YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! This international relations & economics class is officially OVER!!!! I learned a lot and all, but I’m really excited about the next language course. Today we did our class presentations and finished off the class. It was pretty interesting, and our presentation went really well. I think it was good because we finally got to talk about and share what we learned from our perspective because me, Nikki, and Joanna are the three psychology majors, so obviously what we learned from the course isn’t the same as what the economics/international business majors learned from the course. The first half of our presentation was just introducing the rapid economic growth that China has experienced in the past 30 years, which we’ve been learning about all month, so it was like a regurgitation of class lectures. The second half of our presentation, though, was specifically about our observations and experiences at the migrant school and how they may have been psychologically affected by their bottom tier socioeconomic status. I thought it went really well because we were able to apply our background knowledge and psychological perspective to a socioeconomic issue. And I felt we were speaking from personal experience and from our hearts (I know that sounded really cliché, but it’s true), so it was easy for us to explain and be passionate about the topic, which I think really came across while we were presenting. Anyways, that went well, and I turned in my journal entries today as well, so all I have left to do for this course is write a 5 page paper on the same topic as we did our presentation on. Not too bad.
After the presentations, we went to lunch w/ the moms and Dan, where we met our new resident director (Dan’s going home), Katie. Katie is basically our Dan for the next month, except less so. This international relations & economics course was designed specifically for PESI, so it was only our group in the class. But for the next program, we will be taking the language course at Fudan with other international students who are studying abroad like us. So, we won’t have much need for Katie (because she won’t be organizing class or outings), unless we need help getting around or just feel like hanging out with someone. So we ate lunch with them and we ate dim sum! It’s hard to come by dim sum here since it’s Cantonese, but it was good dim sum. Diferent than at home, but still good.
After lunch Dan, Geneva, Joanna, and I had to go to the Intercultural Exchange Office at Fudan to register for the language class, but it was POURING rain. And then it took us forever to find where the office was, so we were running around the buildings and kept asking people but they didn’t know where it was and it was just mass confusion. And we couldn’t even register today so we have to go back tomorrow!
Anyways, after that mad run around, we came back to the hotel to rest for about 30 minutes, then everyone met at People’s Square for dinner. We had dinner at a food court (that’s the only place where 20 of us could all eat together) and some Chinese students came, including Alex, Chris, and Ariel!!! I was soooo happy to see them…it’s only been less than a week, but it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen them. It was so refreshing to see them again J
After dinner we went to karaoke (but Chris, Alex, and Ariel couldn’t go L) but I was really tired at first...most of us were up late working on our projects (Joanna Nikki and I stayed up until 4am) so we hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep and were all getting tired around 10pm. BUT, it’s our last night all together (Nikki and Tim are leaving tomorrow), so we HAD to celebrate. Karaoke was very…ENTERTAINING. THE MOMS came with us and OMGOSH they are CRAZY!!!! I think crazier than me and Joanna, which is really sad. Joanna’s mom LOVED to sing, and she kept singing old pop songs with us. And then my mom was just embarrassing and got up and danced while singing Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. It was amusing, but embarrassing because she was my mom. But anyways, overall it was SO fun, but I’m getting sick and I think singing irritated my throat a little. Now it is 2:30am and we need to leave tomorrow at 8:30am, so it’s safe to assume I’ll be getting 5 hours of sleep or less. Goodnight!
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