First Day!

Look at those lovely faces. The lefternmost (it's a word now) is Celia who I've known all year from my Chinese class at Yale. The others are Harvard kids I met this morning. We were all in the cafe here on campus bumming free wifi. But now we have internet set up in our rooms. (Thank you Yale VPN for keeping my favorite websites within my reach). But the point of this picture is to highlight one of the pros about this program. We're all confused and lost and thus INEVITABLY super friendly. It's great. Making friends here is going to be easy. The teachers also seem quite nice and approachable. They even tell us that Beijingers are nice to foreigners so I really am nothing but optimistic about my interactions with other people here.

NOW TIME TO VENT. uuuuugggggggggggghhhhhhhh language pledge! Remember how I said I was excited to be frustrated by it? I think that was because in my sleepy stupor I forgot how unpleasant the feeling of frustration is. Us second year students all sound like 5 year olds. We can no longer make friendly conversation. We try very hard, but our basic grasp of Mandarin only allows for basic exchange of information. We are slowly creating our own pidgin language. I have high hopes for the future. But after a day of haggling at cell phone dealerships, internet stores, and supermarkets all with my broken Mandarin, I feel exhausted and overwhelmed. For now I am consoled by how ridiculously cheap the food is (3 boxes of Pocky for ~2US$). Hopefully this Pocky will get me through this first night's homework which is already too much for my tired brain to process.

Don't cry for me yet. All I need is more sleep and a wider Chinese vocabulary and I'm sure this feeling of confusion/detachment will go away. My adventures will become more exciting as I become more equipped to experience them.