School, St Andrews and speaking exams

Looking back November was one of the busiest months so far!

After Halloween celebrations, which included dunking for apples in the hall with the rest of the scholars and our Korean neighbours, a night out in last minute costume and trick or treating with our American friend, we were thrown head first into midterms!

We had an exam for each of our classes which for my class （准中级班）was 4; two reading, one speaking and one listening exam. Each exam was different but we all did decently well and worked very hard. Our speaking exam was the most fun by far! We had to make a 15 minute long play in which we speak for 3 minutes each and perform it in front of the class. So we decided to make a play about us getting lost, which the class loved. It was great fun seeing what the other groups in the class had made up too.

Here is some useful exam vocab:

卷子  Exam paper

考试  Exam

铅笔  Pencil

圆珠笔  Ballpoint pen

作业  Homework

Another thing we did this month was participate in food club! We made sushi and sushi triangles which was delicious!

One day when I was out on a bike ride I bumped into my old Chinese teacher! Kevin and I got her wechat and decided to meet up one day and visit her. She took us to her apartment and we had a tea ceremony and drank delicious warm tea before heading out to a nearby park.

Chinese parks are nothing like Scottish parks. They’re a lot livelier with people walking, working out and dancing from dawn till dusk. The park we went to had a zoo next to it and a restaurant in it so we decided to go to the restaurant for some traditional Chinese food. This included pies, chicken, fish and even crab!

We decided we would meet up with our teacher again at the school where we volunteer and we recruited some friends to come with us to show the children some Scottish culture. Some of the children were only 8 years old but spoke English almost fluently! They loved watching a presentation about Scotland and then we gave them a class in Scottish country dancing.

New to Tianjin is the Binhai library inside the Binhai cultural centre. A few of us went there to explore what was said to be ‘the most beautiful library in China’ and were shocked by the stunning architecture. In Chinese library is 图书馆.

Our next big event was the St Andrew’s day ball! An expensive but exciting night out. It gave us a chance to dress up and relax. We stayed overnight in Beijing in a nice quiet hotel, our room was really nice! We had ordered a family room which ended up being an like an apartment with a hall, big bedroom, bathroom and a small bedroom with a dining table.

The ball itself was a very fancy affair, there was five courses of delicious Scottish food and free drinks. At the event we did Scottish dancing and were able to meet many people who told us interesting stories about China.

Thanks for reading,

马爱丽(Alex)