Today was a good day. I woke up early and made my way to campus. I loveeeeeee having a bike! I took me roughly 6 minutes to bike from my homestay house to my classroom on campus. I got to class 30 minutes early so I took advantage of the time to log onto pku’s internet and check my email since the internet at my homestay house is still not working well. I had my kouyu class and then hanyu class. I was dreading my presentation. At least my teacher acknowledged the fact that we did the first presentation so it was the most difficult. Although one of our group members didn’t show up, so me and one other girl had to do the presentation. I was kind of hoping that the teacher would let us wait until Monday, but no luck. After class, I grabbed lunch with Yoshiko and took her to the baozi place. She only ate there during the orientation week, so she forgot about it. I also got her hooked onto nangua zhou. That stuff is the best!

After lunch, I met with my tutor in Shaoyuan 7 and had her help me revise my essay. I had a few grammatical mistakes I had to fix, such as putting the place words in the wrong part of the sentence, but I actually didn’t have to make many changes, so I was happy with that. I thought it was going to be way worse, but apparently my Chinese is better than I thought. I also got her to go over a few grammar structures that I’ve been having issues with. I’m getting nervous for my tests next week. My tutor also helped me download and install a Chinese keyboard input software program that is 1000 times better than the standard Microsoft one. Typing is SO MUCH EASIER now. I wish I would have had it for my essay. Things would have gone a lot faster.

After tutoring, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I decided to explore the campus a bit since I now have a bike. I found that PKU has a museum at the northwest side of campus. That would explain another reason why they seem to get a lot of visitors. I ended up at the No Name Lake, so I decided to get off my bike and walk around for a while. It’s a really nice area to walk around. I’m hoping to go back on a nice day and take pictures. Today was kind of smoggy. While I was walking around the lake, I happened to walk past a person who was practicing reading English. He looked intrigued by me, so I parked my bike and went over to talk with him. He was a nice guy to talk to. He wanted to read passages to me in English so I could help him with his pronunciation. For only studying English for 1 year, his English was pretty good. It was a nice exchange…I got to practice my Chinese and he got to practice his English. He said he could tell I was American because I speak Chinese very fast. I really don’t feel like I speak that fast but…Idk. I definitely feel like my Chinese is getting better every day, especially now that I’m in my homestay.

After talking with the guy, I biked back home. As I got in, they invited me to eat dinner with them and asked me if I had any plans for the night. I feel bad eating with them again, I don’t want them to go out of their way for me. I have no idea how to say in Chinese that I don’t want to cause them any trouble. I might want to learn how to say that. I’m still not sure about living in their house. I’m not quite sure how things are going to work. Like,  I don’t know if I happen to be home around dinner if they will think I expect to be fed or if they’re always compensating and making more food in case I decide to eat with them. He really is a good chef. The dinner was delicious. We watched the news for a little while after. Just not sure what to do. They seem like a quiet family. I don’t want to pester them, but I also don’t want them to think I’m anti social and just work on my computer all the time. I guess I’ll figure things out. So far no plans for tonight except to sit around and relax! I meant to run back to the global village and grab the Hunger Games so I could work on it, but I completely forgot.

I got a call from my classmate that they wanted to go out tonight, so I biked over to the Global Village. They got tied up with their host family, so I ended up just staying in for the night and sleeping at the global village. Ordered McFlurrys from McDonalds and relaxed with Chelsea and Jasper. Super chill night.