The only place to go from here is up. So I am coming home in a couple months and I would like to get everything out in the air now so I might avoid some any prolonged conversation on certain topics. As everyone must know I came to China what must have felt like a decade ago to some but what was actually 4 and half years ago. Still not a short time but in the grand scheme of life and the world just the blink of an eye. As you could imagine it was not easy for me to leave my family and friends, relationships I had built up over most of my life and relationships that were just beginning to blossom. But I did it anyway in pursuit of a goal; sorry goal is an incorrect description; so let’s say a dream. That dream was to study automotive engineering and thanks to a full scholarship I would have that opportunity in the far away land of China. Almost exactly halfway around the world from home, there was no way I could hop on a plane to be home for weekends, birthdays or other special occasions. So here I found myself sitting on the plane that day I left home kind of not thinking about how far I was going and how life would change for me almost completely. Thanks to the fact that Chinese universities teach little or no courses in English, I would spend my 8 months in China were spent in a city called Wuhan (or as I like to call it “The city that God forgot”). It literally is the only city on earth to lie on the equator and South Pole at different times of year. Literally 40 to 45 degrees C in summer and then feet of snow in winter. There I would learn Chinese before moving on to my actual engineering school in another province. While there I made friends from all over the world, had fun, learned a bit of Chinese and even fell in love. That’s a different story and like all great stories it ended, so if you wanna hear about that feel free to ask. This however is a summary of an even greater tragedy and the subject I don’t wish to be asked about when I come home to family, friends, sun and sand. This is a summary of what came next as I went off to begin my major study in a city called Chengdu. I arrived in Chengdu in July 2010 , the first international undergraduate student at my new school, equipped with my luggage, passport and a basic understanding of the language. In Wuhan they taught us how to order food, go to the bank, even how to tell a girl you fancied her…So imagine my surprise when I to my first class, advanced calculus I believe it was. This is where I tell you about the dialects. Now the island people among us will understand that not all English is created equally. There are variations from parish to parish let alone from island to island. The same thing happens in China, there being small to large differences in the language depending on where you are, provincially speaking. This was a major difficulty for me and in fact even for some of my Chinese classmates who had the misfortune of being born 1000km east. But we all survived. They were helpful and I knew that if I continued to show I was serious about studying they would continue to be helpful. By the way I was the online foreigner in the mechanical engineering faculty of the five foreigners that came that year. The task was simple study, do homework improve my language skills and all would be well. But very little in life, let alone my life, is ever that simple. First semester comes to an end and after I do my exams, I am confident. Imagine my surprise when I check my results and it shows 缺考-absent for all the 12 courses I took that semester. My immediate thought was WTF!!!! but I figured no need to panic. I figured wrong. To be continued.....
Posted on: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 14:29:43 +0000
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