Word

So, I’ve drafted the first part to the epic story of my bestfriend and I getting lost. Interestingly enough, I had wanted to get in touch with him to have him look it over, fill in the cracks in my memory and such. We’ve been out of touch for quite a while. I had emailed my mom to have her get his email, when the next day he emails me. Now, I haven’t confirmed whether or not she contacted him, but at any rate, the epic story will be delayed, but quite possibly even MORE epic as it will be co-authored by my former partner in crime.

I know you wait with eager anticipation.

Anyway, today was the first day of Chinese 2. We have a new teacher and only 5 of us in it. Class started and my brain crashed. Of course, I didn’t know what to expect, but when all I heard was Chinese, which they NEVER EVER SPEAK SLOWLY, I had to shift several gears. Now, I know there are five hundred of you out there who are already clicking the comment button to tell me how YOU learned a language and all THEY spoke was said language.

Seriously. I don’t care.

If you tried to learn Chinese, or have learned it, please, tell me. But here’s the problem: we have here a monosyllabic, tonal language. And they speak very quickly and often slur their words together. None of us could even tell you how many words were in the sentence, let alone tell you what words they said.

It definitely makes things difficult, but after a while, we settled in and strained to hear anything we could understand.

This is a problem.

It’s a monosyllabic language. Similar to English, they combine words to make new words. This means we know enough words to NOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING. For instance, I will understand the WHO, and sometimes the WHAT… but let’s take this example. Suppose someone says “I like flowers” in Chinese. Now, this is hypothetical, because I know all those words. Track with me though. Let’s say I don’t know the word for “flower.” So all I understand is, “I like…” what?

Now you begin to see the possible problems and frustrations.

It’s all good. We came out of the class energized and excited. We’d learned a ton already. She really focuses on characters and works hard on making sure our listening and pronunciation is good.

We told some of the other people in later classes about it, and most of them got wide eyed and said, “I think I’d freak out if that happened.” Many had problems with Chinese 1. No one came here to exclusively study language, as say other foreigners here do, or as my sister is doing in France. Ergo, the first teacher speaking in English was a blessing.

But now it’s time to get serious.

Ok, I’ve got to work on memorizing a famous Chinese poem. Peace.

Quanzhou

Well, school seems to have dominated my life. I just realized I haven’t really written about Quanzhou, getting sick, or anything.

So we went to a nearby city called Quanzhou (Chwen-joe). Around 1000 years ago, it was the largest city in the world. It was the start of the “Maritime Silk Road.” In fact, Columbus, in all of his intelligence, was trying to find a faster route to Quanzhou when he ran into the Americas. While we were there, we visited the oldest mosque in China, built in 1009. We visited a sort of Daoist temple and a Confucian temple. We spent some time at one of the most famous Buddhist temples in China, built in 649. We also stopped by the second largest Protestant church in China. We spent most of a day at a Maritime museum, which talked about China’s incredible maritime exploits. I’ve got a ton of photos that I would’ve posted sooner, but my internet bill came due on Sunday and I couldn’t pay until Monday. They’ll be on Facebook, and if you don’t have that, ask and I can get you the external link. All in all it was quite eventful and worthwhile…

…except for the part where I threw up before we went to the Confucian temple. I had other symptoms, but I won’t bother to describe. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t fun. I hardly ate all day, which isn’t really a good thing considering I had to do a lot of walking and standing. It did bring me back to the time a friend and I got lost on an island when we were backpacking… perhaps I’ll write about that story. Anyway, I had to rush to the bathroom just before we hopped on the bus home, but after that I felt pretty good. The rest of the weekend was spent resting and recovering. It took until Monday before I ate a full meal, which was good because myself and another gal were picked to take the president of CCCU (Council of Christian Colleges and Universities—the organization that puts on this and other programs) out to dinner.

We also had a Chinese exam on Monday. I did very well, except for the writing part. I’ve neglected my writing a bit and forgot a few characters. I was glad I did well because that night I had to order all the food amongst other things… much to my surprise I didn’t think twice about it. My listening is horrible, but that’ll come with time.

We basically finish our semester here in 9 weeks. So we are now having what is more or less finals. At the end of the month we start gallivanting around China for two or three weeks and when we return we’ll only have a few weeks before we return to the other side of the world. We’ll have a few classes then, but not much. I am taking Chinese 2 which will continue through that time and will take the most of my time.

So that’s basically it. I’ve got a few things to write about… ok maybe one or two, so hopefully in the next few days I’ll do that.