ABROAD IN
Friday, August 4th: I woke up at 6:45 this morning, and my mom bought me breakfast! (She hasn’t been feeding me breakfast for the past week). Anyway, I walked to the bus stop and eventually made it to the subway where I bumped into Josie. For class, our young teacher/first teacher told us we were going to have a party. She brought her dog, who was really tiny and really adorable, and we all blew up balloons and relaxed. During our party, Alexandra and I ran to the store and bought flowers for our teachers (everyone split the cost), and bought food for our party. Flowers were only 28 yuan for a bunch, which was surprisingly cheap, and we got them wrapped too! We went to the nearby grocery store and bought some Oreos, some coke and sprite, and some other snacks. That was pretty much my lunch, a bunch of Oreos and chips. We got back about a half an hour later, and gave the flowers to our teacher who was really happy and surprised and took photos with us. I gave my first teacher (she’s the younger one) a University of Washington t shirt because I really liked her and I had an extra shirt to give away. After our speaking class with our first teacher, we had listening comprehension with our second teacher after a short break. When we gave the flowers to our second teacher, she said how we made her really happy, which was super cute. We were supposed to do some review that class (reviewing our old homework), but after we gave her flowers and a card, it was more like a class party. It was also Mae’s birthday, so we had 2 cakes for Mae and all sang for her. Also, most of us bought Supreme shirts on Taobao for 20 yuan (which is a little less then 3 USD), so today we all wore our Supreme shirts which was kind of funny. After class, we had pre-departure presentation, where we talked about reverse culture shock and what to do when we get back home. That ended at about 2, and we had free time until 5:30 when we had practice for our play. It was pouring rain, so Alexandra and I didn’t really want to go sightseeing with some of the others, so we went to this souvenir shop (only to find that the clothes were too expensive), then went to Xinjiekou to finish up some shopping. I bought a lot. I finally found a bag for my sister, bought more fake fans, and a really cute “Stranger Things” shirt. I bargained down the Stranger Things shirt, but I think I still got hecka ripped off. I should’ve bargained it down more. I paid 100 yuan for it, but I think I could’ve paid 70 yuan for it. Ahh. I was kind of annoyed at myself for a little bit. Anyway, we left Xinjiekou to meet our teachers at 4:30 where we had a goodbye afternoon tea for 高级班。 The young teacher couldn’t come, which I was sad about, but the older teacher bought us some good mochi-type thing, and then brought some traditional Oolong tea which was amazing. We all got dressed for graduation and then at 5:30 went down into the conference room to practice our play. There, Margie bought us pizza for dinner. We’re all lucky, because Wu Laoshi said we could read off our scripts as long as we still acted out our roles. Pretty soon, 6:30 came along, and graduation started. I invited my old host mom (the rest of the family couldn’t come), and she was so happy to see me. We took a few selfies, and I realized how much I missed my old host family. My new host family came also, and sat down because our performance was about to begin. At 6:30, after a few speeches from the teachers, we started our play. Sam Chan was 孙悟空, the lead character, and he was soooo good at it. Shoutout to Sam Chan for making our play funny. After the play, we gave out host family certificates, and then gave out student certificates. It was a bitter-sweet moment. We all took photos after, and I realized how much I’m going to miss these people. After about half an hour of photo taking, I went home with my host family and relaxed at home. I can’t believe I graduated from this program already; I feel like it was just yesterday that I had PDO. I’ve had such a crazy, busy, but memorable 6 weeks, and I’m beyond lucky that I was able to study abroad. I’ve honestly learned so much, not just my Chinese vocabulary, but I've learned a lot about myself and a lot of important life lessons. Going to a foreign country alone and living with a host family was one of the best choices I’ve made 😊 I’m going to miss this place.
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Andrea 施安雅17-year-old XC runner and boba tea lover living in Seattle but studying abroad in China. Also, I have a cat! Archives
August 2017
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