Family Confusion

by Ruth

Today in class we were talking about family relationships, a topic that very quickly becomes confusing in Chinese! A few words are similar – mama, baba...and that's about it. No generic “grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle” etc. Almost every relationship has a different term depending on if it is the father's or mother's side, if the person is a blood-relative or married in, and also if the person is younger or older than yourself (or whoever you are comparing them to). For example...

Ge-ge: older brother (sao-zi: older brother's wife)

Di-di: younger brother (di-mei: younger brother's wife)

Jie-jie: older sister (jie-fu: older sister's husband)

Mei-mei: younger sister (mei-fu: younger sister's husband)

Nai-nai: father's mother

Ye-ye: father's father

Wai-po/lao-lao: mother's mother

Wai-gong/lao-ye: father's father

Da-bo: father's older brother

Da-jiu: mother's older brother (jiu-ma: mother's older brother's wife)

Xiao-gu: father's younger sister

Xiao-yi: mother's younger sister

Biao-jie: older female cousin (father's sister's daughter or mother's sibling's daughter)

Er xi-fu: son's wife

Nu-xu: daughter's husband

Wai-sheng-nu: granddaughter – daughter's daughter

Sun-nu: granddaughter – son's daughter

I could go on, but you get the idea: it is endlessly complicated! I think there are several reasons for this: First, family relationships are obviously very important in China, so the language includes very specific descriptions of those relationships.

Second, age and status are very important, so older siblings and people in the older generation should be shown proper respect. An older brother and a younger brother just aren't the same thing. An older brother's wife has the highest status of all the wives in the family, so she gets a different name. Thus I will always have a higher status than Kevin's younger brother Scott and call him di-di, even though he is older than me, since I married the firstborn son. Smart going on my part. :)- I will also inherit the family fortune. Oh wait... Anyway, in the past, family status was especially important, but today it is still important for showing the proper respect.

Third, the wife's family and husband's family are viewed rather differently. In the past, the wife left her family to join the husband's family, and while this isn't exactly the case anymore, the idea is still there. Many relationships on the wife's side have the character “wai” (literally meaning outside/outsider) because the relationship with the wife's family isn't as close a bond. At least in theory, though our teacher explained that practically this often isn't the case anymore. But this is part of why it is so important to have a son – you lose your daughter to another family, but a son will carry on your family line.

It is pretty interesting to see all the culture that goes behind these complex relationship terms, but overall I'm just glad not to have too much extended family!!

A Very Important Day

By Ruth

A Very Important Day is coming next week - - November 1 is “Turn on the Heat Day!!” I love this day of the year. In China, the central heating (in our apartments, classrooms, etc.) is controlled by the government and is turned on according to the date rather than the weather. The dates for heat vary according to region. In Weinan, which was a bit further south, our heat wasn't turned on until November 15.

In the south of China, there is no central heating at all. In Yangzhou, for example, I spent my first two years in China freeeeeeeeeezing. I was cold in class and cold outside and cold at home and the only time when I was warm was in bed (with long johns, pjs, several blankets, a hot waterbottle, and a small A/C heater unit. One of my friends from Inner-Mongolia had hard time adjusting to the cold in Yangzhou. When Kevin and I returned to China, one of my big requests for location was to be north of the heat line! I love heat!

Fortunately this year the weather has not been so cold leading up to "Turn on the Heat Day." Just two days ago Kevin and I were saying that it was still remarkably warm. Then – BAM – cold sneaks up and hits you in the face. Cold is sneaky and nasty that way. Today I pulled out the long johns, Smartwool socks, and my big down coat. I dressed Juliana in a turtle neck and thick sweater, leggings, and two pairs of pants, and she wasn't even going outside.

We have also moved Juliana's bed back into our room until the heat comes on. It's not a huge transition since she didn't move out of our room until two months ago. Besides which, she has recently gone back to waking up about 250 times a night because of a stupid tooth that is taking forever to come in. So she's been spending half the night in our bed anyway. (Note: Our double bed is not really big enough for two adult people and one very small but very squirmy child who now likes to claim her own fair share of space - ½ the bed.) We moved her into our room because hers is freezing. Almost as cold as the kitchen, so about 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house. That is because her room has two layers of single-paned windows but the outer windows are broken off. So there is about 1/8” of glass separating inside from out. Even though we have covered all the cracks between the windows with tape, it is still very cold. Hopefully once we have heat it will be warm enough to move her back. In the meantime, it is kind of cozy having everyone sleeping in one (sort of warm) room. Especially since last night Juliana only woke up once, at 5:45am.  Maybe it was teeth + cold that was keeping her awake.

