China – Housing and Classmates

Well China is definitely growing on me. I never thought there would be so much to explore in one city, but my lack of knowledge of the culture here allows for me to learn so much. Some of my favorite activities from this week have been: starting classes and getting into the very intense language learning, exploring the city with the group, and experiencing a traditional Chinese tea ceremony.

Some other interesting cultural events I’ve experienced this week are: Chinese calligraphy, Chinese paper cutting, Tibetan dance, and Tai ji. It’s been extremely eye-opening to see all of the traditional culture that I have never experienced before this.

As far as classmates go, the 20 of us on the dialogue have actually become very close and we’re almost like one big family now. Because we have class from 8:30am – 5pm, we don’t have much time to explore the city but we do what we can in our free time. We have a 2 hour lunch break at 12pm and that has allowed us to play basketball or ultimate frisbee to get some exercise in and still have fun as a whole group. Funny story… we went to play frisbee the first time and chose to play on the big green lawn they have in the middle of campus. Unfortunately, within 10 mins we were kicked off by a security guard because being on grassy areas in China is prohibited. The things you learn. Since then, we’ve been playing frisbee on an outdoor basketball court which has served us just fine. Again, for the most part all of us have become so close that I can’t exactly remember when we weren’t friends. I know I’m not the only one who feels like I’ve known everyone here for much longer than a week.

The university has us staying in a hotel right beside the campus, which is much more than we were expecting. We had been told we would be in dorms but the rooms are rather nice (a bathroom in each) and the beds are oversized twins (so much so that they almost look like a small double!). We couldn’t have asked for better accommodations from a school. In about a week and a half we will take our week long trip to Taiwan and I’ve been told that our accommodations will change when we get back, but I really can’t complain since they’ve been so nice so far.

I’ve included some pictures in this post to give you an idea of what the group does together on a normal day. But for now I’ll just say 再见 (see you later).