Studying (Hannah)

你们好! It’s Hannah/ 春花。A month has already passed since the last update and it’s time for Halloween already! However, that’s not the only scary thing creeping up on us…. Our time for midterms has arrived. We’ve all been preparing for the past couple weeks, and it is finally time to sit our first exams in China. I’ve spent a lot of time in the old teaching building next to our dorms as it provides a distraction free zone, and we can use the black boards there. The library is also a great place to study but it’s usually very busy. I’ve also consumed countless ‘sweet treats’ and gone on many ‘tea trips’ to keep energy up while. So far, I’ve sat my oral exam which went very well so I’m just hoping the rest go equally as smooth.

Unfortunately, I don’t have very many more fun updates as this is one of those time periods where we need to just get stuck into uni-work but don’t worry we’ll definitely enjoy Halloween as it comes at the end of the first week of our midterms.

(Our school recently has a drone show which was super cool so I’ve included a pic :))

Studying (Zach)

你好！Has it already been two months!? It seems like just last week that I was scrambling to finish my first blog before the deadline and yet here I am in the exact same boat! Life in 天津 has just been getting better and better and shows no sign of slowing down but there has been a looming dark cloud over all of us the past couple weeks…Midterms.

Luckily, since I’m only an F班 student, my midterm so far hasn’t been too out with my comfort zone, however I know this is only the start of them and I’ll need to keep practising and studying.

The studying atmosphere is always really good and many of us go to the classrooms at the old teaching building located on our dorm grounds to help each other practise new characters and dialogues. We have small dictation tests after every lesson in our textbooks that go towards a small percent of our final grade. Usually, these aren’t so difficult, but they have gotten increasingly harder, and each requires more effort than the last. For our midterm we will have to know all the vocab from our first 7 or 8 lessons, so I have spent a lot of time with my peers quizzing each other and practising our writing.

The light is at the end of the tunnel though with many of us sitting the majority of midterms this week, so I’ll update you all in my next blog!

And for anyone wondering, we did get our passports back in time to go to Beijing, but I’ll leave that for another time!

再见!

Studying (Erin)

Before I first arrived in China, I knew basically no Chinese as my high school never offered Chinese courses. This made me quite nervous for the move as I had heard that finding English speaking Chinese people was a rare occurrence in China. As a last ditch effort, I learnt some survival phrases on the 10 hour flight, ‘你好’，‘谢谢’，‘多少钱'.

Although this was better than nothing, daily communication was proving difficult as we were relying on translate apps, however as our classes have progressed, I’m becoming more and more confident in my Chinese. I can communicate better with my Chinese friends; shop assistants and I’m weaning myself off google translate.

Classes run from Monday to Thursday, 8:30- 12, and on Fridays we usually an activity from 2- 5:30 as well. The pace of learning is quite intense, but I’ve been really enjoying it as it’s fun to use what we’ve learned outside of the classroom and plus languages is what I would like to do at university next year.

We have midterms this week and next, so after school every day a few of us sit in an empty classroom to study and practice our characters on the chalk board.