Sink or Swim

Sink or Swim..

Practice Practice Practice…

I think I’m in over my head, should I change classes? There’s an almost shaming sense I feel today being in class, I feel I should have studied more, I should have been practicing everyday but I feel like if I did I would need start at the beginning again. The most trouble I’ve been having is reading and writing. I have almost no characters memorized in my head, knowing how to completely write them without looking at the character. I have only had one year of studying Chinese (and not even a whole year at that) and most of what I know is either heard or spoken, I mostly studied pinyin when I should have studied characters more. How did I test into this class? There were several times my teacher called on me to read aloud and write chinese but I felt like I could stare at the characters all day and still have no clue how to say it or what they mean… I felt so stupid and unprepared. I kept thinking about the class and the upcoming tests, what will I do about them, surely they will be written in Chinese, and surely it will be required for us to write Chinese, and SURELY I will fail. I kept thinking to myself… is there a way I can still get out and go to the next class below? Then I thought, well would it be better to be into a class where I know most of the material and could probably ace the test, or should I stay and at least try to accept the challenge of learning new things and studying even harder than I usually do? I was stumped. During a break in our class, my teacher also noticed some of the students in front of me needed some help and while she was talking to them I overheard her saying something about the class under us. I got curious and I asked her…. do you think since I am having such trouble with characters that I need to go to the lower class? She looked at my notebook for a minute and said: “No, your characters are beautiful, but I see that you were normally taught chinese pinyin (the english/phonetic spelling of the Chinese word) and I agreed. I told her that it took me so long to write characters and that I can’t read them well. She just turned to a page in my book where we have to practice writing them and she said: “I just think you need to practice them more because if you went to the lower class you would just be studying more pinyin.” She showed me in the textbook where the lower class was and I noticed that they were doing all the really simple things like basic understandings of the pinyin. I really didn’t want to do that all over again but I wanted to start learning characters from the beginning. (which I should have done more while I was studying back home.) My teacher finished the conversation and then moved to some other students as I sat there and pondered…. “Will I be lost if I stay? Will I fail the tests and let my family and friends down? Should I just go to the other class anyway and just start off slow? That’s so boring, even if it was just for the characters.” Just as I finished my thought a classmate came over to my desk and mentioned that he also had trouble learning characters and the way he had learned and got better was just as the teacher showed me. To practice them. How about that? I guess if you practice something enough you’ll be able to do it huh? Haha. He told me that in the bookstores they sell really cheap “hanzi shu” Character Books that you can just write in these little boxes and just practice writing characters. I told him that I had seen them because my instructor who was here before me showed me them and told me to get them. So then I decided hey… I CAN do this, I will just put in more hours of studying than I do when I am studying Chinese in NC. It’s much easier here to practice too, when you live in the country that you’re learning the language of it makes things much easier to study. You can find the characters written around after you’ve studied them and it’s definitely great that you can APPLY the spoken word and practice it with your Chinese friends and on the streets meeting people.

So over the weekend my friend Line (sounded like “Lina”) from Belgium and I went shopping on Saturday. It was quite fun, we bought some cute things for pretty cheap (of course) and it was cool to see a huge shopping mall where the Chinese can find their favorite European and American brands (but not as cheap as the country you can get them in of course.) My friend Line and I really like that they have an H&M store here in Nanjing because we aren’t as small as the Chinese girls and we are western girls so of course we are a bit more busty than Asian girls, so it’s hard to find cute stuff in our size with the Chinese brand. Line and I shopped around for a few hours and then we came back to our dorm to… yes… I’m going to write it.. STUDY!! WHAT?! On a Saturday?! You’re crazy! Yes I am, but I’m also in a country where I can’t read and write the language well so I want to study more for myself to be able to apply it more. We studied together for a bit and then I went to a party that a new friend of mine was having. There were some really interesting people there, mostly students who were foreigners and some chinese. It was cool to meet some people from my country and some people who were from places like Bulgaria and Russia. I like the diversity here, you can really meet so many people from different countries and cultures!

On Sunday Line and I wanted to take it slow and find some more time to study. YES, STUDY. We went to a relatively close park (one that we could even walk to) and we entered in with no idea as to what it would look like. It seemed really quiet and nice! It was a lot of walking but we wanted to see the “orchid garden” that was written on the “sights” sign. We walked and walked and walked some more all the while seeing some cool things like this blue lantern like thing hanging in the trees I noticed it was moving. The trees were really close by the road so I just went to the edge to see what it was…. as I got closer and closer I could hear this beautiful song louder and louder…. it was a songbird! They have them in cages in the gardens here! Wow, how interesting! Why would they cage them I wondered? The birds didn’t seem distressed, they kept singing beautiful songs. Maybe they keep them there for the songs, they sound very beautiful and sweet. I had to take a photo because it was so neat!

Line and I finally found the road to the “Orchid Garden” wend down it and saw just a strange stone sitting area. We explored that and had a short Sunday afternoon picnic, some fruits and nuts and we were good to walk another hundred miles haha. We saw some steps and a greenhouse like area so I thought oh that must be the orchid garden. We went down the really long set of steps (a good workout we kept saying) and looked inside it. The house seemed to be a greenhouse but.. hmmmm.. no orchids. So we looked around further and further at different gardens down this road but… well… no orchids. I was kind of disappointed because I LOVE orchids and really wanted to photograph some. We found a place where there was a small pond with beautiful lovely bright orange, black spotted, and white coy… that was fun too! I love coy fish. We never found the “Orchid Garden” but we still had so much fun! Also walking up and down several hills (it was like a tiny mountainous garden with the city in the back ground) and stairs we were almost exhausted. We still had a great time and got some cool photos of the place along with photos of my friend Line. We then went back to our dorms to study some more before the weekend was over, my roommate also had some adventures this weekend with her boyfriend traveling to Shanghai to see the EXPO so she came back Sunday night telling us of all her adventures.

Here is what we found:

I love living here, it’s easy to call home because just like America, there are some tough times and some great times and all that’s in between. There’s great people to meet, wonderful things to experience, and friendships to make that you will never forget..

with love from China,
Amanda