Friday, July 3, 2009

Requisite Schedule Post

I feel now that I've finally settled into the swing of things here. Here's what I do every day!

8:00-9:15
"Big" class: We start everyday with a dictation, then the teacher goes over the day's lesson. There are 8-9 students in a class.

9:15-9:25 Break #1: Convince myself I don't need coffee. Stand around in groups and sigh a lot, generally discussing sleep or lack thereof.

9:25-9:50 Reading class: Now we're in our "small" class groups. We read out loud from the day's chapter. It's like pronunciation boot camp. I like it because it gives my brain a break from grammar.

9:50-10:10 Break #2: Continuation of coffee struggle. Stand around in groups and complain about the people in our small class, who inevitably always speak too slow/fast, ask too many questions or are amazing/horrible at Chinese.

10:10-11:00 "Small" class: Same four students and teacher as reading class, but this time we go back through the day's grammar and are drilled on each sentence pattern. Some teachers are better at asking questions than others. I like any teacher who manages to keep the ratio of questions about famous sights in Beijing/food in Beijing/impressions of Beijing/how Beijing is just like American cities if not better/diarrhea to interesting questions relatively low.

11:00-11:10
Break #3: Stand around in groups and discuss how hungry we are but how it's now not worth it to buy a snack, mull over lunch options and the viability of sleep before one-on-one class.

11:10-12:00 "Small" class continued.

12:00 Lunch! Either at the cafeteria or any one of the numerous restaurants nearby. Unless it's Tuesday or Friday, which means we have Chinese table.

1:30-2:20 (or 2:25 to 3:15)
One-on-one: Sit and talk with a teacher for 50 minutes, which is great fun. I'm constantly baffled by the sorts of questions about America Chinese people ask. "I know they say it's safe to drink the water, but can you really drink it?" "If everyone votes for president, who counts all the votes?" "Do you think Walden is essential to understanding American youth?" That last one is courtesy of my language tutor, who is always coming out of left field. I feel like my questions are disappointingly straight forward.

3:30-5:00 Extracurricular: Calligraphy class is getting better, though my left-handedness is no help. I've hit the big time--got a poem I copied hanging in the window a la kindergarten. It's real professional. I accidentally wrote my name too big, so it runs into the last line of the poem. This week I also went to singing-Chinese-songs class, which was essentially very thorough karaoke preparation. We first go through the lyrics to understand the meaning, then read it aloud, then listen to it, then sing along with the music, then sing without music, then again with the music, then once more with feeling. And by feeling I mean ridiculous gesturing. I may be speaking too soon, but I think Chinese people find illustrative gesturing far less ridiculous than Americans.

So there's my weekday (besides homework, eating, sleeping...). Today we went to the Summer Palace, which was splendid enough to merit its own post. It involved adopting a 14 year old for an hour, trying to sing "I'm on a boat" in Chinese and oh yeah, looking at pretty buildings.

1 comment:

  1. "I know they say it's safe to drink the water, but can you really drink it?" "If everyone votes for president, who counts all the votes?" "Do you think Walden is essential to understanding American youth?"

    LOL! So funny... =)

    ReplyDelete