Let the Classes Begin

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Today was our first day of classes. We started with two classes of Speaking and Listening, and two classes of Comprehensive Chinese. The classes are only 40 minutes long, and one of our teachers said that in America our classes are too long, and she would fall asleep. Haha. Then we rushed to get to lunch, and pointed at other people’s plates to say what we wanted. Then we came back and I almost finished my book, and then we had Tea Ceremony class. Walking to Class, I met our Tea Ceremony translator, Jane. She was adorable and thought she had horrible English, though it was very good. She is a student majoring in Chinese Teaching as a Second Language. We first watched a powerpoint and video in a very hot room, which made it difficult for me to stay awake. Then we went to a room that we made tea in. Our teacher took us through the process of making the tea, rinsing, etc., and the proper hand position when doing so. When we were finishing up, the cd playing Chinese music started playing 90s American music. Including Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero”, the song that goes, “1, you’re like a dream come true. 2, just want to be with you, etc.”, and Backstreet Boys. We had a good karaoke session while making the tea.

After class we began in another round of Uno that lasted forever. We now call it “Yao” which is Kunming dialect for “One.”

My stomach has gotten worse, and none of my medicine seems to be helping. I am trying to figure out if it is something I am eating that is making my stomach hurt, but I am being careful to stay away from lactose- just in case.

After Uno, Rachel and Jeremy started throwing things at each other. This somehow turned into playing soccer with a towel in our living room thing, in which I was eventually tagged in. It was more like wrestling combined with towel soccer. It was a lot of fun, and our bodies were slightly beat up, especially our feet. We name it Chinese Towel Soccer. We weren’t really hungry, so Rachel and I just went to get snack food for dinner.