My Name

My first attempt at writing my Chinese name.

Day Two: 9:00-12:00 and 1:00-5:00

Everybody in my class is feeling exhausted. The first thing we did in class today was a quiz on numbers. The tutor, Yin, dictated the numbers while we wrote the pin yin and the Chinese characters for the number. I am surprised at how easy it was to learn the numbers and I am pleased with myself because now I have my first one hundred in the grade book.

After the quiz I learned how to say the date, my birthday, ask for somebody’s birthday, say I am starving to death, the colors, and some other useful phrases. It was a challenging day but my biggest challenge was writing a random question without any help; I began to panic when I heard Lao Shi Ling saying that we were not able to use the internet or our classmates’ help to write a random question. After a couple minutes of panic and frustration, I was finally able to write my own random question in Chinese.

你是 墨西哥人吗
Ni shi mò xi ge rén ma?

“Are you Mexican?”

That is the first thing I was able to write in Chinese by myself. To my surprise there are no conjugations in the Chinese language and that honestly makes things a lot easier.

Today has been a long day and even though we spend most of our days in the classroom, we still get homework. All the work makes my brain feel a bit dead, but I am really looking forwards to being able to write more sentences by myself.

Class Hours: 13

Study/Homework: 4

Total Hours: 30

We Love Chinese Class

This is a couple of my classmates and me. We had to do a Chinese photo shoot and the caption on the picture says, I love China!

 

Photo by Rao Ling and permission given by UNG Continuing Education

My Chinese Name : 龙 丝美

Based on the way our names sound, our Chinese instructor helped us figure out our Chinese name. My name in Chinese is 优丝美 (you si mei). It means excellent beautiful silk, but in order to include my last name I had to add long (龙). So therefore, my whole chinese name is 龙 丝美 (long si mei) and it meant beautiful silk dragon.

龙 – long – Dragon

丝 – si – silk

美 – mei – beautiful

First Day In Class:

Today was the first day of class. I am exhausted and I cannot believe I am actually doing this. FSLA is definitely a big challenge. Today at nine o’clock I walked into a classroom knowing nothing but ni hao (hello). I must admit I feel very accomplished because I now know how to count from one to a hundred in Chinese. I also know some basic vocabulary that Lao Shi Ling taught us today. I have to admit that these three weeks are going to be extremely hard because Rao Ling, the Chinese instructor, has very high expectations. There are fourteen people in my class and only five of those fourteen students are girls. It has only been my first day and I am feeling as if I have been here for a whole week already. This program is definitely a big challenge but I am sure I will be able to get through it!

你叫什么名字？ Nǐ jiào shénme míngzì?  What is your name?

你多大了？Nǐ duōdàle?   How old are you?

 

Total Hours: 13

 

Lao shi Ling and Lao shin Yi

Rao Ling (left) is my Chinese instructor and Yi (right) is the tutor who is helping her out. Both of them are native Chinese speakers.

The University of North Georgia

This is the college where FSLA will be held at. I will be living here for the next three weeks.

Class Schedule

This is the class schedule my instructor gave to us today when I met her. I’m really looking forward to these next three weeks.

Today Is the Day – Setting Up The Room (3:00-3:30)

I arrived at UNG today and my journey has officially begun. Tomorrow my day will start with an hour of PT (Physical Training) and after that breakfast and class. My room mates are really nice and I feel like these next three weeks will be filled with new experiences that will change my life completely.

The Daily Schedule

This is the schedule I received today as I arrived at the dorms.