20

I spent this week in Nanjing. I was surprised how much I loved the city; It is really beautiful and has such good vibes! 

On Saturday, we took the high speed train from Shanghai to Nanjing which only took about 2 hours. After we got to the hotel we explored the surrounding area (around Nanjing University) which was rich with chic shops and restaurants. I had my first veggie burger since being in China! 

That afternoon we met the Beijing NSLI-Y kids (Selene, Malin, Claire, Katerina, Savannah, Cameron, Manish, Alex, and David) for the first time! They're super cool and we all clicked really well. We ate delicious spicy hot pot for dinner and then headed to KTV. We sang everything from Grease to Lady Gaga, Chinese folk songs to Snoop Dogg and turned it into an outrageously fun dance party. 

On Monday, we visited started off out service work with some elderly at a community center in Nanjing. Brady brought his banjo, I brought my guitar, and Manish brought his Kuaiban (a traditional bamboo percussion instrument) and so between that and our talented group of singers, we participated in an exchange of creative expression with our elderly Chinese counterparts. They had also prepared acts as diverse as sword dancing, operatic singing, active group dancing, and Taiqi. The spirit and vigor of our elderly friends was truly inspiring! One man belted out Edelweiss in Chinese and another lady graced us with the tunes she sang as a Mama Mia performer in her younger days. After the performances, we got a chance to converse one-on-one with the community members. They were so fun and sweet and it was fascinating to see both historical and contemporary China through their personal stories and unique perspectives. 

Manish, Malin, Claire, Katerina, Alex, Savannah, Cameron, Selene, David

On Tuesday, we held the NSLI-Y required mid-year program workshop on communication. It was interesting hearing about others' experiences and perceptions concerning personal, American and Chinese styles of communication. 

After lunch, we visited the Grace Home for people with special needs. They taught us a song called "our cute home" and we taught them "if you're happy and you know it". We also drew portraits of each other and played an animal charades game. Everyone was so unbelievably sweet and their happiness was infectious.

That evening, Tilden, Maike, Claire, Savannah, Katerina and I all explored the city a little and ate dinner at a fabulous and very authentic Indian restaurant! Indian food was my last meal in Tucson and I haven't had it since then so it was a cool midway kind of celebration!

On Wednesday, we visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. It was really heavy but important to see; I was glad that it also expressed hope for future peace and prosperity. 

That afternoon, we went back to Grace Home and sang more songs with the students, played with clay and decorated frames for Polaroids of all of us. It was lovely getting to spend time with everyone again! 

On Thursday we spent the day with a classroom of elementary school children on an island on the Yangtze(长江) river. In the morning, we performed songs for the students and they performed a kung fu routine for us. W then held an English lesson related to Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat and then played a few rounds of "Telephone". For lunch, each American student went home with an elementary school student and ate at their home with their family. My lunch family was so sweet and showed me around the island, which is now under extensive development; everyone is being relocated for the project and it will be entirely indistinguishable in a couple of years. It's kind of amazing to observe Chinese urban development in action.  

During the afternoon, we taught the students "If you're happy and you know it", decorated frames for Polaroids, and played Bingo. 

It was overall a long but really excellent and rewarding day. 

On Friday we went to the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum. It was a beautiful place just outside of Nanjing and it was interesting to see how leaders of the Kuomintang are still definitely commemorated in mainland China despite being disfavored by the historical Communist party. 

That afternoon we went to the YMCA to spend time with middle schoolers. We talked with them about American schools and holidays and designed talent show presentations before having a pizza party and tasting some of the delicious homemade snacks that their parents had sent with them in lunch boxes. There was one particularly feisty girl in my group who wanted to help me with my winter break homework. It was so cute! 

By the end I was exhausted but also totally blissed out. It was a great way to end a week of fun and service in Nanjing.

Saturday, we packed up, said goodbye to the Beijing kids ('til we see them again in Hangzhou in two weeks), and headed back to Shanghai. It's always wonderful to travel around China and I always find it interesting when it makes me realize that I really do think of Shanghai as "home". 