At any rate, I'm so glad that next week the all powerful "They" will turn on the heat!

The 10 Steps from Spoon to Mouth

For yeah!  I love eating!

by Ruth

I was wondering when Juliana would start getting interested in feeding herself. She likes eating finger foods, but she has been perfectly content to have someone else shovel the spoonfuls of mushy food for her. It's faster that way, and so far, getting as much food in as short at time as possible seems to have been her primary goal. But a few months ago, those people who tell you what your baby is supposed to be like said, “Now your baby doesn't want you to feed her anymore; she only wants to do it herself.” I should know not to pay much attention to what those people say, seeing as they are the same ones who said, “Your baby is now sleeping through the night” months and months ago, and we all know that didn't happen.

Very important tangent: For a full three weeks now - - - - Juliana has been sleeping through the night!!!! Can you believe it? Not just that, she has gone from waking up 2 to 6000 times a night to sleeping for 11 hours! It's incredible! 20 days! (well, technically minus a couple of teething days). If you are wondering how long I will be counting the days, well...we had 371 days worth of not sleeping through the night, so probably for quite a while.

Back to the original subject: So for a few months I have been wondering when Juliana would take an interest in feeding herself. And all of a sudden the other day, she decided that she didn't want me to spoon in the food anymore; she was going to do it herself. I can see why she was hesitant to try this because it turns out, spoon feeding yourself is quite a complex process. It goes something like this:

Step 1: Take/forcefully grab spoon from mommy with one hand.

Step 2: Flip spoon over upside-down (flinging half the food onto the floor)

Step 3: Transfer spoon to other hand.

Step 4: Sweep spoon back and forth across tray several times (losing the remaining food in the process)

Step 5: Pick up food from tray by hand and redeposit into spoon.

Step 6: Aim spoon in the general direction of the mouth.

Step 7: Move spoon and mouth in opposing circles until they somehow coincide.

Step 8: Shove spoon into mouth, rotating it 360* to actually get the food off.

Step 9: Chew on spoon for desired span of time.

Step 10: Remove spoon from mouth and bang on table for a while. Repeat

At you may have guessed, it is not a quick process. The advantage is that I now have time to eat too!

A TINY Bit Tricky

by Ruth

Chinese is a high context culture and definitely a high context language. When I was going through flashcards from our oral lesson, I came across a nice little example (one of about 50,000 good examples, no doubt):

支 (zhi1)

The definition on the flashcard for this character says,

“to support  / to sustain / to erect / to raise / branch / division / to draw money / classifier for rods such as pens and guns, for army divisions and for songs or compositions.”

What? How can this one word mean all those very different, unrelated things? A measure word for pens, guns, army divisions, and songs? Among its other meanings?

This would be confusing enough, but when I looked up the pronunciation “zhi” (pronounced like 'jer') in the not comprehensive dictionary on the phone, I found 25 different words and characters all pronounced exactly the same way – zhi1 – or “zhi” with a first tone. There are also 23 characters for “zhi” with a rising tone, 22 characters for zhi with a falling-rising tone, and 65 for “zhi” with a falling tone. That makes 135 different characters that are pronounced “zhi.” Among these 135 characters you could find words like...

...pheasant – to leap – to squat – character – delicate – hemorrhoid – ancient sacrifice – mad dog – wisdom – enraged – ambition – unicorn – flag – to store – wait for – embroidery – toe – to stop – location – but – duty – straighten – to grow – value – nephew – respectful – sick – gardenia – goblet...

For this, I just have one word:

哎呀 Ai-ya!!!!

Little Swallow

By Kevin

The week before last, my tutor was away, serving as a translator at the big Sino-Arabic Summit held in Yinchuan to promote trade between China and the Arabic world, largely through the production and export of Halal foods and the import of oil.

