Sweat, Blood and Tears! Or Maybe Just Really Bad Hand Cramps...

In my past blog posts I have picked out little snippets from the week that highlight how I am feeling and what I have done during that week. However, this week I will instead tell you a little bit more about a normal school day for me. This is a typical day in the life of an SYA student:
Everyday I arise in the dark at 6 o'clock sharp from my cosy bunk to quickly shower, scarf down whatever pipping hot breakfast my mama has set out for me, and bike to school as fast as humanly possible without getting mowed down by bus or taxi. Each morning I arrive at school at 7 o'clock, tramp up the 6 flights of stairs to SYA's designated hallway, and set up my books for my first Chinese class. Between 7 and 8 o'clock I pour feverishly over my Chinese vocabulary books hoping to God that some of the characters I spent hours scribbling over and over the night before begin to stick. At 8 o'clock on the dot my zhongwen laoshi (chinese teacher) comes in, takes all my chinese zuoye (homework) and leaves us for 10 more minutes of frenzied studying. After 10 minutes, my teacher reenters the room and we all know what comes next. She says the words we come to expect but still dread immensely. "Shang ke. Xian zai ting xie." Basically meaning, class is starting, now its time for your quiz. Everyday we have a quiz dictation in which our Chinese teacher says the pinyin (pronunciation of the Chinese word) and we write the character and English meaning. This may sound relatively simple to all of you back at home, but please do not underestimate the ability of sleep deprived teenagers to completely blank out after hours of studying. It has happened to me on several occasions and it is a highly unpleasant to receive the small dictation book back in my mail box covered in red ink. Anyway, after the tingxie is over class begins and we spend the next 50 minutes answering back and reciting sentences in Chinese. After that, 10 more minutes panicked studying and another Chinese class with another tingxie. So by the time 10 o'clock hits, it feels like a week has gone by rather than just four short hours.
Then what would be the regular school day for most high schoolers begins. I won't go into much detail, but the next several hours entail Honors PreCalc, English, and Chinese History, all of which the teachers expect the most out of you. So when the last bell rings, we each fill our shubao (school bags) with our mountains of homework, square our shoulders, and head home with heads buzzing with an overflow of newly acquired knowledge. Then the real work begins.
Homework is a word greatly despised by almost all students around the world and I am no excpetion. My original dislike for homework has intensified 10 fold since coming here because it means instead of exploring the cities ancient neighborhoods, or visiting the major sights, I sit in my bunk for 5 hours and solve trig, write about Chinese poetry, read about the numerous dynasties, and of course, study Chinese.
Then after the exhausting day, I stumble into my bunk at around 12 and sleep until my alarm goes off and tells me I have to do it all over again.
I realize I probably seem like I am whining, and perhaps I am being a little bit unfair. I am going to school. There has to be work. It is inevitable. I just wish I could figure out a way to manage my time better because clearly the system laid out above does not include enough time for sleep.
Also I do not want this to be read as, "I am overworked, overtired and want to come home" because that simply is not the case. Even though I am working harder and sleeping less than I usually do, I am having the time of my life. There are times during school with my friends or during dinner with my host family that I have the most wonderful moments, and I wouldn't come home even if someone told me that my host school had decided never to give homework again. That's because I know that this work is worth it, however exhausting it may be. I am tired, but I love it here.
So, now it is 12:13 pm on a Friday night and that means time for sleep. I hope whoever you are, wherever you are, that you appreciate this blog post because it is cutting into my already limited sleep time.
Until Next Time,
Julia

Song of the Week
Waking Up In Vegas by: Katy Perry