6

FIRST DAY OF CLASSES (thursday)!
so...I survived the first day of classes, and actually, it wasn't too hard, but I know its going to get harder and significantly more intense as the summer progresses. There are 5 students in my class (all vassar) and we have two teachers who rotate teaching the class. We spent most of the day going over the 'pin yin', how to write the sounds using american letters. Learning how to make the correct sounds with the correct tones is quite difficult, so they continuosly drill and test us when first learning so that it doesn't hinder our speaking ability in the future. I also met with my tutor today from 5-6...sortof awkward. She is very shy and when she tries to speak english she gets really embarrassed and can't really express herself. we went over most of what we did in class; I practiced pronunciation and she helped me correct things and figure out what I had trouble with. I think when I meet with her tomorrow I'm going to ask her to teach me some new phrases aside from what we learn in class. Hopefully she'll be able to communicate to me the meanings in english...
-I didn't get to post this yesterday, I was up late yesterday learning how to write chinese characters...tons of fun! Today I got a Chinese name!!! its Su Rong (Su being my surname and Rong my given name)..the teacher gave us names based on what sound slightly like our english names (su for susannah ahd rong for horton), but I think I'm going to ask her tomorrow I can change my name to something that actually has a significant meaning..maybe flowing river, or jade princess. I'm not sure what to change it to, but I want my name to mean something.
Most of today's class we spent going over vocabulary we studied last night and practicing dialouges. The dialouges are very simple, but they begin to teach us some grammar and basic phrases. I know how to ask someone's name (surname and given name), ask and tell someones status (job, student, teacher...), and nationality (chinese, american...). We learned many different structures and ways to manipulate the words we know into different sentences. We are also learning the characters..ahhh..I think this is going to be the most difficult thing for me. Basically, what we have to do to learn the characters is write them over and over and over...and over again until they are ingrained in our memories and we can recognize and write them in sentences. It's not too hard yet...but I know it will only get harder.
Today for lunch we ate at a little street food stand right outside campus and it was cheep and yummy. I'm not sure exactly what it would be called, but they cooked egg chive pancake type things on the stove in front of you and put different sauces (sortof spicy) and lettuce on it and you fold it in half like a sandwhich/taco. it was good and only cost 1.5 yuan. which is like 1/6 of an american dollar (i think).
It definately doesn't feel like summer here. It's really cool and windy out, and the air always seems to be misty/full of moisture/maybe drizzling but not really. I guess that's because we're by the coast, but I'm assuming and hoping it gets summer hot later in june so we can go to the beach!

Zaijian!

o ya..I decided to sign up for kung fu (and calligraphy/painting), I figured I'd give it a try and, its probably good exercise, so why not?