Arriving at the university with ten minutes to spare, I realized I should have given myself more time. The yard outside the foreign language department was a mess of 外国人 all politely pushing to see the classroom placement list.

Things were organized in typical Chinese fashion. A sort of chaotic mess that leaves you feeling like you should know where things are, but just can’t seem to wrap your head around it. Eventually I found my name – in Chinese – on a list posts on a random wall away from the posting board.

Fully expecting to walk into class today and ace it – if you remember, I was told I could either go into Level 1 Chinese (as that’s where my reading/writing is at), or I could tough it out and try out Level 2, allegedly where my speaking/listening is. I took the easy road.

For whatever reason, administration had different plans and wrote a nice big “2″ beside my name. Not having the energy to try and navigate the clusterfeck of red-tape that it might be to get things changed, I bit the bullet and bought my books.

Now 20-25 minutes late for my 汉语 class, I walked in on a scene familiar to anyone that’s taught ESL – the “getting to know you” class. Man, this is my first-day standby whenever I need to start a new class. It’s a great time killer, takes absolutely nothing to prepare, and the students are generally comfortable with it – good to see that crosses languages.

Taking up the last available seat in the classroom beside a self-proclaimed Korean Tai Tai and a rather nice American girl, I went to work trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Basically we were instructed that we needed to present the class with five sentences about ourselves using “是“.

I was initially nervous that I’d be far behind this group of students, most of whom were indicating that they had studied formally for at least a year previous. As it turned out everyone was equally nervous, and rusty, so we all had a good laugh.

After an hour and a half of this, we took a break and then reconvened for our second class – 口语. This proved a much more difficult class. The teacher, who can’t be more than a year or two out of university herself, is a doll, but seemed to crave our blank looks of utter confusion.

I made it through though, and aside from having to try and make sense of a two page dialog that I only know every 5th word of, I think I’m doing alright. It’s comforting to see that despite me being a bit over my head in the Level 2 class, I’m not alone.

So yeah, with nothing but positive things to say about my first day, you might be wondering about that “sick and tired” bit. Mid-way through the second class I started yawning uncontrollably, but assumed it was just not having had a great night’s sleep.

Getting home, I was doing everything to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired. Then, while eating lunch and watching some South Park with Maggie, I turned to her and asked, “why is it freezing in here?” Looking at me with that screwy face only a wife can give a husband, I knew I’d caught a bug.

It’s now 8pm and I’ve been sleeping all day. I feel horrible, but slightly better than when I first started to crash. I’ve had this feeling before, and think it’s likely stomach flu/food poisoning. Fun.

Will see what the morning brings, but it’s somewhat disheartening that I might already be playing hooky and it’s only the second day.

I’m often praised and then quickly chastised by Chinese co-workers on my level of Chinese. When they first meet me they lather it on, but once they know I have a Chinese wife, their faces screw up and they try desperately to understand why I can’t speak better.

The truth is, nothing has hurt my Chinese more than having a Chinese girlfriend/wife. This isn’t a slight against her in anyway, as she does her best to push me in the right direction – correcting my tones, telling me for the thousandth time how to say random vocabulary, etc.

The problem is, nothing is a keener motivator than the day to day struggle of having to deal with the Chinese-speaking masses just outside my door – and with Maggie by my side, even simple conversations that I could navigate through, are handled by her.

Well, enough is enough. I’ve watched friend after friend make huge strides with Chinese while I sat dumbly by mumbling “ting bu dong”. I’ve made the decision that come the end of this term I’ll be turning from teacher to student and exchanging my ESL lesson plans for Chinese homework.

I’ve settled on a program at Soochow University (aka Suda) – don’t ask me why they still use the silly Wade-Giles spelling. The term runs from September to January and costs about 8,200 RMB (about $1,200 CAD). This breaks down as:

The price structure seems similar to various other Mandarin courses I’ve seen in other Chinese cities. Though not “cheap”, considering what a foreign student pays a term when they attended Canadian schools, it’s a steal. It’s four hours each morning (8~11:30), Monday to Friday. The program also offers some interesting electives – Chinese History, Chinese Calligraphy, Traditional Chinese Painting, Tai Chi and Chinese martial arts – in the afternoon, so I may enroll in a few of them as well.

I’m quite hyped about being a student again. It’s been on the back burner for quite a while now, as the wedding basically stole the show (and emptied my bank account) over the past year. Now with married life settled into, I can start focusing on the rather massive collection of other things populating my “todo” list.

I’ll be registering in the summer (as my Z visa expires, and I’ll need to transfer it to the appropriate student visa), and as such will be taking a placement test. I’m a bit nervous about this. My language abilities are all over the place – I know some rather complicated vocabulary reasonably well, but am completely lost with other, relatively simple, things. I can say more than I can read, read more than I can write, and write more than a beginner, but not by much.

As such, I’m going to try and hit the books before hand and get some sort of consistency in my Mandarin knowledge. With having a relatively passive interest in learning Chinese since I first arrived, I’ve a huge collection of links, books, software and such to help me – but am open to any suggestions that have worked for you readers.

I’m planning to put into practice Mark’s good advice (Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of ‘Hidden Moments’) and also some tips gleaned from a Pick The Brain article.

These ideas, coupled with my use of ChinesePod‘s free MP3s, Active Chinese‘s cool lessons and a couple of text books I’ll have to dust off, will hopefully cause me to, at the very least, not get put in the “NEEE HOW” newbies class.