03-04-2016

Today, I got tea after dinner. The sinkers are red bean, which I'm not used to. As much as I like red bean, the texture seems odd to me, but that's probably a result of always getting tapioca before.

Anyways, when I went to the cafe to order, the girl asked me what I wanted to order in [not perfect] English. I asked her in Chinese if she was able to speak English, and she affirmed that she speaks a little bit. She said she is studying the language in school. I will probably go back to that place in the future to talk to her more (and conveniently, it's super close to campus!). I appreciated that she took the effort to try to talk in English in the first place.

When you are talking in English to other international students while out and about, you don't realize how out of place it sounds. I went to the market a couple of days ago, and amidst all the Chinese, I heard something along the lines of, "I'll think about it", and that made even me turn my head. Sure enough, there were other international students at the market (I've seen them around before, but I'm not sure where they're from, I think somewhere in Europe). 

Also, I'm never sure how much local people can understand from my English conversations with other international students. I was told by one of the Chinese student volunteers that studying English is mandatory because it comes up on entrance exams. But other than that, I'm not sure of local student exposure to and general English abilities. Not that this really matters because I'm here to practice Chinese, not English, but it's something that I'm curious about.

On the topic of language, I had my first martial arts class today (maybe the place where we have the class will be one of my pictures in the future) and that was really fun (albeit my not being very flexible). My Chinese partner seemed really impressed with my Chinese even though I can't speak that much. I'm excited to talk to her again next class (and she told me she would work on her English, which was nice of her).