Ok,
It seems a lot of the post here, are mostly of what we do with our off time, when we get off time. I figure since we never post about our academic situation (other than when I say "we're managing") that everyone thinks we're all doing peachy fine.
*I'm sure Cynthia's post will be up before this gets up, I figure I'll keep what I had originally written*
Sadly, with the results of our midterms, reality is hitting me harder than a faceplant onto cement. Let me start off with the following statement
I am failing 3/4 of my classesI am
not saying I'm not trying, I'm working my ass off, working on what seem our endless supply of work, studying for long hours, and attending all but maybe one physics class, and two Data Structures classes (Data structures being the one class I feel I'm doing well in).
The Stress level these past weeks have really been getting to me, I've been sick, my room is ridiculously cold due to zero insulation coupled with a heater that hardly heats my room, I'm up late most days working, studying, etc. And to top it off, other people are also studying late, later than I, and their talking through my paper-like door (which keeps neither sound or cold out, only matter, and a hard enough kick at it could disprove that though) which keeps me up till all hours of the night. I've snapped and broken down completely due to stress regarding school three times while I've been here.
I'm Sorry, I'm trying my damndest to work, and tried not to show it, even encouraging others when they've been doing bad. It's just getting harder and harder. We're only 1/8th of the way through our 2 years here! I feel I just don't belong here, This DDP program isn't meant for me, I think this program sounds nice on paper, and advertisements, but it just doesn't work well in practice.
The administration has had their hopes far to high on this one. In one year, they expected folks like David, Edward, and I, the ones who've had absolutly no backround speaking chinese to be fluent enough to understand a University lecture in Chinese. The reality is that we don't know shit right now, the people I understand right now are maybe some sales people if they ask simple enough questions, the cashiers at the convieniece store, and the waitresses at the canteen who ask us what we want to eat. all of the classes which were originally designed to be bilingual have all degenerated into just english, probably since we don't understand a word they say in Chinese.
Any conversation that goes into any depth blows over my head. With the massive piles of homework from our academic classes, I have no free time to study my Chinese characters.
There is a Chinese class, but I did drop it early, the reason being is that my current chinese level is far below that of the Chinese the teacher uses. Since the backgrounds in that class are multinational, all she uses is Chinese. I couldn't understand what she was saying when she was explaining chinese characters; what they meant and how to use them, as the words she used to describe and explain the usage we also words I didn't know.
I also found there to be little proffesional help offered by the school, and only offering it now, when we're so far behind everyone, probably even farther behind our classmates back at SFU. There were no T.A. or tutorial classes where we just asked questions and go over examples to clarify and understand the work, just having someone who cares and wants us to understand the work I feel goes a long way and helps us a lot. the best we can do ise-mail the teacher. Teachers who've been spotty at best, one such incident had us scrambling at the end, as one quesiton asked to a teacher revealed something about a project, which was due soon, that drastically changed how our project was to be coded. This was something she DID NOT mention in class, but was required for the project. From when the question was asked, it took ~3 days before we got a reply, for a project that was due in a week. we had started right away on the project, had it seemingly completed, but this changed had us scambling to work at the last minute to get it finished in time. Another similar incident involved several students asking for some help in their work from the teacher, saying that they weren't understanding how to do the work from just the book. The teacher had been teaching directly, example by example, line by line, from the book, basically reading the book to us. When help was asked for, I remember hearing "Well, I think the work is easy, I think that if you read the book, you'll be able to understand." We had been reading the book, on top of him also reading it out to us. What basically felt like a "You're SOL" kind of reply really lead people to hate him.
I have finaly decided to put more though into the notion of dropping the program, If I wanted to learn chinese, I should just learn it back at Canada. If I wanted to go to China, I might as well have just taken a vacation to China. If I wanted to commit Academic Suicide and kill my GPA, I'd stay in this program.
I figured this would have been a great time to see the world. I haven barely been around this country, I've gone to some places in this city, but the majority of my time has been in my room studying. I haven't seen or experienced this country, I've seen it's dorms and classrooms.
This is the scenic area of Yellow Mountain, about 4 hours bus ride from Hangzhou. A lovely view but I paid a price to get there - 18,000 steps according to a pocket pedometer! My knees were not happy. This first image is shortly after the initial portion of the ascent, which was facilitated by a comfortable trip via a cable car that gave magnificent views of the mountain terrain. 
