The Real First Day

I think yesterday didn't really count, because I didn't have any classes. Today (Tuesday) I went to three, so this really felt like the first day.

Here's a short video I recorded after I finished my second class at lunch time.

After spending a couple hours in the library mining the school's e-journal databases for assigned articles to read for the classes I had in the morning and grabbing a quick bite to eat in the quad, it was off to my first class in Chinese. Yes, both AM classes (a couple of the "optional" ones that I wrote about yesterday) were in English, and thus were quite easy for me to keep up with.

Total contrast with what I experienced in the afternoon class. I was picking up maybe 25 - 30% of the Mandarin that was being spoken, not because it was too fast (I don't often have a problem making out what people are saying anymore due to speed) but simply because of the content, the vocabulary. If I knew a lot of the words being used in the class before, I have forgotten them. It was an eye-opener for me - this is not going to be easy. But the professor was very gracious to me. She told me that right now I am doing fine if I am picking up on 20 - 30%, and that I will eventually build up to where I am getting most everything.

Sometimes our subconscious can be funny. After I walked out of class this afternoon, for some reason, a very fitting song was playing in my head. It was Weak and Powerless by the band called A Perfect Circle. The title says it all - 'nuff said.

I knew that the Chinese listening would be hard, but I haven't really come up with what seems to be a satisfactory answer for how to deal with it. I have considered attempting to audio record all my classes in Chinese so I can go back and review them later, but I fear that this method will be far too time intensive, not to mention that it is likely that the audio quality on whatever recording device I use will be substandard when compared to listening through my ear to the live class in session.

Perhaps it is just a matter of getting used to listening to several hours straight of Chinese, graduate-level Chinese. These classes are no joke! In the US, a 3 credit class would meet 2 - 3 times a week to get to 3 hours of class for a week, but here, they just knock it all out at once! I guess that is good in that you only have to show up to a given class once a week.

In summary, I found all three classes today to be interesting, and further they were interesting in direct correlation with how much (or little) I could understand what was being said.

Tomorrow's schedule is much like today's, except both classes I will attend are ones that I need to take. A course taught in English in the morning, then an all-out assault in Chinese in the afternoon. I hope each day and week it gets a little bit easier.

Finally for today, I was invited to attend (token American?) the grand re-opening of the Sun Yat-sen America Center (SYSAC) at my school later this week. No, I'm not really the only American here, there are several others, but in the grand scheme of things, there are not many of us at NSYSU. Anyhow, I am planning to attend to see what this SYSAC is all about. More to follow after the fact.

GJS