My Mandarin Precalculus Book I have been studying Chinese a ton this week. I really liked feeling the improvement as I attempted to read every single sign in the metro train. I could read loads more than I could at the beginning of this week. I get tons of Chinese homework now. I was thinking of home as I walked up to my house (or apartment, I guess) and Fur Elise was playing from the fake speakers disguised as rocks. Sometimes the music sucks, but I really liked it all this week. When I was riding the bus home with the window down and we passed through the neighborhoods, I just completely melted with the realization of how much I have grown to love this city. The city has its own smell. Usually its a good smell, that you cannot really enjoy until you really think about it. Some places smell nasty, but I have come to like the most common smell. I don't even know how to explain it...kind of like a carnival, with the mix of the old rides, and food, and people. And the breeze is always nice. I'm so glad you are planting bamboo, Dad! I love bamboo, and (haha) it tastes good also. I mean I know we won't eat ours, but it will be nice to have something familiar when I get home. I thought about how it's going to be so quiet when I get home, without the nightly sounds of hundreds of bombs going off from the fireworks. On Monday I have a Chinese test. My teacher says a word, I write the character. I will study hard! Wish me luck.
1 Comment
As of today, I have officially been with my host family for 3 weeks! It went by in a flash, which means this whole year will probably go by this quickly. My official first whole week of school was good. Very long though. On average I would get home around 6ish. Monday was good, although I had a serious panic moment when I got off at the wrong stop at the Metro Station. I had to go home by myself on that day because Susan had to stay late, and when I accidentally got off at the wrong stop, of course, my phone died! So I was stuck in a city of 8 million people who didn't speak my language! But after I freaked out for about 10 minutes I calmed myself down and got a taxi. Thank goodness I knew my address!
Tuesday was regular-- nothing interesting. So was Wednesday. This week I did start my language classes in school, though. I was picturing 2-3 hours of intensive language study, but no, not at all. At least that's not how things have started. We have just an hour, and we have to go very slow because the other exchange student, from Venezuela, cannot pronounce any of the words, especially the "zh," because they sound like "j". I guess in Spanish they don't have that sound? I'm not quite sure, but he struggles a lot, and so our classes are slow right now. I am also so glad I learned a teeny bit of Spanish in my middle school because it has really come in handy. Another reason for the short class so far is that the teacher is usually 10 minutes late, so we usually have less than an hour. But still I am glad the language classes have started! I really want to be able to take Calculus senior year at Justin, so I emailed my teacher from Justin and asked him if he would look at some pictures of my Chinese math book to see if the things I'm going to be learning look anything like the stuff they are learning in Pre-Calculus this year. He emailed me and said yes! It was so incredibly helpful. He said that I could get the same textbook they are using at Justin and use it to understand my Chinese book. He also said that I could ask him any questions as I go through my class here, which is so incredibly nice, and WAY more than I expected! I am happy as well because he was my favorite teacher last year and I learned so much in his class. So, hopefully, I will get my math book soon so I can start understand that class also. Today I was very lucky to be able to Skype with my parents. It was so fun! Usually at home we have less to talk about because I see them everyday, but man, if you are away from each other for 4 weeks, you can talk for hours! I haven't been talking all that much these 3 weeks in Nanjing, and so my voice hurt from talking so much. One really funny thing I told them about was a thing here called "Chinglish," which means Chinese trying to use the English language, and the results not making sense at all. The place where I see Chinglish the most is on t-shirts. Tons, and tons of t-shirts! Here are some examples: "Kiss the Earth with happy!" "Laughs, big smile, bushy tail." "Hippy, Happy, Hoppy." "I love Beijing best most." And by far the best one, in big, sparkly letters, a t-shirt that just said "THE." That was definitely my favorite! I literally started laughing when I walked past the woman wearing it. I hope I see more Chinglish because it really is so funny. So then on Thursday... I don't think anything happened either, but I think I might be having short term memory loss right now. One