China Day 7

Hayley Bell
Jun 22, 2018
3 min read

I’ve officially survived my first week in China, and according to Amanda’s boyfriend, our program is 12.5% over. So far, so good. I’m not homesick, and I’m really enjoying my classes this time around. While I’m generally more stressed, I’m definitely having a lot more fun since I can understand people. Maybe it’s maturity, or maybe it’s the accent, but I can tell this trip is going to be better than my first time around.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved Nanjing, my host family, and the friends I was with. Both cities and the people I’ve met hold a special place in my heart.

The test wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I probably should have studied the characters a bit more, but I think I did well on the grammar (as well as I could hope at least), and I think I got all the true or false questions right. The article we had to read was about pandas, and thankfully I’m well versed in them in English.

The speaking had me nervous because I forgot to prepare for the oral, so I yoloed that one big time. At the end, my teacher told me my sentences were very good because they were long, complicated, and used the grammar patterns. She then told me that my tones were awful, and I should work on that. I’ll take what I can get, but I do agree; I need to work on pronunciation.

I got lunch with Amanda, Korey, and Katie on the second floor today. I had some really good white rice mixed with French fries and chicken. Someone ended up mentioning that the chicken looked like chick-fil-a nuggets, and we bonded over our favorite chicken.

After lunch, I finally bought myself a laundry card and then headed off to the building where we have classes. I studied the new characters and then went to majiang class. It’s very similar to rumicube/poker. Naturally, I won the first game. (That’s a joke. I just got good tiles.)

Finally, after a long, day I got to relax for a bit. I finished studying the new characters, wrote my essay, and then made plans to see Incredibles 2. Korey and I hung for a while before meeting everyone at the 餐厅.

The movie was good, but I didn’t understand it nearly as well as I did Despicable Me 3. Lauren translated the villain’s motives for me, so now I know what’s good.

We went exploring after the movie was over and took some pictures of the city. The area we were in had a lot of statues to commemorate one of the emperors from the Tang Dynasty. Xi’an is famous for having a lot of emperors being born there.

When we got back to the dorms, a congregation of people formed in my room, and then we moved to Olivia’s room. We chatted for a bit until more of the roommates came back from class. They had cake and drinks to celebrate Logan’s birthday, so we all went to his room. They had some really good tomato chips, but the best part was the cake. It was really nice and light.

As I was writing this, I was talking to my roommate and we had a brief conversation about majiang, and she told me my Chinese speaking has really improved. It really warms my heart to hear her say that because this time it was completely unprompted from me. She just said it after we spoke. It’s really good to know that I’m improving, and I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in seven more weeks.