Adjusting to life back in Tianjin

When we got the taxi back from the airport to university it felt so surreal to be back in China again, to see and hear Chinese everywhere. Without a doubt, I have not managed to shake that feeling of surrealness this month. This month has flown by and it feels simultaneously like I never left Tianjin and that I only returned home from travelling yesterday.

During the first week of being back in Tianjin we spent a lot of time catching up with the scholars and sharing our many stories from travelling. We also had lots of chores to do once we go back, such as washing, unpacking and renewing phone contracts - no parents to lend a hand! We also caught up with our friends from last term that I hadn't seen since I left for travelling. It felt strange to be back in an ordinary routine and do normal things because when I was travelling it was almost every day that I was in a new place and we were constantly thinking of how we were going to get our next destination.

It felt weird to walk around campus and see different faces that we didn't recognise. It was sad at first because it reminded us of our friends who were not back for a second term but we soon started to make new friends from different places. This time, we were able to make friends using only Chinese instead of English!

The first week of term reminded me of the first week of our time in China as it was structured the same, with proficiency tests and the start of classes. The first week put into perspective just how far we have come. I remember the first week being a complete blur of opening bank accounts, starting phone contracts, only eating instant noodles and feeling completely overwhelmed with Chinese. Now this term we were in a position to give other people advice!

As Tianjin Foreign Studies in a campus university, it can be very easy to stay on campus as there is not much else you need that is not on campus! Because of this, this term we have decided to make a conscious effort to go off campus. Even if it is to just go for a coffee, go to the cinema or walk to 民园 stadium, getting off campus allows us to see more of Tianjin!

The majority of this month has been work! Without a doubt, we were thrown straight back into our studies. I am now in 中级一班 which is three classes above the class I was in last term which is a very big jump! The classes are very intense; I now have four classes: intensive reading, extensive reading, conversation class and listening class. Extensive reading is my hardest class because you aren't meant to understand every word in the passage but be able to understand enough to answer questions. It can feel a bit overwhelming when you only recognise a few characters in the passage. My teachers are really nice, one of my teachers speaks Portuguese. Sometimes she speaks to the Portuguese people in our class in Portuguese and they can explain to us in English if there's something we don't understand! Our class is a lot smaller this term which I like as we get more time to ask questions and understand the grammar points. Although our classes are very hard, it doesn't feel as hard as it was at the start of last term. Last term, at first, I couldn't understand a word the teacher said nor any of the characters in the textbook. Now, I can understand everything the teachers says and I can understand the majority of characters in my intensive reading textbook!

We have also had extra work as in April we are sitting HSK 4. HSK 4 has 1200 characters - which feels a little bit impossible! We have been working very hard to try to learn them all. It is a lot of work to prepare for this exam but our Chinese friends are helping us so hopefully we will feel prepared enough in April!

The last, and most scary feeling, is that we have started looking at flights home in July. There has recently been a new route direct from Beijing to Edinburgh which some of the scholars have already booked. I can't believe that we have been in China more time than we have left. I remember joking in October that we only had 9 months left! Now that number has changed to 3 months. That is terrifying to me! I can't believe that this experience will one day be over.

Ailsa