Mid-term exams completed

Dear all!

I managed to miss out Armin van Buuren's DJ-gig, and now I'm bu gaoxing (if u don't know Chinese you may guess what it means). But, yesterday we were celebrating the ending of our mid-term exams, which were held on Thursday and Friday. We were just hanging out at Helen's and having whiskey in various forms, plus some shisha (it's gooood stuff :). The people present were: I, Silja, Ruslan, Antti (had to leave to another party quite early though), Nick, Natalie, Russell, Jaan, Marit, Thai, Ben, David, Wilson. Ruslan, again, was not supposed to get intoxicated but to my unsurprise did. No surprise, because Russell, a generous American guy, did offer us intoxicants. With Natalie we were taking lot of photos and having some good time :). With Jaan we drank some whiskey to celebrate the ending of the exams. Thai, Ben, David, Wilson are my classmates - they also honoured us with their presence.

The mid-term exams were composed of three parts: writing, listening and "kou yu" (spoken). For me - totally paradoxically - the easest bit was listening, because I never understand a word the Chinese people are talking to me. I can only express myself but am unable to receive Chinese sentences in any understandable form. The listening test was composed of several parts. For example, in one part one had to mark correct tones for the pinyin (Chinese written with these western letters) by listening the word being said from the tape. Tones - the cornerstone of the Chinese language - are in most cases quite easy to recognize. In the written test we filled out dialogues with proper questions and replies, wrote about what we are gonna do on the next weekend and how is the weather in the place X. Unfortunately I could not recall how to write Finland in Chinese, so I ended up writing of the weather of Beijing. The oral test was so utterly terrifying that I don't even want to think about it anymore. 4 parts: retell a dialogue you just read in your own words, read couple of sentences off a paper, talk about the topic that is written in your paper (mine was how has my Chinese improved during my stay in Beijing) and then she asked a few basic questions, for which I answered with some mumbling. Glad that's over...

Next week is going to be short in terms of studying, because on Thursday morning I, Silja and Jani are going to go airborne, heading for South Korea's capital Seoul.

Finally, some pics from yesterday evening:

27.11.2009 @ Helen's Cafe