Classes

Today was my first day of classes. It was quite uneventful and included only the very basic level of Chinese. The class was three hours long with three small breaks in between. Basically, we went over numbers, greetings etc. Not to much homework either, but there is plenty of stuff to review and preview for tomorrows class.

Besides learning Chinese, the thing that I love the most about studying abroad is the different people you meet. In my class alone, there were three Kazaks, a few Russians and people from Japan, Botswana, Jamaica, Mongolia, and I think two of the girls were from some South East Asian countries.

Apparently I have a very good Chinese name, because my teacher and everyone else really seem to like. I think I mentioned this to my parents but not on here, my Chinese is 孔泽华, pronounced Kong Ze Hua. The father of the family I was staying with gave me the name, and I must say its better then my last name, which made me sound like a migrant worker. The reason for the name goes like this, Kong is the last name of Confucius in Chinese, Ze is from Mao Ze Dong and Hua is how they pronounce George Washington's last name. The reason those were picked were because, Confucius and Mao are very big in China, and I am very tall to Chinese people and since I am American they decided on the character of George Washington's name.

The other night I went to dinner with a friend in Zhongguancun, which is the Silicon Valley of China and only a short bus ride away from my apartment, we came across a Christian Church. Here is a picture of it.

Tonight was the first night that I could cook on my own, since I finally bought a hot plate. Ah, it was nice to make have pasta for dinner!


Tomorrow, I also begin my language exchange with the daughter of the family I stayed with. We are going to meet on Tuesday and Thursday, one day I help her with her English the other she helps with my Chinese. I have also been spending a lot of time with her and her friends. They are young, trendy, upper-middle class urban kids. Quite similar to who you would run across in NYC. One owns a smoothie, fruit and dessert shop (which is amazingly fresh and tasty), another sells multi-million dollar apartments. The others are all in school but appear to come from pretty well-off families. The are a ton of fun and love to have a good time and they always pay for me when we go out and I can't do anything to stop them! Its a Chinese custom to be generous to people you first meet.

Have to go finish reviewing for tomorrow and go buy some dish soap to clean my pan from cooking. Bye.