Its all good

Everything in China has been going great. I am improving my Chinese and making friends. I just recently learned how to play Chinese chess, I am not that great but I feel really cool when I play. Even though I have been here for a month everybody still looks at me like I just arrived, but they are still very friendly and want to talk with me. For all the students at OneWorld Now! I was doing a little research for college and stumbled upon the US department of State web site for people applying to work in the foreign service, The US dpeartment of State says that Mandarin Chinese and Arabic are "super critical" languages to know and they actually add points to your application to work in the foreign service. So congrats your off to a good start. I have been thinking about how China's population is so large, and the size made me think that everybody no matter what race must have someone that looks like them in China, so I have been keeping an eye out for people would remind of home. So far I found Jennifer, from the OWN office, and couple of my friends from high school, I am keeping an eye out for Kristin.

Hamlet in Chinese

Yesterday in Chinese class I quoted the "to be or not to be that is my question" line form Hamlet but I said it in Chinese and I was proud of myself. Everything else has been going I have been putting a great effort towards practing spoken and written Chinese and I can really see the improvement. Just four days ago I talked with a group of my friends here for like a solid 30 mintues I was impressed with my improvement. Every night before I go to bed I try to learn new characters and I also have tests every week on characters. Now that I am in a routine everything is running a lot more smoothly than it was in September. The food is great, the people are great, and city is amazing especially 219 park it is really interesting. I will get some pictures or videos soon. Thanks again for all the surpport. Talk to you later.

School is Great

School is going great I have been told I am going to the best school in Anshan, China. Everyone wants to help me. I was given some really good advice and that was to just talk to as many people as possible. So I decided to get more involved at school.
My school has a yearly sports meeting that I participated in. I was in the track and field area, I ran 1500 meter race, 800 meter, and a relay race. It was fun we took the 4th place in the relay. For the 1500 and 800 meter race I brought back 4th for America (which is okay, but it was out like 30 people). After the race the racers put on one of the Fuwa (the Olympic mascots) costumes and ran around in them. I was Yingying. I will try to upload the video of me. I am making friends and its been going great. Just this week I was able to make a laughable joke in Chinese so that was great. I went to a public bathhouse for the first time, being the only non-Asian person there I got a lot of stares. Chinese class is going great, we starting to break the language barrier and I can understand a lot more of what she is saying in Chinese. Trying to stay healthy while in China so I run three miles a day at school and people run with me and talk me but they never the whole time they think it is amazing that I can run for so long. I will keep running everyday to stay healthy and talk to more kids at school. I am all about the OneWorld Now! intentionality.