Chinese Lessons

I'm a college student again and its keeping me pretty busy.

Both Tammy and I want have been wanting to learn Chinese and Gabriel is learning it everyday as a part of his curriculum. Well, one of the teachers who I work with here has a daughter that enrolled at the local university to study Chinese and mentioned that I may be interested in it.

Now studying Chinese as a college student is a lot more intensive than hiring a tutor or attending a Chinese lesson a couple times a week. As a student now of China Shiyou University I attend class Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM - 12:00 noon. The classes include not only spoken Mandarin (Putonghua) but reading and writing as well.



The university has over 20,000 students and the campus is not unlike what you would see back in the USA. On the first day after class I wandered around to get my bearings and discovered a bank, post office, cafeterias, barbershops and salons,as well as all types of shops and stores. The students who live on campus would never need to leave if they didn't want to.

I'm in the beginning "A ban" class and students proceed up through B ban, C ban etc. as they progress in their proficiency.

I may be in A ban a while...

...Academic studies have always come fairly easy to me but not so with Chinese. The teacher will often say to me, "Mingbai ma?" (Do you understand?) and I reply, "Wo mingbai." (I understand) but when I am asked to speak, my mind freezes up as it tries to translate concepts to Chinese from the English going on inside my head. What adds to the frustration is the teachers are teaching Chinese, in Chinese. That can expedite the immersion experience but can be very frustrating when trying to ask a question.

My class is pretty diverse too. There is one other American, three Koreans, a couple guys from Nepal, a guy from Somalia, and another from Kenya as well as a few guys from Pakistan and Kazakhstan. The guys from Kazakhstan are pretty funny. They are nice kids and always come up to shake my hand but studying Chinese is not their priority. They arrive late, leave early...and are not always entirely sober :)



They remind me of students I had in my class when I took a similar program in Beijing in 1991. The children of the Venezuelan ambassador were in my class and I would on occasion go out with them in the evenings. They were nice guys but were in a whole different league of "party" than I so I would insist on being dropped off back at the dormitory around 9 or 10 in the evening. They would then go out all night and sometimes arrive the next morning not even having gone to bed yet. As they slipped into classroom slightly glassy-eyed, I would nod at them and they would smile back and whisper that I missed a good time. Being a Christian and attempting to honor God I'm pretty convinced I hadn't missed a good time, but I would smile and nod nevertheless :)



Anyhow, I am really blessed to have this opportunity. This term I am doing a lot less teaching and that allows me to be able to go to classes in the morning. Undoubtedly I will be teaching much more in the fall and will not be able to continue but I'm hoping to lay a foundation in the language that I can build on in the future.