苏州大学 - Suzhou University

Hi all,

好久不见! Long time no see!

Melissa and I are still alive and are now halfway through our first semester of the Mandarin Chinese program at Suzhou University. We registered at SuDa (this is the totally hip version of the university's name) the Friday before classes were to start. We woke up at the crack of 7:00am, rode our electric bike all the way across town, stood in line and paid about 8000元 each for books and tuition fees for the entire term. That's a lot of red (the Chinese RMB 100 notes are red... I'm so funny with my cross-cultural jokes that I need to explain)!

Melissa and I are absolute beginners, but we decided to take the placement test anyway because we heard that there are different levels within the 'absolute beginner' group. After all, we had been in China for about a year and a half, so we thought we might be able to get into one of the higher-ranking classes. Turns out, we didn't totally flunk the beginner's test, so they put us in a higher-level 'absolute beginner' group.

This group is divided into two classes; one is reading & writing and the other is listening & speaking. Each class is an hour and a half long with a twenty minute break in between, and they are taught by two different teachers. These classes switch time-slots about every day, which is a little strange, and classes are Monday - Friday at 8:30am - 11:50am.

I think the only real problem with this program is that the two classes use totally different text books that are not tailored to their specific topic (i.e. reading & writing and listening & speaking). So, what happens is that we must take two 'absolute beginner' level classes with different course materials and homework. Basically, they're the same class, but with different books. Maybe this is not the case for all of the levels, and maybe this policy will change in the coming years, but it is the case for us during this term.

Melissa is sticking with both classes, but I have dropped one of these classes. I don't really think of it as a failure because of the flawed course structure that I just mentioned. In fact, I think that I am better able to really learn the material in the one set of text books simply because I now have more time to devote to them. Now I don't have to split my attention between the two different 'absolute beginner' textbooks!

It's not so bad though! Just attending the classes at SuDa every day forces us to study, and with studying comes learning! Our classmates are mostly interesting folks from many different countries, and some of them have even given us opportunities to earn a little extra cash on the side (teaching English, get your mind out of the gutter)!

We already have a mid-term examination coming up this week, so we have a lot of studying to do! Wish us luck!