Day 29: 加油！

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08.04.23

     Today is Day 29 of our dialogue and day 16 of Chinese class, which was also the day of our last 小考 (quiz)! I enjoy Chinese class because our teacher uses many engaging examples to help us learn. We are on the chapter called I Just Want to Be Myself. We listened to sad music in Chinese that had some of the terms we just learned (could've cried). 

~attempt at drawing cows~

:'(


During our break, Karyna brought us dried plum from the markets (which Sam didn't like too much)
              

Meanwhile, This week I've been working on my research project to attempt to understand Taiwanese dispositions towards mental health. I've been collecting responses to my anonymous survey from Taiwanese students. Approaching people to participate in my survey has been intimidating to say the least, especially speaking in Chinese, but I've had some good conversations come out of it. I've had some unsuccessful attempts at asking people to participate in my survey, but, I've also had a couple people comment "加油" (jia1you2 - "keep going" or "you got this!"), which helps me to keep going. 

During lunch I ordered some yummy vegetable pork dumpling soup. While I was waiting for my food, someone named Peter started talking to me and he was super friendly! Asking people to do my survey for my final project was fresh on my mind, so it was a nice surprise to have Peter start conversation first. Peter is a foreign exchange student from Thailand, and said that he has noticed our group of foreigners. I invited him to sit with me and Dawei for lunch. Coincidently, I had mentioned to Dawei that my brother, also named Peter, was coming to Taiwan, so Da Wei thought that I was introducing my brother for a good time. Although I couldn't ask Peter to participate in my survey, he sent it to some of his Taiwanese friends, which was super helpful.  

After lunch, we went back to the Chinese classrooms to spend time with our Chinese Language Partners. Today I worked on my Chinese presentation involving grammar points and vocab, and drafted specific questions in traditional Chinese that I was to ask at the mental health clinic in order to give me more of a background to the mental health resources on Tsing Hua University's campus. After, I went to the library to catch up on some work. 

After the library, we had our last group dinner at a dumpling restaurant! Since our group is so large, we took up practically the whole restaurant, I got to practice one of the phrases that we learned in class "忙得过来". We were such a large group, I'm afraid the cooks weren't able to keep up. Dong Lao Shi offered to help make the soup dumplings, but she was quickly sent back... 

More and more yummy food kept coming, and surprisingly, two more of our friends joined to make dumplings, Derrick and Sam. The restaurant owners were so hospitable, and we all enjoyed our time. 

Sadly, this was our last dinner as a group. As the trip comes to an end, it's getting a bit sad thinking that we won't have any more group dinners. Anyways, I'm too busy with my Chinese and Culture class projects to think about that now. 

Our Last Group Dinner

Although we have lots of work to do with the dialogue coming to the close, I remember "加油"! 

Here's me finishing up some work late at the food court. Now signing off...

Back tomorrow,

爱荣




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