Monday, November 18, 2013

Day 85

Posted by 雯雯 at 10:19 PM 0 comments
Nothing much is happening here at school, but I figured I'd do a little update regardless.

We're back to regular schedules again, which means only 3 periods of exercise/training a week.The winter is also getting closer, so the nights are longer. It's pretty dark when I wake up, and darkens early in the evening. Life has been revolving around studying Chinese, exercising, playing video games and watching movies. To boost my speaking ability, I'm trying my best to respond to LH when she asks me something, as well as talking to my friend in Hong Kong via the internet once a week. It seems to be helping, as the words are easier to find and say than they were two weeks ago.

Perhaps because I'm suddenly exercising less again, I've been feeling very low on energy lately. Last week, I didn't manage to do any extracurricular exercise at all, and it made me feel very bad. Thus, I decided I'd make a change today. After finishing the morning and afternoon classes (sanda and Chinese culture, we're decorating porcelain), I joined the football P.E. group for 45 minutes, then joined the floorball group for another 45 minutes straight after. I then did some weapons practice. After a shower and supper, I helped Bendy Girl with Chinese, then returned to my room to do 20 minutes of stretching. Now I'm all done and pretty tired, but luckily I can sleep soon!

Also, I've managed to upload some pictures of my postcard wall. I do receive some postcards, and I appreciate it a lot. I hang them up on my wall over my desk where I'll see them every day, and feel happy. I've got stamps to send some cards back to return the favour, but sadly I live in the middle of nowhere and have been unable to find any actual postcards. I'll probably be able to find some the next time I'm going into Bergen though, so then I'll be mailing some out!

My postcard wall

Closeup of the cards!

18.11.2013

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Day 73

Posted by 雯雯 at 10:58 PM 0 comments
Though I was quite hyped for a week of all tea-drinking and exercising, we were asked Wednesday morning if we wanted to perform at a Chinese culture day arranged by the Bergen Confucius Institute. We'd be given free Chinese food, so we all said yes straight away. Since the performance would be that Saturday, we suddenly only had that day, Thursday and Friday to learn the choreography and then manage to do it well, all our tea lessons were replaced with more practises. I volunteered to do the staff part, as well as a "jump" (a butterfly kick) as well as participate in the forms. There was also a nunchuk group as well as a basic movement group (kicks, some spinny things and such).

We somehow managed to get through it, and come Saturday we were all on the bus to Bergen for our performance (save one person who had a slightly wild Friday night). We met LH in town (well, first we missed our stop and waved at her as she disappeared in the distance, then we ran back to her), and then walked to the place, with our staffs and nunchuks waving, sometimes talking Chinese. We must've been quite the sight!

We arrived to find loads of Chinese people everywhere. I felt like I was constantly pushed in front of the group to talk to people and was quite uncomfortable straight away. About half an hour before the entire programme of performances started, LH told us that her friend, a wushu professor visiting from China, wanted us to perform with him in a lion and tiger dance. This meant four people grouping up to wear two very red and shiny lion suits and jumping around like crazy, and the rest of us (save for one person who injured himself the evening before) being the dragon. We had maybe five minutes of practice before the professor was... semi-happy.

We had some free time to try some of the Chinese booths, like tea-drinking, calligraphy, kicking shuttlecock (much harder than it looks) before we were sent into the fray in our lion and dragon costumes. Apparently we looked like "an old dragon". Then, our wushu performance was nearly at the very end. We were suddenly pushed together with the wushu professor and his students' performance as well, but it went fine, all things considered. The food was good too, and all in all it was a very good day.

The next day, Red Cross and I enjoyed our day off by thoroughly by staying in bed, eating sweets and trash food and watching movies an series. Whii!
 

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