Week one, check

This entry may be a little long. Just a warning.

Where to start, where to start... I finally got some exercise on Thursday playing soccer with some DSIC and CNU students. I was exhausted after playing for just half an hour, though I'm not sure how much of that was because I'm out of shape and how much was because of the air pollution and lack of sufficient oxygen in my muscles. It was definitely fun though, especially getting to know the local students.

We had our first exam on Friday, and it was about as difficult as I expected it to be. The last question was an essay in which we had to use several of the grammar structures we had learned during the week. The prompt asked for 100 characters, which I thought was a lot at first, but after writing for a bit I realized that 100 characters wasn't even close to enough to express what I wanted to say. I guess I need to learn how to make my writing more concise. Afterwards, we had an oral exam during which we had to talk about our interview with a CNU student. We had all written a 200+ character essay about the interview, but many of us (including myself) didn't realize that we weren't supposed to look at the essay during the oral exam. I suppose it was silly of me to expect that we'd simply reading our essays aloud--it is an oral exam, not a reading exam, after all. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have very nice teachers grading me, and they let me take a peek at my essay from time to time. I think I'll be more prepared next week.

That evening, the teachers treated us out to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant for our weekly "中文桌子," or "Chinese table." I got to sit with my two favorite teachers, which was pretty awesome. Amusingly enough, one of them ordered suanlatang and made the Yalies eat it. It wasn't as delicious as I expected, but I ate my fair share anyway. (For those of you who haven't taken Chinese 115, suanlatang is hot and sour soup, and it was in one of our dialogue about ordering food.)

Some fellow Yalies (but not DSICPers) were meeting up that night at Huixinqiaobeikou for karaoke, so after dinner, Lei Laoshi took us to the Chegongzhuang subway station on her way home, and we slowly worked our way to Huixinqiaobeikou from there. The Chinese subway system is surprisingly clean, modern, and convenient (and cheap of course), so I'll probably be taking it again in the future. Our friend Carol met us in the lobby of Partyworld, the karaoke place, and we spent a good couple hours singing and dancing and being silly in general. One thing I noticed was that all the Chinese songs at KTV are in traditional characters, but that's okay since people who sing those songs usually know the lyrics already (e.g. me singing Tong Hua). Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and took a taxi home, since the subway station was already closed.

Saturday was also a lot of fun. The teachers took us on a winding tour through Gugong, ending at Tiananmen. There was a lot of construction and repair work going on, which I can only surmise was because the upcoming Olympics. Fortunately, there were still many opportunities to take pretty photos, so my camera saw a lot of action. I really wish CNU's internet would stop being so slow and unreliable--at this rate, I'm not going to be able to upload pictures until I get to Korea in August. Anyway, after Gugong and Tiananmen, several students went to Xidan to eat and shop. I almost didn't go, but it's a good thing I did. Not only did I get to know my teachers better, but I also got to buy some good Chinese books (especially one called I Am Your Friend of Panda, whatever that means) at the huge Xidan bookstore, and really cheap clothes in the nearby shopping center. The title of master shopper goes to my friend Arjan though--he managed to buy a pair of shorts that were originally 400 yuan (~$60) for 100 yuan (~15). China is awesome like that.

After returning to CNU, my roommate and I watched 200 Pounds Beauty. Yes, that is the Korean movie about plastic surgery. No, I did not have to force him. I was actually pretty amused because he was able to guess a lot of the things that happen in the movie before they actually happened. His Korean movie watching skills are already well-developed, it appears. I wish I had Korean movies dubbed, or at least subbed, in Chinese, but I guess I'll have to satisfy myself with the two Chinese movies in my hard drive for now.

Today was my first time doing laundry at CNU. I had to search for fifteen minutes before even finding a machine that was free, after which I spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to put in detergent (Yale spoils us) and make the machine start. Actually, I should probably go get my laundry soon. I had to wash my whites with my colors, so I really hope the whites don't turn... not white. That would be very unfortunate. Wish me luck.

Edit
My socks and white shirts are now light sky blue. Fantastic. I suppose it could have been worse--at least they didn't turn pink.