the coming of 2nd semester is imminent....

With the coming of the new semester comes, of course, the advancement of my Chinese language studies.  I will be taking Chinese 300 (4th year) with Professor Bodman. Professor Bodman is a retired St. Olaf faculty Asian Studies department member, who ended his ("official") time with St. Olaf after 26 years of teaching.  This year he has come back to teach my Chinese language class. 

Before we have even started the class, he sent out two short bibliographies of his life and the reasons why he chose Asian Studies as his academic discipline.  He grew up in Taichung, Taiwan because his father was positioned there by the US State Department.  His memories of the time spent in Taiwan, which span the major part of his childhood, are vivid: 

"Taiwan’s climate was warm and wet. We kept bare light bulbs burning in the closets to prevent mold on clothes. We had tropical fruit like papaya, pomelo, lichees, and longans, as well as fresh sugarcane to chew on. There were short, fat bananas called “apple bananas” as long as your finger. Papaya is still my favorite fruit."

While he is a non-native Taiwanese or Chinese person, I think his integrated foreign and native history will play a large role in our upcoming studies.  His experiences as the "other" growing up in what we consider "the other" can help us switch our mindset from the "American" way of thinking to a more "Chinese" way of thinking, a change that cannot be underestimated in language learning.

While previously my language courses were structured from dialogues and essays in vocabulary-specific textbooks, Bodman hopes to add multiple guest lectures, movies, and literature to our Chinese learning experience.  With this change of structure will come new challenges to face, not only at the academic level, but also it’s important to my interests in Asian studies.  I will be able to explore more ideas in a more sophisticated way, armed with better fluency in a language that I did not learn in my childhood.  I will have the chance to start opening up to the relationship between language and culture in a more specific way - being able to read more complex essays and hold better interviews with Chinese natives.  In all, I look forward to changing my investment into a love that can push my progress to achieving native-like fluency forward!

From Chinese to Love

I went to a bubble tea place the other day.  While I was talking with my two friends, another trio of Asian girls walked inside.  I didn't think anything of it, but I heard them talking and, of course, immediatly recognized 普通话 (Mandarin Chinese).  Mustering some courage (it's still hard, even after 4 years), I asked if they were Carlton students.  They kinda just looked at me, said yes, and turned away.  Awkward.  Not the conversation I was hoping for.

I think I've been spoiled by people being impressed with my Mandarin while I was in China.  Here, it is just another language.  I think they also assumed my level was too low to understand what they were talking about (which, when they were next to me, wasn't true at all - I understood almost everything).  I'm glad they didn't talk poorly about me, but with their attitude, they basically did.

I haven't studied Chinese since I came back.  I want to pick up my textbook again and also read Peter Hessler - but I'm having such a good time with my friends back on campus and enjoying late nights talking with friends, studying Freud, etc. And just like that, I switch to 5 months of Chinese to 4 weeks of Freud and love.

out sick

I tried so hard not to get sick in China (sucessful), and within the first two weeks I'm in America, I develop a fever/cough/congestion/headache thing.  Poo.