1st Week at HBA

I would first like to start apologizing for not posting in such a long time, but I just recently got internet this Monday (June 18) and work at HBA is intense. But anyway, the following is a summary of what my first 9 days in China have been like so far:

So I arrived at Beijing on June 15. From the day I first arrived I was able to see many interesting aspects of the Chinese people. Everyone here in China seems very friendly, but in a way different from the people in other countries I've visited. For example, yesterday when I rode the bus with my Language partner (a student from BLCU), the person who sold the bus tickets would start laughing (not in a mean way, though) when she heard me speak Chinese. According to my language partner, this is the way she was being friendly, which I find interesting.

Talking about my Language Partner, I think this is a very good aspect of HBA because it lets me know more about how the Chinese my age think. With my language partner I could see that the Chinese are extremely interested in American culture. For example, while eating dinner, my language partner suddenly asked me how one eats in America. Thus we got into a whole discussion of the do's and dont's in America while eating at a table. A lot of the things I told her surprised her, due to the great differences in Chinese and American culture.

Well, my main reason for coming to China was to study Chinese, so I guess I should describe my academic experience at HBA. I guess a lot of people know how the schedule at HBA is, but it doesn't hurt to write it down anyway, so here it is:

8:00 - 9:15 大班课 (Big lecture class)
9:25 - 9:50 朗读课 (This I think is actually new: we basically read texts aloud to improve pronunciation and intonation)
10:10 -11:00
11:10 -12:00 小班课 (INTENSIVE drill class)
1:30 - 2:20 单班课 （My favorite part of the day: one on one conversation with a teacher who corrects your errors and helps you improve your spoken chinese)

The first day at HBA was REALLY intensive. The teachers, which are all really nice people by the way, would just keep shooting Chinese at us and ask us to make up sentences at a speed I was not used to at all. Not only was class intense, but the homework that came after that was even worse. Not only do we have to do written homework, but we also have to memorize all of the vocabulary (and how to write these words in Chinese characters, a lot of which are new) which basically takes away any free time we could have.

However, I do feel my Chinese is improving, even though we have been here only for a week. The language pledge has definitely helped a lot, since I think after 1 week I am accustomed to speaking only in Chinese, even though it is not perfect. So far there haven't been any major violations in the pledge at HBA that I know of ( there have been instances when students truly unconciously speak English, but as soon as they realize they're not speaking Chinese, they say sorry and start speaking Chinese again). Thus the atmosphere of speaking only Chinese is really helpful.

I'll finish this week's post talking about today: our trip to the Great Wall at Simatai. The experience was really fun, but extremely tiring. This section of the Great Wall is extemely steep, and there are parts where it is difficult to go up due to the small steps. Overall, however, it was a pretty good experience. Below are a few of the pictures I took. I'll post again next week.