4 Days Into Classes

This is definitely the hardest I've worked in my life, at least in
terms of time spent on work; when I'm not eating, sleeping, or working
out (or blogging), I'm either in class or working on one of the
lessons. I also have a very early-shifted schedule; whereas I
normally go to bed around 11 and wake up from 7-8, I am now going to
bed at 9 every night and waking up at 5. One of the biggest
challenges is the differences in vocabulary sets between Harvard and
Yale students; the teachers tend to use Harvard vocabulary, so things
that Yale students have learned using one vocabulary set are mostly
unintelligible when other words are used. That's a good thing,
however, as we are being exposed to a wider range of vocabulary than
we would otherwise hear, and we have to know all the ways to say one
phrase for the ultimate goal of fluency.
I got here on Friday afternoon, where I met a group of other students
while waiting for a full busload to go to Beijing Yuyuan Daxue
(Beijing Language and Culture University). When we got here, we dealt
with some matters of setting up first. I went with a group of other
students to the Wudaokou area to eat dinner, then returned to the dorm
and slept. Saturday morning I went on a tour. Later, I took a bus
into the city with some others to eat lunch, then explored the (very
touristy) Wangfujing area. The other students wanted to stay in the
mall area longer than I wanted, so I took the subway back; the subway
system was very easy to navigate, even for someone who has only
studied Chinese for a year (the English option on the terminals also
helped). I forget what I did the rest of the day.
Sunday we signed the language pledge; I haven't conversed in English
since. Learning Chinese without using English poses special problems,
as we cannot ask someone the meaning of a sentence they just uttered,
instead asking them to describe it using other words or structures. I
think the most important part of learning Chinese will be vocabulary
accumulation, as if I do not know any words for a certain object or
action, I have to look them up or describe said object/action in a
roundabout way. If I can't do either, I simply have to switch topics.
This coming Saturday we will go to the Great Wall.