3 weeks has flown by so quickly that I have written 21 different entries and not once updated my blog! Anyways, where to start? Let’s just say that over the past few weeks my friends Lili, Stowe, and I have been filming a video for a Chinese movie competition. The theme is “My China Experience”, so we have been exploring and walking around Beijing, interviewing locals and asking them all sorts of questions. It was very successful and our video has now been sent off to be judged. Hopefully something good will come out if it!

Besides walking around in the Hutongs, watching little pantless babies run around and old men playing Chinese chess, taking photos of hanging meat and watching fish being bartered in a market, I have been up to lots of exciting things.

My Chinese has improved a lot, and now every time I get into a taxi, a bus or a train, I have conversations with people. I can understand more words, and I am beginning to understand the meanings of the shop signs which flicker past me as I ride my bike around the city.

My family has been doing well. My sister passed an examination (I helped a little ), which has enabled her to take part in an M.U.N conference in some of the IVY league universities in America. She’ll be gone most of February. My baba is great.. drinking a little too much tea, and is getting a little chubby. He teaches me 5 new Chinese words a night, and has promised me that I am going to be fluent by the end of this year! Without him my homesickness would be A LOT worse.. My mama can be a little tough.. today I “washed my clothes in the wrong bucket” and “wasted all of Africa’s water”. But it’s okay.. I understand why she was a little annoyed, however I didn’t appreciate the loud Chinese words being shouted at me! Apart from that, my mama is super!

Overall, school has been a little tough. The first quarter here is finished, and about 200 more days. It seems like a long time, but in reality, time is flying by so quickly!

I have started teaching English at a Migrant School a little outside of the city. It is a school where migrant workers send their children to be educated because they have been rejected to go to normal Beijing schools. The school is pretty run down, but the children seem very happy, and are especially eager and excited to learn English.

I love China, despite the few cases of homesickness I have had. Like a cough can be cured with some cough syrup, being homesick can be cured with a dosage of exploration in Beijing. In two weeks I am off to live in the rural parts of China, which will be a goood break from school work!