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.
No comments:
Post a Comment