Let us talk briefly about the weather...

This is the third night in a row that it has thundered and lightninged in Beijing. There isn't much rain, just noise and light. And the lightning is purple--something which amuses me greatly, which in turn amuses Yoonji in whose room I study for a little while each night. Every time that the purple lightning crosses the sky, my head jerks around and I stare out the window, and Yoonji laughs at me. I think that it is the haze that covers Beijing that gives the light such a strange color. Or else China is magical. Either or.

Today is Yoonji's birthday. We were in our second semester of Yale Chinese together, and we are in the same 小班课 (Small class), so I see a lot of her every day. On top of that, her room is right next to mine. A group of Yale-HBA friends went out to dinner to celebrate Yoonji's birthday. Four of us from our second semester class, and a few others, went to a Mall and ate at a rather nice restaurant. At first we thought that we were spending a ton of money on our dinners (about 30-45 RMB) compared to what we usually eat for (less than 10), but when we converted it to dollars in our heads, we realized that we were spending about six dollars at a fairly nice place. It was an astounding realization. The restaurant was really fun. The waiters were very patient with our broken Chinese, and, noticing the birthday present that Andrew (another 老同学 from Yale) had given her, brought her a piece of free cake and played birthday music. It was a really wonderful and relaxing experience, and allowed us to take our minds off of our first piece of free-response written homework that is due tomorrow.

Last night, I met with my 中国朋友 (Chinese Friend). HBA arranges BCLU partners for us, so that we can really talk to someone who is not a teacher and who can help us if need be, or show us around. We went to a Muslim (Xinjiang Province) restaurant on campus that was absolutely delicious. As 67% of my conversations tend to do, we wound up talking about Harry Potter, which made me very happy. It was very fun, but I struggled with bits of vocabulary, which I found highly frustrating.

What's the most fun thing so far about this program is it's incredible how each day, it gets noticeably easier to talk in Chinese. The sign-language and facial communication of level two students is steadily decreasing in a very heartening sort of way.

Of course, there is still tons left to do learn...