Obviously five months is way too much of a time to sum up in a single post, and I imagine I'll likely relate more specific experiences the longer I'm on this site, but I can give a brief summary.

I was studying at the China Foreign Affairs University, a place my university luckily had some kind of partnership with, it was in the less dense and less touristic, western half of the city center in Beijing. I remained in that city for my entire trip because I'm an awful tourist, and I didn't even visit the Great Wall. I was there solely to study Chinese, and it was wildly more useful than any classes I've taken back here in America. I met tons of people, many of who couldn't speak any English besides "hello" (though even then they often just used a Chinese approximation) and I got to see the average Beijinger. I also partied a ton, participated in an open mic night at an expat comedy club, despite my regular introverted nature, and got a nice button-up shirt of mine stolen in my first experience at a night club. I drank terrible, probably somehow spoiled beer, an even fouler tasting Chinese hard liquor called baijiu, and yet seemed to avoid ever getting food poisoning like everybody else. It was a grand adventure that's given me a ton of stories that I try to bring up without becoming "that guy who won't shut-up about the one time he studied abroad".

Anyways, don't sell yourself short, push yourself to have an adventure, try to visit foreign lands you find interesting. It's potentially costly, but it's entirely worth it, it's one of those experiences that makes you feel like you've done stuff with your life.