HBA Week 4

I spent last week in Shanxi province, as you should know from the previous post, but before that was the fourth week of classes at HBA. I'll give a short update about that, and then write another post describing my first couple days in Shanxi.
The main events of HBA Week 4 were our midterm exam and midterm presentation. The test shouldn't have been too hard, but I couldn't get myself to study particularly diligently (一心一意, to use our new 成语 - four character set phrase), partly because I was so sick of Chinese study by that point, partly because the internet is distracting, and partly because I was spending time on the presentation instead. Even if I had been diligent, however, it's actually fairly hard to cover 13 chapters worth of material (think 8 or 9 hundred new vocab words, dozens of new grammatical patterns, etc) in a single day. And that's what you have to do, because there is regular homework and preparation every day until the day before the midterm, and, as I've explained before, regular work on its own is too much - reviewing older stuff before that is impossible. I ended up doing acceptably well on the test, but I certainly could have used some more studying.
As for the presentation - this is a group project (3-4 students) that constitutes the oral part of the midterm (actually, I'm not totally sure whether it averages into the midterm grade or the oral presentation grade, but it was presented as the midterm oral assessment). My group did a TV dating game as our performance, which was a lot of fun. The girl was a gold digger (named 爱钱, money lover) I was a misogynist 8-time married corporate executive (nicknamed 糖爸 - sugar daddy), the other contestant was in the Mafia (and nicknamed 魔鬼 - ghost). I was particularly fond of our rap contest. Mine, for those who speak Chinese (the translation won't do it justice - it actually relies on understanding the 成语 we learn in third-year Chinese at HBA, so even if you do know some Chinese, you may not enjoy it):
魔鬼一窍不通 (mogui, yi qiao bu tong = "Ghost" is totally ignorant)
人说话他听不懂 (ren shuo hua, ta tingbudong = when people talk he doesn't understand)
但是我和一位皇帝(danshi wo he yi wei huangdi = but I, compared with an emporer)
人人都说难分高低 (renren dou shuo nan fen gao di = everyone says its hard to tell who is better)
Anyhow, the presentation went fine, though my inability to use tones well when I'm excited/trying to perform (rather than just simply talking) didn't do wonders for my grade. Oh well.
After the performances, we had the delightful experience of eating 中国美国菜 = Chinese "American food," which was somewhat interesting. Some of the pizzas certainly didn't resemble what you get in the US. And then, at 5:30 that afternoon, it was off to Shanxi.