The local newspaper I (attempt to) read

Due to excessive excitement about the apartment expressed in the last post, I failed to mention that classes started this week too. My courseload this semester involves:

中级汉语(上）Intermediate Chinese I
中级汉语听和说(上）Intermediate Listening and Speaking I
普通阅读(上）Standard Reading I
中国报刊语言基础(上）Foundations of Newspaper Reading I
新闻听力(下）News Listening II

Newspaper reading is a challenge - there is a lot of vocabulary (including names of countries, people, organizations transliterated into chinese) and newspapers use literary terms and forms that are different from spoken use.

Newspaper reading is hard but I can already tell news listening is going to kick my ass because I need to combine all challenges listed above with the fact that reporters speak very very fast. I can understand a little bit after a few listenings combined with the teacher's explaination, but the first listening constantly triggers instant panic of the "omigod I don't understand a THING" variety.

Anyway, practice makes perfect and I'm supplementing the textbook by buying and reading real newspapers. They are so cheap here, only 1 kuai or 12 US cents. I use the term "reading" loosely because it involves far too much furious dictionary searching for characters I don't recognize. And I'm already reading the more simply written Beijing Youth Daily. And even then, I'm not always sure I understood what I read. Needless to say, it is slow going to get through a single article.

Still, I'm picking up lots of interesting vocabulary like uranium 铀 and (UN) Security Council 联合国安理会. But my favourite discovery was finding that 博客 means blog!