Bittersweet

“I’m in love with cities i’ve never been to and people i’ve never met.”
-John Green, Paper Towns

I cannot wait to fall in love with the city of Beijing and make some new friends along the way. Going to new places and experiencing new things is going to be a real adventure. It’ll be a journey that I want to remember forever, and a story that i’ll want to share with others. That’s why i’m starting this blog. After five months in Beijing, China, this blog will be filled with posts, photos, vlogs, short Mandarin Chinese lessons, and many, many stories!

If you haven’t read my blogger introduction page yet, my name is Sophia Jin and my Chinese name is 金羽庭 (Jin YuTing). My #1 goal for studying in China is to come back fluent in the language of Mandarin Chinese. I depart from NYC in less than ONE WEEK. As the first half of my Junior year at HC came to an end, I found myself saying too many goodbyes and snuggled against many warm embraces during finals week. Goodbyes are always hard, and it’s sad that fall 2013 was my last semester with some people. However, I’m confident that I will make an effort to keep in contact with those friendships that I treasure the most, and that those friends will attempt to stay in contact with me as well. Keeping this in mind is helping me realize that this is really happening. I’m really going to live in another country for almost half a year.

This week, I opened up a checking account at Bank of America, online shopped for a new camera, and began the dreaded chore of packing. Bank of America has a partnership with a bank in China that will allow me to withdraw money without paying transaction fees – which is important because i’ve heard that literally everything in China is paid for in cash. A new camera is for taking snapshots of everything I see so that my readers (that’s you!) can get a little taste of China from the comfort of your room. And when I say that I began packing… that means I have two large luggage bags opened in my room, and one of them currently has 3 shirts in it.

So for my friends and family that want to stay in contact with me during my trip: I just downloaded Viber and Whats App, i’ll be able to Skype (although be wary that the time difference is 13 hours), and my e-mail is always open! I also got a proxy code that will hopefully allow me to access Facebook while I am abroad as well. I promise my future blog posts will be shorter and have more pictures. My thoughts were that people usually have a larger attention span for a 1st blog post, so it was okay for this one to be longer. Stay tuned for more! 😀

Yours Truly,
Sophia

This entry was posted on Friday, December 20th, 2013 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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