China China China China

Right now I should be studying for the two tests that I have tomorrow morning, or perhaps writing some of the many hundreds of characters that I need to write for next week. But, I need a break, so this feels like a relatively good use of my time. The pictures that I posted last week are from my weekend trip with my roommate to her home town of yongkang. It was a very nice trip, it was great to meet her family, and we went on a beautiful hike up to an temple in the mountains. The one slight problem with this location was that they did not speak Mandarin, but a completely different dialect, so I spent a fair amount of time being quiet, listening but not understanding, asking my roommate vital questions like "where are we going?" and "what did those people who just pointed at me say?" Apparently, according to my roommate, they thought I was either Russian or Malaysian. When I asked her if this was better than being an American, she said no, it's about the same. This week classes have been pretty intense. I am taking four Chinese courses, which means that I am expected to memorize about 3,000,000 characters a day, write several 400-800 character essays (by hand, no computers allowed) and then there are the tests. I am pretty sure my country of origin did nothing to encourage me to develop the work ethic that is expected here.
It is also difficult to study when there are so many places I want to go out and explore. However, I also really need to step up my Chinese a notch so that when I go places I can communicate with people in a more meaningful way. This week I have tried to find time to just got off campus and walk around. I also went swimming in our school's pool for the first time (it was very crowded), and started taking a gonfu (kunfu) class that meets twice a week. I will be beating people up in no time....just kidding, it is really difficult.
This weekend my plan is to go travel to Qiandao Hu, also known as the Thousand Island Lake (apparently the first episode of Survivor in 2007 was filmed here, or so Time.com told me). The program that I am on really encourages us to go traveling alone so that we can learn to figure stuff out for ourselves. It should be beautiful and I am both excited and nervous. Wish me luck!