The past few weeks have been very eventful. I left
Chapel Hill on September 5th and spent about two days in Washington,
DC, for an orientation. After that, my group had a series of early flights,
long flights and jetlag. By the time we landed at 浦东
international
airport, we had less than 12 hours until we had to go to school.
At the airport, we met our resident director, Sarah,
picked up our luggage, and headed to our school, High School Affiliated to Shanghai
Jiaotong University 交大附中. We had a school
orientation and I took the HSK 4, a national Chinese language test for
non-native Chinese speakers. I placed in level 2 Chinese out of 3 levels. There
are 6 levels of the HSK, so I’m hoping to get better by June.
My NSLI-Y scholarship group.
I live in a dorm at the school during the week and
have two roommates. My roommates are on the same scholarship program as I am.
One is from Ohio and the other is from Washington state. The Chinese government
does not allow us to room with Chinese students at the school, but I do have a
Chinese host family and a host brother who I stay with on the weekends.
During the first two weeks, we were still getting into
the groove. We had to do a lot of passport stuff; we explored the city a little;
and discovered the school cafeteria food was good -- and then discovered it was
bad. We learned how to get around on the subway and found out who our host
families were. My host family lives about 20 minutes from my school.
I’m doing well. I have had one injury so far. On the
third day a few of us were racing and I tripped – or something. There was no
way to break my fall other than let it happen, so my chest, shoulders, arms and
face got scratched. The fall landed me a visit to the school nurse and my
wounds are now pretty much healed. It didn’t hurt much at the time, but I did get
pretty scraped up.
My host family is really nice. They give me lots of
food and are very polite. George, my host brother, is 15, studies too much. Every
Friday he goes to school after school,
and on the weekends he goes to another class that focuses on math or science and
English. In his free time he likes to study. My host father is the manager at a
Caterpillar (CAT) dealership in Shanghai, and my host mother works at a
university and helps people with their PhDs (I think). I am lucky because my
family does not speak a lot of English, so it’s good practice for me. My host
family also has a dog.
Communicating with friends and family at home has
been hard because I’m in school a lot of the time, and because I don’t always
have Facebook and Internet access. For some reason, messaging on Facebook
works, but I don’t have access to any other parts of Facebook. Messaging on
Facebook works without a VPN, but Flickr won’t. I can Skype, but again, timing
is hard. I did Skype with my mom and dad once and with the guys from my summer
bike trip.
All the Chinese kids at school are pretty nice,
especially the 新疆 kids or Uyghurs.
Uyghurs are one of the many ethnic minorities in China. The international kids
at school are nice, too. There are a couple of Germans, a couple of Russians,
an Estonian, a Norwegian, some Indonesians and lots of Koreans and Japanese.
So far school isn’t that hard, but the school days
are really long; 5:30-6 wake up, 7:50 school starts, 9:15 school ends and 10ish
bed time. That totals about 13 hours in school, but we do get a one hour lunch
break and a 2-hour dinner break. I think this long schedule will make mine back
in America
feel more laid back.
feel more laid back.
School lunch.
I have not really tried anything out of the ordinary
food-wise, besides crab stomach, a couple of pig trotters and maybe a few bits
and pieces of dog in the cafeteria food; no scorpions or cockroaches for me,
yet.
I have lots more to tell, but I can save that for
later.
