Blogging
From Abroad

Suzhou is a very picturesque bit of earth…I can’t go anywhere without running into a photo op. I’m out getting some bubble tea and suddenly there I am, juggling bags and straws, twisting my camera out of my bag. Or I’m five minutes late to class because I was taking photos of laundry and/or bicycles and/or honeydew ice cream. I dare anyone to come here and not find the scenery graciously arranging itself for their lens.

Some examples…

By some written records, Suzhou has a history extending back about 4000 years. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on Suzhou, in case anyone is interested…it’s a big cultural capital, so the reading is pretty interesting…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou

On another note, the studying is really intensifying. There are a total of 10 students here from WVU – seven of whom are second-year students in Chinese, and three of which are only first-year students. After our initial evaluation from our Suda professors, we were all placed in the same class…unfortunately, I happen to be a first year student, so the work I have been doing is really starting to demand a lot of time and effort.

We have two back-to-back language classes from about 8:30 in the morning until noon, which comes to four hours of class a day (with the consequent assignments and homeworks). We’ve got culture and history class for several hours every Tuesday and Thursday, then field trips on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Saturdays are our day trips to other towns, like Nanjing (this Saturday) and Hangzhou (last Saturday). To help the first year students keep up with the second-year students, we also have an intensive practice and tutoring session for an hour or two each night Monday – Friday. So each day I find myself in an intensive class for about 6 hours, which is a bit draining. This week we started off with two lessons that contain at least 50 new characters and vocabulary words, for which we will be tested this coming Friday (in addition to the other two lessons we’ll probably have covered before then). I’m kind of reaching a saturation point that I have to really push through to be able to keep up. Being forced to speak Chinese while we’re out and about helps a lot, but I’ve got to get on the study aids or some such to help with these characters…课中文生词太度了! It’s too much to remember!

Tonight we’re all taking Zheng Laoshi (one of our history and culture professors), out to dinner. I think his last class for us was today and he’s going to talk to us about his experiences as a 下乡青年 (xiaxiang qingnian – sent-down youth) during the Cultural Revolution. (During the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, urban youth were sometimes sent down the countryside to learn from the peasants and farmers as part of a reaction to supposed bourgeois values during Mao’s Down to the Countryside Movement. There’s a lot of controversy around the intended and unintended effects of this policy, which will be very interesting to discuss with someone who lived it.)

... Zheng Laoshi teaching class …

Okay, off to eat once again at the Snowy Seas! G’night, all!