After finishing my last full week of classes I figure it is time to begin reflecting on my semester her at CET Harbin.
Academically, I am satisfied with the program and I feel like the rigor of the classes, without any overwhelming sense of stress or anxiety, along with the benefits of studying standard Mandarin in Northeast China has gotten my Chinese to a level that it would not have been able to reach by studying in the States alone. I think it's also important to keep in mind that upon coming here I had a good Chinese language foundation thanks to Georgetown having a good Chinese department as well as relatively good study skills and personal motivation and those were also factors in my improvement.
Administratively, the program is lacking and I am currently working on a letter to send to CET headquarters in DC. The resident director, Li Laoshi, and that guy that was always in her office and for some reason was on CET payroll, Xuan Laoshi, and the resident advisor, Connie, are all nice people. Unfortunately, they are also utterly ineffective, unreachable and opaque in terms of what it is that they do, if it is the case that they are doing anything. Basically, I think that there needs to be a trimming down of resident staff, more responsibility on them to plan more cultural events for us, and for them to be a visible, transparently-operating, knowledgeable contact who not only lets us reach out to them but makes an effort to reach out to us.
In terms of Harbin, this is a terrible city. Whoever did the city planning must have been on crack, the infrastructure is in terrible condition, and for a place called the "ice city" there is not one plow in the city. They just let it snow, let people walk all over it and pack it down, wait a day or two for it to completely freeze over, then hit it with a shovel and scratch at the ground til they get it up and throw it into a truck so they can ship all of the frozen snow out of the city. And then the process happens again the next time it snows. And it snows a lot here. And I think this instance is a good analogy for not just how Harbin handles things, but how China handles things. They let the problem exist and watch the situation compress under the stress of a billion people until they have to deal with it and then scrape away at it and cart it out of the city, only for it to be followed by another issue.
As far as the end of the semester, I have "classes" on Monday and Tuesday but they are more review sessions and are kind of half-assed so that is not an issues. Then two finals Wednesday, one Thursday (incidentally my 20th birthday), and one on Friday (Jarrett's, a Georgetown classmate here in Harbin, 21st Birthday). Then Saturday is graduation/train to Beijing, chill on Sunday, then a Monday evening, Beijing time, flight to Chicago, followed by a Monday evening, freedom/eastern standard time, flight to Newark.
Lots to look forward to, as in looking forward to getting out of this place.
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