Strategy: Play it cool

I know that this will be hard to believe, but I haven't always had the easiest time making friends. In middle school I actually saw the bottom of a few trash cans (yes that does still happen in school systems). I was the nerdy band kid, but at the same time I didn't do well in classes and I wasn't very athletic, so I had a hard time getting out of the trash cans also. However, here is the good news... there are over 30,000 students at the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, so someone has to be my friend. I'm not too worried about the friend thing, but where I find more concern is how I'm going to assimilate into the culture of China.

The culture is just so different and the people interact in a completely different way than I do. As I have said before conversation is a big concern of mine as far as how proficiently I am going to be able to converse with people in my day to day activities. I'm going to try my hardest to not be as direct as I normally am and try to foster more conversation with individuals. However, at the end of the day I will not be fluent in Mandarin and I am concerned about that being an insult to someone that I am struggling to converse with. Let's take a step back and talk about the whole 30,000 students thing. 30,000 is a rather large number of people. I very intentionally picked Maryville for its size, and at the same time I intentionally picked JUFE because I wanted an experience that would push me out of my comfort zone. I feel like with 30,000 students it could be easier for me to blend in, but at the same time I could see myself just kind of hanging out in my apartment always working on homework or studying because I am a little anxious about some classes and could see that being a reaction.

If I had to guess my day-to-day schedule I would guess that I would start off in the morning with classes till lunch, grabbing lunch in the cafeteria, then more class. Then homework, dinner, and more homework till I go to sleep. That's pretty similar to how I spend my time here, except I usually have my group of friends that I will break up those times with to hang out. I really need to intentionally make sure that I am taking some Eric time through my days or else I will get burned out.

My strategy for assimilating into the Chinese culture? Play it cool. Don't show that I'm nervous about a lot of stuff, just throw on the shades, grab food at somewhere adventurous, and hope to find someone who really likes Star Wars that I can hang with on the weekends.