I apologize for the lack of blog posts lately but after our journey to the Silk Road and our second test I have been very busy and very sleepy. However, for about the 5th time in my life I did not procrastinate while doing my homework so I have some free time to give y'all some updates. The first of which is the destination of our upcoming independent travel weekend. Selina and I will be journeying to Tibet for a week starting next Friday. I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to be doing this. It takes two days by train to get there and we'll be staying in a hostel. We have no idea what our accommodations will be like but I think that's part of the adventure. We will have a personal tour guide and driver for the week and then we will have the last day before our train to explore by ourselves. We are not allowed to go outside the city by ourselves, hence the guide and driver, so we will most likely have to stay in Lhasa on our last day. We have no idea what to expect but I have never been this excited for a vacation. It's the chance of a lifetime and I'm so grateful to be doing it.
On another note, we had our second test last Friday and I made a 20 point improvement!!! Granted, my last test score left miles of room for improvement but I think 20 points is pretty awesome. I can definitely tell the difference from learning Chinese in the US and learning it here. Having to speak in Chinese and listen in Chinese everyday of the week has inspired great improvement in my language skills. I'm no where near fluent but I can manage much better than I could when we arrived in September.
Today we didn't have language class in the morning but our teachers took us to a local outdoor sports park where older people and people with children go in the mornings to exercise, dance, or just walk around. When we first got there our teachers tried to make us dance with the other Chinese couples. They were doing some form of the Cha Cha that I have never seen before but I tried it anyways. I got the footwork down but when it came to twirling I kept spinning the wrong way and my partner was an older Chinese man who just laughed at me. After failing to master the twirling, my partner gave up on me and moved onto someone else. Oh well :) After the dancing we were required to go around the park and strike up conversations with the old people or children or anyone who didn't speak any English. I talked to a woman and her daughter and an older man and couldn't understand too much because they talked so fast but after asking them to repeat it a couple times I got the gist. After a while Bill and I went to play badminton. After a few minutes Zhu Laoshi came over and we asked her if she wanted to play and she said yes. She plays for fun on the weekends so she was much better than we are but it was a lot of fun. Zhao Laoshi came over as well and everyone wanted to play against the teachers but they beat all of us easily. Overall it was a good morning.
In the afternoon Bill and I played hookie and instead of going to economics class we went to a local park about 45 minutes away from our dorms. It was absolutely beautiful. It's the largest park I've ever seen and it had many peaceful spots to rest and sleep. They also have horseback riding, paddle boats, and paint ball. It was so nice to be outside and not cooped up inside for 3 hours in econ. We ventured to the cedar tree area and perched ourselves on a small hill to read and take a short nap. I was reading my book and Bill was dozing off for a bit when I thought I heard hoof beats coming from the trees. I put my book down and Bill raised his head and we watched about a dozen horses run out of the trees and around the next bend. It was so random and unexpected that we turned our heads to look at each other as if to ask "did that just happen?" About 1 minute later we could see about a dozen more grazing in the trees and then more and more horses came out of the trees and ran by or stopped to graze in front of us. Apparently every now and then they just let the horses run amuck in the park and eat the grass. We picked up our things and followed them around the bend and found about 40 of them spread out in one of the grassy areas. I grew up around horses so it wasn't the novelty of seeing them but seeing so many in a park in the middle of Shanghai running around like a wild herd was pretty cool. It was good way to end a pretty outstanding, and much needed, mental health day :)
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