Going back to school

I feel I should inform you guys about the actual educational part, as well. The registration for courses happens online of course. For reasons unknown the uni closed the registration right when we arrived, only to open it up again the next week. The registration was possible for two weeks and during that time you actually went to the lessons you were planning on taking because the courses might be full, so you were basically trying to get in by showing up. And sometimes pleading to the teacher quite heavily... Some of the people here had quite the workout when they were trying to catch a particular professor so that they could request a signature for a participation form.  

In my case, only the Chinese courses were full. I signed up for two: Introductory Chinese I & Introductory Chinese conversation I. These should be for students who have never studied Chinese and the other teacher actually kicked out all the students who knew even some Chinese. This was a good thing, since there were more room for us zero level students. And trust me the Chinese courses are popular so you really need to fight for your seat!

Dummy studying hard or hardly...?

So when comparing the language courses to my biology courses from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Biotechnology the difference is like night and day. The courses that I chose have less than 10 people in them so we're fighting only for the seat farthest from the air-con, since it's usually freezing in the class rooms! I've 3 biology courses and I've been attending to each of them now more than once, but I've yet to figure out what exactly we'll be doing in them... It could be because of the fairly strong Chinese accents that the professors have. However, am happy that the teaching is actually in English, because I heard horror stories of supposedly English courses where the slides were in English but the actual teaching in Chinese and then you'd still have to participate in the three-hour long lecture! Must be an urban legend created just for the international students...

So far I can't say I've really started studying properly yet. Mostly my initial feeling is that the Chinese courses will be the most laboursome courses, or at least if you're serious about learning Chinese. The biology courses don't have any exams but some sort of reports and presentation(s), so I fear that most of the work will be done right before deadlines... Overall, it's the same here as it is everywhere: it really depends on the department/ institute you're studying in and the courses you want to take. Some courses just are better than others, and the same goes for the teachers. Luckily you can adjust to basically anything, it all depends on your attitude and how much work you're willing to put in your education. Luckily, everyone here seems quite happy with their courses and teachers.

Moreover, at times it feels like we're back in school. Especially in the Chinese lessons (I can't call them lectures). We're repeating phonemes after the teacher and usually before letting us leave the teacher asks each of us to perform a specific task and you can't leave until the teacher is happy with your pronunciation. Oh, and also, in the Kuang fu campus there's a bell that marks the beginning and end of a class! It is absolutely fantastic! Feels like I'm back in primary school! :') I'm quite thrilled that I don't live in that campus so I only have to hear it a couple of times, when I'm actually in class.

The bell tower at Kuang fu campus