Some Firsts

This week was my first time ever having strep. I can say I am not a fan. I'm very thankful I was able to get the antibiotics I needed though, and I am feeling a lot better. "Not get sick" was on my to-do list for this summer. Whoops. It was also my first time that I was sick and away from home (besides just a cold). That was hard because when I am sick I just want my mom to take care of me, and also the best doctor in the world happens to be my dad! It was also probably his first time diagnosing strep over a webcam...

This week I also had my first hamigua on this trip! It was everything I expected and more. I bought the whole thing for like $3 and took it to the office and shared it with a bunch of people. I will definitely be going back and getting some more.

This week was our midterms week. Whoa Chinese teachers really know how to stress a student out! For my one-on-one class, I had to give an oral presentation in Chinese (my first!). I picked to talk about my weekend visiting my roommate's house, and I had six minutes and had to use certain vocab words and sentence structures. I was majorly freaking out because it wasn't my one-on-one teacher grading me: it was a panel of four other teachers! It was pretty intimidating walking into the room with all of them sitting at the tables with their judge sheets and bottles of water. It ended up not being as bad as I thought though. They thought my stories were funny and I understood the questions they asked me at the end. I am so thankful that is over!

Last night our group went and did Karaoke. I've never gone to a place and gotten a private room and done KTV before - quite an experience! It was fun singing the songs as a group and just hanging out, but I am definitely not one that wants to grab the mic and do a solo! I was really tired after a couple of hours, so I sat on the couch and watched people dance and sing. That was probably more entertaining than singing.

In 20 minutes I'm leaving for our week of travel to Yunnan Province! This will be my first time in Yunnan and I'm really excited! It's supposd to be really beautiful, I just hope it doesn't rain every day like they're saying it will! It seems really weird to me to be going on a "vacation" with this language pledge. Living here, going to class and living with a Chinese person makes sense to speak Chinese all the time, but traveling with all Americans and touring etc? It just seems weird. Oh and I guess maybe it isn't vacation per se, more like academic travel. But whatever we don't have classes for a week so it's vacation to me! I will have limited internet access while we travel. Maybe we'll find a sketch internet cafe to check in, we'll see. Regardless, I can't wait to share my travels when I get back!