OCTOBER – THE MONTH OF EXPLORING AND LEARNING

Hello again! This year I have planned to pen down each month I live in China in order to reflect back and letting you guys be part of my journey too. This blog post is a monthly recap of October and what I have been doing since last month. 

Time moved pretty fast for me in October. I tried to juggle with a lot of things altogether and I somehow got through this month without having a breakdown and stressing up. (yay! progress!) I can’t even believe it’s November already and by next week half of November will be gone too. Is it me or that’s how adult life is like? Time just flies! However, in these fast times too, I don’t forget to take out time, B.R.E.A.T.H.E and just relax.

I am generally not very fond of October as this is the month where I am generally very homesick. The reason is obvious,  it’s the month of celebration in India and this is my third time not being in India for any of the festivals. However, this year was different. I didn’t feel home sick and I even celebrated Diwali in my own way. I deliberately dressed up in an Indian outfit, asked some of my friends to join me for an Indian dinner. 

I know how hard it is to be in a different country at the time of festivities. As humans, we tend to isolate ourselves  and don’t even feel like celebrating (that’s what I did last year!). However, I realized how important it is to celebrate your own festivals even if nobody knows about it. It’s important to celebrate in your own little ways with friends and have fun in whatever way you can. That’s what I did this year and it’s definitely the highlight of my October.

Moving on, Let’s talk about each week of October.

FIRST WEEK
For last three years, somehow I have traveled in the first week of October. In 2015, I went to Xi’an, China, my first solo-trip to Bir- Billing, Himachal Pradesh, India was in October, 2017 and last year, It was Suzhou, China. This was the first time ever that I didn’t go anywhere in holidays. I was here in Nanjing the whole week. After a lot of thinking, I decided to not go anywhere because I really wanted to work on my blog + vlog and I thought full 7 day holidays could be very advantageous. However, I was hardly productive. I realized I don’t function very well if I have no schedule in my life.
Even the week wasn’t that productive, I did       

• write a blog and posted it 
• worked half way on my YouTube video. 
• celebrated China’s National Day by spending whole day in a park and making vlog about it.

       
I did make a lot of new friends this week as I was out almost everyday but it’s hard to keep up after making friends because I literally shut myself off after going out everyday for a week. I am trying to create balance here.

SECOND WEEK
This was a very hectic yet fruitful week. I tried to balance a lot of things this week. 

1. I attended all my university classes and did my homework regularly.
2. I worked on my 3rd Youtube video which I released in that week. (the response was amazing. Thank You <3) 
3. I wrote another blog which I am yet to publish.
4. I worked on PPTs to teach Mandarin.  I have got another new student to teach Mandarin. ( I can’t believe my luck)
5. Taught Mandarin to 2 people and taught English at my homestay family.
6. I went on a meet-up and met some amazing people too. ( I always keep something for the week to be excited about and I love meet and greet with new people)
7. I was super active on Social media too.

 Only thing that I was lacking in this week was keeping myself healthy and fit by eating good and doing exercise. As they say, You can’t have it all and for me, the most important thing in my life is my PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH which were loosing balance. Although this was the most ideal week in October where I balanced study and work along with my passion and was also socially active, however, this was it because I couldn’t continue with it and later two weeks were a bit of disaster in terms of time management and balancing.

THIRD WEEK
I had this realization that I did no physical exercise for past 2 weeks and I wasn’t able to push myself to join Yoga class as well. But I knew I just needed some kind of push and that happened when one of my classmate jokingly said that I am getting fat and that was it. I immediately signed up for the yoga class. It was not because of me getting fat but I really don’t want to loose the flexibility I have gained over past 8 months. So from this week, Yoga joined my life again. 🙂 In this past year, I have learned, no matter what, no matter how busy I will be in life, I will always make time for physical exercise. It is a must to keep myself sane and going. 
I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS TO EXPRESS FOR THIS WEEK

1. I wrote a blog on my language journey. I don’t know since when but now I enjoy writing so much. I really feel I’ll write a book one day on my life just for fun. 
2. I wrote the script for my next Youtube video but that was it. I haven’t done anything related to YouTube since past 20 days and I don’t know how to continue it because I am just not that efficient in time management. I am really thinking hard on how to keep alive my YouTube everyday but editing takes like forever. I have 10 videos to edit, but I am trying not to stress about it and focus more on my studies for now.
3. I have been really good at being focused and not diverting from my goal which is to study Mandarin. So, I am attending all the classes, doing my homework and meeting my Chinese friend too.
4. I did go out this week too on Friday for meeting new friends I made last week. It was good. Talking to people always helps me have a different perspective on life. So I make sure how much busy I am, I always take out time to meet people.

