演讲，红桥市场，全聚德，剪头发 －Speech, Pearl Market, Quanjude, and a Haircut

At the end of this week, all SYA students presented speeches in front of the other students, teachers, and even some host parents. The speeches were memorized and entirely in Chinese. I spoke about my passion for exploring the city of Beijing and how this also benefits my Chinese speaking.  At first I thought presenting in Chinese for three full minutes would be impossible, but I was able to do it and I am proud of this accomplishment.

Things really seem like they are starting to wind down for me at SYA. I have just 12 days until my dad joins me in Beijing and I finish off the semester. This coming week will be my last week of normal school, and the following week will be mostly final exams. With this short amount of time in mind, I went to the Pearl Market yesterday to shop for gifts for my friends and family back home as well as souvenirs for myself. At the Pearl Market, we also found plastic Christmas trees, so we decided to buy one to put at school to bring a little more Christmas spirit to SYA China.

Last night, I enjoyed Peking Duck at Beijing’s most famous roast duck restaurant, 全聚德(Quanjude), which has been around for 150 years. It was fun to experience this Beijing tradition.

I also got a haircut this weekend, and I was interested to compare getting my hair cut this time to when I went in September. I noticed a clear improvement in my Chinese level, and I was able to have a conversation with the barber about the Michael Brown case, democracy in the US, and the different Chinese dialects.

2 more miscellaneous pictures: