Getting settled

I still do not have a stable internet connection as of this afternoon, but hopefully by Friday they will be installing internet connections in our rooms! :) Until then, still feel free to leave messages or send me an email at carriker@email.unc.edu if you want to get in touch or have any questions at all!

So far, China has been so incredible, but so different than anything I have ever experienced before! Even different than my time in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia – it is very, very difficult for a tourist or visitor to get by here, to say the least! I was talking to another international student yesterday (named Siv – she’s from Norway!) and we were discussing how, at least in Singapore, Thailand, and other places, you can get by with hand gestures and sign language. That’s just not the case here, though. Without Chinese or even being able to at least comprehend the spoken language, it’s pretty hopeless..not to mention the fact that the locals speak another dialect of Chinese entirely!

In China, because of its massive size, nearly every large city and province has its own dialect of Chinese that the local people speak. These aren’t dialects like they are in the United States, though – at leas tin the United States, the spoken language is generally the same. In China, the dialects are essentially different spoken languages entirely. Here in Xiamen (population 3 million, small for a Chinese city), it is the Minnan dialect. Normal Mandarin has four different tones and the Minnan dialect, even though it is part of the same language as Mandarin, has a completely different setup of tones and spoken language. ALL of Chinese can be read in either traditional or simplified characters – that is the thing that seems to bind Chinese together. But spoken Chinese…even if you’ve grown up speaking and learning Mandarin, you still would be unable to talk to the locals here in Xiamen! It is overwhelming but fascinating at the same time :)

My plan right now is to try to update every Sunday/Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (my time, though!) and for now, I will just ramble on my experiences in China as the days go by! :)

Zaijian!

Megan