Finished Midterms and Ready for a “Xiuxi”

By:  Timothy Kojetin

30th April,2010.

This last week of school has been super tough.  It is the dreaded Midterms week at my University.  They have just finished now and I am so exhausted and tired that if I fell asleep right now I don’t think that I would wake up until tomorrow

.  By the way, it is two in the afternoon.

With midterms this week there was so much preparation to do.  Balancing learning Chinese and having a real social life is a tough thing to do.  Every single night I have someone asking me to go to this place or that place to do something or another.  And, whenever I did any of that in the last week, my brain was yelling at me saying, “CHINESE MIDTERMS EXAMS ARE COMING. GO HOME AND STUDY TIM!”

I had two exams on Monday, one on Tuesday, and a marketing exam on Wednesday.  These Chinese exams mainly dealt with characters. Last week I took had my Chinese speaking exam, where I had a conversation with my “Laoshi” (teacher) about various topics including my family, my health, and daily life.  I passed that with flying colors because my conversational Chinese has been coming fairly well.  I try to find many different ways to practice and develop my oral speaking skills.  What I have learned is that you CANNOT be shy about practicing.  Sure, I may think I am not saying something right or be afraid sometimes that people won’t understand me because of my accent, but being brave and speaking to locals is the best way to improve and practice speaking in Chinese.  I am in Beijing, the capital of China, where Mandarin Chinese is based from, and it is an open playground to practice the language.  I can’t let that go to waste!   Anyone I come across day-to-day I try to speak to.  When I go to the market with my friends we speak to the sellers and bargain in Chinese.  When I go home at the end of the day I usually end up having a conversation with the security guard at my apartment complex. I make small talk with the cab drivers too.  Although, when speaking to the cab drivers it takes an intense amount of effort to understand what they are saying when they speak to me.  One thing about the Beijing accent is that it so strong that when spoken almost sounds like a pirate, with great emphasis on the “r’s”.  If you don’t pay attention you will be left confused.   I also try to speak a little and ask about new words with my co-workers. I learn new things and how to converse by doing this.  All these are great ways that I have been able to learn how to speak some Chinese.  It is a slow process, and I have the vocabulary of a 3 year old, but it is much better than I can say for myself when I arrived here in February.

Now, what about these crazy Characters?  I have been in this Chinese course since March 15^th, and since the start of it we have been assigned to learn over 200 characters.  Memorizing these on top of learning many new words that don’t sound or look anything like its English translation is an enormous task.  I have never been much of a drawing artist, so it takes an effort to make these elaborate characters look good as well.  The only way to learn characters is to write them down over and over until your head feels like it will erupt like a volcano.  Needless to say, learning these has taken an immense amount of effort and time.  So over the weekend I set up camp in the coffee shop near campus and basically lived there, monotonously writing characters until I couldn’t stay awake anymore.  Then I went home, slept, woke up the next morning and did it all over again.  This is how my Saturday and Sunday went.  Between the two days I spent over 15 hours in the same room of this coffee shop.  It was a very crazy and hectic time, but also something that was much needed to be able to learn these Chinese characters.  That is the thing about them, there is no other way to learn but to write them down.   The good thing though, is that once you start learning a lot, some of the characters and patterns are used  to make up other characters, and it becomes much easier to grasp and understand.  The good news is, I have a good grasp now of these well over 200 characters and the tests went well.  There is a very good feeling in knowing that you have learned all of these crazy drawings they call Chinese characters, and can actually form sentences with them and read as well.

Now, after this hectic week I am in much need of a “xiuxi”.  (“A rest or break”, in Chinese)  The funny thing about this break that the school has given us is that we have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off of school.  No one really has class on the weekend though so I only get Monday off of school.  So, I will be going Inner Mongolia with a group of friend this weekend to let off some steam and relax after Midterms.  This is a MUCH needed trip for me and I am excited to get away for a few days.  This weekend will be filled with activities like camel riding, sand boarding and riding dune buggies through the desert, having a huge bonfire cookout in a small village, sleeping in tents, and enjoying the desert air.  I will be leaving Beijing late this Friday evening and arriving back here late Monday night.  I will update on my adventures in the Inner Mongolian desert next week when I am back.  Zaijian!

My China Experience