-Woke up bright and early at 8am. Thursday is the only day we get to sleep in, bummer. Prepped for class, it's always so nerveracking! Plus our classes our with all the other international students studying at Beida. Had a nutritious meal of banana with peanut butter and cereal. I swear I only eat carbs here, there's hardly the any protein!
-Walked to our Hanyu class. Hanyu class is essentially the same as the Chinese classes in the U.S. Strangely enough all of our classes our in the Russian building.
-The class was SO easy. I've never been in a Chinese class where I understood everything. I actually felt like one of those smart, obnoxious kids who know's everything. It was the weirdest feeling ever! Now I know why all the people in our classes that could speak Chinese got so frustrated with us.
-After class Katie, Rachel, and I went to the CIEE office to see if we could switch to a higher level. The thing is, Beida only gives you registration day to switch classes. You're supposed to read the textbooks, in like 30 seconds, and decide if the class would be easy or not. Well I can't read that fast, and obviously there was some vocabulary that I hadn't learnt before. But we're learning the same grammar, again. They said they would do what they could but we should follow our current class schedule.
-Lunch was an interesting experience. The cafeterias here are jam packed with people. To get a seat you basically hover over a table where people might be done soon. Once they lift up their tray you shove yours down before the other guy eyeing the table does. Somehow we successfully maneuvered this move. I ate dachowfan (fried rice) for the first time here. It was yummy. The portions are so big, but for some reason I'm always hungry again in about an hour.
-At 3:10pm Katie and I had Tingyu class. It's a listening class for people in Beginner and Pre-Intermediate Chinese. Our teacher is quite the character. Apparently he taught at a U.S. university last year and he also speaks French. Occasionally he'll slip into French, which just confuses the hell out of me because I keep using French instead of Chinese words anyway! It was quite a good class though, it stressed how important it is to know pinyin for computer work.
-For dinner we got Baozi to go because at 5:45pm we left for the Acrobatic Show! The traffic was awful on the way there. I learnt that there was a 6-7 day traffic jam from Mongolia the other week. That would suck! We got there a little late, but the show was just amazing! The Chinese can do some pretty crazy stuff! Like 15 girls all riding one bicycle? It was pretty cool. PLus they had these amazing laser lights. They were basically 3D waves over the audience. Kind of hard to describe.
-We took the bus back home and then it was study, study, study, for our Tingxie tomorrow. I had to make makeshift notecards with post-its. I quite like them though. No word on class change so far.
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