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Junior shares study abroad experience in China
By Lynnsey Kraus ’07
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Ni hao Sweet Briar! I hope the spring semester is treating everyone well. For the past six months Beijing, China has been my home, though if you had told me I would be able to have full conversations in Chinese a year ago I would have thought you were crazy.

Learning Mandarin, living in a home stay and traveling throughout China has been the most amazing and fulfilling experience I’ve ever known. My home stay family is welcoming and incredibly generous and understanding, especially when it might take them 30 minutes and a quick game of charades to explain to me something Chinese.

My host dad enjoys enlightening me with the intricacies of exercise in China and his passionate dedication for Gong Fu. After dinner most nights, the entire family has a short but fascinating performance in which he displays his new techniques to successfully foil any aggressive attempts made by an “attacker”.

I find it endearing, although a little painful at times, because I’m usually selected as said “attacker”, which means I get fake kicked and brought to the ground, i.e. pile driven, on a regular basis. Due to our mortal combat- style training, I can safely say that if ever approached by an “attacker” I can ably inflict pain with a simple drop step and high kick.

My home stay mother is incredibly patient with my Mandarin studies, and we often find ourselves snacking on oranges on the couch and immersed in conversations about social issues, society and most importantly, American movie stars. I can accredit my host mother for a great deal of my progress due to her uncanny ability to utilize each nights’ vocabulary at the most opportune moments and most notably when she won’t allow me to begin eating until I can pronounce each dish correctly.

Needless to say, I have no problem ordering for myself anywhere I eat. This is a surprisingly important skill, especially in a restaurant- you don’t want to risk guessing what a certain dish is because you could conceivably end up with a plate of piping hot fried stomach or caramelized frog.

My host sister and brother (yes, two children in one house) are engaging and so ecstatic that they have an American living with them that their eagerness to learn English and teach me more Chinese is a constant reminder of how lucky I am to be given such a remarkable opportunity.

My host brother enjoys walking around the house with my shoes on his feet or finding excuses to come into my room so that he can push the one button on my laptop that makes all the programs I’m using disappear onto the sides of my computer screen.

My host sister works harder than most college students because of an exhausting load of Chinese and English homework. She often has classes on the weekends and is the target for pressure in the house due to the entire family’s investment in her English studies and attending school in America. Every day she improves is an endless incentive for me to further my own language studies, our unspoken but most definitely present friendly competition in the “who can learn more, faster” race.

All things aside, I am undeniably blessed to live with the most compassionate and considerate family I could have ever asked for. They are all consciously involved and engaged with the quality of my life in Beijing and quantity of extraordinary experiences, adventures in new places, and treasured moments that I can bring home with me.

Along with a week filled with classes, I am also interning with a NGO in Beijing called China Orchid AIDS Project where I am currently researching and writing for their upcoming English website and fundraising for their future projects. Although the work is arduous and at times disheartening because of the content, I am overwhelmed every time I come to work and see so many people fighting a seemingly hopeless battle to assist and educate the entire country.

AIDS in China has an overwhelmingly negative stigma with most of the population, including my host mother who gasped when I told her the extent of what I was doing and whom I was working with. She was afraid I would be infected with AIDS and more or less viewed it as a highly contagious disease I could acquire by shaking a hand rather than a mounting epidemic soon to extensively affect the entire nation due to lack of accurate information, guidance and support. Her reaction only further strengthens my desire to aid COAP in any way possible and facilitate a new age of impartial humanity and tolerance for a disease that has impacted so many people.

Studying and living in China has, without a doubt, been the most rewarding six months of my life and I am even more excited about the months to come. I wish everyone the best of luck this semester, and I’m looking forward to an enjoyable and constructive senior year. Zai jian!