Nanjing, Day 14 - Part I

Today was pretty anticipated, as over half of us couldn’t wait for class to come. I think none of us can say we’re still homesick anymore, but rather school sick after having spent the weekend at our host family’s.
 
I had a pretty decent weekend myself with my host family. It was awkward at first, as I’m sure it was for most of us, but I think we’re all beginning to get the hang of it. My host father is a radio talk show manager and my host mother is a primary school teacher. I also have an 11 year old mei mei. They’re a pretty well-off family.
 
We spent the weekend touring Nanjing, going to Confucius Temple and Xuanwu Lake. And also spent every single meal at some really fancy, high-end restaurant, assuming that that’s the type of quality food Americans eat. They were so graceful, but I felt extremely bu hao yi si! At one dinner, they even ordered me a bowl of bird’s nest soup, which is extremely expensive; I’ve only had it once in my life before and that was because I was sick. And for lunch, we went to this expensive Japanese steakhouse at 1912 (this area of restaurants and bars in which its architecture is like that of 1912 China) and we had steak, lamb, eel, etc.
 
The stories of our homestay experience were endless today. We were all really excited to see each other again and at some point even hoped that the school day would be longer.
 
After class we had our second group discussion session, discussing the week long of guest speakers we’ve had. We compared the differences between Eastern ways of business versus Western ways. And in the end we came to conclude that there’s always this impression set that Western ways are better and that China needs to adapt quickly. But it’s really just this idea that we create and it could be that maybe westerners ought to adapt to Chinese ways of doing things. It was a pretty interesting and productive one hour group discussion.
 
Afterwards we visited Amity Foundation, which is a Christian-based NGO. Amity is one of the first NGOs founded in China after the Cultural Revolution and they provide many services throughout China including rural development, setting up heath clinics, education, assisting the disabled, etc. We started off with a video, which then led to our Q&A session. I personally think the video was too obviously dramatic and I think because of that it sort of set an impression for all of us as to what Amity is. It’s clearly a Christian-based NGO and that’s not a problem, but one of the things I couldn’t understand was why they seemed so reluctant to admit that they promote Christianity.
 
The day flew by and it was shortly time to go home. It felt as if we were in elementary school again heading into our schoolyard searching for our parents whose standing there waiting for us. Some of us were picked up by their host parents, while others like me took the bus home. Everything went smoothly, but of course just when I thought I had made it home okay, I stick my key in the wrong door of the wrong building that was in the wrong courtyard. How delightful…

- Linda K.