Looking down from the lofted bedroom
My Bathroom
My Kitchen
Looking in from the doorway
A picture showing the stairs up to the bedroom
TV shot from the couch
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Pictures of my apartment
Late but never say never! The internet here has been a little weird but no matter.
Looking down from the lofted bedroom
My Bathroom
My Kitchen
Looking in from the doorway
A picture showing the stairs up to the bedroom
TV shot from the couch
Looking down from the lofted bedroom
My Bathroom
My Kitchen
Looking in from the doorway
A picture showing the stairs up to the bedroom
TV shot from the couch
Monday, September 8, 2008
First Day of Class
Today was the first day of classes at ShiDa's MTC program. I'm enrolled in the intensive program, which consists of class for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. I left the hostel at 9 for a 10:20 class. (yes I'm still sleeping here despite having an apartment. Long story that I'll post about later). The cab got me to school quickly, but it's getting expensive to always take cabs so I need to finish the move to my new apartment quickly. Anyways though, I grabbed coffee and a notebook from the convenience store next to the university to go with the bread I had for breakfast and started to review for the first day of classes.
What I neglected to do was check and see if my schedule said what chapter we were starting on. I assumed chapter 1, instead we started on chapter 7, so my preparations were for naught. I'm on the 8th floor of the foreign language building in one of the many rooms. I thought there were only going to be 4-6 students in the intensive program, as the website said. Instead the schedule says there are 8 but only 5, including myself, showed up today. Three of the five are continuing students who took classes together last semester. There are a guy and a girl from Japan, a Chinese guy from Australia and a girl from Mongolia. Of all of us, the Mongolian girl's Chinese is the best, despite only studying for 3 months in Shanghai. She is here with her brother, since her brother got into a prestigious university for Art.
All of us have graduated from College except for the Mongolian girl. I would use her real name if I could spell it, or pronounce it. Closest I can mimic to the sound is to imagine the wind rustling through trees. It sounded something like that. Our teacher will help her choose a better name than the last teacher did (Guan Ting) since she didn't like it.
The teacher is good, but strict. She has taught for 19 years now, however this is her first semester at NTNU. Before she taught at the TLI program. It's a different setup with most people going there for 1 on 1 classes, or the teachers go to foreign companies here who have employees that want to learn but can't make it during the 9-5 time frame.
Every day we will have homework and a "ting xie". The "ting xie" is a listening test where the teacher will recite some words we are supposed to have memorized and we write the character. Tonight's homework was writing examples for 12 words that she randomly chose. It took me over 2 hours due to the fact that I have completely forgotten how to write Chinese. I can speak it, read it and TYPE it, but not write it. Its been 3 years now since I wrote any Chinese at all. In my college classes at the higher level, we would do our homework on computers, using word processing. It's coming back slowly, but I will need a lot of practice, very quickly.
Its time to move the last of my stuff to my apartment. Now that I have a mattress, I need to get sheets for it and I can move in. That and get the Internet to my apartment. Of the two, I think the Internet is the more important thing to get. I can live without sheets, I can't live without the Internet, especially having forgotten how to write so many Chinese characters.
What I neglected to do was check and see if my schedule said what chapter we were starting on. I assumed chapter 1, instead we started on chapter 7, so my preparations were for naught. I'm on the 8th floor of the foreign language building in one of the many rooms. I thought there were only going to be 4-6 students in the intensive program, as the website said. Instead the schedule says there are 8 but only 5, including myself, showed up today. Three of the five are continuing students who took classes together last semester. There are a guy and a girl from Japan, a Chinese guy from Australia and a girl from Mongolia. Of all of us, the Mongolian girl's Chinese is the best, despite only studying for 3 months in Shanghai. She is here with her brother, since her brother got into a prestigious university for Art.
All of us have graduated from College except for the Mongolian girl. I would use her real name if I could spell it, or pronounce it. Closest I can mimic to the sound is to imagine the wind rustling through trees. It sounded something like that. Our teacher will help her choose a better name than the last teacher did (Guan Ting) since she didn't like it.
The teacher is good, but strict. She has taught for 19 years now, however this is her first semester at NTNU. Before she taught at the TLI program. It's a different setup with most people going there for 1 on 1 classes, or the teachers go to foreign companies here who have employees that want to learn but can't make it during the 9-5 time frame.
Every day we will have homework and a "ting xie". The "ting xie" is a listening test where the teacher will recite some words we are supposed to have memorized and we write the character. Tonight's homework was writing examples for 12 words that she randomly chose. It took me over 2 hours due to the fact that I have completely forgotten how to write Chinese. I can speak it, read it and TYPE it, but not write it. Its been 3 years now since I wrote any Chinese at all. In my college classes at the higher level, we would do our homework on computers, using word processing. It's coming back slowly, but I will need a lot of practice, very quickly.
Its time to move the last of my stuff to my apartment. Now that I have a mattress, I need to get sheets for it and I can move in. That and get the Internet to my apartment. Of the two, I think the Internet is the more important thing to get. I can live without sheets, I can't live without the Internet, especially having forgotten how to write so many Chinese characters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)