Firstly, I would like to congratulate the newlyweds, my sister and her husband! It was a lovely wedding in my hometown last Saturday. By now, I am sure they are enjoying themselves on their honeymoon at Disney World.
In much less exciting news, I finished my first week of class at Harvard University. I must admit that I am glad for the weekend. After 4 hours of in-class lecturing/drills and 2-3 hours of outside homework + study, I am tired! But all the work wasn't for nothing, I learned a lot! I had already studied all of the topics and vocabulary, yet I still never got around to writing the characters. I learned over 60 new characters this week!
Speaking of characters, I also made a lot of new friends. In my class there were 10 students other than myself, however, 2 students dropped. One student had grown up in Beijing, China so the class was a little too easy for him. The other was only in the class as he waited to be accepted into the Latin language program. My other classmates are great. They are struggling a lot with the tones and pronunciation (just as I did when I first began), but they are staying motivated. My tones and pronunciation has improved tenfold. We were drilled for about 2 hours every day this week just on pronunciation! The teacher would point to a word and we would have to say it with the 5 different tones. It proved really helpful as I can speak without having to think of tones or pronunciation anymore!
My daily schedule seems to be along the lines of:
7am: Wake up and shower
7:30am: Head into campus to study before class
8:30-12:30pm: Class
1:00pm: Eat lunch
1:30-5:30pm: Practice/study Mandarin
6:00pm: Dinner
7-12:00am: Finish Mandarin homework/ Free time
Even though I am still busy, I am still finding time to do things I enjoy. My brother and I are planning to get back into boxing soon (he has been too busy with teaching his MCAT course lately). Hopefully, I can motivate him into getting back into running too! But I must keep in mind, "one step at a time."
Well that is all for now! I hope next week's blog post will have a better update and maybe some more exciting things will happen!
Stay Tuned
Zachary Zehner
张睿杰
