By Hassiet Asberom ’15, Guest Writer

My trip began with an excruciatingly long 12-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean to Beijing.  I was both excited and extremely nervous for the month that I would be spending in China.  I felt confident that I would adapt well, even though this would be my longest time spent away from home. When I got there, everything from the host family, to the food, to even the bathrooms was different!  Nearly getting run over by a bus just three minutes after stepping out of the airport, I was not given an easy transition into life in Nanjing, the city I stayed in for the first three weeks.

The most difficult aspect to adjust to was family life.  It’s not that I had a bad host family. My mom bought me food all the time and gave me a small dessert for every lunch. She barely spoke any English, but I got a great opportunity to practice speaking Mandarin.  My host dad actually spoke English quite well, and we would frequently answer each others’ questions about Chinese and American culture. All in all, I had pretty great parents. My host brother, on the other hand, was a different story. I don’t know what I should have expected when living with a 16 year-old Chinese boy, but let’s just say that our interaction was the one part of my trip that I couldn’t chalk up to “cultural differences.” We just couldn’t connect in the way I had hoped we would, and after several talks with my program leaders, I had to realize that not every part of my trip could be a good experience.

The most amazing part of my trip was the week-long tour of Beijing and Shanghai.  Spending three days in each city, my group and I got a glimpse of the culture in a variety of cities.  What surprised me most were the different dialects spoken. Shanghainese and Pekingese, to an untrained listener, sound like completely different languages from Standard Mandarin. Without my program leader’s help, I would never have made it to our hotel in Beijing because I had absolutely no idea what the cab driver was saying. On the trip, I learned not only to expect difficult situations, but also to realize that stumbling over the language would be unavoidable and eventually less embarrassing.

The most important lesson I learned on this trip was to deal with surprises calmly.  Immersing myself in a new culture threw many unexpected situations at me, but learning to go with the flow eliminated a lot of useless stress.  I have to thank the Feinberg Grant for this opportunity to learn so much about myself and about Chinese culture.  There were so many memories I made on this trip, and I learned so much that I could have written a full Extended Essay about it! Because of this trip, I am now inspired to pursue studying Mandarin in college and to spend a semester or year abroad in China.