Amazing Race

During the month of February we had Mandarin TIP. So, now, even though I am by no means fluent I can understand a lot more and my vocab has increased by so much! It is still a work in progress though.

One of our Saturday activities was an Amazing Race scavenger hunt around Beijing.  We were give a list of locations we could visit along with assigned point values.  My team consisted of Dan, Elim and I and our Chinese teacher Ethan.  We set off as fast as we could trying to converse in Chinese and plan our route to maximize the points we could obtain.  Luckily for me my teammates were competitive like me : )

Out first stop was the main campus of Peking University.  That is also where we met our first problem, where we missed our bus stop and had to walk about 10 minutes out of our way!

 

"climbing" the pagoda

Then we hopped on the subway on our way to the Olympic village where our tasks were to take various pictures in front of the venues.

 

Swimming in front of the Water Cube

 

Kung Fu and the Birds Nest

We earned extra points for every tiger in a picture.  Because it is now the year of the tiger there were tigers everywhere, including this decoration at the Olympic Village

Then it was time to hop back on the Subway on a trip to the CCTV building, where were supposed to poise like it.

 

Then we moved onto Tienanmen and the Forbidden City where things such as

 

Kissing Mao and

Poising like statues was on the list to complete.

A short walk later we were at the Egg, which is the National Preforming Arts Center

More pictures of Tigers and Lanterns finished the day

 

  

All in all it was a lot of fun, even though it was pretty crazy to try to speak only Chinese the whole time!  We ended the day by meeting up to eat Hot Pot together, which is a boiling broth that you add various meats and vegetables to and enjoy!  I am so thankful for this opportunity to learn Chinese, even though I have a long way to go.  

I'm on break right now and am really enjoying this time to relax!  We start a new session the 8th and as of right now we don't know how many students we will have or what our roles will be, but I am so excited to be back in the classroom after 2 months!  So much has been going on, but the fact remains that God is good and His plans are perfect.  I am learning a lot and and am so blessed.  Love you all!