Well, after only 2 weeks we’re halfway through the semester. It’s amazing how quickly this whole experience is flying by. In the first week of the program, each day lasts a week and speaking 12+ hours worth of Chinese leaves you exhausted. 7 weeks in, each week lasts a day and lots of times I find I can only express what I want to say in Chinese. With the finish line in sight, I plan on sprinting to the end and making the most of my short time left in Beijing. While the coursework is definitely increasing in intensity as the weeks go on, I feel that I’m far more comfortable with the language itself and am therefore the least stressed I’ve been this entire program. It’s amazing how much the brain can soak up in such a short amount of time. Though some days I definitely do lack confidence in my abilities and I just can’t seem to find the right words of grammar structures, I find that through just persevering on I can overcome these slumps and come out of them more confident in my abilities than at any other time in the past. This week in class, we are going to be reading scripts from famous Chinese movies and plays. As I haven’t really had much exposure to Chinese drama in the past, I really am looking forward to understanding how the ideal Chinese drama differs from that of the West.