I don’t know why I keep trying to wake up before my alarm because I always end up falling back asleep.
The textbook dialogue was frustrating today because the story had so many plot holes. It was about a girl and a guy who liked each other, but they both refused to admit it to the other. The boy writes a birthday card for the girl but doesn’t sign his name because he’s afraid she’ll become angry with him.
Issue number 1: wishing someone a happy birthday isn’t a romantic gesture, so none of us really understood why he couldn’t sign his name.
Our teacher said that because he liked her, it would have been seen as romantic, which is why he didn’t, but that still doesn’t make sense. If she doesn’t know he likes her, then it wouldn’t be seen as romantic. I understand that this is just Chinese culture, but still.
So, he sends her a card, but doesn’t sign his name. She gets the card and sends a thank you note back to him, but doesn’t sign her name either.
Issue 2: how did she know who to send the letter to if he didn’t sign her name? Why didn’t she sign her name? Whoever gets the letter will clearly know who it’s from.
Apparently with this one, he put his address on the letter, but not his name. I still have a beef with this because if you know someone’s address, you clearly know who lives there, so all she had to do was figure out who lived there.
The girl is about to move to Shanghai, and the boy goes to the girl’s house at night, but he gets too afraid to knock on her door and just stands outside for a while. The girl stays up late waiting for him to say goodbye.
Issue 3: okay, this is actually really sad.
The rest of the text was fine, but I still had a beef with these characters. Again, I know it’s Chinese dating culture, but they could have fixed some of the plot holes in my opinion. Either way, it made for some good discussion.
At lunch, I was ready to buy my usual drink, and as I tapped my card, a woman came up to me and gestured to my drink. I was confused, and then she told me to pay for her drink/took mine. She asked me something, which I did not understand, so I dumbly looked at her and said: uh…I’m American.
She looked shocked, recovered, and then asked in English if I had a wechat. I told her I did, and then she made me add her. I honestly thought I was about to get scammed or something. Turns out she just wanted to repay me for the drink using wechat wallet, but I couldn’t really accept because I can’t use that since I don’t have a Chinese bank account. I kind of just smiled and walked away.
The good news is that I did make it through that conversation, and the only English thing she said to me was “wechat.”
In newspaper, we had to give presentations about the two-child policy and then state whether or not we think abortion should be legalized.
I ended up whipping out my presentation from my IOPP and used the visuals to stall for time. I was doing well until all my thoughts left my head and I could not remember what I actually wanted to say. I had some points to bring up, and then my brain decided to stop functioning properly.
Also, I have a solid argument for abortion in English, but I did not know how to say what I needed to in Chinese.
Our teacher then made us have a debate on whether or not abortion should be legalized, but all of us agreed that it should be, so she made us draw numbers to determine our side. Cayleigh and I ended up having to argue that it should not be legalized.
I basically just started saying all the pro-life stuff I hear on the internet, and I’m kind of glad it was in Chinese because I would not be able to take myself seriously.
We had a very slow and awkward debate, and then our teacher made us switch, which didn’t really make sense because we just threw the same arguments back at each other.
At one point, I tried to say “if you believe that every sperm-egg combo is life and that killing that zygote is murder, then every time a man ejaculates and it doesn’t go towards creating a baby, it’s murder.”
Obliviously that didn’t work. Oddly enough I knew the word for hand job (because it’s the same as radio but with different tones), but I couldn’t say it seriously, and no one knew what I saw saying. I ended up trying to do a hand gesture, and they got it, but it was just uncomfortable.
The other thing I wanted to say was childbirth is painful and some women still die in childbirth. I also wanted to say it hurts your lady parts, but again, I didn’t communicate that properly.
Class was weird to say the least. Also, Logan was trying to say the same thing about masturbation when he was arguing pro-choice but I didn’t get it. Turns out we were on the same page all along.
I had my 一对一, and I kind of expected it to be like my last oral report, but boy was I wrong. Last week, I sat down with the teacher, talked for five minutes, and did homework with her for the next 25.
I knew that this teacher wasn’t going to let me get away with that, so I spoke slowly and just kept rambling. It was actually really helpful practicing with my language partner because I got to bring up some of the points she made.
What I was not expecting was my teacher to interrupt me during the presentation/correct my sentences/ask me questions. I kind of assumed it would just be me speaking, so I wasn’t ready. At the end, she asked me more questions. I had an answer for her last two questions (because I said them in my oral already), but I didn’t really know how to answer the first question.
She asked if I wanted to be an English teacher at the school, and I said no because my English wasn’t good. I thought she said music, so I was really confused when she said: “what no, your English is great.” It took me too long to realize it was 英语 and not 音乐. I ended up saying something like: if my Chinese speaking was better I would, but the kids can’t understand me, and I can’t understand them.
When I did finally finish my oral, I practiced for tomorrow’s oral.
My teacher told me I either had good pronunciation or good translation, and I’m not sure which makes more sense because I know my tones suck, but saying I have good translation doesn’t make sense either. I assumed it was translation only because I was translating “complex” English sentences into Chinese on the spot, but also not really.
She told me that I needed to use more complex grammar structures though, to which I responded with: I know, but we go so fast that I end up forgetting most of them. Sorry.
We had our weekly RD meeting, which was just us listing our grievances.
Philly asked about our opinions on the excursions, and someone said they felt like going to the 袁家村 felt like walking around Epcot because of how touristy it was. He said he expected it to be more like rural China and was disappointed. I said that we visited because it was that is what rural China is becoming. It’s to show us how capitalism is reaching even the most rural parts of China. They’re making their living off of becoming a tourist trap.
Amanda backed me up too, and I was proud of myself for actually knowing something for once. Tbh, I only knew this because I read the sheet they gave us, and that was in English.
After the meeting, I walked back to the dorms with Katey, Logan, and Kyla and we had a gossip secession in Katey’s room. I should have studied, but I couldn’t be bothered at the moment.
The three of us got dinner together on the second floor, and then parted ways to actually go study.