Oh right, I have a blog. (Week 6)

At the end of week 6, we went to Longqing Gorge. I went bungee jumping. This is not a picture of me bungee jumping, but from this distance that's pretty irrelevant. Bungee jumping was a heck of a lot of fun, and I didn't think it was scary at all, which makes me worry about myself, but that's okay.

I have fallen behind on this blog, but for posterity's sake, will attempt to fill in the gap today, since I blasted through today's homework with superhuman strength and mind blowing focus. Actually we just don't have very much work today, so... week 6, shall we? Sorry if anyone has been obsessively stalking this... besides you, mom (hi!).

Our laoshimen continue to be adorable for second semester.

So this semester is supposed to be the equivalent of Yale's L3 Chinese. So I've been spending most of my time trudging through this swamp of intermediateness, reading dull texts about formal language and terms of politeness. Alright, some of our textbook chapters are interesting (marriage, xiehouyu/fun riddle-like things, humans and animals (??)) but a lot of it can be dull.

Have you realized by now these pictures have nothing to do with the text?

Our schedule changed for the new semester, so there is now less drill class and the addition of a discussion class. My first week of discussion class, which involves two students and a teacher talking about the day's lesson, debating somewhat relevant issues and occasionally role playing, was a disaster. My partner would always be either sleep-deprived and uninterested or self-righteously argumentative. It was great. I think I just had bad luck at the start, though, because in the following weeks I came to tolerate it, though I still question its utility as a teaching method.

This was the greatest part of Longqing Gorge, maybe. It was an exhibit of places in China during different seasons, and everything in it was artificial, lit with intense colors and crafted with no respect for scale. There was a tiny child on a water buffalo next to a field of GIANT RICE. And then some midget pandas and gigantic peacocks. It was so great. And air conditioned. And great.

Week six was also the week in which I reached the end of the line on tolerance of Chinese food. With the exception of baozi, which are forever delicious. Jiaozi are okay, too. Since then a lot of unspeakable culinary combinations have taken place in my room involving oatmeal...yogurt...tofu...kimchi.

That was also the first time I met my new language tutor because apparently my old one had gone home. Though my new one is easier to understand, she's much less interesting as a conversation partner, and our sessions were all just flipping through our textbook, talking about what we had studied. So I was less than lucky on that one, but some people apparently became good friends with their language tutors, so it worked out in some cases. At least it was some extra speaking practice for me. And more excuses to drink mango smoothies in cafes.