It's been such a fast and fabulous five months here and because I know these next four are going to fly by even faster, I am determined to enjoy every moment.

19

The first week of break was filled with both exhilarating exploration of Shanghai and some much needed relaxation. 

My host sister still had to go to classes, so we stayed at our apartment by the metro station, making galavants around the city very convenient. 

Sunday I went with my NSLI-Y chums to the Science and Technology Museum. There were rad exhibits about space, 3D printing, human health, ecology, and more! I particularly enjoyed the Chinese IMAX feature we went to called "Wired to Win: Surviving le Tour de France" which explored the neurology of cyclist competitors in persevering through phenomenal physical challenges. There were also overwhelmingly sublime shots of French landscapes that made me miss the mountains back home so much. 

After exploring the museum, my friend Maike and I decided to get the traditional Chinese medicine cupping (拔火罐 ba huo guan) treatment. It was great for our stressed muscles and I was happy because I got to start some of my research for next semester's project. I have actually made a lot of headway on prepping for that this week! 

On Monday I recorded my singing voice for our Nanjing project. We'll be teaching fun songs to the children at the disabled home in Nanjing and are making a CD that we can leave for the home after we leave. Maike and I recorded "Wheels on the Bus" and "If You're Happy and You Know it", which along with others' voices will actually be mixed by my RD's big-shot music producer JFish (who apparently has mixed for Kanye West and the like) so I have high expectations. Haha. 

After recording, I went with Tilden and Maike back to the postcard palace / café for a while where we drank Thai tea, chatted and wrote our hearts out. 

Tuesday I met up with Heather, a friend from the States who used to manage the B-line restaurant in Tucson but who now manages a restaurant company in China, splitting her time between Shanghai and Hong Kong. 

We had lunch at the delicious Sichuan Citizen restaurant in the French Concession neighborhood. It was great to catch up with Heather and explore that part of the French Concession a bit  (not to mention the food was so good! Yay for spice!) 

I took a few days to relax a bit, but on Saturday I went with Tilden to a yoga class and went café hopping in the French Concession. 

We also went to the iconic center of Shanghai: People's Square, where we found out that the museum of contemporary art is exhibiting Yayoi Kusama (an amazing Japanese artist who I adore)! The line to get into the exhibit literally wound around the entire park, so although we decided to come back before it ends in March, it was so exciting. 

We also found ourself in the middle of the infamous "Singles' Market", where hopeful parents come to find spouses for their unmarried children. It was definitely a disconcerting sight. 

All in all a great day of city exploration though! 

And we leave for our trip to Nanjing tomorrow morning bright and early. So excited!

18

This week was my birthday! It totally snuck up on me; I still can't really believe I am 19. 

Over the weekend, my host mom made me a delicious (early) birthday dinner of the traditional 寿面 (shou mian) or birthday noodles that are extra long to represent long life. Chinese noodles are basically my favorite thing so that was awesome especially since she paired them with my favorite tofu dishes (stinky tofu and this soy-sauce variety that I'm not exactly sure how to explain since we don't even have this type of tofu / su ji in the States) and a bamboo/egg dish! She also bought me a very fuzzy warm jacket and pants, which I am so delighted about! 

On Monday (my actual birthday), I went out to dinner at Pancake Day with my American girlfriends (Tilden, Maike, Megan, Sara, Carmen) to celebrate by having "breakfast for dinner" (another of my all-time favorite things). There were blueberry deckers, apple-cinnamon capote, banana-walnuts, banana-strawberries, chocolate and milkshakes! Tilden even brought along the local Vermont maple syrup she has from the States. 

My friends went around and told me each a thing they appreciate about me and made me some of the sweetest cards I have ever received. 

Quick shout out to my generous mom for sponsoring this outing!

During night study, my Japanese friends (Reo, Saori, and Yasu) surprised me with handmade paper cranes and Johanna (from Estonia) gave me the the cutest socks in the world (taking the opportunity here to plug a pic of the hand-knitted socks Tilden's grandma made for each of us for the holidays).

