still sick.

Classes started on Monday and it's fairly intense. I've got class starting at 8am everyday until 11:30am [or else ending at around 10am and starting again at 1:30pm until 3:00pm]. and then it's divided into sections. so some days i'll have speaking or listening or comprehension.
i pretty much understand everything the teacher's been saying [thank goodness] and most of it isn't anything too over my head. when they were interviewing us about our skill level, they said that my speaking and listening seemed pretty good but the grammar/reading/writing was def. at a lower level. so i could either be in the more advanced level where my speaking skills and whatever would probably be at about the same level as everyone else or be in the more elementary level where my speaking would be better but my reading/writing would be at about the same level as everyone else.
I decided to go with the latter. My speaking may be slightly better but my reading/writing is absolutely terrible. sooooo better to start from the beginning, i feel.

so the thing that i like about this program is that i've been meeting quite a few other international students. whereas in tokyo, i felt it was mostly just american students vs. japanese students with a few chinese/taiwanese students and a sprinkling of those from europe.
within the last two days alone, we randomly met someone from taiwan and his friends from wuhan, and a whole bunch of french people. there are also a lot of people from korea, indonesia, germany, etc. needless to say, it's more diverse which i'm really happy about. i think that was definitely one of my regrets about tokyo - not meeting more international students. cause i feel like that's one of the reasons you study abroad, right? to meet other people from around the world.

the campus here is huuuuuge. at least, compared to uic. definitely takes some getting used to.

we went to a market yesterday with the taiwanese [andy] and wuhan [rain and shine - these were their names, no joke] that had these pretty awesome caramelized strawberries. this is also the market famed for selling scorpions/starfish/sea horses/etc. on a stick. i wasn't quite in the mood for any of that, but rain graciously bought us all mutton which was pretty good.
there was also a market there and so we walked around there for a bit. a few of the people in my group are getting pretty decent at bartering. i have yet to do it yet. i don't want to for some reason. i almost feel kinda bad about doing it. i dunno.
afterwards, we wandered around the area and ended up at some hold in the wall bar. the drinks sucked and were way over-priced [even for chinese standards] but it was fun to play foosball and pool and junk hang out.
they're only in town until saturday but their business may move to beijing so hopefully we'll be seeing more of them in the future!

we also went to a place called silk street a little while ago and it was craaaazyyyyy. it's essentially a bunch of stands set up right next to each other with people standing and asking you to buy stuff as you walk past. it's freakin' intense. the stands are small and five million people are talking to you at once. and if you say no, they'll insult you, grab you, etc. ROUGH. but i guess it's good that way since then i won't be tempted to buy stuff. i so wanted to stop because i saw racks and racks of sneakers but.....yeah. sigh.

can i also say how much i'm enjoying only paying ~$2 - $4 for a meal? so awesome.