...is to have what's distracting you banned by the Chinese government. That's what happened yesterday when I tried to visit Youtube. Turns out China's added Youtube.com to their growing list of internet sites that they ban. The list includes Wikipedia, BBC.co.uk, and Blogspot (the site that hosts this blog- I'm allowed to publish but I'm not allowed to view it). Oh well, it's a loss of freedom, but at least my grades should improve.
Speaking of improving grades, after 2 months at ACC I'm now accustomed to the workload and as a result my grades and Chinese proficiency level are improving greatly. My life is so Chinese-oriented right now that it's even tough for me to write this blog post in English. I'm actually thinking most of the sentences in Chinese first, and then translating back.
That's partly because of the effectiveness of ACC's language pledge- it's been two months since I signed away my privilege to speak English. And although I haven't obeyed it 100% of the time, it's remarkable how often my classmates and I do. The language pledge has played a huge part in increasing the ease of speaking Chinese in any situation. The pledge, on top of the huge classwork and homework load, has contributed to what I think is a massive leap in my Chinese ability in only just two months. That being said, I wouldn't call myself “fluent,” and I still feel that taxi drivers, with their thick accents, are almost completely incoherent, but I'm very excited for the progress to come over the net 4 months of language instruction I have left until I come home.
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