So, I had a substitute tutor. It was a bit frustrating at first.

It didn't start out well. He talked about how this would be a good chance for him to improve his English and for me to improve my Chinese. I quickly let him know that I wasn't paying him to improve his English. He'd get a chance to use some English because I don't know enough Chinese, but I wanted him to speak as much Chinese as possible.

It got worse when he started correcting my pronuciation of the Chinese word for the number 3 - "San." He insisted that it should be said with a long "a" sound like Americans use when saying "and." I told him that I'd always been instructed that it's a shorter vowel sound, perhaps closer to how Americans might say "on." Thankfully, Ruth's tutor came in later and told him that his pronunciation of that sound wasn't standard Chinese, nor was the "v" sound he used in "Weinan."

I never expected that my pronunciation of any Chinese sound would be more accurate than a native speaker. But I had to remind myself that Americans pronounce things differently depending on where they are from too.

Anyway, on the third day he came to tutor me, he brought an interesting children's song, "小燕子 (Xiao Yan Zi)" -- translated, it means "Little swallow." Here's a video ,
or you can watch it here.

He said that he learned the song when he was a child. His translation of the lyrics is what intested me most:

"Small swallow, who wears beautiful clothes,
Every year at springtime, you come back here,
I asked the swallow, why do you you return here?
The swallow said: "This place at spring time is the most beautiful."
Small swallow, let me tell you: this year it is even more beautiful,
We built a huge factory and adorned it with new machines,
We welcome you to always come back here."

As he explained, I stopped him: "If I was a bird, I wouldn't want to come back to a city that has a new factory."

"It's a song about progress," he assured me, a bit confused by my question.

"Not if you're the bird."

Lunch with Ai-yi

by Ruth

Today our baomo (the woman who watches Juliana, who we often call Gao Ai-yi) invited us to her house for lunch. She called us several times before to confirm the plans and to remind us that the weather was cold so we should wear more clothes. She told us the name of her neighborhood but we still weren't exactly sure where it was, so she said she would meet us on the nearest corner. She called twice while we were on our way there by bike (a total of about 10 minutes) to make sure we were coming and we weren't lost. When we met her at the intersection, she immediately took Juliana out of her bike seat and carried her the rest of the way. Juliana was excited to see her ay-yi (“auntie”). She has not only gotten used to her, she absolutely loves her.

Ai-yi scooping out some apple for Juliana, while the others look on

Gao Ai-yi introduced us to her college age daughter, her husband, and her niece. She said her daughter had wanted to come to our house to see the baby. In addition to the eight dishes waiting on the table, Gao zimei had set out a table full of apples, figs, grapes, and chestnuts, and she served us “eight treasures” tea, a Ningxia specialty. We sat and munched on these appetizers while Gao played with Juliana. She sent her daughter off to buy some yogurt drinks for Juliana. I'm sure it was laden with sugar, and as soon as Juliana figured out how to sip it up from the straw, she thought it was great.

Fish, shrimp, chicken, doufu, noodles, greens, peanuts...

When it was time to eat, Gao held Juliana so that we could eat. I had already fed Juliana a full meal before we left home, but she still eagerly munched on the rice and doufu her ai yi offered. After we had eaten and eaten, I finally convinced Gao to let me hold Juliana so she could eat something. She ate a few bites and then jumped up to cook an egg for Juliana. Juliana happily ate the whole thing. She loves to eat.

Juliana happily eats the rice from ai-yi's bowl

As we were finishing, Gao's middle-school son appeared. He greeted us shyly in English, ate a little food, asked for some money, and then was off again. Gao showed us a picture of her eight (yes, eight!) older brothers and sisters. Then she took Juliana in the bedroom to play on her little piano keyboard. Juliana was very excited. She did not want to leave. Whenever I tried to take her from her ai-yi she just begged to go back. I was only a little offended. Somewhere inside she still likes me best.

Ai-yi teaches Juliana to play keyboard

It's about time Juliana learns to read music

Whenever Gao ai-yi comes, Juliana crawls happily to the door and motions to be picked up. The other day I told Juliana, “Ai-yi will be coming this morning,” and she rushed over to the door looking for her. Today when I was talking about “ai-yi,” Juliana said, “Ya-yi!” Juliana just loves her, and Gao adores Juliana as well. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful ai-yi!

