Click on the picture and read the text. I love this - it's printed on the cover of Magnus' notepad, bought in China of course. I keep visualizing a tiny man sprinting his little heart out, straight into the notebook.

The new class level is a good fit and the material is just hard enough that I'm motivated to prepare and study. I have 4 classes: upper-Elementary level chinese, a listening class, a reading class, and an optional elective on the origin and evolution of chinese characters.

There are about 18 people in my class from Japan, Korea, Australia, Russia, Sweden, Indonesia... and North Korea! There are 4 North Koreans in my class and you can easily tell them apart from other BLCU students because they are all thin, tanned, men in their 30s, with the same haircut, and wear the same clothes, complete with a tiny little red pin of Kim Jong Il. 张美婵 Zhang1 Mei3 Chan2, the Indonesian girl who sits next to me, pointed at the pin and asked one of the students "他是谁？" ("who's that?") in total innocence - she really didn't know of Kim Jong Il. To which student replied in a stunned, how-can-you-NOT-know tone: "是我们的领导!" ("It's our leader!").

I met a very nice Korean girl named 尹翡翠 Yin3 Fei2 Cui4 who is also in my class. She's from just south of Seoul and majored in Chinese and German(!) in her university in Korea. We usually eat lunch together after class in Dining Hall Number 1 (building names here are utilitarian: I live in Dormitory Number 4 and attend classes in Teaching Building Number 1) which sells great, cheap food. The noodles and fried rice are really good. Big portions for pennies, literally at 4 RMB = 0.48 USD. But in order to eat said food, one must first navigate very large, in physical size and variety of items, menus pinned up on the wall and written entirely in Chinese. 翡翠 and I also speak completely in mandarin since it's the only language we both understand which makes our conversations simultaneously fun, challenging, and incredibly frustrating. So every lunch is mini-language-adventure.