Apparently, I fail at Mandarin. I wasn’t even attempting to lie at this point.

In the afternoon, we had Mandarin, Cantonese, English classes. English, I was looking forward to. But Mandarin and Cantonese, not so much. Obviously, I knew could speak and understand Mandarin and Cantonese as well as read simplified and traditional Chinese characters, but only to a qualified extent. In short, I was not at an advanced enough level to be in language class with these Class A students.

What the heck was I going to do to pass? I couldn’t even write a paragraph in Chinese!

But then, Mr. Chen, the language teacher, who taught both Mandarin and Cantonese, solved my internal conflict. “Since you two are not as proficient in language as the rest of the class,” he looked at Kris and me, “you will get modified versions of the lesson plan and exams. You will also have a peer tutor. Does anyone want to volunteer themselves to this task?”

“I will tutor Yifan!” several girls in the class shot up their seats and raised their hands.

I guess Kris found himself multiple tutors. Maybe I’ll have to end up with an assigned tutor since I’m so not popular…

“Teacher, I will tutor Jiayi,” a sweet male voice hummed. I turned around to see Luhan beaming at me with his hand raised perfectly vertically in the air.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to him. He nodded in response with his usual bright, cheerful smile.

“So I guess this is set then,” Mr. Chen instructed. “Xinyi will help Yifan and Luhan will help Jiayi. Now let’s begin our lesson,” he smiled at the class and began passing out the notes for the day. Overall, I was able to follow along with his instructions but when we had to write a short narrative about what we did over the sum