Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Farewell

Our last Friday activity - class trip to a Beijing Opera. So much tuk tuk chiang but pretty interesting. I can only understand 5% of the performance. Haha!



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I went for skiing at Nanshan. It was my first time and it was so fun!



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We have finally reached the end of the course. We had a graduation thing yesterday and a farewell dinner provided by BLCU. I got the excellent student award and perfect attendance award. Dinner was good. I was seated at the teachers' table. It is always nice to sit with teachers because you get to converse in Chinese with them. It actually feels good that I can actually hold a casual conversation in Chinese.

My listening teacher who sat next to me, asked me:

Teacher: 你的汉字写得很美, 为什么你不会写马来西亚? (You write beautiful Hanzi, why you don't know how to write Malaysia?)
Me: 我有写啊。。。我写错了吗? 但是我不会写 "亚"。。。我写了什么啊? (I did write...did I write wrongly? But I don't know how to write "a"...what did I write?)
Teacher: 你写了"牙" 。。。不是 "亚"。 "牙" is teeth. (You wrote "牙", not "亚"。 "牙" is teeth.)

LOL!

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Mike, Denny and Jonathan left for their Tibet trip today. It's the last day for me to see Mike and Denny. Oh the sadness. I'm so gonna miss them. Jonathan will be traveling around Asia and he will be visiting Malaysia on the 31st. So I will be seeing him on the 31st.

I'm bringing home all of the good memories of my time here. I have nothing to say now except that I'm going to miss the people I hangout with in Beijing and the good times we shared.

My last weekend in Beijing. This is the video of us hanging out in KFC before heading to Mix Club in Sanlitun. We were supposed to get Cold Stone ice-cream but it was closed, so we ended up in KFC. Robert was so disappointed. :P

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Random Updates

It's 9:26AM now. I just had my speaking exam and I'm done for the day. That explains why I have some time to kill now. We are just waiting for 1pm to go for another class trip again. This time, we are going to a place where they introduce us the history of Beijing opera. Pretty interesting!

I didn't know all these trips are included in the programme. Oooh I like! Even better, those one semester intensive course students get to go for a 6 days class trip to Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing. Of course, their course fee is much higher than the 12 weeks intensive.

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As the course is coming to an end, the attendance of the students are getting lesser and lesser. This started a month ago. I am the only one in class who never skip class. Looks like I'm getting that perfect attendance certificate. Yeah, big deal! =D

My friends are always joking about how they're going to sabotage me one day so that I will skip class and I won't be getting that certificate.

"I'm going to put a broom at your door so that you won't be able to get out of your room."

"We are going to do something to your food so that you will get diarrhea."

LOL.


List of names of the students with perfect attendance for a certain period on the notice board in the intensive studies building.

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Studying Chinese here in BLCU feels like a cultural exchange experience too. You meet so many people from other countries and you actually learn some of their culture too.

If I didn't come to BLCU, I won't know that the people in Germany are still using ICQ.

If I didn't come to BLCU, I won't know that the Japanese do not have a signature. Marina told me that the Japanese do not have a signature. They just write their name as it is. People will laugh at you if you have one. Signatures is only for celebrities or famous people.

One shocking thing is when Marina asked me at what age I started to bathe myself. She was shocked when I told her 4 or 5 years old. So I asked her the same question and she said 12! And then everyone started mocking her and her country. Poor girl. Of course she know that we are just joking.

During dinner one night, we asked everyone the sounds of the animal in their country. It was a good night...we laughed so much. Here is a summary:

Dog
Canada: Woof! Woof!
Japan: Wang! Wang!
Indonesia: Gook! Gook! <--We can't stop laughing

Pig
Canada: Oink! Oink!
Japan: Buik! Buik! <--Again, we can't stop laughing

Frog
Japan: Kero! Kero!
Germany: Quaaaaaa <--Hysterical

I was talking to my Canadian friend and I said "revise" for exam. He corrected me that it should be "review" and not "revise". You only say "revise" if you're modifying something. Later, I found out that the British call it "revise" and the American call it "review". That's because Robert (Malaysian who grew up in London) also said "revision" and Denny (Indonesian who spent the last 6 years of his life in America) was confused with that term. Hmm...interesting.