Quite how I made it to group 102 with my performance on the placement test I don’t know. Although 100 is complete beginner’s Chinese, the group above - 201 is for fluent multilinguists who have been in China for nearly a year, like my Manchester course mate Aaron. What this means is that they have somehow worked out that I am a nearly fluent speaker. I’m flattered, but as class goes on this is clearly not the case - and I find myself quickly sinking to the dregs of a talented group of Koreans and Japanese. My closest friends will of course be the Anglophones in the class - an Oklahoman called Brett, his American-Korean girlfriend Jiwon, and another American called Mark. After the second lesson however, Mark asks me if I’m finding the class incredibly hard. I admit I am, but lie that I am just about coping. We never see Mark again after this lesson, and I am left stranded as the one hopeless straggler. The good news is that by noon we are finished - and I plan to explore Hohai by day.

At noon I meet up with fellow Manchester and BeiShiDa students Rosie and Hannah who are in 102 and 101 respectively. We go to eat at what will become one of our favourite eateries in the BNU area - if only for the fact that it offers Western food and great Chinglish mistranslations. I order the “Italian Tomato Vanilla Face” - the “face” here is almost excusable as the Chinese word for noodles 面 also happens to be a word for the face as well. The vanilla remains a mystery however - the “face” does have a hint of something sweet but is just an essentially well-made and poorly-translated spaghetti Bolognese. My next dish choice will I think be the “Bacon intended for face cream” (a completely mysterious Chinglish dish from which all I can glean is the bizarre image of rubbing bacon all over my face).

The weather is far too cold and grey to even consider Hohai. Much like my homework that week, my travelling will be procrastinated in favour of sleeping and trying to access facebook, youtube and blogger, all of which are banned in China. My pursuit of unfiltered internet is a boring one despite dragging out the whole week, and in short the case is this: I can’t access the above without what is called a Virtual Private Network - and my quest for a VPN sadly ends in vain. That is why, for now, the blog is in a somewhat rugged and dishevelled condition - much like me in my first week of classes at BNU.

Tuesday brings afternoon classes and the first of what we will all find is an insanely hard class - the 报刊 (baokan or newspaper reading class). Being first on the register as 安陛德 (an bi de) is a new thing for me, and I immediately reap the benefits - as I am chosen to present the first review of a newspaper article I have found - lucky me - in a ten minute presentation to the rest of the class next week. I am shocked to find I have been thrown in at the deep end where my best attempt at swimming will be a very tame doggy-paddle - for a start even being able to get the gist of a Chinese newspaper article is something I dream of - never mind being nearly able to articulate my educated viewpoint on it. I vow to stick with 102 however, but immediately get on the phone to my Beijinger friend Aaron with a desperate text “Aaron, finding 102 pretty tough” (as ever, king of the understatement) “where can I get hold of one of those electronic dictionaries? Have come to the brutal realisation that I am in desperate need of one. Pete”. “Those electronic dictionaries” are a basic tool of the Chinese student, it turns out, even the nearly fluent Koreans are constantly tapping away with their styluses on their tiny computer screens to work out the characters - I’m mental not to have one, and don’t have a snowball in Hell’s chance of completing this project without one.

We have lunch together, as the amicable but clearly ranging-in-talent group 102-07, and are kindly given our respective nicknames by the Korean girls - the teacher’s pets and already class leaders. I am to be called Pen “as in Peter Pen”, they decide - although I have fared better than Brett - whose name sounds a little like “bread” to Asian ears and hence is christened 面包 (mian bao - there’s the multiple meaning mian again = bread/noodles/face) - and my tough but smiley Japanese friend Kishi becomes the distinctly tamer Kitty. Although we converse in Chinese I get the feeling that the majority in the class - the Koreans - all understand each other much easier than we do - and Peter Pen is way off in Never-never-going-to-understand-this-land. I spend the night in my flat which is empty, sweating over the pile of homework we have already amassed.

A little later that night, I get a knock on the door. It is the Uzbek. “Where’s Rom?” he demands. I don’t quite understand the translation “Whose room?” I ask, and offer, pointing helpfully “my room’s there.” “No,” he replies, “Rom, where is he?”. Immediately I understand - and almost want to say “Oh, you mean Yuri”; but no, he doesn’t mean Yuri, Pete - your Russian flatmate’s name is Rom. I have spend a week not really speaking to him having immediately forgotten his name on introduction - and had convinced myself his name was Yuri. He’s not in, I tell his friend from Uzbekistan, a man with a ridiculously annoying whooping laugh I will find as the week progresses - and later that night as I try to get to sleep in vain for morning classes.

As a result I am late to class the next morning and am grilled over this by the Koreans, though having neither the energy nor sufficient Chinese to respond I just tell them I slept too much. Thankfully Rom and his girlfriend are sleeping when I get back so I snap up this opportunity to get some proper sleep, mess up my sleeping pattern even more and stay on the internet until the small hours. This is interspersed by a meal out with Rosie and Hannah (Rannah?) again - and at first we opt for a different venue - the nicely named Happy Times. Happy Times turns out to be grim and slightly tacky times as we sit down on in a sofa enclosure with beaded curtains and are offered old Haribo and banana crisps as the only food served by a 茶馆 (chaguan) that reminds me more of a seedy Manchester nightspot. So it is back to Western food that we head, this time I get the “Seafood Face Cream” and am not disappointed (unless I had wanted to use it as some kind of moisturiser for my face), when I get  a delicious dish of creamy spaghetti with seafood. It’s still noodles though - more or less.

Wednesday and Thursday both bring classes in which I feel like my feet can just about touch the bottom - though I’m still out of my depth, and my faith in class 102 is somewhat restored. When not only Rosie, but also Brett and Jiwon talk about moving down a group however, my self-confidence is somewhat dinted again. The Americans seem far better and more able to cope than me at Chinese - and if they were to move down, I would be left in a group of Asians that I never even speak to. I hope that they change their mind and I can keep my hard earned place in 102, although a part of me yearns for easy-peasy Chinesey and would be quite happy to play games in 101. Friday confirms my decision however. Even my favourite teacher, the overly-saccharine Ting Ting puts questions to me that I don’t understand a word of - and I think it’s high time to move down. More to the point Brett tells me it’s more than likely that he will, and his girlfriend hasn’t even turned up to class - so this will turn out to be our last 102. The rest of the day we will spend wangling course changes and buying a whole new set of books for our new course. We sit in on 101 classes, and for the first time in BNU class I am enjoying myself - people are having a laugh - and even playing games. Who cares if their Chinese isn’t in mint condition? It’s better than listening to a teacher rattle off sentence after sentence you don’t understand, and feeling too daunted to open your mouth.

Plus I don’t have to do that huge newspaper project. I’ll leave that in the capable Koreans’ hands. As if to celebrate I text Rannah to see who is going out tonight in what could be our first night out on the Beijing tiles. Hannah is moving house to WuDaoKou that night and I, Rosie and our course-mates are invited - Brett and Jiwon are up for it. Rom is in a friendly mood that night and we have a chat about classes (I am now on the same level as him, and will in fact be in the same group as the Uzbek), he heads out at five o’clock to meet a friend. For tonight, the flat, the night, the city is mine - Beijing is my oyster, that I am just about to crack open.

Week 3...