Musings + Works by Joanne: Back from the other side of the world!

Hello!

I am BACK! The last six months have been amazing in every sense of the word. For those unawares, I left Vancouver in February to study abroad in Beijing for a semester, then traveled to Korea, Taiwan, then Hong Kong.

Study what? Like exchange?

Something similar to that! Although I've graduated, one of the things I regret the most was not applying for an exchange while in university. So one day I decided it was time to go out and see the world beyond my comfortable city.
While I've traveled abroad many times, studying abroad was a first for me, and wow. I agree with what some people say: the experience you get while living in a city is completely different from vacationing there.

I enrolled into an intensive Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. This was really exciting for me since it was a chance to live in a different city and intensively learn/improve a skill I've been sorely lacking.

Being born in Canada, English is my native language. I learned French in elementary and high school as part of the French Immersion program, and Cantonese from my family speaking it at home.
However I never learned to speak Mandarin, or how to read/write Chinese characters. Personally I think it's a valuable skill to have.

Especially when you're dropped in China with no clue how to communicate, the only phrases you know being "I don't understand", "Sorry I don't know", and the only choices are learn or perish.

...needless to say, my Mandarin skills spiked from zero to really, really high in an amazing amount of time.

Anyway I have tons of photos and other stuff to write about, so look forward to that! Still need to edit a bunch of photos and videos though, so that will have to come later.

For now here's a teaser~ :)