Day 16: Because yesterday was my "lazy day," I made sure to do something more productive! I headed to church! Initially, before coming on this trip, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find a church near our host university, but with the help of my friend who is now an alumni of this program, I found a church. Because I was still not completely confident in my ability to take the subway to church, I decided to walk. It should have been a twenty minute walk, but being the type of person I am, it took me double the time because I got lost. Hopefully, I'll get better at this. The church I chose to attend was the Shanghai Community Church (AKA Shànghǎi Guójì Lǐbàitáng / 上海国际礼拜堂), a multi-domination church that offered services for both foreigners and Chinese citizens. I chose to attend the foreigners service at 2PM, but I found it interesting how Chinese citizens were just not allowed to attend the foreigners service. The church itself was very beautiful, and I wished I had arrived a little earlier to explore the garden at the church. The praise team leader was also very enthusiastic in leading the praise songs, and I had a lot of fun trying to read the Bible in Chinese. The liberal environment that this church had created was quite different than the conservative church I attended in the States. After getting back, it was pretty late, so I went to go eat dinner at a restaurant right across campus with my roommate. I ordered a Korean-style dish, which was basically just beef and kimchi over rice. It was really good, very cheap, and rather convenient. Definitely a place that I'll probably go back to eat!
Day 17: Today, I was sick. I had a stomachache, and there were quite a few other classmates who had a cold, which our professors said was probably due to the continuously changing weather in Shanghai. I went to class though because as a student who graduated high school with a 13 year perfect attendance record, I couldn't get myself to skip class. However, my stomachache got worse throughout the day, so I chose to skip Martial Arts class to try to prevent my stomachache from getting even worse. I took a long nap and unfortunately missed the trip to the Jiao Tong University's museum (which I plan to go back to because it's right next to our hotel) and missed our group dinner. Thankfully, our professors (AKA our mom and dad for this trip!) brought soup and vegetables back for everyone who was sick today. We all felt so loved today.
Day 18: I felt a lot better today! I went to class and the tutoring session as usual. I spent the day catching up on work because this week is finals week, and I guess the highlight of my day today was heading to 全家 and buying lime-flavored Lay's chips to eat while studying. There were just so many weird chip flavors at Family Mart that I wanted to try (I plan to try all the flavors though!), but I chose lime! The chips did really taste like lime, but weirdly, the taste of lime and the taste of the chips did not seem to mix very well. Definitely can't wait to taste other weird flavored chips like cucumber flavor and tomato flavor!
Day 19: Today, we had final presentations for Business Chinese in class today, and we unfortunately ran out of time to have presentations for our diary entries. I definitely wished I had practiced my presentation more because I found myself looking down at my presentation script for most of my presentation. Hopefully, I'll be better by the end, right? We headed to the cafeteria to eat lunch, and I finally remembered to take a picture! I definitely need to remember to take more pictures of the different side dishes, dumplings, and other foods in the future, but today, I had 炒面 (AKA stir-fried noodles / chǎomiàn). As usual, the people at the cafeteria gave me an immense amount of food (I should've taken the picture at an angle to really show you how much food the lady gave me) for just 5 Yuan (AKA less than 1 US Dollar). Although I skipped Martial Arts on Monday, I made sure to go to Taichi class today. I got dinner at the 85 Degrees Bakery right next to campus, so I could quickly eat and continue studying for the final exam on Thursday. I got red bean bread and this mango cream bread, both of which tasted awesome. I especially liked the mango cream bread, and the packaging was so cute that I had to take a picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment