DAY 9, MONDAY, JANUARY 13TH
After a fun and busy weekend it was back to a more normal schedule today!! I went to a canteen on campus for breakfast before heading to class. Definitely had to knock off a bit of rust after not practicing pronunciation over the weekend haha. Otherwise class was pretty normal- we reviewed material from last week and also learned a couple new phrases. We got a quick lunch at the canteen- the food here has not failed yet, it's still fantastic. Today we continued painting in our culture class and were still no good at it but it’s fun to just play around with it for a while. After our normal classes we had a special student forum with the Chinese students. Each classroom had a different topic and groups of Chinese students and groups of American students created presentations from their point of view in the topic. My rooms topic was language learning and communication. There were definitely a range of presentations and nothing super innovative but it was fun to hear from all the perspectives. After the forum we had dinner at a restaurant on campus with a lot of the language partners to celebrate. After dinner the Chinese students were kind enough to set up a chance to do Karaoke for all of us! We went to a karaoke bar that was just a 10 minute walk from campus! It was really fun to all do it together (I will note that our group was unsurprisingly way louder and more obnoxious than the Chinese students).
DAY 10, TUESDAY, JANUARY 14TH
Today was our last day of classes and the day of our exam! Today in class we just reviewed what we’ve learned thus far which was very helpful in preparing for the exam. For our culture class we tried paper cutting (think like a version of the snowflakes we would make in elementary school, it was way more difficult than expected. We also got an extra surprise - our art teacher has a friend who does tea art so she came in and shows us how to do it! You basically create a foam on top of the tea and use matcha paste/liquid to draw on top. After our culture class we had our exam and I think I did pretty well! We just have to pass in order get credit for the class. Once we were all done with the exam we headed to student market to to buy a few things with our student cards before grabbing a quick dinner. After dinner we went out to a touristy shopping street called Nanluoguxiang. We semi-successfully took the bus with some language partners and just walked around for a couple hours with some Chinese students and went in to a few shops and tried some street food. After we got back me and a couple friends watched a movie in the dorm while taste-testing all of the various snacks we purchased. Cucumber potato chips were weird but the pumpkin flavored chips were actually not bad.
DAY 11, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15TH
Today I got up a bit early to go to the student market to try and spend the rest of the money on my student card! They gave us 600 yuan which is WAYY more than we needed for meals & they can’t refund the cards so we tried to spend it all at the stores on campus. I bought some pens/pencils, souvenirs, charging cords, literally anything I thought I could/would use. This morning we had our last excursion of Beijing which was to the 798 Art Zone. It’s a collection of decommissioned military factory buildings that now have a bunch of art galleries and shops. Unfortunately most of the galleries and shops weren’t open yet so it wasn’t the most eventful morning, but we still had a nice time walking around and peaking in to galleries. After we got back to campus we grabbed a quick lunch at the canteen before it was time for our closing ceremony. It started with the director of the Confucius institute giving a lecture on the education system on China and pointing out some main similarities/differences. The most relevant thing we discussed was the huge gap in cost of college (of course with the US being WAY more expensive). After that several Chinese students shared performances/gifts with us- a traditional dance, tai-chi, calligraphy, traditional Hanfu clothing, etc! It was so kind of them to spend time preparing and sharing that with us. Then we got our certificates of completion and a laminated group photo.
It felt way too fancy of a "ceremony" for only having 5 days of class, but it was appreciated! To end it we sang a song we’ve been rehearsing- “See you Again” but the Chinese version. Turns it out is very hard to rap in a language you don’t know haha. After the ceremony we had a group dinner at a different restaurant on campus and then had a get together/party with the language students. Some of them had already gone home for their holiday break but those who were left joined us. We shared dances and songs and just hung out. We had a lot of fun teaching them the Macarena and the Cha cha slide. After the party it was time to head back and pack for Shanghai tomorrow! We’re only bringing a smaller bag or back pack to Shanghai & leaving our big bags in Beijing. After our Shanghai trip we will be back in Beijing for just one night to repack and then head back to the U.S.!
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