Hello again Everyone, hard to believe it’s been over a week since I have posted last, so my apologies for waiting for so long. It’s been one of those weird weeks where it felt so long in the moment but last Sunday doesn’t seem all that long ago. This week has forced me to do a bit of planning as I have so much left to do but I have only 2 weeks left here. My time here is quickly coming to an end, but I have so much work and travelling left to do. But before I can really get into what I have left to do, I should probably tell you what I have been doing since I last posted.
It’s about 6:30 PM on Sunday July 19th as I sit here writing this, I’ve just spent most of my day writing the rough draft of my research report for my latest research project. That’s pretty much been the story of my week, that research project. This time around, because I had less time to do it, I picked a simpler research topic, but I think that it’s still fairly important. This time I researched how college students watch movies. I interviewed 9 people about what kind of movies they watch, when they watch them, how many they watch a week, how they watch them, and would they watch banned movies (yes, in China they do ban movies. In America they ban books as well.).
All of the work that I put into this project just wore me out though, so I had a pretty relaxed weekend. Friday night and almost all of Saturday I spent watching movies and relaxing. I did go out on Saturday night for dinner and spent a little time at Jinji Lake, but overall it was a very relaxing and quiet weekend.
Next weekend will not be that way at all. Sometime in the next two weeks I need to do some sort of community service project and write a report about it. Next weekend I’ll be doing some travelling. Sometime on Saturday I’ll leave from Suzhou and ride the train to Nanjing. I’ll spend most of the the afternoon exploring all of the places that I used to hang out and then that night I plan on treating my host family to dinner to say thank you for putting up with me everyday for 5 months. Sometime on Sunday I’ll take a train from Nanjing to Shanghai to visit my TA, Sha from Mount Union. At Mount Union, I was in a special Chinese language program and the university put us all 10 of us in this one house with our TA, so we all became quite close with her. I’m so excited to see my host family and Sha again!!
It should all be fun, but quite tiring on top of school work and our new research projects. This trip will be over before I know it, and I have mixed emotions about this trip ending. On the one hand, I love being in China, eating real Chinese food, and speaking Chinese everyday. I can definitely tell that my Chinese has improved a bit since I’ve gotten here. However, as I get further along in my academic career, I find myself with more and more responsibilities, leaving less time time to spend with my family and friends. I must admit that I am really looking forward to getting back so that I can spend a week with my parents and see some friends before I move back into school.
I think now I’m going to actually post some of my pictures. Stay posted gang.
*Edit: Due to some technical difficulties, pictures won’t be put up tonight
As always, I welcome any emails that you want send me and will answer any questions that you have about what’s going on!
See you all soon!
-TR