disalarming

When the earliest I can get home on any given day of the working week is 5p.m. (on a Friday!), it is very telling just how all-consuming my class/work/internship schedule is. Needless to say, I’m beat from this week. It’s almost 6p.m. on a Friday evening and I’m sitting on my couch in my PJ’s watching reruns of NCIS like an old lady. Not gonna lie, it’s kind of nice that I have absolutely nothing planned for tonight but to relax and unwind. Oh, and maybe tackle some of my readings…

I know I’ve talked about how busy I am on this blog before and it might seem like I’m complaining but I’m not, honestly. My schedule is something I chose and I’m happy with all the things that I’m doing. I just think it’s kind of scary how fast I went from being a freshman with a handful of classes and a schedule that was wide open in terms of free time to a totally jam-packed schedule where I’m juggling sixteen things at once. How did I grow up so fast? Where did the time go? Am I really expected to be an Adult in the Real World come graduation next year?!

(Oh, and in news I meant to post earlier but I completely forgot to and now it’s kind of late and outdated: I survived both the DC earthquake and Hurricane Irene last week without incident, minus the 24 hours or so I lost power due to Irene. My area was incredibly lucky as others were not as fortunate with either, or both, of the natural disasters.)

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It’s that time of year again… The time where the end of the spring semester sends my stress levels skyrocketing and I am perpetually almost at breaking point.

This year, I’m freaking out over final exams, final papers, making a summer travel itinerary (and organizing everything that comes with a self-planned trip in southeast Asia), trying to coordinate a summer internship, preparing for my summer employment opportunity, figuring out if I have places to live… The list goes on. And to top it all off, my beloved MacBook gave out on me, so I am currently computerless.

Till my computer gets fixed (I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow and I’m hoping it’s not a big issue, so it should be fixed soon) I’m going to be scarce. I’m relying on my roommate’s spare netbook and my iTouch for my computer/Internet fix, but neither are ideal for blogging, unfortunately!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

There is this girl in my class that is holding my classmates and I back in terms of how fast we are learning and progressing.

And that is putting is very, very nicely.

She skipped a level to be in my class. Which is no easy feat, considering she skipped a little over an entire book (10+ chapters) of vocabulary and grammar. Not to mention the fact that her speaking, writing, and listening abilities are generally not up to par to the rest of us in the class. This isn’t just me being overly critical; hearing her speak in class and seeing writing samples proves this. How can she be on the same level as the rest of us when our speaking/writing/listening ability is the product of a semester’s worth of intensive immersion study, and not something we produced overnight?

It’s one thing to be a motivated student and pledge to catch up to be on the class level in addition to staying on top of current coursework. It’s another to not actually do any of that, and still expect to get by in class.

My class is the highest class level offered in my study abroad program, independent studies excluded. It’s not enough to just “get by.” I put in hours of homework a day just to prepare for the next day’s class. There are worksheets to complete, essays to write, new characters to memorize for daily dictation, texts to mark up with new vocabulary, grammar, and additional new words. It’s a tough workload, and it’s very draining. To do all that and catch up on the 10+ of materials the girl skipped is, in my opinion, a physically impossible feat. And currently, my opinion has yet to be proven wrong, because the girl has done absolutely nothing to start catching up. Other than hope that it’ll magically happen, without having to do any extra work of her own.

She has the gall to show up to class without any of the homework completed. Essays will go unwritten because she “didn’t understand the question.” (The essay topic was based on the text we had studied in class that day. It was pretty self-explanatory stuff – well, for someone who pays attention.) Worksheets will go uncompleted because she “was busy.” (With what? She didn’t have any answer to that question.) New words in the text will go undefined because… well, she had no reason for that one, either. (Looking new words up in a dictionary is pretty standard for any language class regardless of level, if you ask me.)

So much time is spent going over vocabulary and grammar that we already know but she has never learned, either in her previous class or through catching up on her own. It’s as though instead of learning new material, which we are supposed to be doing, my class is just constantly reviewing old material. She’s not a quick learner, nor is she a hard-working student, a deadly combination for this situation. If she can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum required for class, how is it feasible to think she will do the extra catch-up work required that comes with skipping a level? If her language ability is so clearly below mine and my classmates’, why is she still in my class?

I understand wanting to give every student a fair shot. I get that, I really do. But when doing so negatively impacts on other students’ learning, it’s time to cut the deadweight and move on. If she’s not making the effort and doing the work required of someone in her particular situation, why make the rest of us suffer for it?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Me, at the airport on my way to Beijing

• One 14kg duffel bag with a wheelie thing
• One 7kg duffel bag
• One 7kg backpack
• One 3kg plastic bag
• One 1.5kg purse¹

Me, in my new apartment

• Assigned to a room meant for two, but no roommate
• Translation: double the closet space, my own bathroom, and a spare bed

Me, as an orientation leader

• “Wait, which subway line is the university on again?”

