The below was written by me during my flight from Toronto to Beijing. I arrived in Beijing yesterday (Fri. 6/7 afternoon). I’m currently starting this post at 7 am (Sat. 6/8). I’ve been up since 3 am, having only slept 3 hours. I really played myself thinking since I was so tired jet lag wouldn’t be a big problem and that I’d sleep a straight 10 hours since midnight, but boy I was wrong. The jet lag is so real. Here is what I wrote on the plane from Toronto to Beijing:
So this was supposed to be predeparture thoughts and even though I had a 5+ layover in Toronto I didn’t have time to write that out XD. I was too busy trying to finalize and post my first blog haha. So instead this will be more of an In-Departure thought bubble.
I’m currently writing this on the plane from Toronto to Beijing and it still hasn’t really kicked in that I’m doing this! By this, I mean the fact that I’m going to surround myself with Chinese speaking people and need to get used to speaking Chinese. My brain is going to be constipated for at least this first week.
I am slowly starting to regret not looking at any Chinese this past month… the few new words that I learned and still can recall, I cannot recall the writing. Please let me not place down in my placement test. Is that even possible?? I didn’t even download my last year Chinese textbook for this flight. Dumb Jane! I’m wide awake and have all this time to kill. But I guess since it is what it is, I should just try to relax on this flight. A lot of alone time I got going on here. That’s something I wasn’t able to get any of these past two weeks at home with family. Maybe I’ll review a bit when I get to the hotel, but I have a feeling I won’t get to that just due to the business of trying to settle in physically and mentally into a new environment. Wish me luck!
One thing I realize I haven’t thought about are my goals for this summer! Aha.. that’s pretty important!
I’ve heard the teachers are all on the younger side and quite nice, so I’d like to try to become close to my teachers. Since HBA is already naturally such an intimate environment with small class sizes and a daily one on one class, i don’t think it should be too hard. Certainly easier than doing so at Yale in a lecture of 50+ people. I think teachers will also be teaching some extracurricular stuff like calligraphy or other Chinese cultural activities, so I will try to participate in those as much as possible.
I really want to interact more with locals. I have a sense that HBA may be a bit of a bubble with mostly Yale Harvard kids. Still, I hope to sometimes get out of the bubble by trying to strike conversation with a stranger at least once a week and have that develop into some kind of fruitful interaction. This includes talking to people my age, kids, the elderly, you name it. I’m excited. I really like kids so my dream would be to befriend a Chinese family w a little kid or even a cute pudgy baby, haha. We’ll see how that fantasy pans out.
My next post will hopefully be about my first impressions here during week one! It’ll have a lot more interesting stories and cool photos! Let’s just say I’ve taken many L’s.
Side note, I’ve decided to call all my blog viewers with the endearing name “dumplings,” inspired by my blog photo. Special shoutout to a certain someone who took the pic for the inspiration. Dumplings, see you next time.
Jane in Beijing (HBA) 