Week 2: Nanjing

People say language is a barrier. But these past two weeks have shown me the very opposite. Because of language I've been able to connect to so many new people and have been able try so many new things that I would not have been able to had it not been for learning Mandarin. I'm really thankful I'm here and can't believe it's half over!

In case you were wondering, this is what a typical day looks like for me:

7:00 - Wake up

7:30 - Eat breakfast with host mom (my host sister wakes up later)

8:00 - Walk to the bus station and take the bus to school. Costs 1.6 kuai or about 23 cents!

9:00 - school starts

12:00 - Go to lunch. Out of the five weekdays, we have group lunches with everyone in the program on Tuesdays and Thursday's. Then we have individual lunches on Monday's, Wednesday's, and Friday's. We're given 60 kuai as stipend per week for food. We can literally go anywhere and adventure for some good eats!

2:30 - Either calligraphy or taichi class.

3:30 - Into the community, where we practice mandarin by using it in local life or practicing with the locals. I went to the market and bought this cabbage using my mamdarin!

5:15 - Go home! By bus, but others also go by the subway (which is SO much cleaner and efficient than California’s BART btw…)

6:00 - Eat dinner. My host mom cooks it!

6:45 - Eat fruit (usually watermelon)

7:00 - Take a shower

7:30 - Free time, I usually do homework or look through pictures I've taken on the trip so far.

10:30 - Sleep!

Of course, this is pretty general. Sometimes after lunch we spend the afternoon going on a fieldtrip instead, or in the evening we go out with our host families and do something. Just this past weekend we went to Shanghai!

-Sarah H.