thing interesting thing is that I really am becoming Asian! I mean, I found a black hair on my head the other day! Also, I have an extremely good eye for spotting non-Asians. I used to not understand the staring at foreigners thing, but now I stare too, and try to send them a silent brainwave message to talk to me. Unfortunately that doesn't work too well. On Friday I went and got some "Resident Permit" thing and I had to stand in line for 2 hours, which was such a pain. Usually I get out of school at 5:00pm, then I take the Metro at about 5:15 and then wait for the bus which comes at around 5:45. But on Friday I didn't get back to school until about 5:20, and so I sprinted to my classroom, and then fast-walked to the Metro station. I really think I could have won the Gold Metal for speed walking-- it was amazing how fast I got there! Then I sprinted onto the train, and then raced up all the stairs to the bus stop. And I made it! It was amazing, but then of course the bus sat there for about 10 minutes, which meant I could have pretty much crawled to the bus and still been there on time. I haven't eaten anything too abnormal this week. The only thing that really grossed me out was that I think the rice I had the other night had little white bug things in it. I could hardly eat it, it was grossing me out so bad. But I also ate some really good food! They have really good meatballs at the restaurant across the street, I mean, REALLY good meatballs. And I have had some really good meatballs in my life! The restaurant is very good. It's kind of like a cafeteria, but a really good one. You choose 3-4 dishes you want, and then you get a bowl of rice. It is my favorite place so far! Today after dinner, Susan is going to go with me to buy a volleyball and maybe some knee pads--if I can find them. I would like to get a volleyball as well to play around with in my backyard. My backyard has actually come in tons of use! Every other night I go out and run for about 30ish minutes in it. It's not very big, so it's just like running in circles, but that's ok. It feels so great to run. When it gets dark here it's also hot, but there is a little breeze. I even run barefoot, just because I forget my shoes inside. Whenever I run I listen to music and think about my best friend Teal, who is the worlds best runner. She broke the school record for the mile which was set, like, 26 years ago! Pretty amazing! And tomorrow I get to go play volleyball! I think I know how to walk to the Metro now so I can easily get there tomorrow. I am very excited! That the news for the week. I will write more soon. Ni Hao everyone. This week has been amazing! On Saturday, I got to my host city, Nanjing. The train trip over here was super gross. It was a sleeper train, and so all I could think about was the years of filth on the same blanket and pillow I was sleeping on that they probably never changed. Not to mention I was on the top bunk, which was about a foot from the ceiling. When I got off the train my host sister, Susan, and my teacher, Mr. Ding, was waiting for me. At first she was pretty shy but now we talk a ton and she is very nice, and also has a really good sense of humor. The house I am staying in is on the ground floor of an extremely beautiful apartment complex. While the huge buildings aren't so charming, the grounds around them are green, and fresh and just amazing and so relaxing. There are trees everywhere, and grass, and a lake, which has a big fountain in the middle of it. While it is very hot and humid outside, it smells like honey, and fresh cut grass. Everything beautiful in the neighborhood is increased by 10 when it is nighttime. Everything is lit up and it looks so amazing. The inside of my apartment is actually very nice. It smells so nice inside, I'm not sure of what, but good. It is pretty small, about the size of my house in Napa, or smaller. My room is very cute. It is small, but I already feel very at home in it. Some of the cool things we have in the house are: a Hello Kitty toaster, a special tea-tray thing where you can poor tea onto a spot and it just drains out through a tube, and... we have a backyard, which is pretty rare for a big city. Imagine the biggest city you have been to, and then multiply that by about 50. Nanjing is huge. It is pretty much made up of never ending buildings, and malls and old shops. But it really grows on you. Everything is super colorful, except for the gray sky. And in the nighttime it is even better. On Thursday my host sister and her friend took me to get some school stuff in the middle of Nanjing. It was the first time taking the Underground Metro in Nanjing which, starting Monday, I will be doing now everyday to get to school. One weird thing about walking around in China is that everyone stares at me. It's not even just like looking at me and then looking away, it's like intent staring