Busy busy!

So we moved into the dorm/hotel on Monday, and yesterday we had orientation and did a little bit of shopping and hung out. It was a pretty busy day and I was very sleepy last night. Today, we went to 天安门广场 and 故宫 (Tian'anmen Square and Forbidden City) as a group and did a complete tour of the place and learned a lot of random facts. It was really interesting, and the Forbidden City is ridiculously huge. Like, insanely huge. I uploaded a bunch of new pictures onto picasa (I realize now I should've made a new folder for them since now it may be hard to track which ones you've seen or not, so I'll do that for the next set). Again, I explain a lot of what we did in the captions so reading that will probably be more interesting than reading this! ;]

We got a tour of campus today, or part of it at least. It's beautiful and will look incredible in the spring, I'm sure. It's also gigantic. 北大 (BeiDa) is like a small village inside of its walls. There are shops and restaurants and cafeterias everywhere you go, and you could almost sustain yourself without leaving campus. It's incredible and I love the atmosphere. I really just love that it's like a little city inside of a city inside of a city! It's amazing.

Tomorrow we take our placement exam which I'm really sweating about, since I haven't been in a Chinese class for almost 10 months! Eeek. Most people say that the test is good about placing you where you belong, I just don't want to end up in a really really easy class and not be able to move up (they say sometimes you have to argue with the professors to let you move up into their class because they aren't sure you can handle it). So I'm pretty nervous about it. Tonight after dinner I will be studying until I go to bed, to hopefully cram a little more into my brain. Exam is at 7:30A tomorrow, and we have another full full day after that. Ick :( Wish me luck please!

I also heard about the Deer Creek incident earlier today (about ~45 minutes after it happened). It's really terrible that something like that had to happen again in Littleton, but thankfully it was not half as bad as Columbine. The two kids that were injured are in my prayers, and hopefully in yours as well. Also, thank goodness for Dr. Benke! 7th grade math teacher, you are that much more awesome in my book.

It's almost 5:00P here, so it's almost time for dinner, and then studying time. I will update again soon! Remember to check out my new pictures if you want :)

孔宁