This summer, 10 students and two faculty members are traveling to China to enhance their Chinese language skills while experiencing the country’s vast and diverse cultural landscape. Please enjoy this next blog post below from Cam ’28 as he shares about a rare sunny day in Shanghai filled with classroom language practice, market shopping for their host family, and fun making homemade dumplings.
My day started as it usually did, 7:15 wakeup and breakfast with my host brother and sister. Today hard-boiled eggs, steamed buns, and corn were on the menu. I ate while talking with my family before brushing my teeth and finishing up getting ready for school. I am lucky that I only live about a 20-minute walk away from the university, so my commute is not much of a problem.
Today, for the first time in five or so days it is sunny outside. The weather in Shanghai has been unpredictable to say the least and it has rained most days since our arrival. This is to say that stepping out onto a dry street with no need for an umbrella was a welcome surprise and one that I hope continues to happen.
Today was the second day of our project on the Internet and Apps so we continued learning about different kinds of apps and how to describe them in Chinese. We ended the day by interviewing some CIEE employees about what American apps they knew as well as introducing them to some of the ones they didn’t.
After eating a quick lunch of some meat, rice, and vegetables (I am not exactly sure what they were), we reconvened in our classroom to discuss our afternoon activity. Today we were going to a market to buy some food for our host families to later cook. We had all been given our own shopping lists from our parents – mine included one thing of broccoli and two carrots as well as permission to spend the leftover money how I saw fit.
We were each given 30 CNY (approx. $4), which actually gets you pretty far. I finished my family’s list with about 15 CNY to spare, so I bought half a watermelon and a few bananas.
After that, we got to try making dumplings. I have no shame in saying that what I made is not something you would like to be served at a restaurant, but it was a fun experience, nonetheless. After we had all eaten our share, we grabbed our baskets and headed home where our homestay families would cook the food we got at the market into a delicious dinner.