After night study, everyone gathered for birthday cheesecake in the courtyard! Yasu gave me the most heart-felt and dramatic rendition of "Happy Birthday" in English that I've ever had the pleasure to hear. That boy is such a diva! I love him so much! No one had a lighter, so I ended up making a wish on imaginary candlelight. I'm not worried though, so many of my wishes are already coming true! 

All in all it was an awesome first birthday abroad. The love I felt from back home was enormously heartwarming and I am so honored to have such lovely friends here as well. 

In our Tuesday music class, we watched a really disturbing but enlightening movie called KeKeXiLi (可可西里）about the devastating poaching of Tibetan antelope and the rangers who tried to end it. It's pretty brutal, so I don't recommend it to the faint-of-heart, but it was also a pretty powerful film about preservation and sacrifice. 

We also let our new year lanterns fly on Tuesday. 

On Wednesday and Thursday we had our final exams, all of which went well! 

Thursday night we went out to celebrate our Germans (Noah and Jens) who were only here for a semester and will be leaving to go home next week! We'll miss 'em so much! 

We went to a really rad cafe/bookstore that sells a huge variety of postcards. You can send yourself postcards years in the future! I wasn't in the writing zone that night, but I'm definitely going to come back before the end of the year. 

On Friday we had a little ceremony where I won two "outstanding student" scholarship awards and where Megan and I won a cash-prize for having the cleanest dorm room on our floor! 

That afternoon we packed up everything for the month-long Spring Festival vacation! 

My last hurdle before I could start relaxing though, was the HSK (Chinese language level test) on Saturday. I rode the metro with my Japanese and Italian friends Saori, Eriko, Rachele, Susanna and Luca to the testing center to take the paper-based level 4 test. 

I'll find out my scores in one month, but I felt really good about it. 

And now I am finally free! Yippee!!!

17

This week has been pretty crazy! 

It was a little strange being in school for New Year's Eve, but it also made me realize how arbitrary the meaning really is that we give to some days of the year. 

It's another year full of possibilities, but the opportunities to live my life to the fullest don't just start when I enter into 2014. I do feel empowered to continue taking good care of my body, mind and spirit so that I can feel proud of my language progress and make the most of my overall experience in China though.

Also in our art class this week, we did write down things we'd like to see / make happen in 2014 on these awesome red lanterns that you let drift off into the sky. Returning to the States in June and starting school in September will be much larger transitions than that between December 31st and January 1st, so that's when most of my lantern-list will be realized, but in general I feel really excited and optimistic about this coming year. 

As for this week: 

On Monday we gave our NSLI-Y 1st semester research project presentations! It was fun to see what my American classmates had discovered through their research: 

Sara's project was on student diet and health; Tilden explored the world of Chinese wedding culture; Megan looked at child-rearing; Brady described Chinese gaming culture; Maike's topic was Shanghai's elderly population; Carmen talked about foreign trading in Shanghai; Paris discussed Chinese math curricula; Keiondre did his project on Chinese social networks; and of course I examined the cultural role of public green space (parks and squares) in Shanghai.

They were all excellently researched/presented topics and it feels really good to finally be done, at least for this semester. 

For next semester's topic, I'm planning on researching Chinese medicine, which will give me the push I need to go out and explore that part of Chinese culture a little more. 

Tuesday night I spent at my host family's to celebrate the New Year. I took it pretty mellow, staying up with my host sister and watching Inception (which I had never seen). 

Although Shanghai is a very international Chinese city where there is a large party/performance downtown (a little of which we watched online), the shift from one calendar year to the next isn't a huge deal here. Lunar new year on the 31st of January is where it's at! 

I really look forward to celebrating that here this year. 

New Year's Day I made dumplings with my host mom and grandma. I'm definitely improving the aesthetic quality of my dumplings and look forward to making them all the time for everyone when I come back to the States :) 

After the brief respite, I went back to school for night study and to finish up the rest of the week. 

Next week is our last before winter break! We have finals and the HSK and then we're freeeee! I'm quite stoked.