Now I am already here in China for 4 Month, but for me it feels like 4 weeks. The time is passing too fast. I have not even done half of the things I wanted to have done by now.
But my life here is fantastic. At the beginning I was afraid that I wouldn't get any friends here, but nearly everybody is interested. It is just difficult to talk to my Chinese friends sometimes, because we have very different interests.
The first two month I have been in a very busy host family. My mum has never been home, my sister always studied and my dad was working in Tibet, and I haven't seen him once. And in the evening we never did things together, we never really talked. I was always concerned that this was because of me. But after I asked my sister about this she told me that this is not my fault at all, it is just how their family works. From that day on I was very happy in that family. But in October my mum broke her arm, so I had to change family, to a friends home. And there I was even happier!
We talked a lot more, and even if I didn't have my own room, I felt much better.
We already went to holiday's together, and we go to our grandparents home every evening to eat dinner.
My sister and me are very close friends, almost like real siblings. For me it is just hard, that they don't hug each other. In Germany we do it all the time with friends and family. And I really miss that.
I have 8 hours Chinese lesson every week. With two different teacher. I am very happy about this, because they have very different ways of teaching. When I am not going to my Chinese class, I am sitting in the back of my classroom, dreaming, copying Chinese characters, listening to music....
Every Tuesday evening I am going to the international Department of my school. They are all chinese student, but they have lessons in English. And every Tuesday evening the have the subject ESL, English as Second Language. And they allowed me to take part, so I can also improve my English.
After school I often go to the gym to do some sports, because I am eating so much in China, and doing sports helps me to think.
At the weekend I try to see my Chinese friend as often as possible, but it is not very easy, because they have to study a lot. So I often meet the other exchange student, and we talk about our life here in Shanghai. For example we go to Nanjing Road and walk around, we go to the KTV,...
Since I am in my new family I am doing a lot together with my sister, much more than with my old sister. Nearly every weekend she comes to see my friends with me, and we also want to travel together with all our friends.
I am just a bit frustrated that we have to be at home so early, because now I can only use the weekends to discover new things in Shanghai, or meet friends.
 But all in all, I am more than happy  here.
Also, AFS here in Shanghai is very good. They organise a lot of activities for us, for example we learned calligraphie, how to do chinese knots, cooking jiao zi, and other things. Every month we have at least one activity with AFS. But I really don't like the Chinese parties. You have to do a performance all the time. I already had to do this in Germany with AFS, an I thought once I am in China, I wouldn't have to do it anymore. But the truth is that we have to do a lot more performances. And I think that is very annoying. For me a party is to have fun, chat with friends...
In the last weeks, after Christmas, I felt a bit lonely here. But since I have seen the other exchange students in Yunnan, I felt much better, I planned so many things I want to do, and I really start to use the time that I have left here in China. Because I think it was the best decision I have ever made to go to China for one year, and not to such a country as USA, the United Kingdom or Australia. I think I already changed a lot, and became more selfconfident. And I think all the students that went to China for one year, are going to learn much more for their lives than the students that went to countries that are more similar to their country than China.