The Beginning

It's hard to believe a week has gone by since I arrived in China. Between jetlag, moving in, and all of the other various registrations and procedures, I haven't had much time to think. I'll try to put my thoughts down in an organized and concise fashion.

Qingdao hasn't changed much since last summer. The most noticeable differences are the advertisements and merchandise, which have (mercifully) reverted from full-on "Olympic propaganda" mode back to Engrish slogans and bizarre commercials. Some of the same faces from the same universities have appeared around campus again, but no one I know well. All in all, Qingdao is about the same.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest difference is in my studies. Last summer, we had a single textbook for our 4-hour-per-day class that covered topics such as how to order at a restaurant, how to navigate a hospital, how to bargain, basic Chinese opera, and all kinds of useful stuff. This summer, our 4-hour class has been divided into four 1-hour "mini classes," each with its own teacher and set of materials (class is still from 8am to noon, though). We have a literature class, where we read short stories and talk about the characters, themes, etc.; a movie class, where we talk about the movie we (supposedly) watched the night before; a media class, where we read articles about a bunch of different topics from newspapers and the internet; and a writing class, where we're given a simple topic and have an hour to write an essay on it. All of the classes are pretty interesting; the movie class is particularly neat because we usually pick one cultural thing from the movie and discuss it at length.

Last summer we got to go on bus rides all over the city and we saw all kinds of cool stuff, but this year we haven't done any afternoon activities at all so far. Our Chinese roommates have been delayed for a week just in case we have swine flu, so maybe we'll start doing stuff after that. I don't really know what the Chinese government says about swine flu over here, but there's some sort of quiet hysteria about it. The fact that our roommates have been delayed, us getting scanned for a fever before being allowed off of the plane, people on the bus changing seats away from you if you cough or sniffle, and a taxi driver even asking one of my roommates point-blank if he had swine flu, all point to some sort of weird phobia of the disease despite it having a really low mortality rate. Oh well. Chinese people are crazy.

Anyway, I'll try to update at least once a week, unless