Class schedule and first day of class

The majority of the Exploration seminar is focused on cultural experiences, but a large component of the five credits that UW students are earning involves language. The students are broken up into four language levels with the majority of students in the 2nd and 3rd year classes. Classes are held from nine to eleven in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On these afternoons, students have a thirty-minute individual session with a professor from Guangxi Normal University (GXNU), where they converse with that professor about the lesson topic from that morning’s class. Because the time allowed for the number of classes is limited the workload is intensive. Students are required to familiarize themselves with seventy-five to one hundred characters per class. Homework involves general practice exercises as well as compositions that require students to interview people on the street.

On the remaining days of the week, cultural lectures are held in the morning and site visits that complement these lectures are conducted after lunch. At the end of the seminar, each student will write a short research paper on a topic chosen from the cultural lectures. They are encouraged to interview the GXNU professor who lectured on the topic and go further in their understanding and question asking. The following is a list of cultural lectures the students will participate in: Calligraphy, Painting, Medicine, Culinary arts, Ethnic minorities, Education, Music, and Environmental protection and hydraulic engineering.

The morning of the students’ first language class, Guilin was drenched in a heavy rain. Students met in the dormitory canteen for breakfast at seven thirty. Breakfast included, warm soy milk, fried bread, slightly sweet cornbread buns, noodle soup with meat, vegetables, spices and pickled vegetables, tea, boiled eggs and steamed buns with meat filling. Class began at nine. The 1st and 4th year classes contain two students each. 2nd and 3rd year classes contain nine students each. Yu Laoshi conducts the 3rd year class while professors from GXNU conduct the other three classes. Class pace is fast and much information is covered in the two short hours. Students met after class to do their homework collectively before lunch. After lunch, the students went on their first expedition outside of the University.