we didn’t start the fire it was always burning since the world’s been turning
break downs daily. my brain is being assaulted - speaking constantly, listening, studying, 4-hour classes, intimidating students, and by the end of the day my brain is tired and i’m so fragile and anything leads to tears. embarrassing.
yesterday i decided even though i have no time that i needed to go for a run. it’s my therapy. and exercise makes you
remember things better and i needed to get some stress out. went w/ friends to the track to run but they wanted to lift weights after and i wanted to keep running so i told them i’d go back later myself.
i got lost for about an hour. it’s mr p’s genetics. the track by the way is a 2 minute walk from our dorm. i wandered for 30 minutes before ending up back at the other side of the track. then asked a guard for directions and he told me he’d walk me. i was worried the whole time about not having time and getting my work done, (which i didn’t) and that made this even more stressful. they moved me up one level yesterday so i had catching up to do and class got a lot harder.
anyway, these two policemen are walking me back (to the wrong place) and one won’t stop talking to me. and he’s speaking dialect, so i have absolutely no idea what he’s saying and he’s getting so pissed that i don’t understand something so simple and starts shouting at me (i finally understood that he was asking how china was different than america. it was not a conversation i wanted to have at that point, but i figured if i was talking he might not be).
anyway, along the way we run into my zhuyi, which is kind of like a student mentor. he’s a chinese undergrad who’s studying to be an english teacher. anyway, this guy already thinks i’m absolutely retarded b/c i don’t understand him half the time. and on day one when he told me my phone couldn’t call internationally after i had spent all my money on an international phone card, and not to worry b/c i could call all my chinese friends, he saw me flip out in chinese about how i have no friends in china and all i want are my friends and my american family. there may’ve been a tear or two. not a pretty stephanie.
anyway, when we bump into him i’m 25% relieved and 75% embarrassed as hell. not only can i not speak this language, but i also can’t find my way from the track to my dorm which is 5 feet away. he thanks the officers after telling them they were taking me in the wrong direction, and then tells them that i’ve only been here 3 days. he walks with me and keeps telling me not to worry, that it’s not a big deal at all, etc etc and i fight tears b/c that was yesterday’s last straw. i cried a little but by this time it was too dark to tell.
it’s just so frustrating. humbling to the point of humiliation. and so constant.
anyway, my zhuyi is amazing and he walks me back home, then offers to walk me to the track and back again so that i wouldn’t get lost next time. we do this, and then bump into more american students. i tell them that i got lost 5 minutes away and we all laugh. my emotions here are crazy.
later i go to my zhuyi’s room and he helps me w/ my homework until almost midnight.
anyway i barely made it into advanced. i didn’t test too well AT ALL, and when i had my interview (in a room in front of 8 teachers), i lied and said i’d only taken 2 years worth of chinese instead of 4 b/c i was embarrassed at how little i knew. in retrospect, that was an idiotic move. anyway, i’m good now.
it feels like i’ve been here a year. it feels like i’ve known these people for years.
it’s day 8 of china and day 3 of classes and i’m so worried i’m gonna burn out. it’s the pace and intensity - which wouldn’t be so bad if we had afternoons to study, but we don’t. we don’t even have a single weekend. going to the grocery store to buy fruit is a time luxury.
we are being spoiled rotten though. in the beginning they told us so much about how selective this program is, that they spent 120 million $$ on it (not just china - 500 kids total), that we’re amazing - but there’s a catch. they make us feel oh so good about ourselves for a little while, b/c if we are the “amazing kids” they’ve put so much faith and money into, we had better step up and prove that we’re worth it all.
we have private tutors, we live in a ritz-carlton that they call a ‘dormitory’, we have huge flat screen tvs we’ll never watch, chinese students to take us anywhere we need to go and help us with anything, etc etc. - ie, we have absolutely no excuses to not excel.
except maybe time.
anyway, i’m still amazed by it all. i really need to go.
on day one we took an overnight train from beijing, slept for 6 hours, got up at 6, took our luggage to our rooms and then took a 2-hour written exam. then we waited in a room together while they interviewed us one by one and reviewed our written exams. while they discussed our results and divided us into classes, the zhuyi’s made us dance to backstreet boys and russian techno (i’m not lying, i have it on film), to keep us from sleeping. we also had to sing (also on film). and not in a group - one person up front w/ a microphone. i sang ‘head shoulders knees and toes’ in chinese. it was by far the least impressive performance, except for one guy who sang happy birthday in chinese.
then we slept and the next day was class day one.
ok i really can’t put work off any longer. internet’s nice though. it’s probably really bad that i have it. i’m sure it won’t work by tomorrow though.
sneaking in some yingwen