Qi Ban (The Wives Class)

By Ruth

In case you were wondering, yes – I'm studying too! All of my posts have been about the baby, the apartment, and you know, the baby. But in between feeding baby's insatiable appetite and trying to pick up all the little pieces of food, fuzz, and hazardous material (where does it all come from??) from the floor before they end up in a certain someone's curious mouth, I am also learning Chinese!

While Kevin is in the main department classes, I am in a special afternoon class. Our teachers sometimes half-jokingly call it “qi ban” - the wives class, or “mei guo ban,” the American class. My classmates are the two other American wives/mothers on our team. In the morning we are looking after our assorted children (and in one case, homeschooling as well!) while our husbands are in class. In the afternoon, the husbands watch the children (and in one case, finish homeschooling!) while we attend class.

Our classes cover the same information, more slowly because we have one class a day rather than two, and more quickly because we only have 3 students instead of 19. Our classes are taught by post-graduate students, some of whom know more about teaching than others. We just got switched to a new reading teacher, though, and she's awesome! She doesn't just talk through the lesson; she actually teaches and explains it! I am really glad the school is willing to provide this special class for us because it is great to have classroom time and fun to have classmates.

In addition to our regular daily classes, Kevin and I have two classes other classes each week we both attend. One is a writing class – very helpful since our other (beginner) classes already expect us to write, even though Chinese writing is complex, to say the least. Each character is made up of 1 to fifty billion strokes, and each stroke must be written in the right direction in the right order at the right place or the character is incorrect. I am really enjoying the writing class though, because our teacher explains things really well, even using almost all Chinese, and writing appeals to my artistic side.

Our second class is a practicum class, one that just our team does. It involves sharing some of the new, personally useful words we learned in the past week and doing practical-application activities. During those two class times our ai yi comes to watch Juliana. Fortunately Juliana has already come to love her and gets excited whenever she comes!

We also meet with tutors each week. I meet with a tutor four hours a week, and since Kevin has tutoring at the same time, ai yi also watches Juliana then. Tutor time has been helpful to reinforce the things we are learning in classes and to work on our problem areas, like say, pronouncing the second tone correctly. I have really been enjoying my tutor this month. She is fun and we tend to laugh a lot, even though most of the time it is at all the mistakes I make.

Our language team situation is unique because we are three families. It certainly makes things like meeting together tricky, but it is a really good situation. It's great to be with other families! Before class or during the break we commiserate about children who aren't sleeping and the difficulty of finding study time. We are all struggling to balance doing homework, learning new words, meeting with tutors, spending time with children who start feeling neglected, being woken up multiple times at night, occasionally talking to our spouses, and sometimes even doing things like cooking and cleaning and going to the store (or say, homeschooling two kids every day!). Both husband and wife feel the pressure of classes and the importance of learning Chinese, but we have to negotiate not just class times, but study, homework, and tutor times. Sometimes even sleep times! It's definitely tricky, but it's encouraging to be around others who are also figuring out how to make things work.

Despite the difficulties, I find I am enjoying language learning a lot more than I thought I might. Remembering my past language experiences (middle school Latin and high-school French), I felt extremely doubtful about my language learning ability. I still feel doubtful about my ability, but one thing has changed a lot; Chinese is actually incredibly useful for me, so I feel very motivated to learn. After five years of living in China, it's exciting to finally feel like I am making progress. Things I have been hearing over and over start to make sense. Already it is easier to have (simple) conversations with taxi drivers and vegetable ladies because I can understand their full questions instead of just a few words. I can actually read (very simple, introductory) passages in characters. I can finally write my (rather difficult, 30 stroke) name!

I'm excited to be learning Chinese! I am happy to be able to attend class. Which in no way dampens my excitement for the week long National Holiday coming up October 1^st! Thank goodness for holidays - we need all the breaks we can get!

Happy Birthday Baby!

I cannot believe that Juliana is one year old!! A few months ago I looked at her and realized she was no longer a little baby. She's still a baby, but not a baby baby anymore.  As a side note, we have finally chosen a Chinese name for Juliana, just in time for her first birthday: 林安安 lin2 an1 an1. Lin is Kevin's family name meaning "forest" and "an" means peace or safety.

