Semester

So my semester of studying Chinese in Beijing is basically over. I
took my first two exams today and have a spoken one for ten minutes
tomorrow. Then some classes next week, finishing on Wednesday.

Last week I took the 汉语水平考试, hanyu shuiping kaoshi or HSK.
Its an assessment test for Chinese. It destroyed me, I didn't even
get a grade. Only one girl from my class got a grade, a very good one
at that, but she knows Cantonese and we all think she should be about
4 classes above us. The test is also not designed for someone who has
only studied one semester.

So I look at my progress and I feel like I have accomplished and
improved tons, but its a long road. I can now here and understand
everything my two teachers say. One teacher conducts class completely
in Chinese and I understand everything. The other one uses English
sometimes but I still understand all of his Chinese. They have very
good pronunciation and limit their vocabulary to what we know. With
other people it depends on how clear they speak. People are
different. I can hear some cab drivers even though they are
notoriously horrible. But this guard at my apartment and this
elevator girl, I dont even hear what they are saying until they say
it a few times. Its horrible. But neither of them move their lips
when they speak. When I say hear, that means that I could repeat the
majority of what they just said back to them. By understand I mean
understand what they are saying and translate to English.

So another semester would do wonders for my Chinese, but I just don't
want to stay here in Beijing. If I were to stay, I might hire a tutor
and pay her, or come up with some more individually tailored learning
method. I didn't like dividing time with 15 other classmates. My
friends found that a group of 5 is acceptable. Chinese friends are
useful and you learn a lot from them but their English is so good,
and after 4-6 hours of class a day I feel saturated with Chinese and
just want to speak English. One thing I wish I had done was use a
tape recorder on a regular basis. I never got to because I didn't
feel like buying one and my friend was going to lend his to me when
he finished recording some tapes to his computer but we just kept
putting it off and never got around to it. I wanted to record a
conversation between 2 of my Chinese friends and then analyze it later.

I feel sad to leave my friends and my class, but my class would be
different next semester and it wouldn't be the same. And I have been
having dreams ever since I came to China where I found myself at home
in the US or on my way home after however long I'd been in China at
that point, and I always felt disappointed that I hadn't stayed
longer. I just had that dream last night, that I had gone home right
after the semester, but I had no stories to tell (even though I do).
I felt like I missed out on seeing the rest of China. So thats what I
plan to do now.

Its interesting getting ready to leave Beijing. The date came up
pretty quick because I wasn't exactly looking forward to finishing, I
sort of liked class. But its weird leaving a place and thinking you
might never come back here, at least not in the same time period,
when the same people you know live here etc. Just because its so far
away from the US. Any other place that I'd left I'd always felt like,
oh I can just go back here if I want too, or I might end up back
here. But I would like to come back if I can, even though this city
isn't that great in itself. I'm interested to see how the Olympics
change it, because we see tons of plans for Olympic stuff but not
much has started yet. However the national bird of China is the crane
and there are literally thousands of cranes putting up new buildings
in the city. Its remarkable how much construction there is. It will
be a much different city soon, in some ways hopefully.