北京语言大学－ 哈佛北京书院

大家可以放松，我会来了！

I'm back. Who would have ever thought that I would be? When I left Beijing a little over a year ago, I was so excited to get out and get back to America that I left without looking back, and I was certainly not thinking about the next opportunity I might have to come to China. I was simply running back to the comforts/luxuries of home (and America) that are so hard to find here. You have to remember though, last time I was here I was living here for 9 months. Looking back on that, I can barely believe that I, only 17 years old at the time, up and moved to a completely strange city, where English is the foreign language, and the money has color on it. I also think that that experience was traumatic in its own right, but as we say in Chinese, 说来话长 (that is too long a story to tell here.)

I am not going to lie, it has not been an easy transition coming back to China. My mom can attest to that, judging from the frantic phone call she got from me the day after I got here, in which I had a glorious mental collapse and sobbed my eyes out. Thinking back on it, I think that a lot of my adjustment problems have come from a surprising number of sources, first and foremost being the timing of this trip. The week before I came to China, I would have sworn on...anything, really... that my plane was leaving for China on Monday. I therefore decided to put off packing until Thursday night, at the earliest. So you can imagine my shock as I was checking my email on Thursday afternoon when I had an email from United Airlines, inviting me to check in for my flight, WHICH WAS LEAVING ON FRIDAY (IE TOMORROW.) Turns out, I had gotten the dates wrong. So I freaked out, trying to pack and say goodbye to friends, old and new. So, to get back to my original point, I was very much still mentally in California when I got China, and I was not at all ready to make the mental change.

Secondly, for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed being in California. That's right folks, you heard it, right from the horses mouth, I like California. It has taken me 18 years of complaining and running in the opposite direction to actually figure out that I like being home. I like California. I like the weather, I like the people, I like how I feel when I am home. I like being a Californian girl. And just when I was figuring this out, I did what I do best: left. And ran half way across the world, where I absolutely do not fit in. It's hard to leave a place that you don't want to leave, and I am only just realizing this. Silly me, I know.

I also just started reconnecting with my best friend in the whole wide world. Starting Crossfit also had a wonderfully positive impact on my life. I have never liked going to the gym until I was dragged kicking (but not screaming) with my mom to Crossfit. With all these things going on in my life in California, can you see why the adjustment to being in China has been difficult?

Things started to get better once I realized that California will still be there when I get back, and obviously, once classes started and I lost any free time I might have had to 回首 (look back.) I'm doing the Harvard summer school program, called the Harvard Beijing Academy (HBA). It is based at the Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学), which is one the best university's for teaching foreigners in China. I signed a language pledge, so I haven't spoken English for a while now (I figure if I write this in Chinese, then that will defeat the whole purpose of blogging - keeping in touch with people). I have class (in Chinese) for 5 hours every day. We first have a lecture (with 18 people) for an hour and a half, and then 2 and a half hours of drills, followed by lunch, followed by an hour of one on one tutoring. It is a seriously intense program. Friday's are a special form of torture: 5 hours of testing. Think on that for a while. We do a chapter of Chinese a day.

So that is the logistics of the program. Shall we get to the interesting stories now? Oh yes, we shall.