So far in November, all that has kept me occupied can be captured in one word: family. I started my month by taking a trip north to Alcobendas to visit my first host family from my high school student exchange program. I spent an entire Saturday with Adrian, my partner from the exchange, and his family. Even though I had only lived with them for three weeks–almost two years ago–in a way it was as if I had never left their family.
Being more of a hands-on learner, I love how much outside-the-classroom activities the IES Abroad program provides. It seems like almost every week there’s either a leisure field trip to experience a different aspect of China’s culture or a professional company visit.
I do not really feel qualified to comment on the status of academics since I am a mere visiting student; a transient anomaly of real Oxford student life who belongs to no course or class or year. Real Oxford students enter into a specific course at a specific college as “freshers,” and so they are specialized from the very beginning of their study here. These “courses” are kind of like majors that we have in the states only usually consist of much smaller groups of students e.g. I believe the St.
In China, the first week of October celebrates Golden Week, a national holiday. During this weeklong celebration, over 1 billion people travel throughout the country to reunite with family or visit popular tourist sites. Since IES Abroad gave us the week off, everyone chose to travel to different parts of China, including Beijing, Taiwan, Guangzhou, etc. My roommates and I visited Huangshan, which directly translates to “yellow mountain.”
Seeing as this week is International Education Week and we bloggers are being provided with the opportunity of writing within a prescribed framework of topics, I am making the Herculean effort to push through my collection of half-baked ideas and incomplete drafts to publish once a day, Monday through Thursday, corresponding with my school week. Wish me luck.
IES Abroad takes us on trips and to shows inside and outside of Nagoya to help us adjust to life in Japan, but adjusting to being a foreign student has been rather difficult. With my Japanese not being as good as I would like it to be, being able to be a part of a school in another country that does not speak English takes a lot of effort.
