Studying in the university

We study Mandarin Chinese, Chinese culture, law and business in Guangzhou University; it's an exchange program package through Asia Exchange (www.asiaexchange.org) -organization. Our studies started 3rd of September. Chinese students have 2 semesters and a 2 month summer vacation, not very different from Europe. On Monday 3rd of September there was a welcoming event: a brief introduction of staff and school. We didn't have many lessons on the first week, because arrangements like visa application, book orderings, library cards etc. took many days.

There's a 10 min walk to the bus & subway station from our home. Some mornings we have taken a mototaxi to the school, because sometimes it seems like there is no busses coming! It takes about 15minutes with the bus to our university (during the mourning "rush hour" it's more like 25min). The Higher Education Mega Center is a very huge island! The motorbike taxis are more expensive if you can't talk Chinese, but on a European scale their cheap (12-15 rmb to school). Couple of weeks ago we bought us a bike from a nearby shopping center; it was 270 rmb, with a second seat for Laura :). Now we can get to school faster than the bus, in like ten minutes or so.

Now we have been studying for two months, and the Chinese language starts to open up for us. At first all the classes were about the four tones and the pronunciation in finals and initials. Sometimes it felt a bit boring but the teachers wanted us to know the pinyin and pronunciation well before starting to make sentences in Chinese, so there we were like a choir singing aa, ee, ri and so on.

After the first month or so thing started to get heavy. Everyday comes a bunch of new words and phrases to remember. The teachers are very nice and sometimes very strict. Especially with the pronunciation, and no wonder when the word is all about getting the tone correctly. It's amazing to realize in a store or restaurant that even if you know the words and what you want to say, no one will understand you if the tone isn't correct. And another thing is the characters, phew. At first when we got the course books and opened them, the feeling was something like WTF! There's no English in these books! But after you get over the panic and relax, you can find the pinyin and the English translation under the Chinese text. After one or two exercises the books are something like in every language. Except for the grammar, there is none. We don't know if it's because the Chinese language is so complicated or because the Chinese way of studying is remembering sentences and phrases one by one. For example, in the vocabulary there may a word: Monday, but not a whole list of the weekdays in the entire book. A bit different what we are used to, but the teachers are very nice and explain to us everything we want to know.

In classes we read a lot aloud and make our own sentences. Sometimes in the beginning of the courses the teachers went very fast from subject to another and it was hard to follow, especially when they spoke mostly in Chinese. But the more you hear the language the easier it gets, and the teachers speak less and less English every week. Our listening teacher speaks very little English during classes, but on the other hand she repeats the same thing many times. Our intensive reading teacher is very nice, she taught us very accurately the pronunciation and is the most precise teacher about it. She also teaches us how to write the characters. Actually on this week we have a writing test, and a bunch of characters to memorize.

We have come to notice that the characters aren't THAT bad after you stare them a month everyday trying to figure out how in the world can Chinese differ one character from another. It's something like what our oral Chinese teacher once said, that the characters are like friends, and the more time you spend with them the more familiar they get. Two months ago we didn't know any Chinese and now we can recognize something between 150-200 symbols. It's amazing how rewarding learning this language really is! When you learn one or two new characters, a hundred sentences, billboards, commercials, road signs and many more starts to have a whole new meaning.

We also have downloaded few translation programs to our mobile phones and tablets, so we can check within seconds the character we don't yet know. Best one is Pleco, you can write pinyin and English into it and on top of all you can also draw the characters! The absolute way to communicate with the Chinese! For example in a restaurant the waitress can draw the characters of a portion she is recommending and you can reply by writing in English. Also in classes the program has proven itself useful, it's a great support all in all. Hope the teachers don't think were facebooking during the classes!

At the end of the day the Asia Exchange program is very compact package, and a very efficient way to get to know to the Chinese ways and basics of the language. The culture, Chinese foreign trade, law and Taiji courses support learning the language. You just need to be brave enough to really go to different places and use all the words you possibly can. The Chinese may at first laugh and it sounds funny to them but they also help you to get the word right. And for us it really has been fun too, and because of various situations related to learning new words or manners we have gotten into really exciting places and met many interesting people. And this is good to remember when learning any language in the world: don't be uptight about it, dare to laugh at yourself and enjoy!