Recovering from chinese class related trauma

Today was the first day of class and I honestly have to ask "what did I get myself into?!"

It was so hard. Out of the 3 teachers, the old guy spoke the slowest and used some english to explain things we didn't understand and he was pretty funny. The other two were around 27 yrs old and omg they spoke fast.

First class was listening, i'm not at all surprised that this school is still using audio tapes but they're really inconvenient when you have to repeat something. The beef I have with this teacher is that every time my mind slipped and I was daydreaming for nothing more than 10 seconds she asks me a question and I apparently missed the most important part of the question but everything else I knew so that happened like 3 or 4 times.

The comprehension class was taught by the old guy, wei laoshi, and it went relatively fast. The thing I liked about this part of my classes is that he sort of teaches how chinese culture is infused into the language.

The absolutely impossible part of my day was the reading portion. We're "encouraged" to not use dictionaries and they intentionally put words we've never learned and chinese phrases that can't exactly be translated directly into english. I'm so glad I'm not the only one that had about a 5% understanding in this class. The difficult part about all of this is that I never learned what we're going over so I need to work my behind off to catch up

Other than that, it seems like BLCU knows what they're doing, seeing they've been around for more than 30 yrs, and the textbooks are written by them. Here's a tip to whoever is thinking about applying to this school. Unless you really love being in a small squished classroom, I suggest doing 20 hours a week vs 30 if you're the self study type and somewhat adventurous. Because other than the people in my class, I haven't met anyone who's doing 30 hours. Everyone I've talked to chose 20 because they all have language partners and tutors, and they can spend the extra time in the afternoon to go out and explore the city by using what they've learned from class. Plus, getting out at 4 gives you a lot less time to go out and enjoy Beijing because its later and you get 2 more hours of class which equals more homework