8

I haven't written in a while because the classes have become more intense and require a lot more study time. Because we have to learn 2 semesters of chinese in 8 weeks we are learning 1 lesson each day. That means new vocab (words and characters) new grammar and dialouges to memorize..eeek. So, it definately doesn't feel like summer for me, sortof more like I never left college (well, I guess it would be logical to have expected that seeing as we are international students at a chinese university). Not only does the workload make me forget its summer, but the weather. Its soooo cool here. Its definately jeans and a sweatshirt weather (at least in the morning), and it warms up later, but I rough it and wear my cute summer skirts (seeing as I brought a million of them). It's always windy becuase we're on the coast, so that makes it cooler. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next few weeks, so hopefully we can go to the beach!! (and study).
On sunday me and three friends wanted to 'explore' qingdao...we took the bus to the german area Qingdao (i'm not sure wherein Qingdao, but still on the coast) and saw the governer's house. This area doesn't really feel like China; all of the buildings are old western style architecture (built by germans), but you still have the street vendors, spitting, clothes lines, and bright red oriental decor. The governer's house was really interesting, it was very grandiose and had a great view of the german section. We saw a room where Mao resided for a period of time. After that we just wandered throught the streets, we went to two churches (catholic and episcopalien), but only saw them from the outside because one you had to pay (too much) and the other was uner construction, but it was still interesting to see them from the outside. We spent most of the day wandering around and just seeing the streets of Qingdao. I think the best days are those when you don't really have a plan and you can just wander and explore. We bought some lichi fruit form a street vendor and ate it on one of the greens by the street. I've never had lichi before, and it was really yummy!! They are sortof sweet, but really sour at the same time. They are in hard shells, sortof spiky shells and you ahve to peel it. the texture is like a grape, but its bigger and there is a pit in the middle. We ended up heading towards the coast to take the bus back and got to see the beaches and the 'boardwalk'.
Its funny, whereever we go (including in Shanghai and Beijing) there are always small convenient stores with the same exact little icecream freezer. You see them everywhere, so if its hot out, there's never a problem finding cold icecream. The only problem is you never really know what you've chosen until you taste it. They have corn icecream, bean icecream, red bean (which is really good), taro with dark chocolate (general consensus is that's the best), and many more that we still haven't really figured out.
Yesterday (monday) we had our singing class!! it was really fun and teacher was soo cute! We learned a chinese song called Jasmine Flower (duo mo li hua). It was just a small group of us (the first years), and the teacher was a student at the university. She was tiny and had on a cute outfit with cork platform shoes with red flowers (all of the chinese girls wear heels all the time, I even saw one climbing the great wall in short heels). She had a really good voice, but she spoke minimal english. She had her friend with her to help translate and she seemed so happy to teach us the song. It made me miss chorus a lot, I hadn't sang in soo long, it was weird at first, but once we started it made me think of those early mornings with mr. Shay. After the singing class I was in my room and I heard the song we just learned coming from outside my window!! I looked down the balcony and two girls from the class were singing it below in on their balcony , I went down and we all sang it a few times together. They said they were in chorus in highschool and felt the same way I did about missing chorus an not singing for so long..it was fun, I'm excited for singing next week. It was funny, below us infront of the dorm there was a Kung Fu class going on. I didn't see any board breaking or high kicks while flipping, but the teacher looked pretty fierce. I have Kung Fu and Calligraphy later today...I'll let you know how it goes.
Yesterday we went out to dinner across from the university at a small quick cheep place. The food was pretty good (yes, still really greasy and oily). But this place serves all different types of skewers (I think sortof like what they sell on the street), and I had chicken heart on a skewer!! it was tasty! (actually it didn't taste any different, all of the skewers had a lot of spices and flavor on them, but its the texture that made them different i guess).
Today (tuesday) we had our first test. It was on lessons 1-3 and the pinyin we have learned. That's about 90 vocab words (and their characters) and putting them into conversational dialouges. I was up till about 1:30ish studying and woke up early before 8:00 class to review. We don't have much time durign the day to study, so we have to study later. Because we learn a lesson each day we have to study that lesson for homework and preview the next lesson (start learning the vocab and be prepared for class). The test wasn't has hard as I expected, I think it went well, now I just have to make sure I hold on to all of the characters I memorized. I find it harder to read the chinese characters (when in sentences) then to write them and formulate my own sentences. Today after the test my teacher told me my characters were really good!! (better then the other 3 in my class..yayy now I just have to study and memorize them more)
I have calligraphy in about half an hour, so I think I'm going to try and start my homework...I'm learning how to talk about my hobbies.

Zaijian!