The Holidays

From Brad.

Well, this week is officially the equivalent of a fall break here. Most everyone gets at least 3 days off and quite a few get the whole week off. There have been two very noticeable changes in our surroundings as a result of this holiday week. First, fireworks are exploding all the time. I often enjoy fireworks, and so do my kids, however when they start at 6am sometimes (yes, a nice little alarm clock for our kids), they're not so enjoyable. Also, as you might imagine, they can continue until well after 10pm. Another change in our city is people have been staying inside a lot more and it makes for relatively peaceful streets.

It does seem a bit strange that my school has only been in session for about two weeks and I get a whole week off. I haven't written anything about school so I thought I'd share a few thoughts. First of all, I have 3 classes which demand about 22 hours/week in the classroom. Unlike in America, the classes are taught completely in this country's language, with just the occasional English word thrown in. I think it is quite similar to the 'Wawwaa, whawaaa....' that Charlie Brown always heard. Come to think of it, in this way it also reminds me of my time spent in Louisville at Sem...although I think they were mostly speaking English. :) I typically make good eye contact with the teacher and smile until she is asking for volunteers to do something. At that point I bury my head in my book acting like I'm trying to figure something out. Actually, when I'm diligent to prepare for class and I've read the 'dialogue' a few times (and listened to the MP3s on my Treo), I feel okay about my listening comprehension. But it doesn't take a lot for me to get completely lost and give the teacher an answer which is completely unrelated to her question. At that point, I am thankful to be a Westerner who could care less what the other students think about his/her abilities/progress. Whereas, many of the Asians are deathly afraid of giving an incorrect answer in front of the class because it would cause them to 'lose face'.

Speaking of the other foreign language students, many come from Korea, some from Japan, Australia, Europe, Ukraine, India, and Canada. Very, very few Americans. It is really difficult to hear and understand my new language when the locals speak it, however, when the foreigners who have thick accents from back home try to speak to me, I don't have a prayer. All in all the other students seem pretty nice, but I am dismayed every time I walk into a classroom and another student (not the teacher) takes the initiative to turn off the A/C by them self 'because they're cold'. The other day, we had a cold front come through, so obviously the A/C was off and I thought it was a bit hot/stuffy inside the room. So I sat right next to the window and cracked it open. I'm not sure how it made the others feel, but I had on a T-Shirt and shorts...there's not much more I can do. :)

A couple of other notes. My books are almost exclusively characters, so I am now forced to spend more time on character recognition. In order to accelerate my speaking and listening, these last few months I have neglected characters. However, I can't really do that any longer and a good chunk of my study time is now being poured into reading/recognizing characters. My teachers are dismayed that I cannot (and don't desire to) write characters from memory. The time commitment involved in that is something I cannot even think about right now, and may never invest in. With the advent of computers, I can type the sound of the character in and it will convert it to the character for me which is extremely convenient. So sorry teach, but a guy has got to prioritize...be thankful I'm at least trying to learn how to read this impossible language! :)