Graduation

3 hour exam this morning, followed by a graduation ceremony. We had
speeches by Profs. Gu and Feng, as well as some people in connection
with BeiYu and some HBA students. I understood some parts - namely,
where other 2nd year students were speaking - and didn't understand
others - like when the 5th-year students were speaking. At any rate,
we all got our diplomas, and left to eat lunch, which was a large
banquet at the Conference Center with our Chinese families and
professors.
The language pledge ended without fanfare - Professor Feng simply
stated "language pledge is over" in the middle of a sentence, without
much prelude. Going back to speaking English, of course, presented no
problems, though I did slip in the occasional "dui" or "hao". It also
occured to me how unusual of a greeting "Have you eaten yet?" sounds
in English (it is a common greeting in Chinese). At lunch, we got to
hear the teachers speak English, when they chose to (we had a more
difficult time getting some to speak than others). There was a wide
range - most every teacher had an accent, but some were much more
fluent and had less of an accent than others.
Not sure what I'm going to do exactly these next few days, but plans
include Forbidden City, Tiananmen, Jingshan Park, shopping in the
larger street markets, the Summer Palaces, and the hutongs (old-town
alleys).