6.17.2006

The Big Day




Today is the first official day of HBA! I woke up around 4 am and gave up on sleeping by 4:45. I got up, made some breakfast, and tried to study a little for the placement test at 8 am. The test was absurdly hard, but since I’m only trying to place into the lowest level of Chinese offered here this summer, it was more of a formality than anything else. By the time the test was over at 10:30, I was hungry again, so a bunch of us went out for a second breakfast at this little restaurant out of the South Gate, on Xueyuan Rd. The food was okay, if a little over-priced. I met a bunch of new people, though, which was nice, especially since our time of speaking English was rapidly dwindling.

We returned to the dorm, then a few people and I went down to the grocery store, where I picked up some iced tea and some bottled water and juice. Then we all hung around on the 8th floor (where all the second-year students live) talking to each other before our vocabulary was reduced to “Do you have any children?” “Probably the cucumber was not washed clean,” “Only if you write characters stroke by stroke can you remember them well,” and other useful phrases from our limited bank of Chinese knowledge, entirely contained within two small red textbooks. Soon it was time for what was quaintly termed “Convocation” on our itinerary – speeches from the head of the program, the president of BLCU, and a lady whose position I am unclear on, followed by a long orientation, the signing of the famous language pledge, and a meeting with our Zhong guo ge ge and jie jie – Chinese BLCU students who will show us around campus and the city, help us practice our Chinese, and give us some insight into Beijing’s youth culture. My jie jie’s name is Zhao4 Bo2 (Zhao rhymes with wow, Bo rhymes with awe), and she’s going to take me cell phone shopping. Whee!

After that, we had meetings with our teachers to tell us more about our specific classes (depending on our level), which took a whole bunch more time. After heading back to the dorm, we all hung around speaking awkward Chinese to one another (with lots of miming, giggling, and confusion) before splitting up to study for a while before dinner at the campus dining hall. Then it was back to the dorm for some more studying, which I took a break from to type this. I am wiped as anything but I already have an entire chapter to study and 45 characters to memorize for class tomorrow, so I’d better get down to business now!

posted by Kelly @ 9:16 下午