First Day of School

I had my first Chinese class today, and though I do wish my reading/writing abilities have not deteriorated so rapidly over the past few years, I was really happy with the class and look forward to attending it for the rest of fall quarter. The classes are designed to be small, so I had 6 classmates - and I was the only American, which surprised me. The others are from Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Finland. Quite a variety! Everyone seems really nice so far and I'm glad Day 1 had a good atmosphere to get things started. The teacher also seems pretty nice and personable, and I feel like she's the kind of teacher that I can go to with questions, which is very important. I even wish the class was longer than the 3-hour time slot, but hopefully I can supplement the classes later with other activities.

After getting out of class and attending a small welcome party for all new students, I went to get some paperwork taken care of and ended up bumping into one of my classmates afterwards. She doesn't speak a lot of English, only Korean and Chinese, so it was a good chance to practice some speaking (in Chinese, of course). We got some lunch together, studied a little at the library and finished our homework, and then got some boba. Even though our conversation required the use of an online dictionary and some pictures, I'm glad I got to know her a little bit and that we both branched out of our comfort zones to talk to each other. I'm so used to relying on English to befriend foreigners while abroad that this was a nice change. I stopped feeling self-conscious about speaking in a non-native language, and even though my sentences were far from being grammatically perfect and my vocabulary was seriously lacking, it made me feel happy that I tried. I hope I can get to know my classmates better over the next few weeks using Chinese (though most of them do speak English).

I think studying Chinese can get really discouraging in the beginning (or I guess re-beginning, for me) because there's so much that I don't know, and it takes a long time not to feel overwhelmed, but at the same time I really like the challenge. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to have time solely to focus on these studies, as opposed to before when I was trying to do too many things at once and Chinese kind of got buried in all the hustle and bustle.

Tomorrow I'm going to bring my running shoes and shorts to class so I can find some good running places at the university after. I've put off running ever since I sprained my ankle because I was afraid of re-injuring it, but it's been weeks now and I hope I can resume it on a regular basis. When I went to Japan, my ankle swelled up a bit after a day of intense walking, but a friend pointed out that that meant the sprain hasn't calcified, which is a good thing. NCCU is pretty scenic, so I'm sure I can find someplace nice and safe to run.

I'll start light and go from there! One of my goals during this stint is to balance mental challenges with physical activity.