HBA
...is pretty intense. There's a lot of characters to memorize every day, and a lot of grammatical structures of formal Chinese 书面语 that I have never really encountered before, so it's a lot of work. However, the teachers here are absolutely great and because they're all fairly young, it's fun hanging out with them and you don't feel as if it's a very rigid student-teacher relationship and you can relate to them on other levels, which I really appreciate, and think is good for the program, considering that we spend so much time learning Chinese anyway!
I think a lot of HBA students have written about academics already but I'll do it again, particularly for all three of you future 150 (fifth-year students) who read this blog who might want to know. Our current set up is two hours of lecture class 大班课 on the previous night's text and grammar from roughly 8 to 10 in the morning, which for me mainly consists of trying not to fall asleep, taking notes that I can't decipher later and making bad sentences that involve too much colloquial language 口语 for the formal sentence structures I'm supposed to be saying. Then comes two hours of drill 小班课, which usually involves us going over in more detail the structures we've learned and during which I'm usually a little more alert, followed by an hour of one-on-one practice 单班课 in the afternoon during which I make blatant linguistic errors and give answers that are usually entirely irrelevant to the questions being asked. This is followed by my vegging out on the Internet for a while, doing homework in the afternoon, trying to memorize a hundred or so characters and then going to office hours from 7:30 to 9:30 at night, which we have all literally (mis)translated as 办公室小时. My idea in going to these office hours is to get help with homework, but I usually end up chatting 聊天 and getting a minimal amount of work done. I think it's just the fact that spending the entire day shut up in my room (which is excellent, BTW) studying doesn't seem like a good idea.
Haha that makes it sound much more unpleasant than it actually is. In reality, I think it's an excellent setup because it allows you to internalize the material you've learned. Also, I realized I forgot to mention language pledge, probably because it doesn't affect me as much as others. At the same time, though, the language pledge has made me realize how many holes in my vocabulary, and I think it's simply helpful in being able to increase fluency, and, hopefully, accuracy.
I also really like the nine other 5th year students, despite the fact that seven of them go to Harvard :P. Haha it's an excellent group of people and they put up with my vocabulary-limited Chinese and roundabout way of expressing my thoughts.
Finally, perhaps it's a bit early for this, but I am beginning to see the merits of term-time study, so often encouraged by the Light administrators.
The munchies
Enough about academics! Surprisingly, I have not actually been as satisfied with the food as I thought I would be. I think this stems largely from my impressions of food in Asia, which in turn have been made largely from food in Taiwan -- in other words, coming to Beijing has only reaffirmed my belief that southern China 南方 is FAR superior to the north on a culinary basis. For example, I love summer because of fruits, but because we're not supposed to eat fresh fruit without washing and peeling it and definitely not from streetside stands, this essentially restricts me to eating fruit from the supermarket that's easily peel-able (as opposed to, say, grapes). I love seafood and fish, which are not so much in evidence in the BLCU cafeterias.
I'm thinking this may also originate from the fact that I eat largely in the same places on campus, so I think one of my resolutions for the rest of the program is to try to eat out more, considering that it is really not that expensive by American standards.
It's not actually viewable from outer space
Climbing the Great Wall was a blast. The Chinese is literally "climbing the Great Wall" 爬长城, and before getting there I thought this was kind of an exaggeration, but after getting there I realized that this description is actually quite literally true. HBA took us to Simatai 司马台, which is a part of the Great Wall farther out in Beijing but with less tourists. We climbed to the 12th or so watchtower there, going uphill all the way. I haven't been getting much exercise, unfortunately, in Beijing because of my schedule and so climbing the Great Wall to the "end" (that is, to the end of the area that's safe to climb) felt like a big accomplishment.
Okay so there is one picture. Great Wall at Simatai! Unfortunately I didn't notice the glaring camera string in the photo until it was too late...The thing that kept running through my mind when I was there is how colossally long this is, and how many people must have died (yes, I know this is a bit morbid) in building the wall.
Miscellaneous
- I am bad at haggling, not least because of my semi-proficiency in Chinese. The problem is that I am just proficient enough to sound like an extremely dim-witted, slow Chinese person who has to have everything repeated and speaks funny.
- I have yet to go to any of the famous touristy places in Beijing, with the possible exception of Houhai 后海, as in Tian'anmen Square 天安门广场, the Forbidden City 故宫 or the Lama Temple 雍和宫. I was going to try to make it to the former two on Sunday morning, but seeing as I woke up at noon that plan was sort of squelched.
- I went karaoke-ing on Saturday night and discovered that my Chinese pop song knowledge is sadly lacking, so I've added this to my list of goals this summer, aside from overhauling my Chinese, of course.
- And other than that my life has actually been pretty routine here. I'll check back in next week, with hopefully more interesting tidings for you all.
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