Busy Two Weeks

Hey! Sorry for the delay in posting a blog. It has been a busy two weeks as well as having intermittent problems with Internet service here.

My Chinese classes continue to challenge me, and require between 2-3 hours of study each day to keep up (though I am sure most Chinese would say that is still not enough time spent on studying - more about that in a few minutes). I do feel like I am still progressing with my language comprehension, though there are days that I feel like my brain is mush when class is over. At least once a week I, along with my Western friend (mentioned in last week's blog) and our teachers go to lunch after class, where my friend and I are challenged to use our Chinese to order or to ask for something. It has been good practice, but I still struggle with the Chinese concept of getting the waitress/waiter's attention to ask for something, such as the bill. In the States when you are trying to get the waitress/waiter's attention, you either make eye contact to signal that you need something, or subtly use another method. Well, here in China when you want something you literally yell for the waiter to come to your table. I feel like it sounds like you are mad at the waitress/waiter and that you are demanding that you are the only customer needing something. It may be silly, but I try to wait until the waitress/waiter comes by the table and then I ask for whatever I need. In my opinion they are still a person who deserves to be treated with respect and courtesy.

Ok, so to get to the Chinese concept of studying. Since being here, I have noticed many nights that children are out on the playground in my neighborhood playing at 9 and 10pm. I was a little baffled by this, as obviously in the States children play during daylight hours, so I asked my teacher about it. She proceeded to tell me about the typical amounts of studying for different age groups of children - I thought that you might be interested too, so here is a run down.

• A 4 year old child typically has 2 tutors to teach them each week for a few hours a day.

(This next group of children goes to school from 8am - 5pm, with a 2 hour break from 12-2 for lunch/nap time)

• A 6-11 year old child studies from the time they get home from school until 9 or 10pm, plays outside for 30 minutes to an hour and then goes to bed. Sometimes the child even studies in the morning before going to school.
  
• A 12-13 year old child studies from the time they get home from school until midnight and then goes to bed. Sometimes the child even studies in the morning before going to school.
• A 14-18 year old child studies from the time they get home from school until midnight or 1am and then goes to bed. Sometimes the child even studies in the morning before going to school as well as during the nap time in the middle of the school day.

Tonight I get to join 38 other foreigners at a movie theater here to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D for $5. A business company here, whom one of my friends knows, gets tickets for half price for movies shown in English, so I am excited to go see a movie that is not one of my DVD's and is also not Chinese television. Well, I am going to close here for now. I hope that you all enjoy your weekend.

Cruise Control is Off

So, I have now had six days of classes, and I can tell you that we are not cruising anymore, but rather are speeding down the highway of learning Mandarin. When classes resumed last Monday I was informed by both my teachers that they would no longer use any English in class unless a new concept was being introduced. So, you can imagine how much I am being challenged with listening to Chinese being spoken, as well as having to speak it in return to answer a question. I was slightly overwhelmed the first class trying to recall everything that I have learned so far, but as time is progressing I feel like some of my language is finally coming together nicely. I even surprised myself today with a really long response to a question in Chinese. I guess all the studying over the holiday is finally starting to pay off.

For other news....I met a new Western friend last week at club (Sunday fellowship) and we immediately hit it off. She is from a village town called Pingliang where she has been an English teacher for 2 and 1/2 years. Thanks to a volunteer English teacher coming to Pingliang, my friend has finally had the opportunity to come to Xi'an begin to learn the language. While she is only here for a few months (she has to go back to Pingliang to finish the school year teaching), I am still excited to be able to hang out with her from time to time, and to have another single person to talk to who is experiencing the same things I am experiencing.

Also, my new friend is studying at my school as well, so she and I have had a few opportunities to spend some time with our Chinese teachers outside of class. One day we took our teachers and another teacher out to lunch, which was a lot of fun. And last Friday night, one of the teachers invited my friend and I to KTV (karaoke television) since I had not the privilege of experiencing it yet. The Chinese are fascinated with KTV and many people go every weekend. KTV was quite entertaining to say the least. You are given a private room that includes 2 microphones, a TV, couch, and a control panel. The control panel allows you to choose songs in about 6 different languages, and while the words are displayed on the screen to sing along to, there are also music videos playing in the background, which in my opinion were the best part of the night. Some music videos are the actual videos made with the song being sung, and other videos include a Chinese person singing the song and Chinese dancers in the background - which is funny when you are singing a Barbara Streisand song.

One thing that I have really learned in the past 7 months is that everything here in China is about guanxi (means relationship). The Chinese hold to the concept that they don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. On Saturday, as I was at my school for the grand opening of our second classroom facilities, I realized that my guanxi the past 7 months has been with my teachers as well as the other teachers at my school. All of my teachers are a part of the family, but many of them have only been in the family for a short time and still have so many questions. Many of them were supported when they joined the family, but then the support stopped immediately after that. I have been grateful that I have been allowed the opportunity to come alongside and be that support for them now because ultimately when I leave China one day, it will be my teachers that are still here supporting others in the family.

Well, I will close for now, but I hope that you all are now enjoying the longer days of sunshine since daylight savings time has come and gone. I am sure you would all love to have that extra hour of sleep back though. I am just glad to be back to exactly 12 hours difference in time between here and there, since that extra hour really made a difference some days. I'll be checking in again soon, until then have a great week.

Back to School

The Chinese New Year celebrations are over, and I am glad to be getting back to some sense of normalcy. It was a good break spent in fellowship with friends, but at the same time was somewhat boring with many places (other than some grocery stores) closed for the entire month. The upside to the 'downtime' was that I was able to do a lot of studying. I spent 3-4 hours per day studying by reviewing all vocabulary (from definition to correct tones), to answering all the sentence translations at the end of each chapter. The real test of how much I have learned will be determined tomorrow when classes resume.

Speaking of classes, mine will be a little different this semester. Instead of continuing with 2-to-1 like I was doing last semester, I will now be doing 1-to-1. My friend, whom I was taking classes with last semester, is farther ahead of me and it had become apparent that she felt like class was moving too fast for me to keep up with her pace of learning, and I felt like I was slowing her down. (Side note: my friend has lived here in China for 2 years, and had begun language before, but being a mother had to put language on the back burner for a short time, but by starting over with me it helped her to eventually remember things that she had learned from living here 2 years.) So, we both decided that this semester would be a great opportunity for me to do 1-to-1 in order to progress my language, but at a pace that I will continue to retain the information. I do know one thing, it will be a challenge since I don't have anyone else to rely on to help out when I don't understand, but I also know it will force me to 'step it up a notch' in my learning too. One thing that I am excited about is that I will still have two teachers this semester as well. I will have one of my teachers from last semester again, and the other teacher will be the one that went with me to help on my teaching trip to the village. I really like all the teachers from our school, and would be happy to have any of them, but feel that I have begun to build relationships with these two, so am excited to continue that this semester. I will keep you posted on how my first week in 1-to-1 goes.