Long time, no see

  Shanghai, Shanghai, China
Sunday, June 22, 2008

Nimen hao,

Sorry for the delay in posting. This week hasn't been overly exciting, so I don't think you've been missing much. At the start of the week, classes went as usual, though we did have to cram 5 lessons into four days. The first semester (CHIN 201) is coming to an end, so on Monday we have our two oral exams (one is a presentation, one in an interview), and on Tuesday we have our written exam. We get two separate grades for 201 and 202, so I'm excited about knowing mine... but I'm thinking it's an A... I hope. I feel like language/Chinese classes are just one of those types where if you're there everyday, and you do all your work, then you earn what you put into it. Plus I think the grading system is rather lenient. Anyway, after our test on Tuesday, we start packing for Beijing (!!) and leave that night. We'll be taking an overnight train. In Beijing, we'll be seeing some of the main attractions, like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and Tian'anmen Square, among other places. I believe we'll be there until Sunday. This may shed some light: I will attempt to attach our weekly newsletter which has info about the past week and also about upcoming event. Notice many of the photos are mine. http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=51d1fec6bf&realattid=f_fhn1h4iy0&attid=0.1&disp=vah&view=att&th=11a9fda587d034e8

Anyway, back to the past week. The first half of the week was business as usual, with a little less sleep. On Tuesday my roommate had some friends in town so they and a few of us went out to our favorite club- maybe not a great idea, but it was fun the less.

Tuesday night out

Just made for a more interesting Wednesday. Then on Thursday we (as a group) all ventured to Tongji Middle School down the road from us. There, we split into small groups (4 of us, 4 of them) and they gave us a tour of their school while we chatted and asked questions.

Tongji Middle School

We also had some 1-on-1 time to ask interview questions.

Tongji middle school

The middle school was in great condition, better than anything I've seen in Culpeper. They also had the opportunity to take such a greater variety of classes- ping pong, robots, electric circuitry, calligraphy- really interesting stuff. It was also interesting to see how big of a deal this was to everyone involved. Our teachers and theirs each exchanged gifts, and there were a lot of formalities. Anyway, after touring the school, we had a quick lunch in their cafeteria (better than ECNU food), took a few pictures, exchanged info, and headed back to campus. It was certainly an interesting experience, but I found it somewhat detrimental to my language self-confidence. I could say/ask what I wanted to, but I find it very difficult to understand what the students were saying.

Chinese students and us

Besides that, my student and I didn't really click, so for me it was a lack-luster experience. And now we have a 400 character essay about it looming over our heads due tomorrow.. yayy... We also had calligraphy and painting classes this week, photos attached.

paintings

Friday was good because we didn't have an exam (because the final is Monday). Instead, we had a normal weekday class, full of useless activities. Let me explain- each day, we have three normal classes. First is like going over new vocab and the substance of the dialogue, second is going over grammar, and third is "activity class" where we often do pair or group activities involving chatting over repetitive topics and sometimes acting for the class. On the surface that might sound fun, but we all agree that it offers little to our learning. After class I ventured to the front gate of campus to Trustmart, where I picked up some necessities I'd been lacking, as well as some weird tea which was totally random and not very good tasting. Then Friday night a group of us went out to get some comfort food- at Hooters.

god bless this grilled chicken sandwich

It was essentially exactly the same except all the girls were asian and the food wasn't as good.

the group at hooters

But nevertheless, I was happy to see silverware and familiar meat.

at hooters :/

I hear it may become a weekly trip since there's a college night in the middle of the week... we can only hope.

Yesterday almost everyone ventured out to "fake road" to do some haggling for fake purses, clothes, shoes, etc. You can find almost anything there, and a lot of foreigners don't really haggle well enough so I'm sure the vendors really make a lot of money. I mostly wanted to practice, for some reason I'm not very good, the vendors don't chase after me like other people. I ended up buying some polo sweater that I don't really want, but whatever. I need to go back to get a purse and maybe some shoes, or anything else I can think of. I also really want to go to H&M, but I hear they're the same prices as Western H&Ms. Oh, and I also picked up a Chinese cell phone, so if anyone wants a call, let me know. It's a cute little LG and it really wasn't very expensive. Other than that- I think I might go buy a cheap guitar because I really have the urge to play. Today I slept in and plan on working on my essay and preparing my Oral presentation- gotta get that A! Hopefully I can look forward to a group dinner tonight somewhere other than the dining hall... Hope this cleared things up-

local samplings

enjoy the pics!

<3, luolan