Hello everyone!

大家好!

I’ve almost spent a whole month in China (中国) now and it’s gone by so quickly! I still can’t believe that I’ve been given the opportunity to be a foreign student (留学生）and study abroad. It’s something I always dreamed of but never thought I could actually do. Life in China has been great, I’ve adapted a lot quicker to life here than I thought; living in a dorm with a roommate and being completely independent from my parents is something that I was slightly wary of but it’s been a great way of showing myself what I’m capable of doing. Although I have had moments where I feel a little homesick, which is normal, once I talk to my family I always feel a lot better.

During our first week in Tianjin (天津) we didn’t have any classes so we spent the week exploring the beautiful city. We ended up making a Chinese friend (中国朋友) and he offered to take us to the Ancient Culture Street and the Italian District to show us around. We learned so much about Tianjin and some of its history and it was a great way to start off our 10 months in China. Having someone show us around, who knew the city well, just made the experience so much more authentic!

We have our classes Monday to Friday and on early days they start at 8:30am and late days at 10:25am. I’m going to be honest and say that getting up for classes at 8:30am can be a struggle at times but it means we have the rest of the day to ourselves. Our week consists of a lot of homework and studying! Since a lot of us can’t read the Chinese characters (汉字) we need to try and memorise them by writing them out over and over again. It can get quite difficult but it’s worth it when you can start to read sentences in Chinese and I can already notice myself understanding more and more Chinese characters!

Monday 24th was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) here in China; one of the four most important Chinese festivals. The main thing it celebrates is the coming together of family and friends to spend time together. It’s said the moon is the brightest and roundest on this day and it symbolises family reunion and this is the main reason why people think the mid-autumn festival is important to celebrate, as being together with family and friends is time you should cherish.

Five of the scholars and I were all invited to a Chinese friend’s house for the Mid-Autumn festival to have a traditional Chinese dinner. They took us to buy some mooncakes (月饼) - a traditional Chinese cake eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mooncakes are given between friends or at family gatherings while celebrating the festival. We also went to a Chinese market where we bought all the fruit and veg to go with the dinner. We made our own dumplings, which was a lot harder than it looked! The dinner was amazing and it was really interesting to see how a Chinese family would normally celebrate the festival and they were very kind to let us spend the day with them. Translation apps were a lifesaver as we only know basic Chinese but as we were told to visit them again in our free time it made us want to study more so we can actually communicate with them easily next time. After our amazing meal we walked along the river, took pictures and spent some time looking at the moon and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

These past few weeks have flown by incredibly quickly and we have all done so much in such a short space of time. I hope you all enjoyed my first blog and I can’t wait to write another one next month with some hopefully interested travel stories as we have a week off and are going to some interesting places!