Thanksgiving Misconceptions

It's definitely very indicative how of just prevalent American culture is abroad when most of the non-Americans here at BNU (and the teachers) know of Thanksgiving, which for all intensive purposes a very American holiday.* Not only do they know of the holiday Thanksgiving, many of them knew that Thanksgiving is in November and includes a turkey. However beyond that, their knowledge of Thanksgiving was limited (not that I can blame them for that). But they did have some interesting ideas about what traditions were apart of the holiday:

On Thanksgiving, everyone tells the truth.
One of my classmates asked me earlier this week if it was tradition that at Thanksgiving everyone sits at the dinner table and tells the truth. At first, I was very perplexed by her question, until I figured out that she was most likely getting this idea from a number of US television shows and movies. In many television shows and movies that feature Thanksgiving, all the family drama comes out at the dinner table while the family is all gathered together. Although family drama rearing it's ugly head is not a Thanksgiving tradition in the United States, I do suspect that perhaps for some families, it might be almost be the equivalent to a tradition.

After we gather for Thanksgiving dinner, we exchange presents.
Several people asked if we exchanged gifts after Thanksgiving dinner and each time I was asked, I said no and was slumped why they would think that presents are vital to Thanksgiving. At first, I thought maybe they were getting American Christmas and Thanksgiving traditions confused from what they see in US films and television. However, after some further questioning, they simply explained that with name of "Thanksgiving," they figured the name referred to the giving of gifts and giving thanks in return. Despite being incorrect, I thought their conclusions did make sense if you hadn't had the whole pilgrims-and-Native-Americans story drilled into your brain for most of your childhood.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tale of (American) Thanksgiving, it begins with pilgrims from England fleeing to what was then the colonies to avoid persecution. However, once they arrived in Plymouth Rock, the pilgrims had no idea how to grow food and survive in the colonies. As an act of kindness, the Native Americans living nearby at the time taught them how to grow food successfully in their new home. As the tale has it, at the end of the first harvest, all the pilgrims and Native Americans gathered together for a big feast to celebrate the harvest, thus beginning the story of Thanksgiving.

It must be noted though that Thanksgiving wasn't recognized as a national holiday officially until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln announced his Thanksgiving Proclamation, which declared the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day. However, in 1941, Thanksgiving was officially moved to the third day of Thanksgiving in hopes that lengthening the Christmas season would boost the economy.

And as for the term, "Thanksgiving," it supposedly refers to the pilgrims giving thanks to the Native Americans for helping them out with their crops.

Anyways, that's enough history (or at least, fabled history), for now. Here's a picture a friend sent to me that I think perfectly sums up what I think is key to any Thanksgiving (along with family and friends)....

Eating!

*Not #1: Yes, I do know Canadians have Thanksgiving too, along with a few other places. But for this message of this post, Canadian Thanksgiving (and the others) are irrelevant. I hope I didn't offend any Canadians out there.

*Note #2: I also do know that the whole Native American-pilgrims/Native Americans-colonists relationship is not as cheery as the Thanksgiving story suggests. However, for the sake of being concise and not opening a whole other can of worms, we'll just put those facts aside.

Fragrant Hills

The week before last, after midterms were over, I went to Fragrant Hills Park (香山公园) with some friends. This park on the outskirts of Beijing is a popular destination in the fall for many people since it's a great place to see the fall colors.

Unfortunately for us though, the strong winds of the week before had blown most of the leaves off the trees. Nevertheless, it was nice to be out of the city and walking amongst trees instead of buildings for a change.

Since many of the pictures I took of things didn't turn out particularly well this time, here are some pictures of people. For those of you who've been complaining that there are no pictures of me on this blog...here you go. Click to enlarge the image, if you must.

Emilia & I

(Left-right) Me, Stephanie, Christine,
Emilia & Irene

(Left-right, top-bottom) Beichuan, Emilia, Paul, Yandi, Irene,
Christine, me, Arvin

(Left-right) Yandi, Arvin, Beichuan

(Left to right) Emilia, Paul, me, Christine & Irene

(Left-right) Arvin, Beihcuan, Yandi, Paul, me, Christine,
Emilia, Stephanie & Irene

Special Thanks to Yandi Santosa for many of these photos. 

Disclaimer: If I spelled your name wrong in the captions, I'm sincerely sorry. Let me know and I'll make the necessary changes.

Classes & classmates

Looking back at my blog posts to date, I realized I haven't really mentioned much (or really, anything at all) about my classes here at BNU. Seeing as that I came here to study Mandarin, it's high time that I enlighten you about my academic life here, since up until now it's been a bit of a mystery.

From Monday through Friday, I have class everyday. My three classes here are Mandarin intensive reading （精读）, conversation （会话） and listening （听力）, each of which meet three times a week for roughly an hour and half each time. On top of that, I have an additional class on Fridays that basically acts office hours where I can ask my head teacher (my intensive reading teacher), any questions I have concerning class material or Mandarin in general. All in all, it adds up to approximately 18 hours of class a week.

Unlike in the United States where each one of my classes is with different people, here at BNU everyone in my class remains the same except the teacher. The only exception to this is my conversation class, which also includes three students from the 101 (level 2) class.

For the most part, ensuring that our classmates remain the same in every class really helps our learning process. It allows us to become comfortable enough with each other so that when we mistakes it's no big deal. However, on the flip side, there's often a lot of chatter going on during class time since we all know each other pretty well now, and this sometimes can be obnoxious.

Regardless, meeting new people from all around the world is always the best part of studying abroad in an international program, whether it be here in Beijing or in Paris. According to my teacher (and reinforced my my own personal observation), the program here at BNU is overwhelmingly dominated by Korean students, followed closely by Japanese students. However in the last few years, the program has seen an increasing number of students from Indonesia and Thailand.

In my class, half of the students are Indonesian. The rest of us come from Thailand, Sweden, Japan, the UK, Botswana, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, and the US. Despite Koreans making up the majority of BNU's international program, my class only has one student from South Korea. I'm also the only one with an American passport, although Tom, who's English, now calls the United States (North Carolina) home as well.

Now for some photos of my classmates from the classroom and around Beijing:

My class with our listening teacher

(Top-bottom, left-right) Robin, Jessica, Emilia, Tom, Janar

 

(Left-right) Teddy, Janar, O, Jane and I at Hongluo Si

(Left-right) Emilia, me, Christine, and Irene
at Xiangshan

Special thanks to Florensia "Gina" Regina , Jessica Lee and Yandi Santosa for the photos.