After passing out with the lights on at 9pm last night, I woke up at 5am and finished up my homework this morning. At my host family's, we had a nice multicultural breakfast of an egg with soy sauce, a corn dog, a croissant, and a pear and banana milk shake, which we drank with a bubble tea straw. I think when Chinese people have the choice to, they pick and choose what Western culture they want in their lives. My host family wanted the croissant, but they kept the egg with soy sauce over maybe scrambled eggs. I get dropped off at school, but take the public bus back home everyday. Traffic is not that bad here in Nanjing; even at the very peaks of the rush hours, the delay is about twenty minutes maximum. Though I do think it's a little worse on the highways. My host mother, Jing A yi, drives my host sister, Jing Yi, first to Jing Yi's middle school and then me to Nanjing University; this is the best time to practice all the little Chinese I know without feeling guilty, because light and meaningless talk is acceptable when we are all stuck in the car, and light talk is better than no talk. Jing A Yi told me in the car that Jing Yi came to my room last night and turned the lights off for me. I was so touched because Jing Yi is very shy and doesn't talk to me that much. She's still the nicest and the sweetest person; She drew me a map after the first day of school when I got lost for 2 hours on my way back home and went on a bus tour of Nanjing, even to the very rural parts I believe. I think if Jing Yi and I had more time together, she would open up to me eventually, but she is super busy with school work at the moment to spend time with me.
At school, we took a quiz, a "Ting Xie" (listen and write), as usual and had to recite a Chinese poem. After going over the chapter dialogues and vocabulary, we are also given a few minutes to pair up and write a script for a role play. Our Laoshi wanted us to practice writing scripts because role play is a section of OPI, a standardized test for advanced Chinese speakers. Taking Chinese classes while being in China has motivated me more to pay attention in class. I finally understand the importance of tones, because Chinese people would just give me blank stares whenever I speak without carefully drawing out the tones with my fingers for each syllable I say. I also try harder to remember words that I think will be useful, and for sure I always bump into chances to make use of my new vocabulary.
After Chinese class and then lunch, we were off to Nanjing Vocation School of Tourism and Nutrition for our second and last visit. On our first visit I made friends with my partners who taught me how to cook Chinese food in a wok. Though we were bad at communicating with each other, we had so much fun together, and I've been counting my days to come back to see them again today. Today we got to make dumplings and Shao Mai, both of which required rolling the dough into thin circles and wrapping the filling with it. It was very hard to cut the dough into even pieces, and then roll them into perfect circles. Anyone else in the world probably would use a longer rolling stick to roll the whole piece of dough evenly, then use a cup or something to cut out identical circular pieces, but not for the Chinese. They had to manually rip off "cubes" from the dough, then make the "cubes" into "circles" by rolling with a specific, tiny roller that's thicker in the middle and thinner on the edges to make the outer part of the circle thinner than the middle, because the middle is where the meat goes and requires more support. Rolling the dough was more interesting for me than actually making the dumplings, but our partners kept insisting that they do the tedious work, while I have fun making dumplings. One of their students stood next to us and made fancy dumplings with different patterns and shapes. When he was done, he gave us those dumplings to boil. We were happy that our dumpling collection looked better now, but little did we know, as we were all eating the dumplings, the selfish ones who took the pretty dumplings got to taste dough-filled dumplings, so basically just boiled dough. He said it was a joke, and we all had a good laugh. I thought the boiled dough tasted pretty good, but I don't think Mike thought the same.
It was incredibly hard to leave the Nanjing Vocation School. It was cruel or dumb of me to get so close to them, because I knew from the beginning that I was going to leave. I got email addresses from two of them to keep in touch (one of them are going to Korea to study! Maybe I will see her there!), it was a really hard concept to grasp that I may never in my life see them again. Maybe! I'll see those two again, but what about all the others? Now that I am so sad thinking about them, how did I even get so close to them? I don't speak Chinese, and they don't speak English. And if I knew that I only had two chances to see them, why would I put myself in that situation to become so attached by the time we had to go? We had nothing going for us to become close; we didn't share a language; we didn't have similar life styles or life goals to relate with each other at all, nor did we have the same culture or mindset.
To top it off, we were at a mutual understanding that any friendship we form would have to end in two weeks. How and why did we get so close? Did we "click"? I think that would be an understatement, considering how everyone felt the connection I am sure. Was it because we ate together? I read it somewhere that the fastest ways to get closer to someone is to either eat with them or to talk about someone both of you hate behind his back. Maybe it was the "gourmet powder" they put in our food that made us become so close. I don't know what it is, but it's still really hard to think that I am on a trip, and that this is all going to end soon, and that next Tuesday, I won't come back to cook with my Chinese friends here. Tonight, to make myself feel better and since I am in China, I will think in an eastern mindset and believe there is neither a beginning nor an end to this world. Even if I die today, I will just reincarnate and be happy to live my next life.
-- Hallie J.
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