In addition to that, I get to have even more fun on Friday. In the morning, I have a listening test and a written test with 15 minutes in-between. After that, I'm free for a grand total of 2.5 hours before I have to report back to class for an oral exam. That pretty much means I sit in a room with Zhu Laoshi while she asks me random questions in Chinese, to which I better have a decent (and preferably lengthy) answer. Somehow, Friday the 13th doesn't seem like a good day for a final exam.
It's difficult right now to imagine that my summer class is so close to the end. I won't know what to do with myself for the next week and a half except, oh I don't know, be a tourist? Starting from Saturday the 14th, I have no definite plans until the 24th, which is the day we get on the train to Guilin. Extra tidbit for those of you who I didn't inform personally: my cost estimate for the Guilin-Shanghai trip has now been cut in half which, naturally, I'm very happy about. During that time off, I'm planning to go to a trip-briefing (given by Yammy Lai and maybe Glos Ho) on the 20th. Other than that, it's sight-seeing for this gwailo.
Fun factoid: I really should be offended by the word gwailo, but I think it's more interesting than offensive because of it's history. This is actually a Cantonese slang word referring to white people. It literally means "ghost man" because Caucasian people tend to have paler complexions, but historically it has often been translated as "foreign devil" because the term originated during the Opium Wars when tensions between the British and the native Cantonese were at their peak. Nowadays, it's considered very rude to call someone that so the preferred term for a foreigner is laowai, meaning "wise foreigner." OK, OK, Cantonese lesson over...
Like I said earlier, I have some major testing coming up so, in light of this, I am now spending a lot of my time in the CLC Student Lounge (a.k.a. the only place on campus with truly comfortable chairs). Here's a picture of my favorite study spot. The people in the traditional Chinese dress are, of course, mannequins, and that's a vending machine in the left-hand corner.
I haven't spent all week studying non-stop, though. I had promised to help Aishu with a linguistics experiment a while back so Monday after class I headed over to this place, the Fung King Hey Building. The experiment itself was really simple. I just spent 25 minutes listening to variations on 5-6 different sentences in Mandarin. Every time a sentence was read, I had to decide whether what I heard was a statement or a question which, given that Mandarin is a tonal language, is sometimes rather difficult. Halfway through, they played a piece of music (it was actually a piece I knew--"Brothers" from the anime Fullmetal Alchemist--so Aishu earned some cool points there), and then I listened to the sentences again to see if the music had had any effect. When I finished, they gave me HK$100 because, as I was told, no one would come otherwise. Helping a friend and earning some moolah? Sign me up.
The rest of my Monday was pretty much a blur of studying. The only other "exciting" thing that happened to me was that I found a snail. I'm easily amused, I know. Check this guy out, though...he's almost 4 inches long!
Plus, I get to bore you once again with the same view from my dormitory, sunset version:
Let's see, Tuesday was a little more interesting because it was Javi's birthday. During lunch, some people went to Tai Po to buy a birthday cake. There's a little place there called "Tasty Bakery," and the cakes are a lot cheaper than the ones you can buy at "Mei Xin" (the bakery at the University MTR stop)--they also taste a good bit better. Of course, Hong Kong has it's own variation on cake. It still tastes good, but let's just say that presentation and appearance usually mean a lot more in a cake than taste does here. The icing usually tastes rather cool-whip-ish, but where there's a birthday, there's going to be a cake. We've had 3 birthday folks so far and nobody's survived without getting a celebratory ambush. As for Javi, it's common knowledge around here that he simply adores mangoes. Conveniently, Tasty Bakery features a "Mango Cake" as one of its options. One thing led to another and around 8:30pm, we all barged into Javi's room singing "Happy Birthday" in Spanish and carrying the bright orange monstrosity lit up with candles. I wish I had a picture of that gaudy cake, but unfortunately, I don't. I think Javi had a good time, though, and hopefully we'll have a good repeat because today is Charlie's birthday. Let's suffice it to say that plans are underway.
Last but not least, I haven't discussed the campus food very much recently and I know many of you are still curious. This past week, the canteen at Shaw College finally reopened, which means I don't have to walk 15-20 minutes in search of food. Usually, a little walking doesn't bug me, but during typhoon season it happens to bug me a lot. Anyway, "Shaw Can" as the place is so cleverly named, actually has some pretty decent food. Zhu Laoshi (my teacher at USC--not the Zhu Laoshi here) will be very proud of me because I have finally eaten tangcuyu (sweet & sour fish), pictured on the bottom left. It was the most delicious thing on my plate by a long shot:
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