We had her an early birthday party at my parents' this summer, so today was not a big 'to-do.' We had a little three-person party after I got home from class. She opened a couple of gifts we had bought (well, they weren't actually wrapped, just hidden in her special cabinet) and a package from Nana and Gramps. She played with her new toys – a little train, a 3D puzzle, and a phone toy that talks to you, plays music, and flashes lights. Clearly she is unfamiliar with the 'old fashioned,' non-cell-phone type phones, because she grabbed the whole phone, base and all, and held it up to her ear.

After presents, we partook of some iced banana bread 'cupcakes.' She was hesitant about the cake at her early birthday party, but this time she had it figured out. She grabbed the cupcake and immediately tried to stuff the entire thing in her mouth. She gobbled down about ¾ of it before resorting to one of her recent favorite games: fling the food across the room.

The rest of the day was filled with some extras of the normal activities she normally enjoys. Block towers to demolish. Containers to fill with toys. Books to pull of the shelves. Music for dancing. Tickles. The kissy game (in which I grab her and kiss her chin until she erupts into giggles). The hide-toys-in-the-special-cabinet game. Cheese snacks. More of the fling-food-all-over-the-floor game. All in all, I think she had a good day.

So here is the one year update!

Baby loves: putting things in and out of containers, knocking down block towers, standing up and cruising around on the furniture, being carried up and down the stairs (she's happy to live on the 6^th floor!), pulling all her books off the shelves

Baby eats: Lots of mashed veggies and fruits (squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, melon, peaches) and some finger foods (tofu, mixed vegetables, eggs, cheese). You wouldn't know it looking at her, but she eats a ton! Sometimes as much as me! She nurses about 5-6x a day, generally while practicing her latest acrobatic moves.

Baby moves: She is always eager to explore and follows me or Kevin around everywhere we go. She's not walking on her own yet but loves to stand up and cruise around whenever she gets the chance.

Baby sleeps: Yeah, it's still her personal nemesis. She has been doing a lot better lately (sleeping 6-8 hours at once!) but once she wakes up, whether it's 3am or 6am, she thinks nighttime should be over. We're still working on that... She also thinks she should drop her morning nap, even though she's clearly not ready. She's just too busy for sleep!

There are many things I just love about Juliana. Her incredibly bright blue eyes, which you can bet draw a lot of comments here! Her squeals. Her love of cuddling (even when it's a 3-second “check in” before she's off again). Her “I'm going to die if you don't feed me this instant” impatience for food. Her friendliness. Her little arms reaching out imploringly for a pick-up. Her little dimpled smile, her wispy hair, her chipmunk cheeks. One of the things I enjoy best though is her exuberance for life. She is so happy. Not just content, but thrilled, delighted, vibrant, and joyful. I can build the same block tower 20 times and each time she is so excited she can't wait for me to get more than two blocks on. I can hide the same toy in her special cabinet every day and she still thinks it's the greatest thing ever. She dissolves into giggles when you tickle her or sometimes just look at her funny. She beams delightedly when she sees me and squeals when daddy comes in the door. She makes us laugh a lot and smile even more.

Happy Birthday to my not-so-tiny baby!

Before and After: Pictures of our new home!

With the arrival of the new sofa covers we got made, I finally feel enough settled into our apartment to post "before and after" pictures.  I didn't think we would get so far this quickly, with all we've had going on.  But I'm very happy to have things cleaned, (mostly) organized, and decorated.  In comparing the before and after pictures, I can really see what a difference it's made!  Enjoy!

1. The Living Room

BEFORE: The "before" pictures are ones our friend sent to us when she was looking for an apartment for us to rent.  We decided to replace the old slipcovers (and get extra foam padding) because they were falling apart, even though they were oh-so attractive.  The glass coffee table (with it's sharp, unattached glass top) was deemed a hazard and removed.

BEFORE: This is what our living room looked like when we arrived, since we had all our things shipped ahead from Weinan.

AFTER: A quick comparison with the before pictures makes this look downright awesome!  The slipcovers look better, no?

