Nanjing 2018-2019, Blog Post 9
Looking back, April is tied with July as my happiest month abroad. SO much happened this month, and in the back of mind I knew I only had three more months left until it was time to go home. I suppose I mentally started wrapping up my year way too early, but with my friends in college finishing up and with warmer weather on the horizon, it felt like it was almost summer. But, I was still happy to be in school and learning a lot in classes.
As I settled into a routine of taking 2 morning classes for 三年级，汉语(reading& writing) and 口语 (speaking), and also afternoon electives, I became better friends with my classmates. I ended up attending 3 out of the 4 electives offered, and because my classmates were required to take all of the classes, we were able to see each other every day in class. I really enjoyed the friend group of a few of my Korean and Thai classmates, along with my other two friends Matthew and WangFan. Matthew is from Malaysia/US/Mauritius, and WangFan is Chilean-Chinese. I think they are both around 8 years older than I; I know my Chilean friend is at least 26 or 27, but I really enjoyed their fresh perspectives and more sophisticated talks. Never will I forget our morning walks to the 包子 shop (although I ate breakfast before class, it was still a good excuse to stretch my legs) and laughing at their daily, never-changing orders.
All the people I saw in class and talked to during class break were all like older brothers just because they had so much more life experience. I liked feeling cared for, like a little sister with lots of big bros, and although we didn’t talk about our personal lives, we still had some very interesting conversations. Embedded in my memory is our group regularly sitting outside 八号楼(where our classroom was located) on class breaks, where we just chatted, drinking weird bottled teas from the shop across the street, and shared strange stories. During breaks, we mostly sat precariously on a thin, wiry fence, and I remember falling off of it once.
Outside of class, I had planned a day trip a week or so before I adventured to WuYuan county with Jisoo, my Korean roommate. We had booked train tickets and decided to go to Wuxi for a day. Wuxi is a city near Nanjing that’s also highly populated and plays a big part in China’s east coast economy; it is also full of many tourist locations and cultural heritage sites. We simply bought our train tickets and the night before, planned out what we wanted to see. That’s what I love about China: the convenience, ease, and the low stress of traveling. We decided on a visit to the LingShan Buddha, which was over an hour’s bus ride from the train station, and a trip to Tai Lake. Neither of these visits exactly panned out how we had planned, resulting in a several mile walk by a busy highway while observing the famous lake, being squeezed in the back of a bus without room even to scratch my nose (I really had to. But I couldn’t), and a bathroom pit stop at a random school. However, it was another really fun adventure and a good bonding moment with JiSoo, because she was so temperamentally different than my last roommate.
Another great part of April was the weather change. The winter had been so cold and suffocating, once warmer days came on the horizon, I could feel my spirit beginning to lift. I began to run outside on the track whenever I could. Those sunny days paired with birds chirping were absolutely perfect. Going to WuYuan, where the countryside was full of green grass and mud and streams, made me realize how much I missed nature. I even just sat in the overgrown grass in the middle of the track with my homework sometimes, just to feel the ants crawling on my leg or the itchiness of the grass. It reminded me of home, where I could go outside and see and touch the green grass if I wanted to at any time.
I definitely think April was my busiest month, because looking through my pictures, I also began biking with Iana during my free time, filmed a video interview project with my classmates, and celebrated a few friends’ birthdays. Plus, I still had weekly taekwondo, yoga, and language exchanges. Another trip with Mackenzie to some islands off of Shanghai also occurred in April, where we got to spend 12 hours on a local fisherman’s boat. Although we were only out of town for a few days, it was still so refreshing and full of adventure. Reading my journal describing this travel experience, I wrote “How was I awake at 5:30 hiking up a giant hill to get to an abandoned village, then laughing/ sprinting/ frantically hailing cars down through a tunnel to catch a boat, in Shanghai walking around the Bund, and now back laying in my bed, and it’s only 10 pm?”. Good memories. Good month.