Studying at Sichuan Normal University

Hi everyone,

As you already know, I am living near and studying at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. Apparently, there are several Sichuan Universities, the Normal so named because it is/was (?) a teaching college. It is a large college, I believe, founded in 1938. If you are interested in reading more about the university, here is a webpage in English:
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http://web.sicnu.edu.cn/en/AboutSNU_1.html
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I spend most of my time on campus, most days from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In the morning, I attend Chinese class. I've been placed into the advanced class, so there is a lot of pressure from my very smart classmates to keep up with the language. I'm not the best in the class, but my language is progressing. At this point, we are learning pinyin and not the Chinese characters. Peace Corps's focus at this point is oral fluency. During training, they might start to teach the advanced class characters, but I'm not positive about that. At this point, probably 98% of our language instruction is in Mandarin (putonghua). We rarely ever switch to English. Day by day, I add new words to my active vocabulary, but I'm still only able to order a few dishes, so I eat the same foods day in and day out. I really have to learn more vocabulary for food. I eat a lot of dumplings and noodles, but that is in part because they are so cheap.
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Some days, we have language until noon, but other days, we have a health/cross cultural/TEFL session from 10:30 to noon. Today, we talked about the dangers of alcohol. Peace Corps is very strict about alcohol consumption when it causes problems with the host country nationals. If we get into a problem with a Chinese because we are drunk, we will be sent home. The problem is that, in China, there is a lot of pressure to drink. So we have to learn how to establish our drinking boundaries without ruining guanxi between ourselves and others. (Guanxi is the most important thing to Chinese. It is the system of relationships that the entire country works off of.) If we damage guanxi, we not only make our own lives more difficult, but we might damage the relationship between our school and its contributors. Drinking plays a large part in building guanxi, so we have to learn to balance drinking in order to build guanxi with drinking in moderation. I think it's often a tough call.
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Other seminars we have had: managing a multi-level classroom, dating in China, Chinese holidays, diarrhea, how to put out a fire, bird flu, brief history of China, etc. Some of them are quite interesting and some are a bit tedious, depending on the presenter. So far, I've like putting out a fire (we really did) and the health seminars best. We were supposed to get to STD's today, but we ran out of time. Also, we have weekly vaccinations, but I believe we are done except for one more Hep A/B before we leave for our permanent sites. We've had shots for Hep A/B, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, and maybe something else. There is a large rabies problem here, so we have to be really careful around animals. In fact, we are not allowed to own any pets except for fish during our two years here.
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After noon, we have an hour and a half for lunch. We then have some time to prep for model school and then teach model school. After model school, we usually have an optional Chinese tutoring time, which basically means an extra 45 minute class, but we have some influence over the content. Yesterday, we learned a cheesy, but kind of romantic, Chinese love song. I'll write another post about model school later. I'll post a picture of our students, as well. The last day of school is tomorrow, so we'll throw a party; I think it will be fun.
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Overall, I'm having a good time. I have a hard day here and there, but I'm very happy to be here. Sorry if I worried you by not posting for awhile. I've been very tired and busy and a little sick. I'm trying to get over a pretty wicked cough. I really like the people in my language class; we laugh a lot in class which I find absolutely necessary to maintain mental sanity. There is an ongoing joke about "chi doufu," which literally translates to eating tofu, but figuratively means making out. We also seem to have found a training theme song, "Strangers in the Night." I'm on the committee to plan our performance for the swearing-in ceremony, so we're trying to figure out how to include that song. We recently found out that the national director of Peace Corps is coming to China and will be the one to swear us in, so that's pretty exciting. There are also a few of us who daily work on a puzzle. It's amazing how fun a thousand piece puzzle is when you're trying to decide between puzzle and studying more Chinese.
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So hi from China. We're all very excited about the Olympics starting tomorrow. I'll write more about them later and how important they seem to be to the Chinese people. I hope you are all doing well. I love you and miss you.
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Jennifer