Miscellaneous updates

This morning I was walking Sophia to school when I took this picture...I have been meaning to take it many times. I love walking down the quiet lanes between our building and Sophia's kindergarten. They are much older than the other buildings on the campus, and built in a more traditional style - brick construction with walled courtyards in the front, balconies with no metal bars and only 2 stories. These streets are paved with uneven stones, and Sophia insists on riding her tricycle to school every day, so its slow going up the street and I get to peer into the courtyards a bit. I had assumed that retirees lived here, and while some do, there are also lower ranking employees and their families, according to my friend, who lived there for a semester when she first arrived 12 years ago.
This is a more typical building for faculty housing:

Five or six stories, this one happens to overlook the beach area, so I am sure the upper floors are sought after...There are clusters of 10-12 faculty buildings in several areas of the campus. I have been inside one apartment of one of Helen's classmates who lives in this area, and there are 2 or 3 small bedrooms, a living room, with a table for eating and a small kitchen. Every apartment has a small balcony, with bars (I guess for safety?) The balconies are where the laundry is hung every day to dry, since hardly anyone has dryers. It amuses me to see all the laundry hanging as I walk by -- lots of red underwear out there these days !

I will take some photos of the student housing soon. Most of the 1st and 2nd year students live on another campus of the university -- on the mainland. Some buildings for faculty and students are quite a bit newer, as the university continues to expand. The current enrollment at the university level in China is the highest ever..and a lot of the students can't find professional type jobs when they graduate because there are so may people graduating and looking for jobs in business. So many do what college grads in the US do..become even more over educated by going to graduate school! One of Michael's students is finishing her masters in philosophy and taking civil service exams all around China in the hopes of finding a good job in the government.

The Sophia update: Sophia has stopped 90% of her morning protests for school. At the end of the day she is always very positive, but in the mornings, she says -- "no go to school", but then gets her shoes and coat on and waits by the door. The teachers all seem relieved that it is going so well, and I am relieved, too. I think the language barrier is not much of an issue. I tried to take some pictures in her classroom this morning, but realized I just needed to get out of there while the going was good! As a reward for taking a nap at school, every day she gets to watch a a little TV after school. and every day she picks the same thing : "Watch ballet!" We have a DVD of the Nutcracker which the entire family has now memorized. It could be worse! Today's video, primarily for grandparent's sake, features Sophia in her daily ballet mode...



My school update: My courses are very busy!! I have forgotten what it is like to sit in a class for hours at a time. Each class period is 80 minutes. Each week I have 6 periods of Elementary Chinese (every day with a double period on Tuesdays) and 4 periods of Chinese Listening, 2 in the lab and 2 in the classroom. Yesterday we spent the whole 80 minutes listening to words on the recording and marking the tones. I did not do very well -- but the teacher is patient and says --"don't worry!" I should explain a bit about the tones. There are different ways to say vowel sounds in Chinese. There is (1) a high even tone (2) a falling tone, similar to the way the voice falls naturally in English at the end of a sentence (3) a falling then rising tone, sort of like swooping the vowel, but subtler (4) a rising tone, similar to the way the voice rises at the end of a question in English. We use little marks to indicate these on the pinyin (the word written in roman letters, like "ni hao"). I have progressed to the point where I understand the concept and can do it myself, but have trouble hearing it and identifying which one, also trouble remembering which tone each word has.

The courses are very good. The class is not too big and we are all at about the same level in Chinese, with some having more strength in speaking and others in writing. I have opted out of 2 additional courses offered : oral Chinese and reading Chinese, because its too busy, and instead I am taking Calligraphy. Well actually, Michael thinks he is going to sneak in the class pretending to be me -- but after seeing all the cool supplies for the class, I am not going to let him -- we got huge paper, brushes, ink and paints for traditional Chinese painting. I can't wait for the next class.

Actually I should be doing homework right now...I always think I will have so much time in the morning, but today I started back teaching English at Helen's class (we did the hokey pokey again), so I had better get moving.....