Honestly, I’m writing this at 1:12 on Sunday because it’s been a crazy busy few days. Class wasn’t anything special, but I totally bombed my tingxie. I know I need to work on my listening skills because I know the characters really well when I see them written in pinyin, but when I hear them, I don’t immediately recognize what I’m listening to.
I, unfortunately, ended up missing almost every character, and my teacher said: “Luyun, you did so bad on this tingxie.” I know I could have prepped more, but I thought I knew them. I ended up doing corrections so I could get credit back, but now I know what I really need to work on.
Friday was long, because not only did I have my 一对一, but we also had to go to our review. I didn’t end up leaving the school until around 4:45. While it’s not too late, it late considering that we usually get out of class around 2:30.
I walked back to the dorms with Korey.
My original plan was to get dinner with my language partner, but she actually got out of class early, which meant we got to push out meeting time up to 5:30 instead of 7:00.
I’m so proud of myself because I managed to hold a conversation with her for an hour and a half, and I didn’t have to look up too many words. The conversation actually flowed pretty easy, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable talking with her. We talked about her classes, how the Chinese schedule works, what my high school/college schedule is like, etc. The most exciting part of the conversation was talking about her classes that involved using Photoshop, Premiere, PowerPoint, and Flash. I got to show her some of the things I’ve made on powerpoint, and we commiserated over how awful Photoshop is.
Hannah texted me and asked if I wanted to get dinner with her, so I asked my language partner if she wanted to come with. We ended up going to this really awesome noodle place on 师大路. My language partner was translating the menu for us, and the waiter came up and started reexplaining the menu to us. My language partner then says “Oh no I understand; they just can’t read.”
Since Hannah and I are both Chinese, that got the biggest look of confusion from the waiter. I then had to quickly explain that we are both American and that we did not, in fact, grow up in China. She seemed to catch on pretty quickly.
Noodles were great, and we took some cute selfies. Afterward, we got some of the best Milk Tea I’ve had in China. We walked back to the dorms, said our goodbyes, and then I finally settled in for the night.
