Happy National Day, all. 节日快乐！Well, except to those poor staff having to work double shifts in retail to make sure their shops maximise profits from the hoards of holidaying Chinese who’ve saved up with the specific aim of spending a holiday with more money than sense. Commiserations to such folk!
Of course, National Day also marks about the half-way point in my first term at CNU, so it’s been a good time to reflect. I finished three exams over the last three days, and now have a holiday of ten days, which (thanks to moving to a new flat in the past week) I’ll likely be spending in Beijing. A low-key week or so of free time is probably just what I’m needing at this point however, as each day – and each of those exams – seems to further inform me that I’m not quite at the level I should be. However, with early starts and a workload spread throughout the day (not to mention bundles of homework), I’m usually left too tired to do a significant amount of independent catch-up study. So with any luck these ten days will help me get to a comfortable level in my course, so I won’t be spending quite so many minutes each lesson frantically scribbling down then looking up words, my lack of knowledge about which means I have no idea what the sentence that contained them could mean. That’d be nice!
The new flat meanwhile, the other cause of my quiet National holiday, feels like a worthwhile investment. Only 5-15 minutes walk from the university, spacious and clean, the place has started to feel like home a lot quicker than the shared-hotel-room I stayed in for the past month. The desk in my room is also a much easier workstation than the ever-crowded tiny thing I had in the last place. Also, the ability to wash my clothes free of charge is a welcome bonus.
So yes, the 61st Anniversary of the founding of the PRC is an occasion that leaves me optimistic, if not entirely overjoyed. I’m hoping to start the second half of this term in a much more collected state, so I can get onto thinking about the winter spate of exams and the Leeds essays, rather than just keeping up day-to-day. Although with the pace here, it’ll probably still have to be a bit of both!
