大家好！

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a month since we first arrived in China. The time has flown by, but at the same time it feels like we’ve been here for ages. The university is really starting to feel like home and I feel I’ve adjusted to life in Tianjin really quickly.

After a short panic at McDonald’s the night before the big day and a sad goodbye to my friends, August 31^st finally arrived and I was more excited than I’ve ever been. Seeing everyone at the airport with whom I was going to spend the year with was really reassuring. I can’t imagine having to travel to China on my own. Making the trip across the world with people who are now some of my closest friends definitely made the gruelling set of 7 hour flights a lot more enjoyable.

The week running up to the first day of university was daunting. While my friends in Scotland were still enjoying their last weeks before beginning their uni courses, I was here in China making a home for myself. As I’d already been to TJFSU before, I briefly knew my way around, and it was interesting seeing what was new and what hadn’t changed since summer last year. Most of us took the week before uni as an opportunity to explore the surrounding area and get to know some of the other foreign students. It’s really cool making friends with people from Korea to Russia where our common language is Chinese. Although my Chinese is nowhere near perfect at the moment, being surrounded by it and having to use it every day, I can feel myself becoming slowly more confident in using Chinese to get around, but there’s still a long way to go.

The first day of uni was really hectic. We were immediately thrown into the deep end when we had to sit a proficiency test to determine our classes, but the fact we were all subjected to it put me at ease. And after managing to attend the wrong class for two days, I finally found my place in 准中级班. Classes are entirely in Chinese which sounds daunting at first, but constant exposure to the language really helps me learn. It’s also a really cool feeling when you start to take notes in Chinese rather than relying on English everywhere.

To my surprise, I’ve adjusted quite well to the early starts. On school days, I get up at 6am to prepare for my first class at 8am. Classes last an hour and forty minutes which is really demanding, but the amount you learn in once class makes it worth it. All of my teachers are really nice and helpful, as are all of my classmates. You know you’ve adjusted to life here when you start to refer to 8am as a “lie in”.

There’s so much to do here, on and off campus. Of course I’ve been able to keep up my table tennis, but I’ve also found myself trying new things, from cycling on the terrifying roads and becoming a master jaywalker, to eating an entire chicken head somewhere in the mountains on the outskirts of Beijing. Open mindedness is extremely useful when you move to a country like China. Everything is so drastically different, but often in a good way. The shared bike facilities in Tianjin make cutting about so much easier and more fun. It’s definitely something I think Scotland would benefit from.

My first month in China has been amazing and I hope the rest of the year is just as fun.

再见！