This is the last week of the first semester so there was a lot of review going on besides the usual classes. I also got chosen to present HBA on an inter-program speaking contest. I knew this was going to be another big step out of my comfort zone, considering I was not a good public speaker, and preparing for this contest would require a lot of time. But I thought it would be a good chance to put my formal Chinese to use and fulfil my hopes of simply trying out all the different things here. For extracurricular activities, on Monday we learned how to cut papers, one of the Chinese traditions especially on special occasions such as New Year or on wedding days.
For the fourth week, instead of doing a formal presentation like the previous weeks, we had a final speaking exam instead. Our speaking topic was pretending to be a presidential candidate and discussed about social topics such as the environmental issues, health insurance policies, or job market problems. The point was to apply all the new words and grammar structures we had learned throughout the 4 weeks. Preparing for this speaking session I had to force myself to think about these topics more generally to encompass everything we had covered in class to express my own ideas. I thought I managed to solidify what we had learned pretty well, and was able to cover big topics and speak formal Chinese much more naturally. After all, I thought it was a very productive 4 weeks.