Classes begin

Classes began on September 10 here for all the foreigners who are studying Chinese. It has recently become a requirement that all beginning students must take at least 15 credit hours a semester so currently I am taking 15 credit hours of listening, Speaking, and Comprehensive with three different teachers which don't necessarily teach any of the above areas but they often switch. All of the teachers have been very helpful so far in the past 3 weeks of classes 2 of which are really nice and the third is a little bit more challenging... I will discuss the latter in more detail in the next post, when culture shock finally begins...

It is about a 20-30 minute walk to class which is probably pretty close to the same as last year at Liberty in comparison with the distance from East campus to Demoss.

However, it is a little bit different from walking on a bridge over a busy high way...

Half of the way is on the normal campus through the dorms and the cafeteria and the main class room buildings. Then the second half is on a dirt road through farm land. Once you get to the dirt road there is the sound of constant dynamite blasting as a bunch of construction is taking place at this end of the campus, which causes some humorous times in the middle of class...


At the end of the dirt road, as shown above, is the new foreigner branch of campus; which once was less than 2 minutes from most places on campus and now is a 20 minute walk separated from the rest of campus... This is also the area of my classroom as shown below.

In side on the left is my good friend from Thailand hes my only classmate who knows a little English. He is a medical doctor in his 40's who knows over seven languages and is studying the trade between different minorities in the area. Up front is one of five of my Korean classmates. The Korean students speak very little English so I have not gotten to know them well however, my Thai friend "Song ba" has been a great help to me.

Thank you, for your support I should have a lot more posts coming up soon to catch you up with the past few weeks of whats been going on here in Asia!