你们好!
I've finally reached my first weekend here at HBA, and unsurprisingly, there's even more to write about than last time! This time I'll work my way back in time, starting with today's adventures.
Today most of the students in the program went on a field trip to the Great Wall. We left at 7:50 to beat the rush (and the heat!). All the teachers had already warned us that this part of the wall was a comfy-shoes-required kind of place, but I think most of us were still surprised by how strenuous the hike was. Though it certainly afforded us the opportunity to practice complaining about how tired we were in Chinese, it was a great trip. The scenery (including the wall itself, of course) was breathtakingly beautiful, I was in the company of friends, and I made it all the way to the furthest and highest point we were allowed to go. Since I hiked for so long, I didn't really have much time or energy for shopping at the many stands selling touristy things outside the entrance. Some of my friends did have the time and energy, however, and I enjoyed hearing their bargaining stories -- for example, getting the price of a decorative scroll down from the initial 260¥ to 20¥. I'm going to pause for a minute to try to put in pictures...






<------ Pretty mountains!













Some of the Yalies who went all the way to the end. The point on the wall directly to the right of Marissa's head was our destination.














Here's a better view of the wall looking towards where we ended up.













This is the view looking down the very steep set of stairs at the end of the hike. It's a lot steeper and longer than it looks!







It is hard to visit something like the great wall without thinking of the mind-blowing amount of work that was put into it. Climbing just a tiny fraction of it was hard enough; I can't imagine what constructing it by hand would have been like! I wonder what kind of consolation it would be to the people who died building the wall to know that it still stands as an international marvel, and that it is covered daily with tourists, merchants hawking questionable bottled water, and foreign kids studying their language and culture.
Speaking of studying language and culture, I feel like my Chinese has improved dramatically in just one week. To me, the normal pace of learning languages is kind of like the pace of growing throughout most of childhood: there's no question you're gradually getting taller, but you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference from one day to the next. An intensive program like HBA, on the other hand, is like an extreme growth spurt, when you can measure yourself every day with different results. I can't possibly express how exciting this is for me. It makes make want to put even more effort into my classes and homework, since what I've done so far has provided such immediate and satisfying rewards.
I suppose it's not too surprising that my Chinese is already getting better. Every day we have five hours of intensive classes: one and a half hours of "large" class (8-10 students per teacher), two and a half hours of "small" class (4-5 students per teacher), and one hour of one-on-one class. So far, I don't think the actual material covered has been too taxing, but the classes themselves are quite difficult simply because absolute focus is required at all times. Unlike at Yale, I don't have the luxury of occasionally spacing off -- the teacher can (and probably will) call on me at any moment. I never did competitive academics like Quizbowl or Academic Decathlon, but I imagine how I feel in class is a lot like how I'd feel in some sort of academic tournament. I'm not competing with my classmates, but I do feel like I'm always on my toes and constantly forcing my mind to move as quickly as it possibly can. This is a surprisingly great feeling. It could be that, as I said in my last post, it's a kind of mental workout I haven't done before, or it could just be the adrenaline, but either way, I'm really enjoying my classes.
Again, I have a lot more I'd like to write about in this post: I'd like to tell you about my teachers, about my adventures in the area around BeiYu, and about my homework and tests. But I'll have to save those for later, because I'm extremely wiped out. Climbing the great wall really takes it out of you, as does rewriting half of a blog post from scratch because blogger deleted it :( ! Goodnight (to me)/good afternoon (to those of you in the U.S.)!