Today, I got my admission notice to the summerschool programme at Beijing Foreign Studies University – aka the “Cradle of Diplomats.” I will be off to China at the end of this month for about 4 weeks, to improve my Chinese (and indubitably meet many people from all over the world trying to do the same thing.) Needless to say, I cannot wait!! Though I am more than a little nervous about it.
I try to remember what it felt like when I first went to a summerschool to improve my english – but as much as I look back, I can’t seem to get into the mindset. It seems amaizng that I was ever in that position! And while I can’t for the life of me figure out how I’m going to assess an environment that I don’t speak the language of as well as I’d like to, the truth of the matter is that it’s the best way to learn a language. After all, as the bulgarians say, “Necessity is the best teacher.”
As far as the lifestyle goes – well…I doubt it would be terribly different from a Catholic Boarding school full of under 18s. Except this time, I bet I’d feel much sillier – a stammering 20 year old in China. Now there’s an idea for a blog…
I will try to update this blog with a lot of pictures, if nothing else. But how often I’d be able to do that remains to be seen.
Yikes. I’m going to China! *excited*
Wow, thats awesome! Good luck
Thank you!!
Crazy days, though sounds an amazing experience! Have fun and be sure to blog your thoughts, even if its after the event
It probably will be after about a week of “OMG I can’t understand a word of what everybody’s saying!!!” I’ll try to keep a diary of some sort even if i can’t post it rightaway.