Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

First day of school

It's much easier to be a student than a teacher. So easy that I have nothing really to say. I came to class, opened up my book and paid attention. Far less nerve-wrecking than my first day when I was an English teacher in Xi'an. Inexperienced teacher + class of 57 students = clusterfuck.

Here in Tsinghua I've been assigned to one of the more advanced classes. I think it's a good fit so far, and I hope to learn a lot. My classmates come from different backgrounds, but it seems predominately filled with students who are from Hong Kong. They speak Cantonese, but wish to improve on their Mandarin.

When introductions came I was impressed by some of the other foreign students, who spoke Mandarin well, and yet had been studying language for only three years.

"Hello everyone, my name is Gan Shi Jie (my chinese name)," I said in Mandarin during my introduction. "I'm a Chinese-American so I've been learning the language since I was young. But I've learned it pretty slowly," I joked.

At the end of our classes, the teachers gave us a bit of homework. I look forward to it. Maybe it's because I was a teacher before, and had such a hard time getting my students in Xi'an to do their homework. All those days of telling them to "study a little everyday" and "don't give up". Now I have to follow my own advice. I guess, in a way, I haven't left my classroom in Xi'an.