The scheduling seems okay except for Mondays because I have all three classes (start with Chinese class from 0800 to 1210; then Internship from 1500 to 1700; then Translation from 1700 to 1830 sometimes 1900.)  I would get home at about 1945 and have dinner.  After showers and dinner, it would be about 2100 before I start doing homework.  Pretty much, not enough time to study for the next day’s quiz.  I would have to study ahead next weekend to be better prepared.

Chinese class is tolerable for now.  We are still getting used to the instructor’s quirkiness.  He would look at one person when he’s asking a question, then point to another person to answer the question.  He caught us by surprise quite a few times.  There’s a lot of vocabs to study every night.  The homework is moderate most of the time until it’s my turn to do the news report.  Reading Chinese news can be difficult is I have to look up about 10 to 20% of the words.  Then there’s also that research project.  I can’t seem to find my potential group (at least 3 persons; must have a meeting location and met at least twice a week) to do research on.  I barely have enough time to study (I have to visit that group 2 to 3 times a week and chat with them).  I found one group of 6 people who likes to play Chinese poker but I could not follow the rules (and they focused on asking me about the U.S or Vietnam.)  I think the group may be too big.  I asked them to teach me but I hadn’t have time to actually sit down and learn.  I will do a lot of writing for the project and do a formal presentation on my research.  I thought about my host family as a research group because the maid has an interesting background.  As a migrant worker, she can tell me a lot about her hometown and the life of a migrant worker–a good topic for research.  The only problem is that there’s only two in the family who actually meet more than once a week.

Translation is a fun class.  We would do translation (Chinese to English) in groups and then have a class discussion on our translation.  All of our translations are variations of each other (all with different levels of formality/vocabulary and semantics).  Then we all would have to make a consensus on one version; we usually just came up with a combination of all of them.  Then the final version has to fit the rest of the page/chapter.  Our first work is “Huo zhe,” (to live, the book.  There’s a movie with the same name, which is based on this book.)

Internship is interesting.  (I decided to stick with my original plan.  Thank you all for your thoughts and support.) We’ll have a couple of field trips to tour Lenovo and a certain company, our instructor have not scheduled the other one yet  (on two Friday afternoons and will have Mondays off instead.)  We will have to write a journal about our internship (2) per week and a presentation of our experience at the end of the semester.  There is a lot of readings, but thankfully it’s all in English.  We discussed about the work life in China and whether they work to live or live to work (still have not decided as a class).  The text book said the former.  The Chinese workers treat their colleagues as family members.  They would call each other aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, grandpas…Our program director, also an instructor for this class and the HR director, a few years ago when this school had only female instructors, they would call each other “Qin ai de”, meaning “honey” or “dear”, but when he hired a male instructor, the employees changed to brother and sisters.

During lunch time for Monday and Tuesday, we found a little eatery nearby that sell really good noodle soups and dumplings (they only have one flavor; pork).  But their restaurant has really fast service.  It’s close to another restaurant specializing in donkey meat (we did not try that one, seeing the donkey’s picture on the wall.  There’s actually a few donkey meat restaurants in town.  We were talking about how we were adjusting to our homestay families.  Most of them said they have trouble communicating because of the language barrier but the families are great.  Though one person, Rachel, had a really hard time because she does not know any Chinese at all and her family doesn’t speak English well.  We were comparing how well matched we were with the families.  Amy said hers was very well match.  She had some communication problems but the family is just like hers in the U.S.; only mother and daughter.  I think mine is almost what I asked.
I asked for:
1. about 15 minutes walk from school (no match)
2. Translator or teacher (yes)
3. Middle class or higher (yes)
4. has school age children (no)
5. Personality match–no really
6. prefer dog if any (no)

Things just get worse through the week with the homestay for me.

Home Stay:
I am learning new things everyday; like the cat (11 yrs. old white Persian cat with one blue and one green eyes) does not sleep in the house.  He sleeps in the mud room adjacent to the balcony, in a little card board box.  They call him “Bong Bong” for “Bony”.  He used to be a very thin cat.  Song Laoshi would give table scraps but not at the table, but on the kitchen floor.  Bong Bong is very particular; he only likes duck or chicken.  The maid said he may be allergic to certain foods because certain foods would make his hair fall out in clumps.  He only eats the expensive cat foods.  He likes head scratches but don’t scratch him too hard or too much, then he’ll hold up his paw as a warning.  If you don’t pay attention then he’ll start to nibble you. (he did that once to me.  He bit the maid on the legs when she bathed him–big tooth marks.  She said she used gloves but thankfully he could not bite through them.)

Song Laoshi, although retired, he go to work just about everyday.  (His field is in Anthropology and Sociology; he likes to do comparison studies between China and the U.S.).  He takes naps after lunch (so does the maid).  I went home one afternoon and disturbed him with all the noise I was making.  He was very upset.  He was even more annoyed when I searched the fridge for some lunch.  He said he’s only required to provide 2 meals a day, which is true, but I was giving the impression that the host families were more than willing to provide lunches for the students as the staff told me during orientation.  He stood firm on his statement, but the maid made some hot noodles for me anyway.  The maid told me that he also yelled at his daughter whenever she disturbed his nap.  All this week I was feeling unwelcome, sometimes as a burden even.  The maid made the food that I like to eat and they said it was made especially for me.  They would not eat it though.  I told Song Laoshi about my problems with the mattress and he took offense to that.  He said since there were a couple of layers of padding (very thin), that I should be comfortable.  Because all the 12 other students did not raise this concern with him, he concluded that the problem is not the mattress but me (There are plenty of students here think that the mattresses in China are hard.  One even said that she found out her mattress has a wooden layer to keep the hardness.)  He told me to get my back check at a hospital.  I told him that I was willing to buy a mattress pad myself, but he said that I could not find one in China that would make me satisfied.  Later, he apologized for being impatient with me because I was interrupting his tv soap (another rule: no talking while he’s watching TV, not even during commercial time if it’s an serious matter.  It annoys him very much when people phone him when the soap is on.)   I found out another rule when I asked him if I could hang out with him.  He said the previous student had his own agenda and so did he.  He does not want to change that routine, so  I should find things to do myself or may be with my friends.  I wanted to make things better by buying roast duck as a token of apology.  It turned out he and the maid do not like duck.  All better for me I guess.  This is not something I picture for a home stay life.  The staff said that the host family would teach things to me or play board games or go out on hunt for fine tea, just fun things to do that I may not have time to do some site seeing.   So that just leave me with a daily routine of having meals together and watching TV together and an occasional walk together and the weekend is on my own.