rich - A semester of a masters in Chinese seemed like two years...

Going on with that Chinese IS a Black Hole article I posted a few weeks ago, having finally gotten through one semester of actually studying Chinese in a master program at Univeristy of Edinburgh (爱丁堡大学), it seemed like a black hole in another sense, that I-can't-believe-its-only-been-three-months-and-seems-unending kinda sense. :P

The most interesting experience is just having day after day being with the same 6 other classmates, 6 europeans all from different countries (if you count Scotland and England different countries, which those two classmates do) and me the lone American.  Most interesting in their Chinese learning (especially for the 4 whose English is a 2nd language). 

Of course I'm pretty much the only one passionate about knowing every in-and-out of the Chinese language and the culture behind it, where the Europeans are doing it to have an advantage in doing business later.  Yet lots of it wasn't focused on language, but like learning 50000000000 (+ or - a few 0's, ha ha) of Chinese history in 10 weeks was a rush.  Highly recommend knowing all that though, and the best book we used (we had to read like from about 100 different books) is Patricia Buckley Ebrey's