First of all, I want a custom tailored suit. J The reason I say this is because for my hall here they had a dinner called the Cai (Cai is actually pronounced ‘Tsai’) hall High Table Dinner. It was only for members on my hall and it was a formal steak dinner with a distinguished guest. I did not bring a suit (yes Yvonne, I know, you were right) but I plan to get a nice fitted one while I am here.
The guest was a political official from mainland China (the actual part of China, not the Hong Kong part). He is a very radical politician. He is president of the Social Democrats party, which is a very small and extreme party within China. He attends and leads many protests against the Chinese government. He mentioned America and our free election system and how great it is. He mentioned Obama (one of the few words I understood) haha. There were two students from the university sitting close to me and the other exchange student who attended (from Mexico). These students helped us to understand some of the things the politician was saying. He touched on issues of same-sex rights in this country as well. There is apparently a law right now about spousal abuse which helps to reduce the number of incidents. And there is a proposition to give these same rights to same-sex couples. The politician was talking about how it should be a given that they receive these rights just as everyone else. The arguments against this proposition are that by giving same-sex couples these same right it will encourage homosexuality and show people that this is something that is ok (wow, never heard that before). The politician stated that by giving people who are already in committed relationships more rights to safety will in no way encourage more people to be homosexual. Which was very refreshing to hear, but interesting also to hear about similar problems relating to this issue all over the world.
It was a fun and delicious night where I learned a lot.
I am going to start trying to take pictures of my food, because I realized that when asked what my favorite part of this trip is, I always say, the food. (I also want to apologize for all the grammatical errors throughout this post, it is early, and I am tired and I am kind of sick of all of english’s rules anyway after studying Chinese. Cantonese is the language that I am studying here, it is spoken in Southern China and other surrounding areas. It is also, as my roommate tells me, the primary language spoken in at least San Francisco and possibly all of California and the West coast. Which is nice. The language, other than the tones, (there are 6) is pretty easy. There are barely any verbs and sentences are very simple. Such as “I be Hong Kong Person” (Attempt at translation: Ngoh haih Heung Gonng yahn) or “He/she very beautiful” (Keiuh hou leng) or “You like tea?” (Neigh jung yi cha ma?)
Ok, I may have very easily butchered those, but I think they or mostly right. At least this is good practice. Haha. And the sad thing is, even though I can kind of write the words and how they are pronounced like that, (I am still missing tone marks too which kind of define what word I am trying to say) the way people read and write Chinese is through characters, which there are several thousand of. L Anyone reading this, never complain about Spanish again. So I guess when I said that is it pretty easy, I was only referring to grammar.
The Chinese New Year is this Monday or Tuesday (I can’t remember which). So, this place is going to get crazy starting probably today or tomorrow. The weekend will be ridiculous and Monday the celebration will be so big that literally everything will shut down. There will be a huge parade through the city and craziness going on the whole week. I leave on Tuesday morning for Manila, The Philippines. I am pretty excited. J
I have also started practicing with the schools volleyball team here! It is very fun but also very very difficult. These people have all been playing for at least 5 years and the captain has been playing for 12 years. They are great players and I am very luck to have the experience to improve my skill. I am also getting killed, my legs are very sore as is my hitting arm. Another difficult part is that they all talk in primarily Cantonese. So I don’t understand anything. And like most other countries in the world, people here are very expressive, emotional, (not bad emotional) and often times loud. Which is seen as such a negative thing in America to show your emotions and be very expressive. It is something I am working on being a lot more comfortable with. It’s difficult because they are all practically screaming and yelling in Cantonese while the game that I have only recently learned how to play properly is going on. I am getting much better at focusing because I have to. Haha.
Ok, so now I am kind of just rambling. If someone is interested in something specific please let me k now and I will go into detail about it (assuming anyone reads this. Haha).
I guess I could briefly explain my classes. I have Modern Chinese Society. Great class, fun and energetic teacher. She is very interested in the subject and caters very nicely to the exchange students. We have watched some great videos on recent Chinese history. Very interesting shows of social control. I also have Traditional Chinese Society. (Btw, if anyone has a question on China ever again in your life, I think I will have it down. Haha) This class is good. It is very expansive. My modern class covers the past 80ish years. And this one covers from 100BCish to 1920ish. So, a little more time. We go through all the emperors and their specific policies and ideas during their rule. I have a class called Existence and Reality which is a Philosophy class. I was very excited about taking this class but once the class actually started I was seeing a trend that I did not like. My teacher, Professor Pfister, is from San Diego and thinks we are just best friends. (Which isn’t a bad thing, yes I see the academic benefits of this mom). But, he had us fill out a questionnaire about our religious beliefs and practices. My sheet was empty, haha jk. So, he pretty much learned about my beliefs and things. And since he didn’t have a spot for what be believe, just boxes of religions to check. I am pretty sure he thinks I am atheist or non-religious because of just a bad experience of my ignorance, not because of my actual mind or thought process about the world and life. So, he is my “friend” and ready to show me the truth. Actual quote from class while he was trying to be open-minded, “Now I know everyone in here is not Christian, or maybe I should say, not Christian yet.” Are you serious? Did you just say that? As you can I’m sure see, I am having a great time holding my tongue. Anyway, moving on, I also have Basic Cantonese for Non-Chinese speakers. Which was a very confusing title for those who spoken Mandarin but wanted to learn Cantonese. There is no Cantonese for native Chinese speakers. Anywho, (Cheyanne!) I really enjoy this class. The teacher is even more energetic than my Modern Society teacher. Her name is Miss Whan or “Whan sui jui” She is fun and has taught this class over and over for exchange students. She is very helpful and nice. And last but not least is my Volleyball class, which is turning out to be kind of a waste of time. Especially because I am practicing with the team. I mean, there are at least 30 kids and none of them know how to play at all. We are working on bumping right now. (yawn) But I do need the practice, so I am sticking with it. J
Wow, this is a long entry. I didn’t realize this. Why can’t I get a essay topic titled: Write whatever you want and try to make it not connect at all to anything except possibly, vaguely to one extremely general topic.
That’d be perfect. Haha.
Hope you are all enjoying Wednesday! Cause Thursday is pretty sweet! Haha
Love, Sam
