大家好!My name is Anna Woods and I am a second year HNC Certificate/SAIS MA student, so I just spent a year at the Hopkins Nanjing Center and have now started classes in Washington DC.
A sunny blue sky day on the 5th floor 阳台 (deck) |
My background, with an undergraduate degree in Economics and Chinese, is pretty ordinary for a typical HNC student, with one exception: I’m from New Zealand and am one of the very few Kiwi students who have attended the HNC. I actually have this very blog to thank for that- since I didn’t have any friends or classmates to describe the HNC to me, I relied on blog posts and chats with the admissions team to ascertain whether the HNC would be a good fit for me – and evidently it turned out it was.
I was born in Dunedin, New Zealand and moved around a lot as a child with a father in the military. We settled in Christchurch in 2005 and I stayed there until 2013 when I moved back to Dunedin to pursue university studies. After three years I graduated with my BA in Chinese and Economics and a Diploma in French (in New Zealand a Bachelor degree is only three years long). I worked at a translation company in Christchurch before arriving at the HNC in September 2016.
Walking on the Nanjing city wall with a bunch on friends our first week |
Meeting the former US Ambassador to China, Max Baucus |
Eating Christmas dinner with my roommate Shirley and friend Natalie |
I’m excited to share with you more about the HNC as well as HNCers experiences at SAIS DC – we’ve already had one of many luncheons, complete with Chinese food, and I’m looking forward to our Mid-Autumn Festival celebration that’s coming up.
Anna
Written by Anna Woods, HNC Certificate/SAIS MA Student