Superstar Hysteria & Getting around Campus

On Sunday we all went to campus with our admission letters and registered for the summer school at Beijing University.

After signing in, they gave us a map of the campus (which is enormous) and student I.D cards so we'll get through the gates on campus without too much of an hassle.

Needless to say, I still carry this map on me at all times
- the distances are long, so I'm glad I have my bisycle

Lol, I'm still using the photo Dag took when I was 17

Somewhere on campus
- there's big lakes and museums and shit everywhere

On Monday we were welcomed by the university, and they fed us.


They brought us to this posh restaurant on campus, which almost seemed like it was inside a hotel, and all the Norwegian students were seated around a bunch of big and round tables. Our new teachers where also there, and some of them gave short speeches.

At my table there were only Norwegians, so we had fun guessing what we were eating most of the time.

But it was a true feast! (And some of it was grosse)


After lunch we went outside to be assigned speaking partners: but since it's currently summer vacation, most of the Chinese students have returned to their home town, so they only managed to gather around ten Chinese students, which meant there would be around three Norwegians "sharing" a Chinese person, which is fine.

Having a Chinese speaking partner could be a great doorway to building a network, aka. getting friends here in Beijing.

Hanna waiting to get a speaking partner

Gøran has already found his

My speaking partner, Zhou, I share together with Lars and Jørgen - which ironically enough are the two Norwegian guys in my class that I think look so much alike I barely can tell them apart most of the time - I usually refer to them both as "Lars-Jørgen".

Zhou's major is chemistry: and being a diligent Beida-student (student at Beijing University), I suspect I won't be seeing much of her after the semester has begun in September. So it means I got to milk her for what she's worth now!

She seems like a really sweet girl.

Zhou

Zhou took us on a tour around a small part of campus, and I quickly realized how big of a tourist attraction the campus of Beijing University is. There were big groups of people everywhere, especially field-trippin' school kids, everyone armed with their own cameras, snapping photos of the historical sights and beautiful scenery.


But soon, something completely overtook their attention:




Tall, blond and blue-eyed Norwegians!

Lars (or Jørgen?)

I promise, they where squeeling like my classmates were superstars!


Too funny.



The classes started already on Tuesday, and for the next six weeks we have classes from 8 am to 12 pm, Monday-Friday.

For now, during the summer school, all of the Norwegians (there's around 30 of us, all from the University of Oslo) are divided into two groups who have classes together.

We have three subjects. In one class I think the point is to mainly focus on speaking Chinese, and in another class we're supposed to mainly be focusing on writing Chinese. I'm not quite sure yet. So far the classes seem alike, except that there's different teachers and different textbooks.



In the third class we'll be working on a massive and very intimidating compendium full of news paper articles in Chinese, and what not, that the university back home sent with us. This compendium will be the base for the oral exam we'll have right after we've returned to Oslo in the winter. Yippie.

So far I like our teachers, and I think and hope that they know what they are doing. Anyway, I guess them being teachers at Beijing Uni is assuring enough on its own.

The class is being taught in Chinese 99,9 % of the time, and we're only allowed to use Chinese when we speak to each other during class or have question (naturally).

I'm eager to learn new vocabulary and grammar, but I'm also scared that I'll get bored with the classes easily. I feel that it is a bit demotivating having to "artificially" speak Chinese and create sentences during class, or at least I'm still struggling a bit - then it's much better to speak "in real life" outside of the classroom when you're having genuine conversations with people, or have something you actually need to convey.

Well, it's just been two days of classes - many months to go!