因为语言誓约的关系，我不能说英文

The dreaded language pledge has begun. They passed around little sheets for us to sign before the 听写 (dictation) today. Somehow, giving up the ability to speak English (and Korean, I suppose) felt like giving up a part of my identity, or even my existence. Surprisingly, though, getting by with just Chinese hasn't been too bad so far. It's remarkable how much more useful hand gestures and body language seem can be they're used deliberately.

But anyway, going back to where I left off in the last entry... I did quite a bit of traveling by taxi during the first weekend. A bunch of us went to a Thai restaurant on Saturday--the food was pretty good, but a little on the expensive side. On Sunday, after meeting with our language partners (more on that later), three of my friends and I took a taxi into the heart of Beijing and checked out a very modernized shopping center/department store. The prices there were sort of ridiculous, even by American standards. I had heard a lot about the huge disparity between the wealthy and the poor in China, but seeing the difference for myself was pretty shocking. Also (not nearly as surprising but worth mentioning), I discovered that I'm starting to get used to drinking hot tea with my meals instead of ice water. This is a very good thing. Some people I know, after drinking restaurant water, have had 拉肚子, which literally means "pull stomach." The English meaning of that idiom is pretty clear.

Monday was the first day of classes, and thus Monday was the day I realized how sad my Chinese skills really are. This is how DSICP works: the first hour is 大班, which has about ten students per teacher and is mainly used to introduce the lesson's new grammar structures; the second and third hours are 小班, which has about four students per teacher and is more for practicing the new material; finally, twenty minutes are dedicated to each student for 1-对-1, or 1-on-1 conversation. I felt pretty good during 大班 and 小班, but once I got to 1-对-1, I promptly forgot everything I had ever learned and had to ask my teacher to repeat everything three or four times. I've never been a fan of "hot seat" activities, even in English, so 1-对-1 scares me to the extreme. I hope I can get used to it eventually.

Monday was also the first day my language partner and I really got to hang out. I'm still in the process of getting to know her, but I do know that her name is Ma Jing and that she's a first year English Lit major studying at Shou Shi Da (DSICP's host institution). She's also extremely patient and doesn't get an annoyed look on her face whenever I say "什么“ （what?) or "请再说一次" (please repeat that again) like a couple of the teachers in the program. Anyway, on Monday she took me to a nearby electronics store to buy a cell phone. I won't repeat the procedure here, since it's sort of complicated--suffice it to say that I was very glad I had someone who could speak Chinese to help me.

One of the interesting aspects of DSICP is that we have a weekly language practicum during which we're supposed to use the week's lesson material to interview a Chinese person. Today, I spoke to a Shou Shi Da student about the differences between college life in America and in China, and some pretty interesting topics came up. For example, when I asked her what her impression of American students was, she said that she felt like American students are all "slaves to time" without offering further explanation, yet her description of an average day for a Chinese college student seemed much stricter and bound to time constraints than what I'm used to at Yale. I guess it's something to keep in mind as I become more familiar with the Chinese lifestyle and the things Chinese students value most.

And here I am again at the end of another picture-less entry. I'll have to post a monster entry with many many pictures one of these days, once I get used to the daily schedule and have enough free time to go out and find faster internet. Bye bye for now!