Get Me A Rope.

... Not really sure how to describe how the first day of classes were. I had a two hour speaking class, and a two hour reading class.

Speaking class started at 13:00 so I decided to go to the Muslim canteen with Ibby and Charlotte at 12:10 (when Ibby finished her classes). As soon as we got inside the canteen though, there were way more students than expected and the whole place was pretty packed. We weren't too sure exactly what we were doing and dawdled for a bit before joining one of the many long queues up to the counter. Since we couldn't read the menu, I chose to have lamb noodles. It wasn't until 12:40 that I got my food though, and the other two didn't get theirs until 12:50. So we literally had 10minutes to stuff our faces and attempt to get to class on time.

Lamb noodles with onions and tomatoes.

Rushing wasn't really possible though because as you can see, the noodles are pretty big and the sauce was really runny, so I ended up with loads of splashed oil all over my scarf.. :/

We had to leave Ibby to finish eating on her own and Charlotte and I rushed to class. Well, we tried to but Charlotte managed to get a stitch on the way. By the time we'd finally made it to the building (it was a ten minute brisk walk since the campus is huge) we almost ended up going into the wrong class. We noticed Tanya wasn't in there though and found out our class was in the room next door.

We entered the class the teacher asked if we what country we were from and then sat us down. At certain angles, she looks like Amma. Is that because all Chinese people look the same? Haha.

The lesson was just standing up in front of class in pairs having a conversation to introduce ourselves. Since Charlotte and I were late, we ended up being partners. We had to ask each other where we came from, our ages, what we study at university, and our hobbies. As we're classmates from SOAS, the whole conversation was pretty much me asking Charlotte the questions, and then repeating what she said for my answer when she asked me the exact same thing. We then had a bit of a silence since we didn't really know what to ask each other next so Charlotte asked how big my family was. My reply was "I have 5 older brothers, 1 younger brother, 2 older sisters, and 3 younger sisters." Everyone found this pretty shocking and amazing, and the teacher got them to count up how many people are in our family altogether. She then asked "So how many mother's do you have?" to which I replied "Only 1." That properly shocked everyone.

Had a 10minute break and then had our next class. Newspaper reading. Eurgh. This lesson was just ridiculous. For almost two hours straight, I had pretty much no idea what was going on or what was being said. I understood a few sentences but for the most of it, nothing made sense.

Looking at my class, I think it's kinda unbalanced. I'm the youngest in the class and the oldest is 26. Apart from Charlotte, Tanya and I, everyone else had been studying Chinese for at least 3years or more. There was even one guy who had been studying it for 8years!! How are they the same level Chinese as us!?

We figured that it was because to pass second year, you have to pass newspaper reading, and this is only available from level 102 and higher. The lowest level is 100, and highest is 104, before you move up into the next set.

I have no idea how we're meant to manage newspaper reading, or even the year. Looking over the lesson, we're expected to learn about 40 new words each time, but also have all our other classes on top of that with an similar amount of new vocabulary. D:

To get bring our spirits back up, we went to the drinks place in the hutong near the apartment. I actually ended up getting two drinks there as I came back later on since Charlotte wanted to see who the guy in charge of the place was (since he's Ibby's Chinese penpal and she couldn't come the first time round as she had other stuff to do). Just as I was about to get my drink, the guy told his friend who made it not to put the lid on, then started saying how I want to take a picture first, then he started to imitate taking a photo of the drink. So I took one, but he creeped up behind me to watch me take it. How embarrassing.

Vanilla milk tea.

The guy then let me take a picture of him, to which he started posing for..

He also asked my name so I told him my Chinese one (Li Fei Xue 李霏雪) and he said in English "Your name is very beautiful." He also carried on attempting to speak English and said "My Chinese GOOD!! *double thumbs up*" We had kinda figured he had good Chinese though.. didn't really need to tell us that in English. He seemed really happy about being able to speak English though so we just laughed along with him.