Day One: Success

I am smelly and sweaty and totally pumped!! For one, today was the first day I have worn my hair "down" since I shaved it all off. Technically it was half up and half down, but I haven't know the feeling of hair on my neck in over a year. So despite the heat and the fact that my hair did more sticking to my neck than flowing in the breeze, I'm excited :) Also (and maybe more importantly) today was the first day of the LANGUAGE PLEDGE. So turns out it is a lot more fun and a lot less terrifying than I imagined (in countless nightmares). Today has genuinely been the best day so far in Beijing, and no one realizes how happy that makes me. I have been so nervous about this adventure from the very beginning (as in from the time I started applying for my programs), and today classes started and I just had so much fun. That is such a relief to me (and my family, especially my mama). We read the pledge together at 7:45 am and it went into effect at 8:00 am. For the first three weeks the pledge only applies from 8am-4pm ON CAMPUS. My Chinese classes went well. We spent two hours going over pronunciation (yes, that is necessary for Chinese believe it or not), and we spent two hours talking about the taking the bus, greetings, taxis, and ordering food. Then we split up into groups and prepared skits. So two surprises: class was ENTIRELY taught in Chinese, but I was somehow able to follow, and I understood the skits!! Those are two things that I have never experienced before. My classes back home have such a wide range of language skill levels that the only class skits I can understand are my own, but here classes are only 4-5 people and everyone is of the same skill level-- perfect for language study. Next my friends and I left campus of course for lunch so we could escape the restraints of the pledge midday (believe me, after four hours of in-class Chinese drills you would do the same). I had niurou chaomian or fried noodles with beef. It was delicious and even an AMERICAN portion...meaning I couldn't finish it hahaha. However I did share a lot of my noodles with friends and that is the Chinese way of eating, it is all about bonding and developing relationships so Madison-adapting-to-Chinese-culture: 1 China: 0?? Hahaha :) After Lunch a friend and I went to the chaoshifa (grocery store)to pick up cutesy stationary. Naturally I came home with paper, pens, disney princess stickers, hopelessly adorable stamps etc...you know, the usual. I even talked to a fuwuyuan at a clothes store today while my friend was trying on jeans. I asked her a lot of questions that I didn't understand her answers to and made silly comments like "I like listening to music." I didn't learn much about her because I generally couldn't understand what she was saying, but at least she learned that American students are really good at stringing together useless Chinese sentences when under the pressure of talking to a local....so I guess Madison:1 China:1