Maybe when I'm not so tired....

I'm really sorry for the lack of interesting/introspective entries lately... even though I only have three classes, they all keep me pretty busy and tired.

I think I'll follow suit with Clay and describe a typical day for me in Beijing...

I wake up at around 6:45am (I know...disgusting) and get ready for my Chinese class which begins at 8:00am. This entails getting dressed, prettified and doing some last minute studying of characters for our TingXie.
When class begins at 8 we hand in our homework and have our daily tingxie...this entails usually the teacher reading around some words from the day's lesson and us writing the characters, pinyin, and english meaning. There's also 2 non-aural sections which are usually English translations into Chinese characters and pinyin, and then pinyin into characters into english. Buh. I pretty much hate these things...

We then have class for about an hour in which we go over the sentence patterns that we are supposed to know for the lesson as well as the vocabulary. After this we break for 10 minutes where all of us usually congregate in the hall and complain about how tired we are and how boring/hard our TingXie was for the day. After our break we have class again for another hour where we drill the sentence patterns. After another 10 minute break we have class AGAIN where we usually go over some supplementary material that's more colloquial (kou yu=ko you) and then go over that. We then either have a 40 minute break or a 10 minute break after which we split into discussion sections of 3 and just sit around and talk. Some people use the 40 minute breaks for naps--I have yet to do this.

Then it's LUNCH. We usually go to 'Food Alley' and eat family style, we usually order like one less dish then there is people, plus rice of course! Remember, if you want your rice WITH your meal you have to tell them to bring it first...otherwise they will bring it last to like cleanse the palate or something, I'm not exactly sure. The dishes we seem to order most are Gong Bao Ji Ding (Kung Pao Chicken) and Qie Zi (chiyee-zuh= eggplant)--people laugh at Persephone and Cory and Me because we always get the same thing...oh well, I know what I like, man. If there's no time for family style dining we go to the Xiao Chi (sheyow-chr=little eating place) and get noodles or Gong Bao Ji Ding. We almost always go to  this little store in food alley and buy snacks and/or green tea and/or diet coke for the day...

After this sometimes I have Literature which is interesting or sometimes I have a break in which I say I will do homework but will almost always fall asleep hardcore...like I said it's pathetic but I really cannot function without a nap. If I don't have literature the rest of my day is free to study Chinese and have dinner with peeps.

If I DO have Lit after the class I have a break in which I will take a nap if I haven't before and study for my philosophy class which meets 6-7:30. I've only had once but is pretty interesting...I'm going to work to try and think in abstractions again, though...all of this straight-edged econ has ruined my mind.  After this people have gone to dinner already so I'm left to fend for myself--usually getting something quick so I can come back and study until about 12-1 when I pass out.

Work hard. Play hard. I don't know if these words have ever really applied to me but they do now... It's sort of like what we were talking about in Philosophy class today...yin and yang, everythig in balance and opposition. We cannot have something exist without its opposite--this is the Dao. You look at the Chinese language and its this way too... Have you eaten? (Ni chi fan, bu chi fan?= Have you eaten, or not eaten?) Questions are often asked in this way...two given opposite states. Perhaps this pervades the Chinese culture and work ethic as well...you work until you cannot work anymore, you play until you cannot play anymore and so on and so on-- a continuous changing of one state of being into another--it's opposite.

hmmm, maybe these philosophers were onto something....