Thursday, September 8, 2011

Classes and Roommates

Hello! My first week of classes at Nanjing is almost coming to a close (minus one 10 am writing class tomorrow). Classes here are.. interesting. I am in Writing C Ban and Media A Ban. Both classes meet twice a week for two hours each. Mondays I have Media at 10 and Writing at 2, Wednesday I have Media at 2, and Friday I have Writing at 10. Not bad, all in all. Every day there is a break from 12 to 2, which apparently in a Chinese culture thing. Most students start class at 8 am and go through until noon,  with 10 minute breaks every hour (to get something to eat or drink of splash cold water on their faces). At noon they get a 2 hour break, where they first eat (in order to have a really good lunch you need at least an hour, or so my professor says), and then rest (because the blood is going to digest their food and not to their brains). After that classes resume and go through until about 6, again with 10 minute breaks every hour. My classes are interesting for the most part. Media is pretty much a repeat of what I learned last spring in my Flagship Media class, so I try to stay focused by taking avid notes, which are pretty much useless because our grades are based on attendance, small homework assignments, and the final project/report/paper (this is the big chunk of it). My writing class will definitely prove to be more challenging and more useful. The professor stresses accuracy, which in this case means that when writing a recipe, knowing the words mince, slice, dice, chop, and shred, and knowing the proper context to use them in. Our homework over the weekend is to watch a short video we saw in class on how to make dumplings and to write down the recipe using the proper vocabulary. It will be very challenging but will do wonders for my vocabulary.

I foundout that my Teaching Chinese to Foreigners class (对外汉语 literally facing outwards Chinese) doesn't start until next week because I am a first year student, so I had Tuesday and Thursday free. I spent the time scrubbing my kitchen (I am now satisfied enough that I will start making food as soon as I wash the dishes!) and going to the 公安 public safety bureau to register myself. We have a month from the day we arrive in China to register ourselves and apply for a residence permit or we incur a 500 rmb fine, which is just shy of 100 dollars. 4 of us went together (safety in numbers, right?) and everything went off without a hitch, except for when a friend tried to take a picture of the outside of the building. They actually called him 'comrade' when they were yelling at him not to take a picture! Lesson learned I suppose.

That's pretty much my first week. Monday is the Mid-Autumn festival, so we don't have any class (yipee, though we do have to make it up), and the festival itself mainly consists of eating 月饼 moon cakes and watching the full moon at night. There are some events planned, so I'll have to choose one of them to go to  (and of course take lots of pictures). That's all for now. Love,
Maggie

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