25th and 26th
6-26-04
Our visit to the Great Wall was quite an experience. It took almost two hours by charter bus to get there from the University, during which time I became acquainted with Xu Ming, from the Phillipines, and Kil from Korea. I'm really enjoying getting to know students from so many different countries; it's also good Chinese practice, I guess. We all have similar vocabularies, consisting of, "What is your name?" "What country are you from?" "How long have you studied Chinese?" and similar questions, which is fortunate because our pronunciation is so poor that we'd probably never understand each other if we weren't asking the same questions.
But I digress; The Great Wall. On the way there I noticed that people had laid out patches of nuts and fruits, some kind of apricot I think, for miles on the road. On the road. Not the side of the road. This made traffic even more fun. At one point, we were in the wrong lane avoiding a particularly large patch of apricots when a car was coming towards us in said lane; the bus driver honked and the car drove onto the shoulder. I guess the bus had the right of way because it was bigger.
6-25-04
First day of class. There are about 25 students in the 'advanced-beginner' class; a lot of them are American, but the UK, Germany, Canada, Korea, and Greece are all represented as well. I think most of the students in the class have had about 2 years of Chinese, and their skill level ranges from those who can't pronounce the pinyin (romanization of the characters) correctly to those who speak very well but don't know any characters. We have two teachers, a man who teaches for the first two hours and a young lady who teaches for the second two hours. The man is loud and funny, and obviously enjoys his job. The young lady is a little more shy.
Today's taxi ride was a little more successful...we didn't have to stop for directions at all, and I was actually able to converse a tiny bit with the driver. The taxi system really is convenient. I'm working up my courage to try out the subway...my main problem with getting around at the moment is that the map that the Lotus lady gave me is entirely in characters.
Traffic in Beijing is crazy. Crazy. On the interstate-type roads, people will drive close to 70 mph, and then slow almost to a stand still to read a sign. Intersections are like nothing I've ever seen; stop lights are generally obeyed, but not always, and no one's ever heard of staying in one lane. Even just driving down the road, there will be 3 cars driving side-by-side in 2 lanes. Bicycles are everywhere. There are lanes designated as bike lanes, but sometimes cars will pass in these lanes, or bikes will pass cars outside of these lanes...there is just a general melee with the most aggressive drivers getting the right of way. Needless to say horns are used liberally. It's pure craziness.
Our visit to the Great Wall was quite an experience. It took almost two hours by charter bus to get there from the University, during which time I became acquainted with Xu Ming, from the Phillipines, and Kil from Korea. I'm really enjoying getting to know students from so many different countries; it's also good Chinese practice, I guess. We all have similar vocabularies, consisting of, "What is your name?" "What country are you from?" "How long have you studied Chinese?" and similar questions, which is fortunate because our pronunciation is so poor that we'd probably never understand each other if we weren't asking the same questions.
But I digress; The Great Wall. On the way there I noticed that people had laid out patches of nuts and fruits, some kind of apricot I think, for miles on the road. On the road. Not the side of the road. This made traffic even more fun. At one point, we were in the wrong lane avoiding a particularly large patch of apricots when a car was coming towards us in said lane; the bus driver honked and the car drove onto the shoulder. I guess the bus had the right of way because it was bigger.
6-25-04
First day of class. There are about 25 students in the 'advanced-beginner' class; a lot of them are American, but the UK, Germany, Canada, Korea, and Greece are all represented as well. I think most of the students in the class have had about 2 years of Chinese, and their skill level ranges from those who can't pronounce the pinyin (romanization of the characters) correctly to those who speak very well but don't know any characters. We have two teachers, a man who teaches for the first two hours and a young lady who teaches for the second two hours. The man is loud and funny, and obviously enjoys his job. The young lady is a little more shy.
Today's taxi ride was a little more successful...we didn't have to stop for directions at all, and I was actually able to converse a tiny bit with the driver. The taxi system really is convenient. I'm working up my courage to try out the subway...my main problem with getting around at the moment is that the map that the Lotus lady gave me is entirely in characters.
Traffic in Beijing is crazy. Crazy. On the interstate-type roads, people will drive close to 70 mph, and then slow almost to a stand still to read a sign. Intersections are like nothing I've ever seen; stop lights are generally obeyed, but not always, and no one's ever heard of staying in one lane. Even just driving down the road, there will be 3 cars driving side-by-side in 2 lanes. Bicycles are everywhere. There are lanes designated as bike lanes, but sometimes cars will pass in these lanes, or bikes will pass cars outside of these lanes...there is just a general melee with the most aggressive drivers getting the right of way. Needless to say horns are used liberally. It's pure craziness.
posted by Mike and Jean Anne at 7:23 PM
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