When I was about to go on this sabbatical, I imagined that I would be updating a lot more and feeding my passion for writing short blogs about anything and nothing. Not sure what happened but sloth-mode took over and I was chillaxing so grandly even the sloth and koala would give me a nod of approval.
Beijing has been an extremely different experience for me. Moving to Australia when I was 16 was really not difficult at all. For some reason I went over and it just felt great. I spoke the language fluently, things were done efficiently, public transport was a breeze, the air was cleaner, I was even spoilt for choice buying simple daily use items from the supermarket. Life was so comfortable.
Beijing on the other hand has caused me to feel intimidated for the first time in a long long time. And I don’t like feeling intimidated. I always thought myself to be someone who easily adapts herself to situations. I didn’t like that I could not live completely comfortably here. For the 1st few weeks I was like a lost puppy (fine, lost kitten), tagging along closely to him wherever we went because I could not understand the language here.
Ok if you’re thinking, ‘I can speak mandarin. I’m sure it’ll be a breeze living in Beijing’, think again. Their accent is thick. They roll the ‘r’s’ obsessively and they swallow their words. You’d have to get used to it but of course knowing the language in the 1st place definitely helps.
When did I start feeling more optimistic? Well for one thing I started taking mandarin classes. For another, I went on a 8 day holiday to the Fujian province – back to where my family is from – and I realised that I could understand these people! My mandarin doesn’t suck as bad as I thought and I felt more confident with adapting my ears to the Beijing accent.
It’s not so bad now. Still hard but I don’t feel so helpless out there. I don’t think I’ll ever really love or prefer living here but for the sake of my future, I don’t see it as a horrible time to come.
Definitely more to Beijing that I initially thought.
One Comment
1 missd wrote:
this post echoes me and berlin! and now, i speak the language but still feel this way sometimes!! sounds like you had a blast babe. x