know what a "wallet" was.

Denise has always contributed her relatively fast acculturation to mornings she spent reading English passages.