Sunday, June 13, 2010

xujiahui

no pictures today! but excitement nonetheless. this morning, wenjun (sue) and i joined our upstairs neighbors, yanan and sarah, for breakfast at the SUFE cafeteria. SUFE, pronounced "soo-fee," is the abbreviation for Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. even though yanan and wenjun live here with us, they are actually students at SUFE, which is just next door to fudan. breakfast was street-food style, yummy as always. we had egg/flour pancakes with chinese sausage inside, baozi, and rice porridge. delightful :) but having a conversation in chinese is tough stuff, that early in the morning!

from 11-12 we met our chinese teachers for the first time! and thus received the results of our placement exams. i was relieved to place into 201 (there are "complete beginners," 101, 201, 301, and "advanced heritage speakers"). sooooo happy not to be at the bottom of the barrel... but also in a class i can [hopefully] handle. our teacher is shi laoshi, only shi like "时"; not like mommy's maiden name, shi "石". ah yes, this afternoon we also took our dreaded LANGUAGE PLEDGE. no more english.... EVER!

afterward i made the [hour and a half long] trek to xujiahui, to visit teddy's lovely aunt fey and uncle ray. they were very friendly; we spoke a mix of simple chinese and simple english. their grandchildren were also visiting. tomorrow, we may all go shopping and have dinner together.

NOW, it's time to study study study. tomorrow we start class, and we have two drills to prepare for. tonight begins eight grueling weeks of intensive study! and we already have a test approaching on thursday. 吃苦!

2 comments:

  1. Just visited with Lucy and Jun. They love reading your blog. Congrats on placement exam ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. No more English for the rest of the trip? That is intense! Your blog is SO fun to read, and you do an excellent job at writing about your adventures. Have fun!

    xoxo,

    Kat

    ReplyDelete