and never looking away until they can't see me anymore. I think I will have to get used to that because there is not another single blonde person in the whole city--or any tall people. I have surprisingly seen a few tall Chinese people though. People always ask my host sister where I am from, which is mei guo (United States), or they sometimes shout something at me in English like: "Hello" or "What's your name?" It's actually pretty amusing sometimes. My host sister and I laugh about that. The driving is also very bad in China. While there are lanes, nobody really cares, and everyone is constantly cutting everyone else off. Also, nobody really wears seat belts, except sometimes the driver. I have to say, wearing a seat belt is a very hard habit to break when trying to fit in. I always put it on and my host sister says I don't have to wear it. I have also been learning more Chinese! My host dad doesn't speak any English, but he told my host sister he thinks I am very clever for learning how much I have because Mandarin is a very hard language. I am super happy about that! Whenever I say something right my host sister always claps. I think that when school starts I will learn even more because my Chinese classes will start and my Chinese friends will all speak it to each other. The food in China is very good. It is very different from American Chinese food, and the only thing I have eaten that is relatively the same is the Orange Chicken, but even that is better in China. I have also eaten some weird things. I ate sea snails! You pull them by their foot out of the shell and dip them into sauce. They aren't actually all that bad! We had a whole fish, with bones, eyes, skin, everything. I had bamboo, which was good. I had quail eggs, which I actually do not like at all. They are purple and look rotten, and taste kinda rotten also. Throughout my whole stay so far I have eaten lots of stuff, and most of the time I have no idea what it is--it could pretty much be anything. And I am very unhappy to report that I have officially eaten at McDonald's. The food they have at a Chinese McDonald's is different than in America, and I did not like it at all. The drinks at the McDonald's are very weird. The first one I had was super good! I think it was sprite with soft-serve ice cream on top, I'm not sure what kind, probably vanilla. The other drink I had was extremely gross. It was some sort of bitter, milky tea, with the weirdest things in it. They were these brownish black, gummy, rubbery, slimy balls of goo that were kind of sweet, that were about a half an inch in diameter. So, overall the tea thing with the gooey balls was gross. But I do love the Chinese food. I also found out that I have been holding my chopsticks wrong, so its been interesting re-learning how to pick up food. On Thursday after we went shopping, my host sister and I went to the Nanjing International School. We went there with a family friend of her's whose son went there and she didn't know English, so she needed Susan to translate for her. Susan brought me along because she still doesn't know some English words and she wanted me to explain what they meant to her. The International School was so beautiful. It must be new because the campus was just amazing. They put effort into the buildings so that from the outside it resembled some traditional Chinese architecture, but inside it was super modern and high tech. The parent meeting was cute, with a lot of little kids, but it was also a little boring. When Susan and I were taking a walk on Thursday night through our neighborhood she told me that Mr. Ding, my teacher-mentor-person, wanted to know if I would be willing to do an interview for some Youth Olympics thing that is going to be in Nanjing this year. I have learned to, in almost all circumstances, never say no, so I said yes, but I'm not really sure what I'm actually supposed to do! Once I talk to Mr. Ding on Monday I will know more about what I'm actually supposed to be doing, and why. This is one of the most important things I have learned so far on my trip: trust people. I have been sent on trains with nothing more than an address, Susan orders for me in restaurants, takes me places when I have no idea what or where they are, and it has all turned out great. And they have been amazing experiences. I hope to write more soon, but for now, zai jian. |
India Medaris
This school year, 2012-2013, I am an exchange student in Nanjing, China. It's a long way from home in Napa, CA! I live with a wonderful host family and go to school in a local high school. I'm keeping this blog to record my experiences for my family and friends (and fellow AFSers!). Recent May Pictures:
Posts
May 2015
Categories
All
Recent April Pictures
Misc. February Pics:
Misc. December Pictures:
Pics: 10.19.12
Pictures: 10.6.12
Pictures: 9.07.12
Pictures: 8.27.12
Pictures: 8/21/2012
|