The day began as yesterday did, with breakfast followed by Mandarin-language class. We learned how to talk about our families and where we are from and where we are living today, which perhaps is not a lot in the grand scheme of an entire language, but feels like an auspicious beginning to gradual proficiency of Mandarin. I can’t speak for everyone here, but I feel proud that I know enough Mandarin now to hold a decent conversation with a local, which is incidentally something that I got to do quite a bit of this evening!
Before I get into the adventures I had this evening, however, I want to talk about the awesome experience we had at the home for rehabilitation that we visited today! We got to meet several Chinese peers who were close in age to us and make soap with them! Making soap with them was actually so, so much fun – we got to pour the hot liquid soap into molds of all shapes and sizes, from stars to conch shells to butterflies and cartoon characters. I have never made soap before, and I’m so glad that this first experience was full of excitement and definitely an activity I can definitely see myself revisiting. We got to dye our soap different colors in different patterns, such as opaque soap with a marbled design of blue dye.
For dinner, I also went to McDonald’s with several others, and wandered around Beijing for a bit afterwards. In meandering, we joined outdoor dance-groups, pet lots of puppies, and put a lot of what we have learned in our Mandarin-language classes so far into use by interacting with the locals in Mandarin!
All in all, I had a great time today. Beijing truly is someplace else!