Walking on the path at school, I couldn't help stopping and watching the colorful leaves and enjoying this colorful fall. Love stepping the fallen leaves, even though it is not time yet, it will be soon. Trees have turned to different colors significantly since last Sunday. Apple cider, pumpkin this and that (bars, spice latte, etc.), all kinds of fall season products and fall decoration. You can't escape it, but I don't think anybody will miss wonderful fall.
It seems like I started to have real fall season after I came here. Shenzhen is too hot to catch up with any season except summer. I miss that city though. Oh.again?! I am not gonna talk about any suspicious homesick feeling. So no more Shenzhen, Shenzhen, and Shenzhen.
OK...No Shenzhen..what about the weather over there? :P because it has been becoming colder and colder for me, the girl from the south.
50F is very nice weather here. BUT! How about no heater in any building or at home? Can you stand that? OK...If you can. How about living in a concrete building then? Yes, this is how it is in Shenzhen, concrete building and no heaters. We have to wear as layers inside the building as going outside. My grandpa has to wear more! Actually I wear more layers when I am home because I don't move too much and it is really cold in the concrete building. At my family, the worse thing is we don't have the hot taps. Many family do have this, but there are still a lot of families don't. So I don't really want to wash hands, or do anything with cold water! Maybe we just need to improve so many things.
Last weekend, I visited my Chinese friends at ISU. I guess that was the time I spoke Cantonese and Chinese most. They couldn't understand my Cantonese very well because it is going worse... Should I be happy about this? Does this mean my English is getting so much better? It better be.
I don't really think my English is perfect or better than other International students..But I do find out that they are not confident in speaking in public. I can understand that since I was like that at the beginning. We usually start to learn English since 4th grade..kids start even earlier these days. Even though we have learnt this language like forever, we don't actually speak and listen more than writing and reading. Well...it should be hard for the exam-oriented education system because it just cares about how good grade we can get on the reading and writing exams. Not afraid to be shamed, I got 8 out of 30 on my listening part of TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language, usually for international students who want to study in U.S.A.). 8/30?!!??!?! I had never gotten the grade like that low ever in my life. I have been studying English for over 10 years, but look at my feedback--they couldn't understand me or I couldn't catch up with them. Oh, exam-oriented education, I got at least 100/120 on my usual English exams, but I failed?
We usually have Chinese teacher as our English teacher..We just learned grammar and vocab.mostly in class. Most of us barely practice speaking and listening in English.
Maybe this is the reason that most of us are not confident with talking to people in English or just start the conversation like,"My English is very poor." Actually it makes sense. When I talk to my friends who study Chinese, they do the same thing as well. I did that too! Languages are hard..-->this is the conclusion for above. Why I randomly talk about this? I got inspired from my visiting ISU. :P
Half of semester went away already! Can you believe that? Time is crazy. We are never fast enough to catch up with it. It flies, sneaks, and slips. Better watch the beautiful falling leaves before the time tells trees to be ready for being bald!
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