Wednesday, July 9, 2008
4:36 AM

OK, so I was too tired to do an entry last night. But I'm up so I'll do it now.

The sun comes up here at 4:30 in the morning. Who's idea was that? One of the guys at the school says his host family wakes up when the sun comes up every day, and then goes to bed at 8:30 or 9. I don't really understand why, considering that they're not farmers or anything.

Yesterday was the first real day of class. Those of us in the 'intensive' program have 2 class sessions. The morning session goes from 8 to 12. We have 2 10-minute breaks and a 20-minute break. Then lunch is until 1. Then there's another session from 1-3. Each session has a different teacher, so I have 2 teachers. Our morning session at the level I'm in has 3 students, and the afternoon session has 2. Both of my teachers are Chinese, and quite fluent in English. But they do try to spend most of the class talking in Chinese. They also emphasize writing in Chinese, which I'm not good at at ALL. We had homework to review characters for a dictation test today (that's not going to go well), and we're also supposed to write an 'excuse note' in Chinese. Oh, and to help memorize names of body parts we sang 'head shoulders knees and toes' in Chinese.

For lunch, there are a number of restaurants around. Or, as I did yesterday, during the last break before lunch you can go in the 'cafeteria' area at the school and they have a bunch of menus from different places, and you can tell them what you want. They'll call in your order for you and deliver it to you at lunchtime. So the Korean girl and I did that yesterday... we actually ordered from a Korean place and she helped me through the menu.

Each session has its own textbook. The one for the morning session actually includes a DVD, which is handy -- it basically acts out all the dialogs in the book.

I was supposed to go over to the police station with a group of the students at 3 yesterday to register (I haven't done that yet) but it turns out that I have to go to a different station so I believe I'm going to come back to the apartment at 3:30 today and go with my host family.

At 6 PM they brought a bunch of prospective language exchange partners in to pair up with us. We were supposed to just start talking to them and then pick one to keep meeting up with. I was talking to 2 of them. One was a guy named Chris who kept trying to talk to me about the NBA. Apparently as a world culture, that's what America brings to the table. He kept asking me about various off-season player trades. I explained I was really more of an NFL fan and he knew what that was. He also thought everybody in America played sports in high school and college. He said he played basketball in high school, but the guy was 5'11 so I imagine that made sense. The other person I was talking to was a 33-year-old girl named Emily, who's married, and a college teacher in business. Her English is really good. She's also been to America, so between that and her not being particularly interested in the NBA, we had more to talk about. We hung out for about 90 minutes and exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up again today around 6 PM.

I rode back to the apartment, and the host family's son was there. He had apparently been working in Sichuan. He's in his early 20's, I'd guess, and speaks some English, so that was a relief. He goes by the English name 'Leo'.

OK -- have to study... more later.