Lots of Little Things
Hey Friends --So, I'm getting back into the habit of writing. A lot of things have happened over the past few weeks that I haven't had the time to tell.
Class
This semester, I'm taking classes at Fudan in addition to working at the UNC/Foreign Affairs office. I'm taking sixteen hours a week of intensive Chinese reading, writing and speaking. Needless to say, it's extremely difficult, but taking classes allows me to meet more people my age in Shanghai. The classes are small (about ten students) and the classrooms are even smaller (about the size of a college dorm room). I would term the organization style of the classes as "fluid". All sixteen hours are taught in the same room, with the same group of students. In our one group, we had students from Seria, Zimbabwe, Austria, Germany, Indonesia and England. After being a part of that first class for three weeks, Fudan changed the structure of the class I was in to just speaking, with no reading and writing component. So, three weeks into the course, I changed to another class that was still learning characters. Of course, no one in the administration is around to help us with the changes, we just had to pick a new class on our own. Classes are back to normal now. I'm enjoying learning a lot of Chinese really fast. Unfortunately, it's an incredibly difficult language and it will take a lot more practice and time to have a decent conversation or even read the newspaper. You have to be able to recognize 6,000 characters to read a newspaper, a task only 24% of native Chinese speakers can do anyway, so I don't feel too bad.
Engaged
I wear my Appalachian class ring fairly often here. When Chinese people see the ring, they automatically assume that I'm married (or engaged). There have been at least 5 people ask if I was engaged, and even more ask if the ring was my wedding ring. I quickly explain that I'm neither engaged or married and that the ring is my college ring. I have learned there is no equivilent to a class ring in a lot of countries, China included.
UNC-Fudan Website
I'm working on a new website for the UNC-Fudan office. You can check it out at unc.mattdull.com until it is finished and placed on it's own website.
Resident Permit
I finially received my Chinese Resident Permit. I had to run around campus to three or four different offices to get the paper work together, get a physical from a Chinese doctor because our American doctors aren't good enough and take a taxi to Pudong (about 35 min.) once to drop all of the paperwork off and once to pick up my passport. The Resident Permit allows me to come into China and leave China as many times as I need to from now until I finish my work with Fudan. I'm going to Hong Kong in May, so this will save some money and time now that I won't have to buy another visa.
Talk to you all again soon!
-Matt
posted by Matt Dull @ 8:59 PM
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