eleven

This Monday in choir we started working on the song "This Love" by Maroon 5, which is a fun and upbeat piece. 

Tuesday, I gave a presentation to my host sister's class about BASIS, the American high school from I graduated and to which Jiao Da Fu Zhong will send some students next year. It's quite the coincidence and I was very happy to provide a picture of the school and what they might experience next year, since I'm in a similar position as an exchange student now. 

Thursday, I met with my language buddy, Yichen. She still hasn't been interested in speaking any English, which is great for me! Anyway, we had some interesting conversations including one about Chinese high school dating culture. Dating (at all) is technically against school rules, but that does not mean it's not happening in secret...

On Thursday, I also got myself all signed up for the January 11th HSK 4 (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi or Chinese Level 4 Test), which is said to be about the same level as the AP. We took a practice test this week and I felt pretty solid! 

Saturday, we had our monthly NSLI-Y group outing where we explored Shanghai's Seafood Market, which has an unbelievable diversity of sea life, most of which I could not name. The fishermen were super lively, sometimes even alarmingly so: one man who was insisting I buy his gooey-ducks (the huge clam-like things) kept asking me in Mandarin if he could be my boyfriend and only stopped yelling "girlfriend girlfriend, come back" when I was almost out of earshot. But there was also a nice set of siblings from Guangdong province who were happy to explain to me the names of different enormous crabs. 

It was definitely not my favorite place in Shanghai, but it felt very local (foreigners don't often come there) and was none-the-less a valuable experience. 

Afterward, we went to a beautiful Buddhist temple, where the fragrance of incense soothed me greatly after all the seafood smells!

I then explored the city a little with my American friends Tilden, Sara, Megan, and Keiondre until we met back up with Paris and Brady (who had opted to eat at the seafood market) and saw the second Hunger Games film! Jennifer Lawrence is such a goddess!!!

Finally, this week we received the exciting news that we'll be spending one week of our month-long winter break in Nanjing doing service projects with the Beijing NSLI-Y students and another week of the break in Hangzhou (where my sister was this past summer) living with temporary host families and focusing on cultural immersion studies! January and February will certainly be an exciting time!