Aidana

My roommate is from Kazakhstan and speaks Kazakh, Russian, English, and is now learning Chinese. Her name is Aidana and she has been at Lanzhou University for about 7 months. She has been so helpful to me by showing me around the campus and city. We went to the supermarket, the bank, and out to lunch together my first day here.

Aidana is a Muslim, and luckily for her, Lanzhou has a large Chinese-Muslim population. The most common meat served in China is pork, but there are many halal restaurants in Lanzhou that serve mutton and beef instead.

Aidana and I get along very well. We are both neat and quiet, and we study a lot, but we also like to go out in Lanzhou and have fun.

English is Aidana's third language, so she learns new words every day and fixes her grammar as we speak. I learn the Chinese words for the English ones I teach her. I forget most of them, but I have started writing them down. Also, since classes have started, I'm picking up Chinese more quickly.