Speaking of Homes...

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Hey everyone!

So the news for the week is that on Saturday I moved into my homestay! While I've known that I would be moving into the homestay for the past two weeks or so, it wasn't until lunch on Thursday that we were given any information about our families. By the way, only four of us moved into homestays, as it is a part of the language intensive program to live in homestays for half of the semester (yes, that means our midterm tests are this Friday. So soon!). Anyways, when I say we were given information, it was very minimal, as in who has siblings, and whose family will have a car (critical information, as we were all wondering how we would get our stuff to the new houses). So on Friday, I packed up my dorm room and got myself ready to leave the dorms! (I swear my stuff has exponentially increased in volume since the last time I was packing. It seems like I always end up with more stuff than I started out with whenever I pack to move to a new location...) On Saturday morning my host father came to campus to pick me up, and we were off to my new home!

My new home is an apartment about a 20-45 minute bus drive (depending on the traffic) away from the school. Because it is so far, I am worried that I will end up spending lots more time alone than I have so far, since all of my classmates were so close. Ian, who was already living in a homestay since he was here for the summer as well, told me that it is likely I will spend more time alone, but I'm hoping I will be able to figure out how to balance my time on campus with my time at home in the apartment.

Both of the parents work. The dad is in IT, and I still haven't found out what the mom does. My younger sister (who coincidentally shares the same name as my real sister) seems to attend class all the time. Over the weekend she went to at least three different classes, and it seemed as though when she wasn't at class, she was doing homework. I have yet to meet any of her friends, which makes me wonder if among all of the time spent studying, she has time to just get together with friends and play. I feel like when I was her age, I was less interested in the schoolwork and more interested in having friends over it going to their houses. After speaking about grades and scholarships and such with my host family, they seemed surprised when I told them my parents weren't strict about schoolwork and doing certain activities growing up. I think I got pretty lucky growing up in that I didn't mind doing schoolwork. Of course I preferred playing with friends, but I've never truly hated homework to the extent that I know some people do.

I think living in the host family will help my Chinese quite a bit, because the way my host parents say some of the words are so different from how my teachers and classmates speak, and even from my language partner. I still haven't quite figured out exactly what it is, but the other day Ian mentioned that his host family often slurs their words, and I think that could be it. It could also be that they have a different accent; I'm still not sure on that one. So far, though, it's been a bit of a struggle to understand them, and sometimes I misunderstand even the simplest sentences, which is awkward. I think it probably seems like I know much less than I actually do, which is a little frustrating, but I'm hoping I become accustomed to their speaking soon. My lack of understanding works for my younger sister though, who takes the opportunity to practice her English by translating what they have said for me. Her English is actually surprisingly good, to the point where she's proven her English is much better than my Chinese.

Another challenge that I will have to overcome is the fact that the bathroom has cockroaches 蟑螂(zhāngláng). I hate bugs. Imaging my surprise when I turned on the bathroom light and at least ten cockroaches started scurrying for cover. The worst was the one that was sitting on the toilet cover. He didn't know where to go, which I could have ignored if I hadn't had to pee so badly. But I did, so I kind of perched and went fast. If I hadn't had to go, I would've just said “screw it” and held it for the rest of the night, but alas, I did have to. I've decided that I will overcome this by using the bathroom earlier in the evening (like 11 at the latest) to try and finish in there before they even start venturing out. Out of sight, out of mind, right? (The correct answer is no, out of sight, more paranoid.)

Anyways, that's all for this week. Until next time!

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Photos

View from my apartment on the first day
As of right now, I don't have any pictures of/with the family, so you all will have to do with this picture of the terrible 空氣污染 (kōngqì wūrǎn) air pollution

On the way to the Forbidden City
Not mentioned in the post, we finally visited the Forbidden City on Friday. The air quality was pretty bad that day, too.