我的第一个星期: My First Week

Class is super intense here at HBA. We have about five hours a day, divided into a "big" class (which in reality only has about 10 students), small class (five students), and one-on-one conversation practice with a teacher. Everyday we learn the equivalent of a week's worth of material: upwards of 20 grammar structures and about 60-80 new vocabulary words. Or, at least we're supposed to learn this much. I've actually been picking and choosing what I want to study. I focus very much on grammer, but with vocabulary I weed out the words that I know won't do me much good (ex.: monosodium glutamate & Quanjude Duck Restaurant... I'm pretty sure I can get by without knowing those). Even with picking and choosing, I have about five hours of homework a night, except for Thursday when I studied for 8 hours for my test this morning. It's very, very exhausting but I'm noticing immeasurable improvement and I'm having a good time.

I haven't really gotten the hang of ordering food at restaurants yet, so I've had way too much King Pao Chicken and insubstational noodle dishes with only traces of meat. I haven't been getting any fruits or vegetables so I need to do something about that pronto so I don't lose weight or get sick. It's hard to have a balanced diet here.

Every Tuesday and Friday we eat lunch with our teachers. Today's meal was a little disappointing however because our table was served FOUR tofu dishes and two vegetable dishes. I needed some actual sustenance but I had to settle for just one small piece of chicken. I don't understand how vegetarians do it.

One difference between dinners here and those in the US are that in China, food is brought to the center of the table, where a lazy Susan allows everyone to take a little bit of each dish. I haven't seen individual ordering yet.

Here I am with my first week's "small class" classmates, who were also my lunch partners for most of the week. The Chinese lady in the center was our teacher this morning. She was really nice, but then again I've liked all the teachers here. (We rotate teachers for "small class" everyday.) (Also I like that we're all wearing Yale colors here. I haven't made many Harvard friends yet.)