A very very late post

I had my written and oral Final Exam for the first half of the “semester.” Starting Monday I am officially a second semester second year Chinese student. The final was by far the most difficult test we have had so far, and I do not know anyone who feels confident about it. Maybe, hopefully, our Laoshimen will be comparatively kind in grading, although that would not particularly Chinese of them.

This program is the most academically rigorous program/ class I have ever enrolled in. Nevertheless, I feel a sense of relief and pride when I realize how much I can speak now compared, especially to last September when I started Chinese. Even though my Chinese is at a level less than an elementary student, I find myself thinking in some strange form of “Chinese-English” (changlish perhaps?)I have noticed that in my mind words like “Coffee Shop” have been replaced by “Ka1 Fei1 guar3”, “work out” is “”yun4dong4” and “study” is “xue2 xi2” (that is the pin-yin version of Chinese, a phonetic system to use roman letters to show how a character is pronounced).

While I may wonder whether I should have locked myself in the library this past week to study for the final, as I did at Yale last semester during reading period, I feel like the other experience I have had that have not been studying have perhaps been more helpful with my Chinese. For example, yesterday I was in the second floor coffee shop studying and went to the counter to order an “English Milk Tea.” A large group of Chinese middle age women was standing by the counter. After I ordered my drink, one turned to me and said “Oh! You speak Chinese! You speak very well.” This started a twenty minute conversation, where I found out that these women were all leaving very soon for the University of Minnesota to study English more so they can come back and teach English at another University here in Beijing. I talked to them about Minnesota, Yale, and about studying Chinese. I have found that the consensus among Chinese people I have encountered is that they find it very interesting that foreigners, especially white people, have an interest in the Chinese language. Perhaps Americans are just so use to the attitude that ‘everyone in the world learns English” and the Chinese have not quite developed that attitude yet.

In general I feel very comfortable right now in China. I know a lot of the street food vendors, talk to them frequently. The people in the sandwich/ milk tea shop I am starting to get to know, and the closest Boa zi pu (name for a small restaurant with Chinese buns, dumplings, soup and noodles) I think are starting to know me. Sometimes I forget I am in such a far away country with such a different culture and history, then other times I snap out of it and realize that “yes, this really is China.”

In a few hours I leave for Datong for the weekend (the "midterm trip". Myself and 9 other students chose to go to Datong, most of the students in the program choose to go to Xi’an, but I thought the idea of going to old Buddhist statues in an extremely beautiful landscape or mountains and water sounded better than going to another modern city. The terracotta warriors do sound pretty cool, but hanging out in a cool (temperature wise) part of China sounded too nice. I will post pictures on shutterfly when I get back.

In all things are going well, and some of the pictures i have already posted I am quite pleased with. DaTong!

-Camila