中文课

I’ve got a few days worth of classes under my belt, and I’m finally feeling confident. The first day went completely over my head. I was out of practice with Chinese, and the teachers ONLY spoke Chinese, no English whatsoever. So it would go completely over my head.
But now I’m remembering what I learned before, and adding on the new things that we’ve been studying. I’m getting used to hearing Chinese all the time, and I’m learning how to piece things together more effectively.
Also, I’ve been making friends. Well, I haven’t really made new ones since my last update, but the bonds are growing! I’ve been sitting by Tina (she’s with the BYUI group) for the last two days. Federico usually sits behind us. And Xu Rungui usually sits near us. Whenever I see either of them around the campus, we always say hi. The first time that I sat by Rungui (Elric), we had to ask each other questions in Chinese, and then introduce each other to the class. He showed me a picture of his little sister, and she was super pretty. So while everyone else was introducing their partners, saying their name, where they were from, etc, I introduced him as “这是徐闰圭。他的妹妹非常漂亮!””This is Xu Rungui. His little sister is extremely beautiful!” It got a good laugh out of the class, and now we all kind of tease him with it. Today we were learning to use the sentence structure 挺。。。的, which means something is “quite” something (hard to explain in English). The teacher was asking for example sentences from everyone, so for my turn I said “徐闰圭的妹妹挺漂亮的。“ “Xu Rungui’s little sister is quite beautiful.” I started something, and it’ll probably stick with him for the rest of the semester :P

Brandon and Theo (from BYUI) transferred into our class. They were originally in 一本上，the lower level. So they came to 一本下, the upper level (the one I’m in). So now us 美国人 all sit together. We kind of talk a lot, which probably isn’t a good thing. But at least we always talk to each other in Chinese, so the teacher can’t yell at us for speaking English. It’s really fun to sit by them, as we all tease and make fun of each other in Chinese.