Getting into the Rhythm of Things...

I actually wrote this post on Saturday but the internet would not work…

Today is the first day since I’ve gotten to China that I have the whole day free. No class. No excursions. No lectures. Just free time. And maybe some homework.

Classes started two days ago, on Thursday. My regular weekday schedule is pretty much as follows: starting at 8:00 AM, I have two hours of Chinese with Charles, one hour of Taiji with this really funny old man who does not speak English, about another two hours of Chinese with Huang laoshi (黄老是, literally ‘teacher Huang’). Then we have lunch at the dinning hall, for which we all have meal cards and little metal pots/bowls. At the entrance of the dinning hall, we wait in line for someone to scoop rice into whatever dish we have, for which we have to press our cards on a sensor for it to deduct a couple kuai (which is the equivalent of about 50 cents). Then we go around the dinning hall, where they have different dishes set out at different ‘stations’. Once a dish is picked, the cost of the dish is deducted from our meal cards. Of course, the restaurants here are so cheap that we go out a lot and can get a good meal for the equivalent of a dollar or two.

After lunch, I usually have a bit of time to do some homework or go online. Then, there’s usually a lecture or movie that I have to go to at 14:30, which can last for a couple hours. Then free time, which is usually spent walking around Kunming or doing homework/trying to narrow down my ISP ideas. Speaking of ISP ideas, I’m thinking I want to do something with mythology and folktales (which is totally different from what my original ISP proposal was). I’ve read a few ISPs on the topic, but they all simply recount the stories, whereas I’d like to do something like what I did for Anthro Theory last semester, when I read stuff by Levi-Strauss and used his methodology to analyze certain myths. And I think I’d also like to investigate how material circumstances might affect different versions of a myth…or something like that. I need to read more about the different ethnic groups around here to decide where I’d like to go for this or if it’s really what I want to do.

This schedule is actually not absolute because excursions sometimes alter it. For instance, yesterday, the language classes were shortened and we didn’t have Taiji because we went to a Mosque. There were so many people there for the end of Ramadan (Eid ul Fitr) that we simply waited outside for a while, as people took photos of us and we took photos of them taking photos of us. Then we went inside and sat on mats as a man whose name I unfortunately can’t remember talked about Islam and prayer. The day before he had also been present when a Hui man (Hui being the only minority in China that is based solely on religion) had talked about China and Islam amongst the Hui and Uighurs. We also had a lecture on Chinese modern history and then a movie about the Mao years, which was very interesting.

I had some photos...but the when the fifteen minute mark passed on uploading the first photo, I decided I could just try again later, hopefully with a stronger connection.