Tuesday, May 27
Photo 1: Dinner
Photo 2: Free kites for the advanced class
After a long weekend in a somewhat surreal environment, returning to Nanjing was something of a shock, but it didn't take long for everyone to get back in the swing of things. Today was a fairly typical class day consisting of four hours of language classes, two hours with language partners, and an evening guest speaker. The morning started out with an odd experience at Momentum, the only place near our hotel with affordable hot coffee open before 10 am. I had run out of small bills and needed to get change for 100 yuan when I bought my morning coffee, but the cashier couldn't open the cash register. Thankfully, Rebecca, Molly, and Jonny were able to translate enough to let me know they had made me coffee anyway so I didn't have to borrow money. I'll try to pay for it tomorrow even though I know they won't accept because I felt guilty accepting the coffee without paying.
While most of the other students are in classes with other Northeastern students who are all required to participate in the language pledge, I am in an international class with students from many different countries including South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Sweden. While they are not supposed to speak to me in English, they do sometimes translate words I don't know – their class started two months before I joined and made more progress than I had in my previous class at Northeastern – and one student in particular enjoys teasing everyone. And especially me on days when I can't speak English to come up with a good retort. I had to learn some new phrases to be able to reply, so I think he's actually helping me learn.
During the language partner session today, the Intermediate and Advanced groups went to visit Nanda's hospital clinic and to fly kites respectively. As one of the two in the beginner class, I stayed behind to work with my language partner. As part of the lesson, he asked us to explain the worst illness or injury we have ever had, which involved much cell-phone dictionary consulting on our parts and surprise on his part as to why the other student couldn't remember his injury and why I was indoor rock climbing at the age of six. I think he was more shocked that my parents let me rock climb at that age than that I almost broke my back doing so.
While waiting for my dinner at my favorite Bird Flu Alley shop, I actually had a conversation with the owner, who always insists I take a chair, even when I'm only taking food to go. It was a very simple conversation that consisted mainly of her asking me simple questions, but it was the first time I managed to understand someone with a regional accent at all, which hopefully indicates progress in my Chinese. She's a very nice women who, it turns out, has a daughter a few years older than me who is currently studying at Nanda.
Tonight's guest speaker was probably the most interesting for me so far. Ms. Zhu Mei works for one of the government's water quality control offices, which is attempting to clean up Taihu Lake. As someone who has done environmental work before, I was very interested in what she had to say and received answers to several questions that I have been wondering about for some time. Many of the other students were less interested, but environmental protection is an important issue for China and it was important information for the cultural aspect of our Dialogue to learn about how China is attempting to clean up its pollution and make the environment safer for its population.
- Mika Brown
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