Oh. My. Gawd.

I tested into the highest level in the program! My classes are Chinese 400 (Changing Faces of Modern China) and Chinese 420 (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture). I'm a bit terrified, as half of the people in my class are, in fact, Chinese. This will be the hardest three months of my life. My first lesson (we do one each day) has 111 vocab words in it. The first lesson, they say, is 比较轻松...kill me. Each morning I have one hour of a "drill class" (8 people) where we do dictations followed by an hour of discussion (4 people), followed by an hour of debate (2 people), followed by an hour of one-on-one time with a teacher. Every Tuesday, at 7:30 pm I meet with a Chinese teacher who hands me a passage to read aloud. She is paid to correct me every time I make the SLIGHTEST mistake. "Oh no! You use third tone! but it is actually second tone followed by fourth tone!" Fifteen minutes of me repeatedly and incorrectly saying the first sentence on the page, and then I'm out.

I swear I'm the only non fluent student in my class. ^_^

Oh, all you flagship kids out there would have appreciated the HOUR long conversation concerning 拉肚子during our painstakingly slow general orientation to the program. "You see, it is a Verb+Object la is the verb you see? Duzi, your tummy eez the awbject."

Wish me luck. :)