I Survived!!!

It's amazing to me how being immersed in a language can develop your learning abilities in just a week. On Monday I was struggling to understand anything our professors were saying and as each day passed I understood more and more. I actually feel like I've accomplished something huge just because I can understand when she assigns us homework or asks us questions on the grammar. Our professors are both very nice but the second one kind of scares me. She has a withering stare that she gives you when she can tell you haven't memorized the dialogues. I know this because I only memorized half of the dialogue today and I definitely got nailed to the wall with it. Lesson learned :)

This weekend we are going to the Urban Planning Center and then we plan to stay downtown to shop and sight see. It will be nice to take a break from our homework which takes a minimum of 3 hours every night. We don't have class on Monday because they are celebrating the Autumn Moon Festival, hooray for a three day weekend!!!

Oh, I forgot to tell y'all about an excursion I took the other day. There is a street near our apartments where I get an egg pancake some mornings and I walked down it the other day on the way back form class. I was taken aback by how peaceful this street seemed when all around there were cars honking and bike bells ringing. There was classical Chinese music playing from a small store and many small apartments where families lived. Most of there belongings were outside the dwelling because the rooms were so small and all the cooking was done outside as well. I felt more at peace on that tiny, unfashionable street than I have anywhere else in the city. The combination of the music, lack of traffic noise, and small families running about made it more real than anything I have seen thus far.

And can I say how great it is to have an AWESOME roommate while studying abroad. It's so nice to walk to class everyday and eat our baozi, talk about class or family or whatever, and never get tired of the other person. It makes things soooo much easier :)