Hi! My name is Josh, and I am a rising sophomore! In a couple days, I’ll be off to Beijing, China from Los Angeles, California. I will be studying at Peking University for two months, where I will be studying Public Health, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Chinese. While I am excited for what new experiences I’ll encounter during this trip, I am also gripped with fear and nervousness as I imagine being surrounded by a society whose culture and language of which I am not particularly familiar. Although not Chinese or Chinese-American myself, I believed that having interacted with Chinese people for as long as I could remember would give me the expertise needed to fully immerse myself in the society and successfully get through each day. In middle school, high school, and even college, I had many friends who were of Chinese descent, thus initially causing me to believe that I knew much about the Chinese culture. However, when I really thought about it, it occurred to me that the aspects of the culture I knew were simply a small portion of what the culture actually consists.
Now that this trip is approaching closer and closer, reality is beginning to hit me as I begin to wonder whether I am truly ready and equipped with the skills necessary to live two full months in a foreign country. A month ago, one of my friends jokingly mentioned, “If you don’t know what is going on, just say ‘wo bu zhidao’”, which essentially translates to “I don’t know.” What seemed like a light joke at that time suddenly feels like it would become a frightening reality.
I hope that during my two months in Beijing, I will be able to immerse myself in the academic and social aspects of the study abroad trip, and also gain valuable life skills!
