Classes are Over, Research is Beginning?

OK, I promise, this is the last post I will ever write about studying Chinese. Classes are over and it was a great experience. During the first week of classes, I would wake up and recall conversations I had the day before and think to myself, did we really say all of that in Chinese and this morning I woke up thinking about all the English conversations I had yesterday after the language pledge officially ended and thought, why did we talk in English when we could have said it all in Chinese?

There were quite a few highlights of the week, mostly that I felt good after all of my exams. I would say I definitely would say that completing my independent study class with a long essay, an oral report, and answering questions about my research project was definitely a highlight. Over the past year, I have been trying to synthesize my ideas about Chinese rice and write them in a way that would get me grants from an American scientific and research audience. As I spent so much time doing this, I knew that I should be thinking in Chinese about Chinese rice, but never had the time, motivation, etc. to make the effort to spend the time doing so. Luckily, what I was able to do over the summer was to find ways to effectively communicate my research to a Chinese audience. So I felt like I had really accomplished something after my test for that class was over. Altogether, I had my four finals for my four classes in about 26 hours, so it was a lot of cramming and not much sleeping, but I felt good about all of them.

Aside from being able to communicate my research proposal in Chinese, I feel the most valuable experience of the summer was to get me motivated to practice my Chinese everyday and to do so in a productive way. I know what works for me to practice and I am going to make sure I spend at least a couple hours each day aside from research on reading and writing in Chinese.

After finishing exams on Thursday, I was able to relax for a day and organize my papers and run errands that needed to be done. It was a good feeling to have time to do that. I got to see my friend Afton for the last time before he left Harbin to go back to Colorado. And then I rushed back to the dorm and sat in front of the TV to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. A group of American students and our Chinese roommates crowded together to watch it. I did not think I would be this excited about the Olympics, but it really is fun to watch how China presents itself to the world. And I love talking to Chinese people about the games. I guess I am looking at the Olympics through the perspective of a researcher, trying to understand how this experience is evident in people's lives here in Harbin. And its fun to watch the games that are important to Chinese people and that I don't necessarily see in the US.

So this morning everyone from my program left early to head back to Beijing and then most are going back to the US. And I stayed here in Harbin, with the task of trying to figure out how to begin 'research.' I looked at some apartments the other day and I am still deciding where I want to live. I have a meeting set up this week with the northeast agricultural university to get me set up as a researcher there. So I am hoping that over the next couple weeks thing will fall into place and I can get going. But I am not pushing for it to happen too fast, I am ready to take a little break and rest after my classes.

So I hope soon I can start posting interesting stuff about rice soon, but for now, I am taking it slow. I am making a lot of lists. List-making is a lot of fun, and makes me feel organized. It gives me a place to begin and goals to work towards. Getting started with research is a multi-faceted process and, in China, especially, requires getting to know lots of different people.