Me, as a returning study abroad student

• Teacher: Manda, you started last semester with a really strong Cantonese accent but had lost it by the end of the semester. But after spending winter break in Hong Kong, your accent has come back!
• Me: *demoralized*

Oh, Beijing. It’s so, so good to be back. <3

1. This was filled with electronics like my iPod as well as my wallet, which had a ton of coins, hence the weight. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

This week is the last full week of my fall semester abroad. Aside from the usual tell tale signs of the end of semester, like revising for final exams and writing final papers, my surroundings signal the end of all that I’ve become accustomed to and grown to love this semester. I’ve started to pack up my stuff in my suitcases in preparation for when I move out of my apartment; my friends and I are swapping our photos of various events throughout the semester; plans are being made to go see sites in Beijing that we’ve put off visiting in all the time we’ve been here.

It’s not even what I’m doing, or what my friends are doing, that all point to the end of a fall semester abroad. It’s the fact that the bustling outdoor night market along the main street near my apartment building got closed down, so the street is empty every time I walk along it in the evenings. It’s the fact that the nearby outdoor biergarten, which had the best fried 饺子 (jiǎozi / potstickers) I’ve ever eaten, got closed down as well. It’s the fact that the regular 串儿 (chuànr / kebabs) sellers outside the clubs are no longer there, having left for other places. It’s the fact that my favorite bubble tea chain changed their summer specialty drink to that of a winter specialty. It’s the fact that all the markets have changed the shoes and clothing selection to that of winter fashion.

And let’s not talk about the impending goodbyes I have to say to all the friends I made in my program this semester. Because that, for obvious reasons, is going to be extremely difficult. It’s always hard to guess how close you can become to someone over the course of just a semester. But when you are abroad, friendships are stronger and experiences abroad are inextricably tied with those who you are friends with. It’s hard to believe that once we part ways at the end of the semester, I might not ever see some of the people I’ve become close to over the last few months.

I’m gonna make this last week count like no other.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I should be doing my homework right now (when am I not supposed to be doing my homework?) but I’m taking a quick break to write this entry. This immersion program is tough; even though everyone told me it would be intense it’s still more intense than I imagined it would be. Tonight, for example, my homework is the following: learn 55 new characters for two separate dictation quizzes; fill out a worksheet about phrases used when buying fruit at fruit stands; complete a worksheet using new vocabulary and grammar that was covered in today’s class; and write a minimum of 100 characters about the topic of today’s lesson (female equality in the workplace/life in general). Basically, I spend my life either in class prepping for the homework, or outside of class doing my homework. Fun times, fun times.

Anyway. The first of my three firsts (I think I’m losing my grip on the English language) is that I bought fruit from a fruit stand today! Not only did I buy fruit, but I bought a 香蕉苹果！ It’s an apple, but with a banana taste. I was first introduced to such a fruit existing in the first book of the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, and I finally was able to buy one today. I haven’t eaten it yet, but that’s on the cards for tomorrow.

The second of my three firsts is what my friends and I witnessed when we were at dinner today. There was this loud, raucous bunch of incredibly drunk and half-dressed (men only, as it is not unusual for men to take their shirts off in the hot summer weather) Chinese who clearly were at the restaurant celebrating a birthday. By the time the cake was brought out, the group was totally wasted. They started flinging cake at each other and practically shoved the cake into the birthday girl’s face. Then they started breaking the empty beer bottles, throwing more cake at each other (as well as the floor and the wall), and just being incredibly rude, disrespectful, and flat-out embarrassing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I was incredibly surprised to see that no one asked that party to leave.

The third of my three firsts is that I rode on the back of a bicycle for the first time today, in true Beijing (or perhaps it’s the same throughout all of China) style. My friend bought a bicycle yesterday, and he offered to give me a ride back to my apartment as it was on his way. I probably was not the best passenger because I had my backpack filled with my textbooks (will remember not to do that in the future), but it was still fun. It was a little nerve wracking at times, though. Not because of my friend’s bicycling ability, but because Beijing roads are just terrifying to begin with. I’m pretty sure everyone that uses Beijing roads, whether it be pedestrians, cyclists, or drivers, almost get killed at least three times a day because of how crazy the roads are.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

In the last few months, I have talked a lot about the fact that I am going abroad to Beijing to study for the 2010-2011 academic year. But I haven’t really discussed why I am going to Beijing, or what I will study there, or why I am studying there for a full year rather than just a semester. Seeing as I am departing for China soon, I figured now is as good a time as ever to explain everything, as obviously my experiences abroad will influence what I write about in this blog.

When it was time for me to start figuring out my junior year study abroad plans, I didn’t really know where I wanted to study. I had a French and Chinese language double minor at the time, and all I knew is that I wanted to go abroad for a year. However, I ended up dropping my French minor, so that wrecked my plans for a semester in Paris. I thought about going somewhere in Europe for the fall and Beijing for the spring, but that idea didn’t really sit well with me as I wanted to spend a year in one place, not two. Since I still had my Chinese language minor, it made the most sense to spend a year in China. My school happens to offer a top notch program in Beijing, so on paper, that was why I chose to study in Beijing.

