Hanging out in Hangzhou: Day 7: Classes and Trips

2006/06/24

Day 7: Classes and Trips

One week ago, I arrived in Shanghai to explore this new world. The word of
the day is humble. I feel like an incompetent man wandering around a city
of approximately 6.42 Million people in the municipality of Hangzhou and about
3.93 Million people in city proper. As previously mentioned, there are
very few people that speak English here, which is good because that is why I
am here: to study Chinese. BUT - I need a helper. Hahaha I mean -- I
didn't feel this incompetent the first time I moved out on my own in Urbana,
IL. But, challenges are made to be overcome (I keep repeating this in my
mind).

Last night, Zeina, Guy, Kat, and I went out to shop, dinner, drinks, and
World Cup. Shopping was interesting. We ended up in a 5 story building in
the center of the city with little shops everywhere. Neat place. There
were many "knock offs", but nothing of the quality we normally expect. Guy
showed me his watch and the Roman numeral for 4 (IV) was put on the watch as
IIII. And "Puma" was misspelled as "Pmua" We also found a store called
"Cavern Kernel" that represents Calvin Klein. I *am* going to try and get a
Cavern Kernel shirt. Reminds me of the Massive Magazine t-shirts (I wish I
bought a few of those. The only one I had has been destroyed by overwear).

Dinner was at some cafeteria style place. Guy and I had the "huntun"
(sorry, no accents for you!) and a cardboard cup of beer. The huntun's
were 9Y/each (about $1.15) and the beer was 4Y (about $0.50). Not too
shabby. We ended up at some bar that was showing the World Cup and they
were showing the CzechV.Italy match. Whatever. We ordered some Carlsberg
(buy 6, get 6 free!) and started playing this dice game. After a while,
these two really drunk Chinese men come over wanting to "Cheers!" us.
(Ganbei! In Chinese, but they were proud of their English knowledge =)
They kept coming back and coming back and eventually invited us/forced us to
go to their table. They kept asking me, which was funny. We found out it
was because I am one of the biggest men they have ever seen (6 ft. 3 in. 260
lbs./ 190 cm 118 kg). Pretty funny. I'm not even that big (today someone
called me "massive") -- hahahaha Regardless, many many beers later, we
still had some left, we exited the scene. He gave me his phone number so I
could call him to drink. Mind you, the only english he speaks is
"Cheers!", "you", "me", "I", "byebye". =) It was fun. This morning I
woke up with a wicked stomachache (wo tou duzi!) All day has been horrible
- don't know if it was the food, the beer, or a mix. I usually don't get
this screwy by drinking beer.

Anyways - It was fun.

You all are probably wondering about my classes. The *real* reason I am
here. I go to school at the MANDA
Center. First, I have 6, 1 hour classes a day. I start at 9 AM and go
straight through until 1 PM. We have an hour lunch and then from 2-4PM.
The morning classes are primarily language training. Evil stuff really.
There are 3 students per class at pretty much the same level in the morning.
The instructors, Mike and Lucy, speak English pretty well. I'm focusing on
my speaking ability now because I lack proper tonal pronunciation. The
afternoon class is much different -- it is more of a "fun" class. We learn
about different items (such as the World Cup) and phrases surrounding it.
We also take trips to different places. Which brings me to:

June
20th trip to the tea house