Today was mostly centered around my Chinese class. I got there early to study for my oral test, and I took it first before class officially started because we had a long movie to watch. I think it went well; I was able to respond to the questions and I remembered the dialogue. I did forget the pronunciation of the word for "flash frozen" because there was a sentence about frozen dumplings I had to read, but that's okay.
We watched a movie called Fei Cong Gu Ra 2, which was the sequel to a movie about a middle aged man who is in search of a wife. The girl he proposes to wants to do a trial marriage to make sure they could last, and it ends up being a contest of who can annoy the other the most first, then the guy's friend gets malignant melanoma and dies, and it brings them back together after a lengthy separation. It ended with the setup for the third movie, and it is the basis for a dating show on Chinese TV.
After class, all of us, including Yao Laoshi, took the subway over to a traditional hot pot restaurant. Laoshi knows the place and ordered for us, and it was really good. We had beef, lamb, noodles, mushrooms, fungus, cabbage, green vegetable, tofu, chilled tofu, radish, bittermelon, maybe more stuff for the broth, and three cold dishes: Beijing tofu, peanuts, and cucumbers. I ate it with the traditional dipping sauce that was plated beautifully with the character for lamb written in sesame oil on top, but others had spicy sauce or garlic sauce. Everything was delicious, and while I swore I'd never eat hot pot again after that first week of eating only hot pot, I'm really glad I went. We had a really nice time, and I think we bonded as a class and got to know our teacher better as a result.
Once we finished eating, we walked back to campus. On the way, Laoshi pointed out some spots he knows: a foot massage place, the place he and his friends used to go for barbecue and beer, the grocery store. We actually stopped in the grocery store to get ice cream, but I finally found the tea tins I was looking for, so I got them because I saw them. It was a really nice walk, and we re-entered campus through the West Gate and walked past the lake and the pagoda. I realized that I hadn't been to the north part of campus since we stopped having class in the Russian Building, so I have to make sure to do a final walk all around campus before I leave next week.
I spent the afternoon catching up and getting ahead on work. The paper for Public Health class was assigned to us after we turned in our final exams, and the assignment sheet said it was due on August 31, so I was planning on writing it on the airplane, but it is actually due on Monday, so I set aside the time to just get it done. I also wanted to finish the reading in the TCM coursepack so I could have my highlighting done before it's finals crunch time next week. Since I finished those items at an odd time, I moved on to preparing my flashcards for next week's Chinese vocabulary, and then all of a sudden it was 7:00. It was a quiet evening as afternoon turned to night, and I went to sleep early so I could be fresh for the final group excursion tomorrow to the Summer Palace.
Today is awesome because my Chinese class got a chance to socialize together and I got a lot of schoolwork done.
No comments:
Post a Comment