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I also wasted/invested (don’t know what to say) a chunk of good time on social media. It’s such a trap. I try my best to use social media in a positive way to show my life in China, to share positive things and messages related to mental health but social media really affects my mental health. I love expressing and writing but creativity needs a lot of time. Even writing a blog like this needs atleast 4 hours. Can you believe that? So I always asking myself, what’s the point? Why I am sharing, Why I am doing things the way I do. The answers are below. 🙂

The amount of positive messages I get in a week are just so overwhelming. It never lets me demotivate from what I do. Even if it is affecting one person, I felt I didn’t waste time doing it. Because whenever I write or post something, it is with a purpose and intention and when it goes to the heart of people, It just makes my life so much more worth living. SO THANK YOU ALL OF YOU WHO ALWAYS SAY SUCH SWEET THINGS. IT REALLY MATTERS A LOT. PLEASE KEEP SPREADING THIS POSITIVITY.

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FOURTH WEEK
This was my favourite week and one of the most exhausting week because of so many reasons. The start of the week was pretty bad as the air is getting pretty bad over here and bad air quality really affects your body and mind. I was so lazy and tired all the time this week but I had so much work and deadlines that I have to keep pushing myself to go on with my work. I actually hustled this week.

One of my friend asked me a month ago if I would be interested in giving a presentation to Chinese students about any topic in English. It was part of Chinese student’s curriculum to improve their English. The concept is similar to ted talk but called as M-talk. They need foreigners from different countries to give a PPT on any topic and then the Chinese student will do the simultaneous interpretation of the same. You get a reward for presenting as well. I did it last time too where I made a presentation on Bullet Journalling.  Those who don’t know, I love self development and self- growth related topics and love talking about the self-development tools to have more clarity in life. So this time, I picked up a topic which is again very close to my heart and today whatever I am is just because of that – POWER OF VISUALIZATION. I am writing here because I spend whole week preparing this PPT which turned out to be really good. I presented to Chinese students as well on rehearsal day where I got not that good response because it was such an alien concept for them. My actual presentation was in November and I got a phenomenal response from Chinese students.. I ll tell you the whole story in November post. 🙂

SOME AMAZING THINGS THAT HAPPENED DURING THIS WEEK

1. I got one more student to teach Mandarin. I never thought I could get even one student to teach Mandarin and here I am, teaching 3 students now. 
2. I had an amazing Diwali dinner with my friends and it was really fun telling them more about my country.
3. I wrote a movie review in Mandarin 😮 Even I am not putting that much efforts in studying mandarin no. I feel like I am still improving. I have studygram account on Instagram where I do a monthly update on my language progress and struggles. If you are interested in following me over there, my Instagram handle : @mylanguage_studygram . 
4. I went on a free event organised by our university on waste management where we got to see how Nanjing is taking action to combat climate change. It was a pretty relaxing and calm day and I realized how less I am aware about it and since then I am trying to read more about protecting environment and proper waste removal.
5. I have started studying for my international exam HSK 5 as well. I can’t wait to have the HSK 5 certificate on my hand.

SOME ADDITIONAL THINGS THAT I TRY TO DO WHENEVER I GET EVEN LITTLE FREE TIME

1. Currently reading a book – “Ikigai – The Japanese Secret to Long and Happy life”
2. Listening to podcasts by Jay Shetty and Oprah Winfrey
3. Planning my last two months and setting goals for 2020.
4.  Talking to my friends on video call
5. Always trying to reply back to the queries I get on various social platforms about China and Chinese language

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It’s always nice to reflect back on your month and let your friends and family be updated on your life too. If you have always wanted to pen down your life and your thoughts but never got motivated enough, trust me, it is the best thing to do. Documenting your life and experiences will make you learn so much about life and about yourself. 🙂
That’s it for today. See you next month! I hope you have a terrific November. 🙂 If you have anything to say, feel free to drop a comment or message me on my email ID.