Class is in Session - 上课！

我们星期一上课。

We started class on Monday. I am now enrolled as a 汉语学生 (student of Mandarin chinese) at a university. The classes are great. Everyday for 3 hours from 8:40 in the morning until noon (we get two ten-minute breaks) I sit in a classroom with 5-10 other students and we get barked at in Chinese. If we speak in English we have to give our 同学 (classmate) 10 Yuan. My textbook is 90% in characters so I'm learning a lot of those which is such a plus.

Last Friday I arrived at the administrator's office for an interview and placement test. We talked in Chinese about Jamaica and Miami. We talked about my inability to sing and my love of exercise, even though I never do it. I got a new name - 卫云涵- that means that I'm a person with a lot of interesting things in my soul (or something to that effect). I like it. I waited until I could see that they liked me before I let them know I really didn't have any money to pay for classes. No problem, they said, you can pay in installments. Yippee! Somebody, definitely worked that out for me.

I have a part-time job that will help with the tuition. The job consists of me teaching kids from 2 - 13 years of age English. More on that later. I'm going to join a gym. I bought a mat for the bathroom floor. So much interesting stuff! Just way too much to write about. If you want to know what it's like to be here in China, you really have to come here and see for yourself. 真的！

Interesting exchange: I took a taxi to work. When I feel like it I make an attempt to practice my Chinese with the taxi driver and so we started talking a bit. He actually initiated the conversation and asked, "Where are you from?" I told him I was American. He said "You don't look like an American." I asked him what made me different. He said, "Americans don't have hair like you." I told him that many in America have hair similar to mine. He said, "I think you're a Mexican, show me American money." Eventually he saw a dollar bill and finally he believed.