Prescott Student Blog: Brett

June 30, 2008-

You know how occasionally you meet a person who just isn’t happy with doing the normal day to day things. They constantly study to keep that 4.0 and never allow themselves to slack off just a little bit. Well, for one reason or another I turned out to be that kind of person.

I graduated from Norco High School in southern California a semester early, so being my normal self there was no way I was going to just sit back and let that time go by. I signed up for Riddle’s study abroad program in the People’s Republic of China. I spent a month there studying the language and culture of the Chinese people. The trip was a once in a life time experience for me. I was impacted by the amount of knowledge there was right in front of me, at the edge of my finger tips. Unfortunately, as always good things must come to an end. I returned from China on the day my high school graduating class walked to receive their diplomas, so I joined them. I had a single day back at home in the States and then I was off again. This time I found myself in the beautiful but, blistering Prescott, Arizona.

So here I am, once again enrolled in a Chinese course. I am here for the Summer B Intensive Foreign Language Institute. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of information Zhan Lao Shi (Professor Zhan) is shoveling into our heads. Day after day we show up at 9 A.M. for the normal classroom session. We learn all about pronunciation, pin yin, and Chinese characters. In China I picked up a lot of the street language, you know, like the stuff you absolutely need to survive, such as: Zhege shi shenme (what is that?!?!) or Cesuo zai nar? (Where is the bathroom?) But now I find myself deciphering what looks to me like a code, such as this: 你好 我 叫王博。。。我是美国人. All that jibber jabber says is; Hello. My name is Wang Bo. I am an American.

So, as you can probably imagine, each day I leave for lunch with a massive headache. After lunch (once my headache has a chance to subside) we return back to the classroom for lab time. This time usually consists of a game or an interactive lesson on the computer. I must admit that I enjoy this part of the day much more. I get to just sit back and take bite size pieces of information at a much more reasonable pace. Each afternoon at 3:30 we leave with our king size stack of homework for a long evening of study. As I sit here and think about it, I can say that I absolutely enjoy this class. Sure it’s difficult and frustrating, but I wouldn’t be happy if it was any other way because easy is just too…easy.