This past week has gone by so fast and so many things happened. This past week I had to do a research project and present my findings. For this project I chose the topic of “How American Pop Culture Effects the Youth of China” (美国流行文化对中国年轻人的影响). For this project, I had to go and interview people around Suzhou about their thoughts and feelings towards American pop culture. I sort of got the results that I expected, but not entirely. They mostly said that movies have the most influence on Chinese youth, but it wasn’t as large of a majority as I was expecting it to be. The hardest part about it all was either finding the courage to ask random strangers their thoughts on this or the presentation of my results, I’m not sure which. Overall though, I’d like to think that my research was successful and it might be the start for my research in the future for the OSU Flagship program.
Even though I was working hard on my research, I did get to have some fun this week. On Thursday night, I watched “The Big Lebowski” with one of my classmates who had never seen it before. Friday night after all of our presentations were done, we went and explored the city a little bit together. We found a really cool sports bar that has a couple of pool tables and western food, so we had some fun and a little change of pace when it comes to food. Saturday morning our class and our language tutors all went to a nearby mountain and hiked to the top. It wasn’t that tall and it had a path on it so it wasn’t too difficult. It was really nice though because it a drizzling the whole time and it kept me cool. The view from the top was so pretty, especially when you watched the fog blow over the mountains. It was such a beautiful sight and I wish I had a better camera to capture that moment. Saturday night a few of us all hung out together and had a pretty quiet night. We played some cards and shared a few laughs, so I have to say that this weekend was a big success all around. Today, however, will be nice, relaxing, and productive.
I’m really excited for a couple of weeks from now when we go on our study trip. We will all go to Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai. For those of you who don’t know (which is probably very very few of you at this point because some of my friends have told me that I never shut up about it, haha) that the first time I was in China, I lived in Nanjing for 5 months and went to high school there for a semester. I haven’t seen Nanjing in 4 years and I am so excited to go back and see the old stomping grounds.
Unfortunately, I have to wrap this up and go be productive today. Have a good one everyone!