AFTER: The living room, view 2: We moved a cabinet into the living room to store our dishes, since there isn't room in the kitchen.  We also moved the little table in so we have an eating area!  The kitchen is separated by a sliding glass door and a window (which you see in the back).

AFTER: On the other side of the living room is Juliana's cabinet.  We have left it empty so she can hide toys inside.  It is one of her favorite activities, along with standing up and pushing buttons on the TV.  On the right you can see that our water machine and fridge are in the living room because they don't fit in the kitchen.  To the left is the hallway leading to the other rooms.

2. The Kitchen

BEFORE: We had a little bit of trouble figuring out the kitchen from the pictures we saw.  The dirty towels hide shelves on the top and cover up the gas tank and random empty space on the bottom.  The counter is formed by two wooden cutting boards.

BEFORE: When our apartment contract listed "dishwasher" we thought, "Well obviously it's not really a dishwasher.  Who ever heard of a dishwasher in China?"  We arrived to find it was in fact - a dishwasher!  Totally bizarre.  Also irreparably moldy.  Bye bye dishwasher.  This side of the kitchen (opposite from picture 1) does have 2 cabinets on top and three cabinets (no shelves, of course) on the bottom.

BEFORE: One of the more interesting facets of our kitchen is the stove cubbyhole/window box.  The one-burner stove hangs off the kitchen in it's own area separated by windows.  To get to the stove, you have to bend over the wide windowsill and out the small window opening, where the burner is located almost a foot below.  Two other nice things about this area: (1) It was covered with newspapers.  If you know anything about Chinese cooking, you know it involves lots of large fires and hot oil.  Smart, very smart.  (2) It leaks.  So if you try to cook when it's raining, your food will probably get wet.

AFTER: The biggest change that brighten up the space are the new fabric coverings I got made (For $2.50).  Very cheerful and green.  We shipped the small oven, toaster, and blender from Weinan.

AFTER: We bought the cabinet on the right so we would have a little more storage space and even a few drawers!  It is very pretty.  The dishwasher removal made room for a dish-drying rack, which is probably more useful anyway.

AFTER: Not a whole lot we could do about the strange cubbyhole/windowbox stove arrangement, but Kevin did take off the windows in front and raised the stove up on a platform constructed from an overturned basin and a random piece of tile, so now you don't have to bend over to get to it.  We are planning to borrow a caulk gun from some friends and maybe even fix the leaking problem!

3. The Bedroom

BEFORE: This is our bedroom, with the laundry porch in the back.  The bed is not actually too uncomfortable...once we added some foam and a couple of comforters to cushion the board, uh, I mean, mattress.

AFTER: Much more cheerful with our pretty flowered bedcovering and some wall-hangings (a fancy name for pieces of scrapbook paper taped up :).  The laundry porch has become a storage area for all the random/broken/useless stuff left behind by the landlord or the previous student renters.

4. The Office

BEFORE: We moved the bed out to make this room into an office space.

AFTER: It doesn't look amazing, and will probably never really get organized, but it is finally functional, and not even unpleasant to be in.  You may not be able to tell from the picture, but that desk on the left is monstrous and Kevin had to remove two doors to move it from the baby room into here.  Out the window you can perhaps see a very Chinese sight: the big construction area across the street.

5. The Bathroom

BEFORE: In typical Chinese style, the shower is directly in the middle of the bathroom.  It's a little annoying that the whole bathroom is always wet, but you can also think of it as a self cleaning mechanism.  The bathroom also includes our washer on the right.

AFTER: Not a lot of transformation here, because really what are you going to do?  Other than scrub and scrub and scrub and add a few Mickey Mouse stick-ons.  Yes, those were mine and I even brought them from Weinan.  I have lived in China too long.  The pipes all along the walls work well for shelves and towel racks.

6. The Nursery: last but not least, and arguably the best room in the house...

Before

After!  Look how pretty and colorful it is!  Juliana enjoys her own shelf where she can pull off all her books and hide toys in the low drawers.  We bough some  inexpensive foam tiles to make the floor a little softer (and warmer in the winter) and moved the extra bed into here.  Her curtains and pictures, along with all her homemade blankets (crib afghan made by my mom, floor blanket made by myself, and bed quilt made by my sister Becky) make the room look very homey.

