SO my blog actually works.

hahaha.

So it actually works. hmm weird. Don't know if Light will let me use my blog to serve as a "report" for my summer fellowship, but I will be writing here for more than just that. Better to be late than never?

Maybe I will recap the 4 or so weeks I've been in Beijing in reverse order so that I don't forget what has happened recently. Or maybe I will randomly ramble. I'm good at that.

So I have been attending Princeton in Beijing, and, I've realized that learning Chinese is quite difficult. I would say almost twice as difficult as learning another language, as Chinese doesn't have an alphabet, so I need to match meaning with sound, and then sound with the character, and then enmesh all three. A pain. So that's what I've been doing for the past four or so weeks. Learning characters, and speaking Chinese. People at PiB are pretty good about their language pledge, and I've been good about it as well. I only break it when I'm with other Yalies, who aren't in a Chinese language program, where they know little or no Chinese, or when it would be really awkward for them to speak English. I also keep break it when I'm talking to my parents. I also break my language pledge (somewhat) when I write blogs online, like now. In other words, I keep the language pledge only when it's convenient to keep the language pledge.

But in all seriousness, I think that speaking for the most part in Chinese has hopefully been improving my speaking skills. I can at least hold conversations with my teachers in Chinese about semi-serious matters. As a fourth year student, we are also expected to give a semi-informal speech on the days matters. I tend to stick to more basic vocabulary and sentence constructions, but I can manage. Every week we also have a more formal speech that we should prepare for. I've learned that I can think half-decently on the fly in Chinese as well, which is encouraging for my language growth, but less encouraging for my grade.

I've also realized that I forget things really quickly. I forget vocab fast enough for it to be somewhat discouraging, but, I guess my main purpose here is to work on verbal fluency.

One of the most pleasantly surprising aspects of PiB is that that teachers are really friendly. Most tend to be in grad school, meaning they are probably 5ish years older than me, but outside of class it's great that they want to chat and bond outside of grammar and vocab sessions.

The following is a somewhat humorous encounter on the Jinshan part of Changcheng (the Great Wall):

Some of my friends and I were trekking ahead on the Great Wall, as the weather was nice, but as the skies were foggy due to a sudden downpour right as we entered the Wall, the picturesque views of GW were slim to nonexistent. We chose to treat it as an adventure and go as far as possible, (though I, in all honestly, lagged behind a little being somewhat out of shape). Fast forward a few hours and it's almost time to head back, I was as mentioned before, was a little behind and decided to wait for them to come back and rest a bit.

Then, lo, there is this funny little Chinese girl determinedly hiking forward, passing by where I was sitting. She says to her friend [in Chinese] "hmmph, I'm so envious that there are people ahead of us! I really wish we were the furthest ones, but now we have to turn back. ah it irks me so!**"

And (I'm going to be brutally honest here, so forgive me) I thought to myself "haha, that this Asian girl is so funny, but, I guess that's the attitude that got her into Princeton."

So we strike up some conversation because she was loitering about indecisively, and I joking say to her, "Hey, let's race back to the bus." Since it seemed like she had such a vivacious competitive spirit, and she took it in stride, and we gradually introduced ourselves. The proceeding conversation went somewhat like this:

ME: "So where is your home town?"
GIRL: "Oh, I grew up in [insert random town in China]"
ME: "Ahh okay. and you go to Pubeiban (PiB)?
HER: "Yes."
ME: Well, why do you need to go to PiB if you grew up in China? You're Chinese is really good already."
HER: ... -.- "I'm your teacher."

So it turned out that she was actually a 4th year teacher that I just hadn't met yet. Quite an embarrassing moment, but it ended up giving all of us some laughs. I think that story definitely reflects how the teachers are here. When I'm in the classroom, it's fine since the teachers are all taller than I am when I'm sitting down, but I never seem to adapt to the fact that I am taller than most teachers, making for some hilariously awkward situations when we go on weekend trips.

Enough for now. It's Midterm week and work will be everflowing.

Ben Au Loggin In

I'm really pumped up!