Beijing Week 7 (北京周七)

Classes:
Again, overall things are getting easier to deal with, but everyone is itching to go home so it makes studying an extra struggle. The first few days of this week we read 散文 (literary/poetic prose), which wasn't so bad except that it felt pretty useless in terms of learning language skills that people actually use in real life, and it was frustrating when they asked us to write our own by looking at pretty landscape pictures because there are a lot of things that you could say in English that we have no way of expressing in Chinese past extremely elementary methods.

Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi 汉语水平考试 (aka Chinese Proficiency Test):
We also took the HSK a second time to note how much we've progressed in seven weeks and to have official proof of our Chinese level in case we wanted to come back and work/study. It was still a hideous test that required an unnatural amount of concentration and tactful guessing, but it was also undoubtedly easier the second time around, especially the reading and grammar sections (since those were the biggest things I could improve in and the focus of 4th year). I also got more sleep in advance for this time around, so if I'm lucky I'll go from 6th level to 8th level, although 7th will make me happy anyway. Either way I can enroll at a Chinese University... I'm just pretty sure I don't want to.

(Fun fact: HSK can also stand for "Horrendous Space Kablooie" from Calvin and Hobbes as an alternate term for the Big Bang. In a way, China's HSK is a Horrendous Kablooie of it's own kind.)

Beijing ZhiYe 北京之夜:
Saturday evening HBA put on its annual end-of-the-program show. I ended up in two acts: the fourth year skit (because hardly anyone wanted to do it) and a violin/ballet duet (because Chris Lin-Brande volunteered to play Butterfly Lover's Concerto but didn't think anyone would pay attention to a purely audio performance). Both required a lot more preparation than I had originally assumed and took up my entire Saturday. The Fourth Years are slackers to the max and didn't think about our skit until the day of the show (much to HBA's aggravation) and I am too out of shape to entirely impromptu a 4 minute piece. It was a good show despite the unnecessary stress in the end though - a lot of great imitations and talent and creativity, and a surprisingly good way to show how much bonding/Chinese learning had happened in a meager summer.

Relatives:
Yesterday was my daddy's birthday, although I didn't remember until 3am China time = 3pm EST... but I hope he forgives me. Today my granduncle and his son (my mother's cousin... what are those called?) took the train from Tianjing to visit me in Beijing and have lunch with me. It was a pretty brave trip for an 80+ year-old man to make just to have lunch with a distantly related little girl he's never met before. But that's what family does - they make efforts no one else will bother with for you because if family isn't there for you, no one else is.

My grandma is coming next week to see me off from Beijing too, and I have to meet with my host family one last time to say goodbye, so it's pouring family obligations on top of the many last-minute things that need to be done before I pack off.