Let's see... it's already been almost a week since I last posted! Unlike the first week, this week has sped by at an almost alarming rate. I'm sure this is because I've adjusted to the routine of life here -- I'm used to waking up early to finish my homework, going to class, eating lunch, going to more class, and doing more homework. Another thing that has definitely contributed to this acceleration is the addition of extracurricular activities this week. HBA offers extracurriculars on three of the five weekday afternoons: on Monday, you can practice singing Chinese pop songs or study Taijiquan, on Tuesday, you can learn to play erhu, the "Chinese violin", and on Thursday, you can cook Chinese food, do Chinese calligraphy, or learn the old art of paper-cutting.
Since I've never been one to hesitate about over-committing myself extracurricularly, I promptly signed myself up for the maximum of three classes. My first two choices, the popular music class and the erhu class, make a lot of sense given my interest in music. Neither disappointed -- even though I'm not crazy about pop songs in general, just being able to sing with other people again is great; and even though I do sound pretty screechy on my new erhu, I love the feeling of starting a new instrument. The third class I signed up for was paper-cutting, mostly because I don't feel artistic enough to paint brushstroke characters, and because I thought that the cooking class probably wouldn't cater to vegetarians. It, too, turned out to be a great choice. There are only five people in the class including the teacher, and all of us are girls, so it's a much more natural environment for conversation than my other two extracurriculars. Besides that, this is the first arts-and-craftsy thing I've done in a long time, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Taking extracurricular classes here seems to be a great idea, since not only have I been able to meet people and take a slight break from my intense studies, but I've also been improving my Chinese even more by listening to instructions and talking to fellow students (many of whom are much more advanced than I am).
Besides the extracurriculars, I didn't do anything too out of the ordinary since I last wrote, so I'll write a bit about a one-on-one class I particularly enjoyed. This Wednesday, my individual class was with one of the three "large-class" teachers, who teaches Chinese at Harvard during the school year. The first thing I noticed that really separated him from the other teachers I've had for one-one-one class, most of whom are just starting to teach, is that he was extremely good at guessing my meaning when I didn't know the Chinese word for something. To my astonishment, he was right on his first guess every time when I tried to say things like "reputation", "religion", and even "abstract". I'm sure this ability comes with years of interactions with second-year students, and encountering it made me think more about the different skills involved in language processing and in communication in general. Probably because his excellent understanding of my lacking Chinese made for a smoother flow of conversation, we got to talk about many different things, and unlike in previous one-on-one classes, when I'd mostly talked about myself, I was able to learn a few things from him about Chinese culture.
When discussing which countries I had been to, he mentioned that German people are supposedly unfriendly. I confirmed that everyone I've met in China so far has been much more friendly on first meeting than almost anybody I met in Europe (at least to a 老外 like me), and I found it interesting (although I guess not that surprising) that Chinese people seem to have the same generalizations about people of other countries that Americans do -- Germans are cold, Italians are exuberant, etc. We also discussed dating in the U.S. vs. dating in China, and when I told him that many people begin dating early in high school or even in junior high, he said that in China, dating in high school is really frowned upon since students are expected to devote all their time to their studies. Apparently college is the most common time to begin dating. I'd like to find out more about what courtship consists of here; probably a good way for me to do that would be to ask my "Chinese family", a single thirty-year-old woman who works for a consulting firm. One thing I've noticed on my own is that PDA seems to be quite common, more so than in the U.S.
Another thing we talked about is the social study project all HBA students do during the fifth week of the program. I told him that I had hoped to do my project at a Beijing school, but that since that wasn't an option this year, I planned to go on the trip to the Chinese countryside and research rural education. I was very taken aback when he said, "The countryside?! That will be so boring!" It turns out he grew up in a small village, one he clearly thought was quite boring, so I guess he doesn't see why I would find it interesting.
That about wraps up what I wanted to say in this post! Tomorrow we're going to Gugong (the Forbidden City), so I'll definitely have some photos to put up. In the meantime, I might also put up photos of my erhu and my first paper-cutting project. Again, feel free to write me with questions or just to say hi! I'm sure I'm forgetting to talk about some things that would be of interest to some of you, so don't hesitate to ask!