Yep, sorry for the late update on my life here in Beijing. Did a lot of things and classes started last tuesday so I’ve also been busy with that. The third and fourth day I didn’t really do a lot because it was rainy so I only went out to buy things that I really needed. On friday I had my placement test and that was really difficult. The first part went ok which was listening, but the written part was too difficult.
On saturday there was an official Opening meeting scheduled for the foreign exchange and language students so I walked towards the Mai n Building with my roommate (Hak), Juan and a Japanese friend Koichi Hamazaki. We got there and when the presentation started everything was in Chinese. So a lot of people where like what are we doing here. I couldn’t really uderstand anything so I just read the English texts on the sheets. Some people even fell asleep during the whole thing. Anyway, after the first part the room got split up into different language groups. The English speaking people had to stay in the conference room and the Japanese, Korean speaking people had to move to another room. The second part was done in English by someone from the Visa office or something like that. After that was done we walked back towards the dormitories and I got my bike to check out the west part of the campus. Finally getting there and finding my friends we walked around that part taking some pictures along the way.
In the evening we went out to party at the place to be, Vics. It felt really good going out after a long time. We had a blast and got back home at around 5:30 or something like that. Sunday was a slow day, got up late and had lunch at around 15:00. In the evening we decided to go to Wudaokou market but when we got there they were already closed. So we decided to go back towards Wudaukou have something to eat. We got back at the dorms around 1:30 and that was another day.
Monday we got to see in which level we’re in. I wasn’t really surprised that I was in the lowest class. I don’t know enough words and the characters were always a problem for me. My speech and pronounciation is better but I can better start from scratch to get the basics right. After seeing in what level and class I’m in I bought my books. After that me and my EUR (Erasmus University Rotterdam) friends decided to go to Wangfujing to take a look around downtown Beijing. We went with the subway we got there around 15:00 and stayed there untill 21:00. We went back to Wudaukou to eat and ended up at Isshin. It was raining like crazy and we had to ride our bikes from Wudaokou to the campus. It was a pain in the ass to do so but we managed. Pamela forgot her umbrella so she and Ying took a cab back to the dorms. That what I did on Monday.
Tuesday classes started and I had to get up early. My classes are Monday – Wednesday from 8:00 – 13:00, Thursday and Friday 13:00 – 17:00. It’s nice because I can get used to an early schedule and still have the while afternoon to do stuff. Anyway, the first week of classes were kind of boring because it was purely tones and pronunciation. I was thinking on going to a higher class but when I tried sitting in on one it was to hard for me. I’m stuck in the middle so I decided to stick in my class. My basics are still not well enough and I don’t know enough words for the higher class.
Anyway, that was about it up till today (Saturday), see you the next update.