Beyond Dim Sum :: Personal Narrative Essays

Beyond Dim Sum   at that place is justness to the platitude that it isnt the destination that is important, but the route that one takes to put t present. To say my goals for studying abroad were purely academic would be skewing the truth studying Chinese took me to China. But just as from studying Chinese language, I be possessed of gained new insights into Chinas cultural and historical legacy, so too, in going to China stomach I gleaned more than just the faculty to speak a foreign language.   I remember arriving in Beijing. I was awestruck. Tiananmen Square on my left, the Forbidden City on my right, a giant-sized enactment of a deified Mao Zedong looking down on me from above. It seemed un received. So some times had these images been a part of montages in books and on television, I had bring into being accustomed to representations of this amazing place, but had never taken in the real thing.   It was all so surreal, so wondrous, these impressions were u nforgettable. A week into my trip abroad, here is what I wrote as my first journal entry I am for the first time in my life truly alone. Alone non just in the sense that I dont have anybody to rely and think on, but in that I am in a sylvan where I can barely communicate with anyone, and beyond that, I dont have a cultural clue how to follow that old travelers phrase When in Rome, do what the Romans do. I am a stranger here. I get in the marks in every sense of the word. It is in the way that I look, it is in my inability to communicate with people, it is in the way I get hold of myself. Sure, I am nervous, and rather timid. But, the fact is, I am excited. I am finding in China a new pleasing of engagement it permeates every minute of my time. All these activities in my life that I have taken for granted, those that even no longer warrant the mixture of activity, those things like buying a soda or taking a bus, the regimens of everyday life, have now become the instruments of my engagement. Ironically, my vehicle is Chinese until this point, my studies have been so figurative. It is so strange to actually hear people rehearse this language that I have been studying for so long in American classrooms as their everyday mode of communication, as I physical exertion English.