I am loving the name letters we got this summer!  The beautiful IKEA lampshade made it from Weinan unscathed.  She still has one or ten giraffes.

As you can see, we've made a lot of improvements!  However one part has remained the same...

View from the kitchen window: Most days have been clear enough for us to see the mountains!  And just look at those clouds!  We love the clean air here!!

From Firehose to Punctured Straws

By Kevin

If the first two days of class were like gulping from a fire-hose, we were sipping from perforated straws during week two.

Just before stepping into the classroom on the Monday of our second week of class, some classmates summoned me down the hallway to enter a new classroom. I was handed a new schedule and told that now we were members of class “B,” rather than class “A.” Apart from the fact that we'd now have to rearrange childcare for one two hour chunk of time from our original plan of Tuesday to Thursday, my first reaction to joining another class was relief. I'd learned that several of the students in class “A” were actually second-year Chinese students, repeating the class. That explained why my mind raced to catch up with them during the first couple days of class. I figured, perhaps this class would be more suited to my Chinese level. Now I'm not so sure.

We spent the next four hours practicing  pronunciation and repeating about one-third of the content that we covered in our first eight hours of lessons with class "A" last week.

Instead of fretting because we were moving too fast, I starting wishing that the teachers would just hurry up. One of the reasons for the repetition was this class was filled with nine new students who weren't here last week and speak very little Chinese. There were five students from Mongolia, two from Kyrgyzstan, one from Tajikistan one from Uzbekistan, in addition to four of the Americans, the Canadian and the Mexican from last week's class.

Most of the second week's lessons were similar to our first day in class “B.” In spite of the name of the class, we didn't really do any reading in Reading class. After working on some basic greetings, we spent 2/3 of our time going through the pronunciation of every sound combination in the Chinese language. The teacher spent half her time listening to each of the 15 students pronounce a list of words. Most of our classmates have problems with several Chinese sounds, so it is helpful. But it's also boring for everyone who isn't being called upon. I am sure that their Pronunciation class will cover these basics, but our teacher insists that we need to go through it here too (we spent a good chunk of time focusing on pronunciation with our tutors the week before official classes began to free us up to take a “Practicum” class instead during this time to apply our learning).

In Oral class, we spoke a little, but there were few opportunities for us to practice with one another (as we would in an Oral English class). Our homework was writing: write these 20 characters 10 times apiece. Time-consuming and helpful, but not improving my speaking. Several of us longed for the challenge of the other class, even if it was a bit too fast-paced. However, I am sure that things will pick up once we get past pronunciation.

Outside of our classroom, a large gathering of senior citizens were playing in a croquet tournament, so we watched during the break. We asked our teacher what croquet is called in Chinese – 门球 (ménqiú). Translated into English, it's “gate ball.” The name seems especially fitting when you consider the shape of the characters and imagine a ball rolling through the 门.

During week two, I did miss one day of class – on Wednesday, when the school loaded 26 of the new students onto a bus and brought us to get our medical examinations, which are required to obtain a residence permit. It took almost an hour for each of us to register and pay. We waited in line alongside about two dozen curious Hui, presumably applying for passports so they can make their pilgrimage to Mecca. During the next 2-1/2 hours, we cycled through an assortment of required medical exams. We were checked for normal things like height, weight, blood pressure and eyesight along with more exotic exams like an EKG, chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound and blood test to make sure we don't have any major health problems. Oddly, the school was able to exempt us from having our backs examined because it might make us “uncomfortable.” Juliana generally enjoyed the attention she got as we juggled her back and forth. But, she wouldn't nap and we didn't expect to be gone so long, so she was getting hungry and cranky by the time we got home at noon.

So, the first almost full week of classes is done. And we're already ready for a break. It seems we won't truly have a “normal” week of class until week four, so we're still easing into a normal routine. Last week was the end of Ramadan. Next Monday (week three), we have no class in honor of Mid-Autumn Festival. 

 

I imagine that, by the time we reach the week-long National holiday at the beginning of October, the straws will have been replaced by fire-hoses and the Chinese will again be gushing instead of trickling into our brains.