[personal profile] disalarming

While many of the guesses as to what happened were very creative, none of them were actually close to the mark. But a common theme was the language ability of myself and the three boys, so I should say that I, as well as the boys, all have an intermediate working knowledge of Mandarin.

I’m not sure how well I will tell this story seeing as there’s a bit of a backstory to explain, but I’ll do my best. It’s also quite convoluted and bizarre!

Next year, I want to study abroad in Beijing on a year-long program. I have three guy friends that, as of now, are also planning on participating in the program. Two of the three (Boy 1 and Boy 2) will only be studying abroad in Beijing in the fall, while the other (Boy 3) is also going to be there for a year. Boy 1 and Boy 2 are friends and I have known them since the first day of Chinese class freshman year. Boy 3 does not know the other boys and I have only known him since the beginning of this semester.

In the Beijing study abroad program, there are two options for study: a regular track or a language immersion track. In the regular track, you take classes taught in English about Chinese history, politics, economics, etc. In addition, you can take a Chinese language course on top of the English-taught classes. In the language immersion track, you only study Chinese. It’s an intensive program that really focuses on learning and using the language; students in the program usually are housed together and pledge to speak only Chinese during the course of the immersion. This pledge might interfere with how social immersion students are with the regular students as it has the potential to create a language barrier depending on the individuals’ level of spoken Chinese.

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Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

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disalarming

May 2020

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