My Hell Week Between China and Costa Rica (1/4)
April 16, 2008 – 9:52 pmI first heard the term “hell week” when I was in high school. It referred to the one week throughout a particular sport season when the coach would push the athletes to their limits. This would usually happen two weeks before regional competitions, and athletes would spend the week right before the competitions to rest. In college, hell week is more or less midterms week or finals week.
My class was mainly Chinese diaspora living in Europe and students from other parts of Asia.
This was my hell week. And it’s like a combination of both. Except high school and college students don’t usually have to get on three plane rides, one of which is more than a dozen hours long, or traverse eleven time zones, all the while switching among four languages (Mandarin in Shanghai, Cantonese with my family in Los Angeles, English with any American, and Spanish in Costa Rica).
It was my final week in Shanghai, wrapping up my two-month stay as an international student. My return flight to America was that Saturday. The following Monday I would fly to Costa Rica for a one-month volunteer project.
The journey started on the Wednesday of my final week in Shanghai and would not end until I landed in Costa Rica the following Tuesday. I didn’t really sleep the entire week. It was not fun. But it is a fun story to recount.
Since Friday would be our last full day in Shanghai, we knew Friday night would be sleepless. As one of my American friends put it so aptly, “It seems kind of anti-climatic to sleep on the last night.” Well, we sure didn’t do much sleeping.
But Thursday was our typical night to go out. The nightclubs were usually livelier Thursday nights than Friday nights. The reason was most nightclubs in Shanghai designated Thursday nights as foreigners’ nights.
So, we were going to go out two nights in a row. Not a big deal. Especially since we would be done with exams Thursday, and going out two nights in a row was certainly nothing new to us.
Came Wednesday, and I knew I was screwed when my European friends wanted me to go out with them that night. Most of my American friends throughout the study abroad program just hung out with each other, and a big part of why was that they all had the same classes. I, on the other hand, was put in a class with other foreign students because of my advanced language ability. Being put in that class was perhaps the best thing to happen to me on that trip. It broadened my horizons and officially expanded my social circles to the global level. It also kick-started my hell week, though.
