Back in Business

First week of the second semester is over, so I'm back to my boring normal Taiwanese life. I spent last week going to different classes and deciding which ones to take and which ones to drop. While many people around me are basing the decision almost entirely on the amount of work required to pass each class (and choosing the classes with the least amount, obviously), this has only played a partial role in my choosing. The other big and important aspect is, when will the class be finished and will it allow me to get out of Taiwan by the middle of June to go back to Europe? So far it seems that my efforts have been successful, I am planning to buy my ticket within the next few days. The date of my return will be announced soon, so that my fans can get ready to come welcome me at the airport :) It will be a return ticket though, I'm still coming back to Taiwan in the fall.

The classes I will be taking this semester are:

Mainland China Communication Studies
Media and Globalization
Political Communication
Human Communication

I expect this to be an interesting mix of a lecture class, research-oriented class, discussion class and a fun class. The professor for the fun class (a Taiwanese woman) had a nice surprise for me, welcoming me with an Ahoj!, as her husband is Czech. Only minutes later, we were cracking inside jokes about mathematicians, as her husband used to study at the Department of Maths and Physics at the Charles University in Prague, as did my brother and his soon-to-be-wife did. (neber si to moc osobně, Oldo.)

This also means that unfortunately, I won't be able to take the by-far-most-interesting class on offer this semester, A Journey Into The World Of Chinese Opera. The class will study the singing, the make-up, it will visit several opera performances and the students will even get to perform some opera themselves.

Grades for the previous semester are also out, and I'm satisfied. The only one that has caused a little confusion among foreign students is a "Morality grade". As Ryan found out for the rest of us, it is a local tradition to grade students on morality. Quite awkward by itself, but it gets really weird upon the discovery that every single student at the university gets a 85% morality grade. Everyone, every semester. And that the grades might be determined by a professor I've met maybe twice in my life. A rumor says that doing something exceptionally good, or something really bad, would cause a change in the grade. The fact that this grade goes on the official transcript may mean complicated explanations to future employers, unaware that being 85% moral is as good as it gets in Taiwan. I can only hope they will put it on in Chinese, hence saving me from the complicated explanations.