About Me

Greeting strangers! If you are reading this right now you most likely fall into one of these categories: family, friends, teachers, or fellow Juniata College students. If you are not one of the above by whatever misfortune or luck you have stumbled upon a college's student study abroad experience in China. Please stay and enjoy. My name is Jasun. Now to interject two disclaimers. One, this is my blog and I will speak my mind and sometimes, unfortunately, this may cross your comfort's threshold - and for that I apologize. Two, as much as this blog belongs to me, I am writing for you. As such, if there are any questions (I mean any) that pop into your head that you want answered just send me an email at Moyjf08@juniata.edu and I'll answer it on this blog. One more thing. I can't seem to upload pictures here. So I will most likely be uploading pictures on my facebook account. If you are interested in seeing these pictures and are not a facebook friend by all means add me - just leave message saying something of the sort that you follow this blog if I do not know you. Best wishes throughout the year, and I hope together we make it a fun, educational, and safe year.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Classes

This post is long overdue. But things have been chaotic and throughout this post you’ll see why. Let’s start with some housecleaning stuff. To my audience: we potentially have new members. My blog has been linked to my college’s website thus prospective study abroad students, et cetera, may be reading this blog and thus my posts will sometimes sound and will be oriented at them. So I’ll insert my apology and disclaimer now to my professors who will read this and see my horrible unedited grammar and writing as well as the slang that I use.

But nevertheless let’s get to the good stuff. Apparently people are interested in knowing what classes I’m taking. So without further ado…Classes started on September 8th but it took until September 17th for me to finalize my schedule – and even still it might not be finished, I’m not quite sure. The most interesting and of course the most intensive is Chinese language class. Four hours a day, five days a week, starting at….8am and finally finishing in time for lunch at 12pm. Now to be fair, it is more like three hours because we actually start at 8:10am and then get a break at 8:55am for ten minutes and then we start at 9:05am and another ten minute break at 9:50am – you get the picture.

This school has two sections: A and B or in my head Advanced and Basic. We have three students in our program who are in the advanced class. Two are from our very own Juniata College! The last one doesn’t count because he’s actually a Chinese citizen. His situation is complex and I don’t really want to get into. I was going to be in the advanced class as well; but after day 1 when I understood maybe 25-35 percent of what was going on I figured it was for the best to go down to basic.


Other fascinating classes include: Chinese Foreign Policy, China and Civil Society, and the mandatory class Modern China. Very Chinese if I do say so myself. I don’t think they require much explanation but I will provide one anyway.

Chinese Foreign Policy is very intensive survey of the surrounding issues regarding the foreign policy of China. Basically why they do what they do. We look at the themes, frameworks, and the origins of Chinese history and culture and how they play into their behaviors in the international community.

China and Civil Society is an examination of if civil society is in China and how it has adapted and modified to fit into contemporary China. The first question is what is civil society? This in itself is complicated because there are various conceptions and definitions of what civil society is. But the most generalized definition I can provide without over simplifying is that theory of the third sector or the individual distinction between self and society. The third sector is supposedly distinct from the other two sectors: the state and the market. But now this is sounding too complicated so I’ll stop there.

Modern China is a history class focusing on contemporary China – or post-Mao era. Here we are learning about current issues in China with special attention to state-society relations, the externalities of economic reforms, popular culture, Chinese society, the Chinese political system, and Sino-US relations.

I just want to take a step back and discuss a little about classes in general for prospective students. The first thing I want to say is Danny is really cool and flexible and will go out of his way to help you. So the way Danny does things is he had like four class options and as a collective we picked two that he would teach this semester. But on top of that, he is more than willing to set up individual or smaller group classes to fill in your schedule if the other classes aren’t your thing. For example, there are a couple economics majored students here and he is doing like a tutorial with them. Basically anything within reason is fair game. So for those thinking you might not be able to take classes you want; chances are you can convince Danny to teach it.

I also want to insert a rumor that I’ve been hearing. But there may be potentially another school partnership somewhere in Beijing in a few years. I don’t know how credible that rumor is, so take it with a grain of salt. But from what I’ve heard, economics students will be going to Dalian because it is an economics school (the English speaking economics teacher took leave this semester/year which is why Danny is teaching that economics class to those students). And everyone else will be send to Beijing instead.

So this is already probably too long, a problem that occurs quite commonly when I type. So I’ll stop here. Many more interesting topics that I want to cover…eventually. But I also want to write about things that interest you so if there is anything about China or their cultures that intrigues you let me know and I’ll try and fill your inquisitive minds.