June 14th, 2011

So this is my first post. I'm kind of new at this, so I hope that my posts come across as coherent and intelligent.

First of all, I should outline the purpose of my travel. I'm attending an intensive summer language program at Fudan University in Shanghai, China with the Alliance for Global Education from June 15th to August 15th. I'll be attending 20 hours of Chinese class a week, during which I will only be allowed to speak in Chinese. I'm writing this blog to help communicate my experiences to my friends and family more easily. My parents and friends can attest to how bad I am at keeping in touch whenever I leave their immediate vicinity. So I'll be doing my best to regularly update my blog with pictures and posts of my experience living and learning in Shanghai, which will become double entries in english and chinese.
(It would be greatly appreciated if my mandarin speaking friends would comment on my grammar, sentence structure, etc when I make my posts in chinese)

So with that said, I've come to accept how crazy this all sounds. Barely a year of college level chinese under my belt, and I'm already galavanting off to Shanghai for 8 weeks, during which I'm supposed to only speak in Chinese. The sounds like something a patient at Bellevue would say. (The hospital in NY, not the megachurch in Memphis, TN) I see this as another opportunity to turn challenge into triumph, and better myself through pushing my limits and comfort zone the edge. Isn't that what UWC taught me to seek out of life?

Anyway, I need to get going now. Time to finish packing to catch my train from Hong Kong to Shanghai at 15:15 HKT.

More posts from Shanghai soon.