I'm on a Boat

On Monday I got home from school at 6:30.  Ivy had told me that she was going out to dinner with some of her friends so I sat down with my host mom, dad, and grandma for dinner.  Considering they speak almost no English and I speak practically no Chinese, dinner was pretty quiet.  Afterwards, I went upstairs and took a shower and started on my homework.  It was really hard because normally Ivy and I do it together so she can help me but since she wasn’t there I was completely on my own.  I had finished everything except I still had to translate twelve characters into pinyin (Chinese characters written phonetically) and then into English because I had a test the next day on it.  Unfortunately, I do not know any characters and my teacher assumes that our host sibling will be available to translate for us.  But Ivy was gone!  Just when I was about to give up my host dad knocked on my door and in very broken English asked, “Chinese homework? Can I help?”  I said “Shi de” (which means “yes”).  We went down to the office and my host dad rewrote all the characters in my notebook and then with the help of my dictionary, my host mom and her computer, and my host dad’s smartphone, we wrote the pinyin and English.  I was touched by how sweet they were and how much they genuinely wanted to help.  And they got so excited when I read the pinyin back to them!  It was a great bonding moment and even though I don’t speak the same language as them, they still treat me like a daughter.

On Tuesday instead of afternoon class, we went downtown to a martial arts museum.  There were some interactive exhibits and Agatha, Richard, Tafari, and I almost beat the high score on a reflex game (although I'm not sure if it counts as cheating since all four of us had to work together).  Afterwards we went to this gym (no AC- I was dying) where we met all these other exchange students and watched some martial arts routines.  It got slightly embarrassing when our group was asked to perform something.  We had nothing to do and had about 3 minutes to prepare so we ended up singing the National Anthem (which was hilarious considering none of the other exchange groups were American).  Then we went on a cruise on the Huangpu River with the other students and I got a chance to talk to these two French girls who were really nice.  I'm glad I had gotten to the see the Bund on Friday night because not all the lights were on during the cruise so it wasn't as pretty.  But still, it was pretty cool!

xoxo

sar  

Here we are at the beginning of the cruise. 

This is us with our two new French friends (they're in the orange shirts).