Warm Memories in the Ice City (Harbin)

I arrived in Harbin ready to make the most of this opportunity to participate in a semester of CET, funded by my Fulbright fellowship. My Mandarin abilities were minimal so the first month under the language pledge was excruciating. But I persisted through the discomfort of sitting silently at the dinner table because I knew this all-Mandarin environment was rapidly improving my speaking and listening abilities. I was forced to figure out how to express myself in Chinese, even if it meant stumbling through butchered sentences at first. By the half-term Fall break my Mandarin had already improved at an exponential rate. By the end of the program, my Chinese roommate was my best friend and we were regularly staying up late at night giggling in bed over stories from each of our days. The subject of these stories was often boys. My uncle told me there are several truly beautiful things one will experience in life: having a baby, falling in love, and making a friend in another language. Needless to say, my Mandarin has improved dramatically since my first week of “你好吗？”.