This week was my last week with my host family and it was filled with various trips around Kunming. Below is a view from my host family’s apartment, it was an especially sunny day in the city.
One afternoon I went with some friends to a park in the city, it also has roller coaster so we decided to be adventurous and went on the one that goes upside down four times.
My apartment seems to be in a pretty great location with lots of cafes and gyms near it. My friends and I found a newly opened rock climbing gym, i forgot how hard it is to scale a wall!
This week we had an assignment to write a life history paper. It involved going up to strangers and asking them questions about their life. Of course this was all done in Chinese! I went to a place called Green Lake Park where most retired people like to hang out in the mornings. I found this experience to be extremely rewarding and provide firsthand accounts that I otherwise would have no idea of their existence. These concrete examples allowed me to get a better understanding of Chinese history, Chinese society and Chinese people’s life. The exercise also helped me to build up field study skills such as designing questions, conducting interviews, and analyzing the data I collected. I did find the life history interviews to be frustrating at times. I could understand the very basics of the conversation but there were most likely many smaller details that I missed for lack of vocabulary and fluency. There were also more complicated questions that I would have loved to ask on the spot. Despite these frustrations I did find this exercise demonstrated to me that just in 6 weeks, my language skills have improved significantly!
My host family took me out to dinner to celebrate my last weekend with them. Time seems to be flying by so quickly, but we are already planning a trip for my host sister to visit me in the summer!
Just a photo of my host mom and I bonding over face masks!
I hope everyone has a great week!
Elizabeth