Fast Post! Fast Post!

I will write much more later, but I'm supposed to be going to dinner shortly, so I should probably leave this coffee shop soon.

Harbin is wonderful. I really like it here. The weather's great and...

Well, it's ridiculously windy and I think raining outside now so maybe I won't be rushing this post to make it to dinner. My computer and all. But! Harbin's summer weather has been pretty nice up till now (I don't want to discourage any other potential visitors).

Today was our third day of classes and our third full day speaking only Chinese. We began on Sunday afternoon, just after our lunches with our one-on-one class professors - in which it was highly suggested that we only speak Chinese, so I guess our language pledge started around 12 pm that day.

The lunch was...a scary start, I have to say. I'm definitely doubting my topic now because I think it's going to be even more difficult than I initially thought. I was too embarrassed by my lack of skills to ask my professor anything really illuminating, so I mostly listened to him talk about things like 东北人's taste in food and...well, I didn't understand a lot of what he said. What made the whole thing even more awkward was he told me at the beginning of the meal that he didn't like how I held my chopsticks, assuming I guess that I hadn't used them much before. He showed me his grip, and instructed me to hold them like that. We were eating 饺子 and I was dropping them all over the place trying to hold the chopsticks the way he wanted me to instead of the way I usually hold them. Big, fat FAIL. My normal grip isn't bad! Oh well. It gave me a reason to laugh instead of looking lost, I guess.

Anyway, the first day of classes was ok. Hard, but mostly because I didn't prepare properly. Now that I know what to expect, and now that I've had a few class meetings to get used to classroom Chinese and being a student again, I think I'll be ok. I'm taking a 4 person conversational Chinese class, a 5 person newspaper reading class, a 2 person pronunciation class, and my one-on-one class about 相声 (see first post) - which I still haven't had my first class in, actually. It was moved so that we could finally move out of our hotel and into dorm rooms on HIT's campus.

Speaking of, our hotel room:

Tory said it.

The hotel was nice - free breakfast and pretty much on campus - but I'm really glad to be living in the dorms now. Aaaand I met my Chinese roommate last night! She's very nice - a bit soft spoken, but she doesn't speak crazy fast or anything so I can mostly understand her. Or, I can mostly decipher words, I should say. I definitely don't always comprehend what's being said. But we had a very long conversation last night, which was constantly amazing to me. About three times during the conversation it was like I pulled out of what was going on and was astounded by the fact that everything that had gone on wasn't in English. It was a weird feeling, sort of like: since I'd comprehended so much (...a moderate amount), I felt like the conversation must have been in English. But it wasn't. And I was amazed. But then I'd focus in again because if I didn't I'd really lose what what going on. Very strange...but comforting to know, I guess, that such a thing is possible. I just hope I'm not giving her incorrect impressions of America with my poor ability to explain things.

I pretty much love living on campus. It's exciting to be an international student, and it's exciting to be getting to know a whole new school. Chinese supermarkets? Amazing. There's one on campus. Plus smaller stands selling food everywhere. I love it. And, of course, I love how cheap food is everywhere. Today I had a fantastic breakfast for 2.5元 - and I mean fantastic in the sense of I bought it because it was something I'd never seen before.

Turns out it was like a cinnamon roll minus the cinnamon plus red bean paste with a savory meal on top. I expected it to be gross but was pleasantly surprised. Delicious.

I had ice cream for 1元 and then a giiiant 包子 for another 1元 (China also is full of AMAZING ice cream bars, for the record). Love, love, love. Some more food:

We all went out for a meal and the CET people ordered this 东北 delicacy. A hunk of meat + bone that came with gloves and a straw with which to suck out the bone marrow. Bones kind of gross me out, but I did try a little. It was like...grainy fat. Not my favorite, but not gross.

Hot pot, or 火锅. Before...

And after.

Finally, because I need to get dinner and start my homework and the rain has let up, the notebook I bought for class yesterday. I really bought it for the cover.

"This is the most comfortable note book you have ever run into. Buy me!" it said. And I obeyed.