First Week

This update's been a bit overdue, but I had to go through a lot of trouble to get internet over here and I've been swamped with work, so I haven't had much time to update the blog while I was settling in. The first week was very busy. I went through a whole day of registration, and the next day I had a placement test to judge which level I would be placed in. The test was pretty hard and I didn't know a lot of words on it, but I was placed in the lower intermediate level (中级上), which corresponds to a student who has studied at least 2000 words, so I felt it was the right level of difficulty.

Classes move very quickly here and a lot of the students in my class spent last year in BLCU studying Chinese as well so they are a step ahead of me. One of the main challenges for me is catching up on all the words that were introduced in the lower level books to these students, as the books I used in the US had a totally different set of vocabulary. One of the things I really like about BLCU is that it is very international, and there are people from all over the world over here. Most of them know some English, but the best way to communicate is through Chinese, which is great because it only gives you that much more practice. My Chinese was not as good as I thought it would be this time around, but I've already made long strides in the short time I've been here. I can easily carry on a 5 min conversation with a local and that has really bumped up my confidence in speaking Chinese. The problem for me is not in understanding what is being said, but it is in speaking and putting words together on the spot. I just met with some Chinese BLCU students studying English and made them my language partners, so I am really going to do my best to improve my spoken Chinese.

Outside of classes, I've been doing my best to explore the area around my university and I have found that BLCU is in a great spot and there are a lot of restaurants and shopping centers near campus. I also got a 5 month membership to a pretty nice gym about 10 min away from campus on a bike for 500 RMB, which was a great deal. The gym was a major training facility during the Olympics in 2008 and they also give you free personal training sessions. Stuff here is cheap by western standards but you still have to keep your eyes on your finances to balance it out because it is very easy to overspend or get suckered into paying a higher price. One thing to remember about China is that unless you are in a big department store, almost no price is set, so you always have to haggle and bargain your way down. And if they don't bargain, they will flat out tell you, but it never hurts to try.

I am planning to post a video up on Youtube showing a tour of the BLCU campus. I will also try to update this blog much more regularly.

Peace out