Pictures, pictures, pictures

Here's some random pictures from throughout the first two weeks.  It takes forever to upload pictures... :P

At Qianmen, touristy place with a mixture of "traditional" looking shops and Western style shops

Rachael, Jocelyn and wo at Tian'anmen square.

Me with the olympic panda bear thing, several people got pictures with this thing, and then it tried to make us pay for it.  Oh China, always trying to rip you off........

Temple of Heaven.  We didn't actually pay to get in, so this is from outside the gate.  Lol, cheap students are we.  :)  We also took one of the pictures where you dress up like the emperor and his wife and concubines.  Don't have the picture on my camera though.......don't think I'd ever put it up here either.  (It was a really bad picture.)  Worth the 10 kuai though.

My zhongguo pengyou (Chinese friends) and Rachael and I outside this yummy restaurant.  Afterward we went to KTV (karaoke and sang for 2 hours.  My throat hurt so much!!!

 This is the ktv thing.

This was a sign inside the KTV room......unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the actually room.....I guess I was too distracted by the sign...

Oh, for those who don't know, Asian karaoke is different than American in that you get a group of friends and go into a private room and sing together, instead of to a bar full of strangers.  It's super fun.  ^^

Will post more later.  Till then, peace!!!

中文课很难！！！(a.k.a. Why I have no time to blog)

Ok, I probably shouldn't start out with excuses, but I'll do it anyway.  It's also probably not the best sign if my second post is an explanation of why my blog post may be a little less frequent then I would like.

To begin:

Studying Chinese is no walk in the park, and studying two terms worth of Chinese in one is definitely not for the faint of heart.

I begin every day waking up at 7:00am.  For the next hour I get dressed, eat oatmeal, and study for my quiz, and preview the reading for the day before racing off to class 5 minutes before 8.

In class, we begin with our quiz; Shang Laoshi (our teacher, laoshi means teacher, Shang is her name) tells us vocab words and we have to write them down.  Then we begin learning the grammar structures for today's class.  After an hour, we take a 10 minute break (which more often is squished down to 5) and then continue by reading the passage that goes along with our lesson for the day and learning more grammar.

After another hour we have a 20 minute break and Qian Laoshi takes over.  She asks us questions and we must answer them using the grammar structures we learned in the last two hours.  We do this for an hour, take another 10 minute break and then do it again.

So, in total, I'm in class from 8-12, a solid four hours in the same small room, learning the same subject.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have an extra two hours of class devoted to Chinese cultural. On Wednesday I have 25 minutes of office hours, where I converse with Qian Laoshi in Chinese, and on Fridays we have language table, where we eat together as a class and can only speak Chinese.

Studying then takes up the majority of my free time.  Every day I memorize 30-40 vocab words, which includes pinyin (Chinese using letters and tones) and hanyu(Chinese characters).  I don't know if you've ever had to memorize 30-40 Chinese words a day, but it takes a very long time.  Every day we have a quiz, and every Wednesday we must turn in an essay.  We end the week with a test (written and oral) covering all four of the lessons that we did that week.

If I'm not studying then we're either doing cultural activities, or I'm exploring on my own.  Every Wednesday night we have some sort of cultural activity, and every weekend we have a day trip.  For instance, last Wednesday we had a meet and greet with other Beijing University students so we can make new friends and practice our Chinese.  I'm hanging out with my Beijing University student today.  We're going out to eat and maybe doing karaoke.  :)  This Wednesday we went to an acrobatics show.  It was a little cheesy, but fun nonetheless.

Last weekend we took a bus tour to Beijing.  We stopped at the city wall, Tian'anmen, and the Olympic Stadium.  This weekend we are hiking the Great Wall.  Should be fun. :)

Last Sunday, a couple of friends and I went to the Temple of Heaven.  We wanted to go to the underground city, but it was closed indefinitely.  :(

If you missed the gist of this post, I'll spell it out for you: I am very busy.  But I'll try to keep up with the blog.  It might help my motivation if anyone who's reading this actually signs up, and then subscribes/ posts comments.  Hint hint.  :D

Hmm...blogger isn't loading my photos, so I'll post them later.

Till then,

peace.

Wo zai Beijing!

Ok, y’all.  Sorry for the delay of my first post.  It’s not too deep, and I’m not going to wow you with any kind of fantastic writing.  I have my first quiz tomorrow, so I’m going to devote time to that instead.  This is just a brief happenings/feelings of the first four days since I’ve arrived to Beijing.  I’ll try and put more time and effort into these posts when I have get more settled.  I’ll also try harder to take more pictures.  It’s just really hard, cause I’m really lazy. :P

Hope life in America (and in Scotland) is fantabulous. 

Day 1: Ni Hao, Beijing!!!

Exhausted, and slightly sick.  This did not happen the last time I went to China.  After a long wait at the airport for the bus to pick us up we finally got to our dorm rooms:

(note: this was actually taken 2 days after arriving)

We then ate at E Station, one of the restaurants on campus.  We didn’t eat much, even though we didn’t eat much all day, because everyone’s stomachs were still unsettled. 

I finally hit the hay around midnight. 

Day 2: Exploring

Woke up around 7, group breakfast at a nearby bakery.  Stomach still queasy.  We got phones and bus/subway cards.  Except my phone had 100 something kuai of debt on it, so when I filled it up it didn’t actually work.  (It took me 80 kuai before I finally realized why it wasn’t working, and they can’t give me my money back. -_-)

We took a tour around the city and I had mapo tofu for lunch.  Yum. :) In the afternoon I finished unpacking and did some last minute studying before class starts at a cute coffee shop.  Here's a random picture I took when we toured the city.  Driving in China is dangerous, but so, is sitting on furniture.

Talking to people is really scary, because I know I’m making a fool of myself.  It’s really frustrating. 

We had a campus tour around 4, and supper as a group.  Afterwards we went to Walmart. Chinese Walmart=more interesting than U.S. Walmart; 3+ floors of walmarty goodness.  We didn’t have much time to spend there though, so I need to go back.

Overall, a pretty good day. :)

Day 3: What am I doing here?

Not the best day.  With my stupid phone not working and losing 80 kuai over it, running around crowded buses and subway stations for two hours, and stressing over the fact that I know absolutely nothing, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed (It doesn’t help when most of the FSP is also feeling very grumpy and all the bad nerves and stress are floating in the air and sticking to me!). 

I don’t know if you know how much I want/ need to be fluent in Chinese, but I’ll tell you now.  I really really really want to. 

Everyone speaks so fast and I get freaked out.  When I get uncomfortable or nervous in a situation, I usually just go silent, and don’t know what to say.  This is really bad if I need to do the exact opposite if I want to learn to speak Chinese.  I just hope I can get over this.

Today was Mid Autumn Festival, where people are suppose to come together and be happy, but I’m feeling more lonely.

I just know tomorrow is a new day.

Day 4: Shang ke!

Classes start today! 

Things I learned today:

The teacher is super nice

I can have a conversation with the teacher. (a very basic one)

I DO know some Chinese :P

Maybe I can do this after all…