In reality, though, I also chose Beijing for a lot of other reasons. I visited mainland China two summers ago and loved it there; there really is no place like it in the world. The energy, the food, the people… it’s a really great place to choose for a year of study. Not to mention that ethnically, I’m half Chinese, yet have spent my entire childhood (minus the first few years of my life) growing up in Western countries. I felt that it was finally time to go and get in touch with some of my roots.

In Beijing, I am enrolled in an intensive Chinese language immersion program for the fall semester. I will be taking only Chinese language classes and will spend both my mornings and afternoons in class five days a week. The intensity factor is a little daunting, and I’m a little wary of spending my nights up to my ears in Chinese homework, but I’m also really, really looking forward to it. The best way to learn a language is to completely immerse yourself in it, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing with Chinese. It also helps that I love learning languages and learning Chinese in particular. Not to mention that one of my really good friends is enrolled in the program too (and also studying abroad for a year in Beijing, just like me), which eases some of my nerves.

For the spring semester, I will still continue studying Chinese but in a non-intensive, non-immersion setting. I will also be studying other subjects. I’ll be able to take courses such as Sino-American Relations from a Chinese perspective. Since I’ve taken a similar course from an American perspective, I’m really interested to see what the differences in the perspectives will be. I will also (hopefully) be interning twice a week at a yet to be decided location. That’s going to be a great work experience, and it’s going to be so awesome to say that I’ve interned in Beijing before!

That, in a nutshell, is the 411 on why I am studying in Beijing and what I will be doing there for a year. Even though I’m a little nervous (and who wouldn’t be nervous at the prospect of studying abroad in a country for an entire year without returning home during the school breaks?), I’m sure Beijing will be everything I hope it to be and more.

In other news… it’s my birthday today!! I have officially left my teen years and entered my twenties. Eek!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Imagine my shock, horror and shame when I was alerted to the fact that my school has been sending out emails to prospective students with the following subject line: What do the college search and Justin Bieber have in common?

Think that’s bad? Oh, it gets better. This is what the body of the email says:

What’s it like to be so popular? You have every university chasing you like prepubescent girls going after Justin Bieber (it’s okay, we don’t get the appeal either).

But we aren’t just another university. We actually want to know about you before we tell you anything about us: [link to school website]

This isn’t such a bad position to be in. You worked hard, you earned it. And hey, being pursued can be nice, sometimes.

The only redeeming quality about this email is that Admissions admits that they don’t get the Bieber mania/fever that seems to have swept the world. Still, I don’t think that is a big enough factor for me (and all other students, alumni, faculty and staff and anyone remotely associated to my university) to recover from this horrible, awful shame.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have learned a lot about the protocol regarding dorm room sex during my time as a resident of my school’s dorms. Most of the stuff I’ve learned, however, is what not to do when having sex in the dorms. Here are some examples:

• If you want to turn up music so people don’t hear screams/moans/cries out loud, make sure it is actually loud enough to drown out said screams/moans/cries out loud. If not, when you turn the music off, everyone will know that you are done… not to mention how long it took for you to orgasm.
• If you have to sexile a roommate, make sure you and your roommate are on good enough terms so that the roommate won’t run into the lounge and announce that you are having sex. If that happens, it is more than likely that a good portion of the people in the lounge will come running down the hall and sit around outside your door, trying to stifle the sounds of laughter as your whines and cries get progressively louder.
• If you live on the first or second floor of the dorm, make sure your curtains are closed so that people walking by won’t see more of you than they ever wanted to see.

Most of it is just common sense, really. But it’s astounding to see how little common sense college kids have when it comes to having sex in the dorms!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Smoking is something that has absolutely never interested me, unlike some other aspects of college life. There are a multitude of reasons why, but in the end, it all amounts to this: it’s just something I choose not to do. It doesn’t matter to me whether others do it, but it’s not something I personally am interested in. Needless to say, the “holiday” that is 4/20 is something I find stupid, but since it’s all part of a counterculture I’m not a part of, I do my best to refrain from judging and go about my own business the way I would any other day.

However, when those who “observe” 4/20 start smoking in the godforsaken early hours of the morning and set off the fire alarm at 8:27a.m., I will totally hardcore judge. I don’t care if they smoke; they can do what they want. But when they are stupid enough to smoke in the dorms and set off the fire alarm and the sprinklers on the floor, then they are dumbasses, regardless of whether or not today is 4/20. When the sprinklers are involved, it’s not even about how the fire alarm disturbed the sleep of so many students anymore. It’s about damaged property that the school won’t cover unless a specific type of insurance has already been purchased prior to the incident.

Also, I just got an email from the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority telling me not to use tap water until further notice because of an unsafe spike in the amount of chlorine in the water. According to the email, “water with excess chlorine may have… taste and odor problems… the chlorine may also cause a reaction in individuals with sensitive skin.” I washed my face and brushed my teeth with tap water this morning, does this mean my face and/or the inside of my mouth is going to react from the chlorine?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.