Week one: completed

Hello all! Week one of classes has successfully completed. It's been a little hectic because everyone is allowed to go to as many classes as they want ("shopping week") to better figure our which classes they want to take. A few of the most popular classes were definitely over-enrolled with close to 50 people attending last week. Yesterday at 5:00 they announced (they announce things by putting print-out on a white board- they think sending mass emails is too dangerous) who had been cut out of these classes to accommodate the 30 cap. Who gets cut and who stays in the classes are based solely on the order of signing up online- so if I happen to sign into the course registration page a few seconds earlier then I will be in the class and you won't. I don't think this is the best system, but it is definitely very Chinese. Master's students also get first preference because they have pretty stringent requirements for required courses. Many people are pretty upset about being cut out of classes they wanted to take, so we'll see what happens with that.
Well, I fortunately made it into both of the most sought after classes that I signed up for, so I am taking: Modern Sino-US relations, Anthropology and Chinese Studies, Social Issues of China's Modernization and Macroeconomics. I am also taking Environmental Economics, but will probably audit it if possible. Both the economics classes are taught by the same professor and are in English (yay!). It's very refreshing to go to classes in English and be able to understand everything and focus on the content of the material rather than trying to frantically translate and missing some of the meaning. I was also signed up for Chinese history after 1949, but it turns out there are between 100 and 300 pages of reading every week. In Chinese. I dropped that class. I'm not sure I ever had to do that much reading for one class in English. The professor sat we me at breakfast one morning and asked how I liked the class, etc. I said I enjoyed it, but there were a lot of readings. Then he said, Well isn't that why you came to China?
There are about 18 or so Chinese faculty who each teach one class, and seven international faculty who each teach two classes. Most of the Chinese faculty speak some or a lot of English, but none of the international faculty speak Chinese at all, which, I guess, is an advantage for me as an English speaker with Chinese professors. On the other hand, I think for the most part the Chinese students have better English than the international students' Chinese, mostly because they have been studying English a lot longer than we have been studying Chinese. I think they have more stringent admission requirements as well.
Well, I must do some reading now...toodles.

Happy Birthday Lizzie! And Anna!