Chinese lessons, cultural discussions and a movie I understood half of

Today was the first day of our Chinese culture themed J-Term and I was super excited to see what Mr. Zhou had in store for us throughout the next three weeks. We started out by going over the schedule for the upcoming week; stopping briefly to discuss particulars for our Chinatown scavenger hunt or where we were going to eat for our Chinese lunch on Wednesday. After my suggestion for Kam's was brutally shut down, we switched topics and were split into groups based on our Mandarin ability. I, having no Mandarin ability of any sort, was given two handouts to read on the basic layout of the language of most of China. One of the handouts covered Pinyin, the romanization system for Mandarin characters, and briefly explained the history of the form of Mandarin and why it existed at all. The other handout talked about the composition of Mandarin characters, their history, and why they came to be. After reading both handouts all of the groups met up again and had a combined Chinese lesson led by Jadyn and Persi, mostly centered around the numbers and how to remember them using critical visual techniques.

After a lunch break, we came back and watched "the Gua Sha Treatment;" a combination English and Chinese movie that showed (without spoiling too much) just how powerful culture shock can be. After a good seminar, our first day of J-Term was done.  I learned a lot today about Chinese culture and how our viewpoints as Americans can come into play when we step into the culture of another group. All in all, today was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

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