Some say Khaled, some say Khaleed

It’s my third week here and classes have finally begun. This is good news for a few reasons:

One, I’ve finally escaped the local accent. I actually kind of like it in general, but especially in men it sometimes assumes this very heavy icky sound that I can’t stand much less understand.  The teachers at ICLP speak very clearly and make me feel like a genius at Chinese.

Two, I finally have a schedule. Wake up at 7, catch bus before 8, grab breakfast if hungry. Arrive at ICLP before 9, and study until classes from 9-12. Then lunch with friends or lecture or straight to the gym. Library or Starbucks all afternoon, evening, and night, depending on how much work I have. Gym, bus ride home, and staying in touch with people online are excellent times to not think about Chinese at all and recharge.

Three, I get to see fellow ICLPers everyday. Sorry Light Fellowship, but it is so so nice to have other people who actually speak English around. Complaining about how much work we have a few minutes a day is extremely therapeutic, and a good bonding experience, especially in English.

Four, I am learning a lot! I think. There is a huge learning curve for me since I don’t know any traditional so I feel far behind on characters, but I’ve picked up a lot even in the last few days. The sentence patterns we’ve covered so far are pretty basic, all really easy to understand though harder to employ on your own -- the tiny class size lets me get a lot of practice using them.

My classes begin with my one-on-one, which is HARDCORE. I think I spoke more Chinese in the first class than I had in the 10 previous days since first arriving. My teacher doesn’t let anything escape – if a single tone or ‘de’ or ‘le’ is wrong or misplaced, I hear about it. It’s like a celebrity roast, except in Chinese and I’m not famous (yet). From speaking to other students I don’t think their one-on-ones are similar – they seem to mostly cover whatever the student feels he or she needs to cover, like a tutorial, and help prepare for the other classes. In my case, I don’t really get a say in the matter. Though I dread going to this class first thing in the morning, I think it’s my best chance to improve my Chinese.

My second day of class, I walked into the one-on-one classroom and my teacher started jabbering away in Chinese. Then I figured out she was asking me to put my paper in the folder on her desk. Uhhh…what paper??? Apparently I had totally missed that part the previous day. So it finally occurred to me yesterday to read my syllabus (durr). I think normally I get a syllabus and read it automatically because it’s in English; I’ve never actually had to *decide* to read my syllabus. This will fix a lot of problems…(though, the paper isn’t on there? And she said it was on a topic of my choosing and due Monday, but then Wednesday mentioned a paper about my trip to Taiwan due Friday? Is this the same paper? How many papers am I going to write???)

My other classes are good but not as intense. One has two other students and is with a very animated Taiwanese man who wears a lot of plaid. He has decided his job is to overturn everything we ever thought we knew about Chinese – how to say tones, categories of ‘le’, sentence patterns, etc. He is a linguist. This really just emphasizes what I already feared – Chinese people don’t really understand Chinese grammar. No one does. Whatever point of grammar you want to learn, if you ask a linguist, a Chinese linguist, and 5 native speakers, you will get seven and a half different answers. At this point I don’t really know who to believe, so am I suspending judgment (my other group class has a completely different tone chart and a different opinion on the ‘shi…de’ construction. My one-on-one teacher has different ideas on ‘le’. Oh and everything I learned at Yale, about ‘dei’, about half third tones, about everything, is wrong. GET IT TOGETHER CHINESE PEOPLE).

 The other class has just one other student and is taught by a young Chinese woman who is super nice, though when she sends our homework assignments via email Gmail deletes them as spam (oops). The last class uses a different book than the other Yale students who have only studied one year – I think this is some kind of racial profiling because I should know the same amount of Chinese as they do, and my two original classmates were both ABCs (one of which dropped to a lower class because she didn’t actually know anything). Oh well, at least I get to learn the following noises: hai (like hi), ou (oh!) and m (mmm!).

Beyond the noises, I've also learned some of the finer points of Chinese culture, such as "Chinese people still believe that effective study will lead to a successful future, bringing honor to oneself and one's family. Therefore study is of primary importance."

My current method of studying might kind of be overkill, even in Chinese culture. I’ve basically been memorizing the lesson and learning to write all of the new characters I encounter, whether they’re from the new vocabulary list, example sentences, class, or wherever. Plus I’m playing catch-up with characters. Being prepared for class feels great but I am worried about burning out already.

The most obvious short cut would be to just learn the new vocab as it appears in the book (as two or more characters used together) instead of also learning the individual meaning of each character and other ways it can be used [e.g. learn that dúlì means independent instead of learning every nuance of dú, alone, and lì, stand], but I think this really defeats the point of trying to learn Chinese. Nevertheless I hope to strike a better balance between learning everything and doing the minimum, hopefully ASAP before my brain explodes.

Anyway I am off to go write this mysterious paper on a topic of my choosing, whatever that is. A lot of homework tonight, looking forward to this weekend…