Dreams of White Tiles . . .

I went for a class at Diqiucun, a private language school in Wudaokou on Thursday. I’ve been meaning to go along for a while, as one-to-one lessons can be pricy (especially if you bother to find a teacher actually qualified) and having a few more people around you can actually make stuff much easier.

I opted for a Pronunciation Correction class for my free sample, and proved I needed it by having to repeat myself three times and point at the timetable before the girl at the front desk figured out which class I meant.

The class was pretty good – 6 or 7 people, all young Korean and Japanese girls apart from me (tough life, I know) and a lively teacher who was clearly remembering which students had which problems from previous lessons. It was very much follow-the-book stuff, but that’s fair enough – the class obviously had a routine which the other students were familiar and happy with (even if they hadn’t bothered to memorise the poem about the kite for their homework).

I think after the October holiday I may cut my hours at the main job down to 15 or so, and use the extra time to take more classes at Diqiucun. The main job isn’t really doing me much good language wise, and is therefore pretty boring. There are only so many Letter of Intent to Cooperate‘s you can read before they all begin to blur in to one (although I’m still amazed by some of the stuff you find in them, like

Clause 4.5: Party A and Party B will both obey the law

How does that work? What if they don’t include the powerful Clause 4.5? Can Party A murder and rob with impunity? Can Party B park outside UN headquarters in New York without fear of fines?

Anyway, I’m hoping to take maybe 10-15 hours at Diqiucun a week – speaking stuff mainly, and whatever else grabs me. They’ve got a couple of newspaper reading classes that may suit me, as I read the Chinese newspapers anyway.