and he's sitting right next to me, playing World of Warcraft, lol.
I know much more now about his summer. I wish he'd blogged about all this, but he didn't think it was interesting. It may not be interesting to our readers, but it's certainly interesting to me.
He was never given the chance to take another placement test and change classes--nobody was. Contrary to what they'd been led to believe, there was never another evaluation done. So the tuition we paid to Columbia was a ripoff--he won't get credit for the classes. He wrote a scathing review of the program at the end of the summer.
He's not the only one. Only about half the kids in the program were from Columbia. The rest were from schools all over the country, Stanford, Yale, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Univ. of Michigan, even West Point. His class was a dumping ground for those non-Columbia students after the class he wanted to take was filled. No students from Columbia were in his class. He claims to speak much better Chinese than many of the Columbia students in the class he was supposed to take. Oh well.
He made a few good friends; one from the Univ. of Chicago, one from Princeton, and one from the Univ. of Georgia. Unfortunately he met them just a bit too late to accompany them on a trip to Tibet, bummer, but he has pictures from one of them, which I'll post if/when he gets around to uploading them.
He's been regaling me fairly continuously with accounts of life in China. For instance, we went out to lunch today, and he talked about eating in a restaurant in China. A waitress brings one menu for the table, then stands by the table waiting to take your order. She doesn't smile or greet customers. She doesn't get tips, so there's no reason for her to be friendly. If you ask her to recommend something, she'll shake her had no, or point to the first item on the menu. Each dish is brought when it's ready, so everyone gets their food at a different time. When the waitress leaves a dish at the table, no one thanks her.
Grocery stores: no fruit juice, and no cheese. Every part of every animal is sold in the butcher's section.
I noticed right away that he hadn't gotten a haircut over there. He wasn't willing to take a chance, even though haircuts cost only 45 cents.
We're hatching a plan to go to China and Tibet together during the summer after he graduates. Oh boy!
More later, with pictures, I hope.
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