Goodbye foreign students

This week, I'm saying a goodbyes to Fudan language students who have been studying Mandarin here. They've finished their exams, and are now beginning to disappear off back home.

They're generally young uns, in their early twenties. Some are staying on in Shanghai, but most only planned to spend a single term out here learning Chinese. Some say they may be back in the future for internships or to find jobs - aussie Emily, german Joyce, french Carole, canadian Kellog... I hope they do. :)

In the last six months I have befriended a number of the foreign students, through occasional meals and parties. [aside - excellent, just fried a mosquito with my electric tennis racquet thing - hope it was the one that was bothering me all night] I haven't socialised with them as much as to join their 'gangs', but I've happily tagged along from time to time.

My focus of course has been on the Mandarin side of things. My MBA has also detracted from the socialising time I have, in particular needing to be at class on Friday evenings, and to wake up [darn it another one just flew past my nose] for 9am clases on Saturdays. I think the focus is one of the reasons why I've been able to make some good progress with my Chinese.

It is of course a balance that all are entitled to choose. For example, by choosing to live outside the foreign student dormitory, I've missed out on a whole lot of fun socialising with young fun (and some quite beautiful) people... but that fun would indeed have been at the cost of progress in mandarin.

Generally I'm comfortable with my decision to focus. My intention was to progress my mandarin as quickly as possible, in line with convincing my company to take me on. Enjoying life as a foreign student wasn't really high on my priorities. I have one pang of regret though - as a consultant, it isn't so easy for me to find or settle down with a partner. A number of the foreign students have hooked up with boyfriends/girlfriends over these months. To think that I possibly have missed out on a romance makes me feel a little regretful that I couldn't take longer out of my schedule. Only a little regretful though... because ask me if I'd have done it any differently in retrospect, and I think the answer is still no.... I am impatient to get on with my China mission.

One very nice thing is if I can keep in touch with some of these folks as they live their lives on in other countries. I'm hoping MSN or ideally www.Friendster.com will help out here. An international alumni network of friends from something like this is something to treasure for quite some time - it's so easy to reminisce over 4 kuai la mian, the state of the teaching buildings, or other aspects of our Fudan life.

This reminds me of the experience I had with the Weizmann Institute Summer Science Camp in Israel, back in 1995 I believe. 80 students from around the globe, doing some science work and touring Israel. A fantastic, fantastic experience. My contact with friends there has waned significantly, possibly because we were quite young at the time, and will have changed a lot. Also, email addresses and such like have changed, as we entered university, got jobs, changed jobs etc. Anyway, when i have time I hope to track down some of my friends from the programme, in particular US Joey, US Connie, Alex (Rau?) from Ithaca, Chinese Yi, and Mexican Yiti.