When I woke up this morning and looked outside the window it was SNOWING! I was shocked and happy, I realized how much I've missed snow. This was the first precipitation in Beijing in almost two months.
Yesterday I had my oral test, and it went very well! (to quote the teacher: 很不错). The test consisted of two parts; the first was to answer a couple of questions and the second to present a topic that was assigned five minutes before the exam. I introduced my friend Sofia, and told the teacher about all our adventures in China. Sofia seemed very satisfied when I told her my exam was about her. I won't get the results until the 14th of January together with the results of my other tests that take place between the 4th and the 6th. The next couple of days will be filled with studying for the listening, reading and writing exams.
29 December 2010
25 December 2010
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone, it is very weird to not be at home. It is not much of a Christmas feeling around, no snow and no real celebration from the Chinese people, so you just have to create the atmosphere yourself. I managed to cook some Swedish Christmas food, and that helped. I will now have to continue my studying. This is China, no rest during Christmas!
22 December 2010
After the Confucius Institute Conference
Our performance on The Confucius Institute Conference went very well. We spent about 1,5 minutes jumping around singing in jumpsuits, except for participating in singing Chinese songs in the final number. It was a very intense week where I met a lot of interesting people from all over the world, and I had a lot of fun. You can see parts of the performance on this website, the link is to our song "Gaibian Ziji" http://www.chinese.cn/conference10/article/2010-12/11/content_207380.htm
My mum and uncle came to Beijing on the 10th of December and they watched the performance live. We had a couple of days of sightseeing and I showed them my life here. It was really nice to see someone from home, and especially just before Christmas!
It's soon the end of the term, and new tests are ahead of me. Tuesday the 28th is the oral test, and the listening, reading and writing tests will take place between 4th-6th of January. I'm preparing for Christmas at the same time as I'm doing some serious studying. We will see how that works out, but hopefully well!
My mum and uncle came to Beijing on the 10th of December and they watched the performance live. We had a couple of days of sightseeing and I showed them my life here. It was really nice to see someone from home, and especially just before Christmas!
It's soon the end of the term, and new tests are ahead of me. Tuesday the 28th is the oral test, and the listening, reading and writing tests will take place between 4th-6th of January. I'm preparing for Christmas at the same time as I'm doing some serious studying. We will see how that works out, but hopefully well!
8 December 2010
Practicing for the Confucius Institute World Conference Performance
I know that I have been awfully bad at updating my blog. This is the reason:
On the 30th of November Anna and Sofia came to Beijing for the rehearsals before the World Conference performance. It started with a meeting where we had to present our program one by one. No one had told us what we were supposed to present, so in 10 minutes we prepared speeches, a tongue twister and two songs.
We were selected to perform "Gai bian Ziji", a Chinese pop song about how we can change ourselves and the world, together with an Australian girl. Every day we have practiced this number; we were taught dance moves, we recorded the song in a studio (in China everything is playback), we showed it to different directors etc. The days have been extremely long, we start around 9 am and finish around 10 pm. We have a lot of waiting in between our practices, and that's when we take the opportunity to catch up with our studies.
Last afternoon we went to Beijing University of Sports to practice on a stage the same size as the one in the real performance hall. It was a very important performance last night since the Han Ban directors of the event came to watch and speak their mind. We were informed that they might make changes or even cut some programs. This morning the atmosphere was extremely tense in the hall when the directing group announced what numbers had been changed and cut. Several people started crying and Anna, Sofia and I were really nervous about our song. But we went up and performed like never before, and just got a "非常好!" (Excellent!) from the director. YES!
We have two more days to go, and things can still be changed so I won't relax until the show is finished on Friday. It's extremely hard work but I really enjoy it, we meet a lot of people from all over the world and have a lot of fun. Today for instance, the Swedish girl trio were interviewed by Chinese TV. We improve every time, we have been interviewed together about 5 times before. We are confused every time, but we just smile, nod and pretend that we think it's completely normal to be interviewed by CCTV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television).
On the 30th of November Anna and Sofia came to Beijing for the rehearsals before the World Conference performance. It started with a meeting where we had to present our program one by one. No one had told us what we were supposed to present, so in 10 minutes we prepared speeches, a tongue twister and two songs.
We were selected to perform "Gai bian Ziji", a Chinese pop song about how we can change ourselves and the world, together with an Australian girl. Every day we have practiced this number; we were taught dance moves, we recorded the song in a studio (in China everything is playback), we showed it to different directors etc. The days have been extremely long, we start around 9 am and finish around 10 pm. We have a lot of waiting in between our practices, and that's when we take the opportunity to catch up with our studies.
Last afternoon we went to Beijing University of Sports to practice on a stage the same size as the one in the real performance hall. It was a very important performance last night since the Han Ban directors of the event came to watch and speak their mind. We were informed that they might make changes or even cut some programs. This morning the atmosphere was extremely tense in the hall when the directing group announced what numbers had been changed and cut. Several people started crying and Anna, Sofia and I were really nervous about our song. But we went up and performed like never before, and just got a "非常好!" (Excellent!) from the director. YES!
We have two more days to go, and things can still be changed so I won't relax until the show is finished on Friday. It's extremely hard work but I really enjoy it, we meet a lot of people from all over the world and have a lot of fun. Today for instance, the Swedish girl trio were interviewed by Chinese TV. We improve every time, we have been interviewed together about 5 times before. We are confused every time, but we just smile, nod and pretend that we think it's completely normal to be interviewed by CCTV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television).
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