Sorry no pictures this time...

I haven't gone any interesting places the past couple days because of class. My Chinese class alone is around 50 characters per night that I have to memorize for our TingXie (ting-shyeh= dictation) so I have been studying pretty much non-stop only stopping for food and sleep (sometimes).

Every morning I have Chinese class at 8:00 am for 2.5 hours (with like two ten minute breaks) and then a smaller discussion class for about 40 minutes. Let me tell you, this is pretty much like torture. Don't they know that us American students can't function before 10 in the morning??? Just today, I set my alarm for 6:45 and didn't get up until 7:18... my body just does not want to move at that time of day. Furthermore, they cram sentence patterns and new vocabulary into your heads as fast as possible, I don't know how anyone could retain it without extensive review...and who has time for that when you're studying for the next day's lesson.

Today, I also had my first Contemporary Chinese Literature class, in which we will be studying Chinese Literature starting from the May 4th Literary Movement (1919) until today. I'm not entirely clear on the details of Chinese Literary History--he tried to explain it, but those of you who who know me know that I cannot stand history (or really any other academic subject for that matter). However, from my understanding, it was around this time of political and cultural revolution (really, when is China NOT going through political and cultural revolution?!?) that China began to write literature using the modern vernacular as opposed to the ancient languages only understood by the nobles. So I won't be reading any Tang poems or Oracle bones, which maybe will work in my favor...but maybe not. It might be interesting once we get to read some stuff. I don't have my film class until Thursday.

It's really weird switching between Chinese and English...there are definitely some people not heartily adhering to the language pledge so its really confusing when you're trying to think/speak in Chinese and there is English around you. Also, the differing levels of the students mean that you constantly have to express yourself at least three times before anyone can understand you. I am getting better at ordering food though...especially when the menus have pictures! Hen jiandan! (hun jyen-dahn=really easy)

每个天士新的天. 我还不知道我觉得怎么样.