I have come not to praise Chinese classes, but to end them

"Pengyoumen, Zhongguoren, tongxuemen, jie wo nimen de erdou." (Friends, Chinese, Classmates, lend me your ears). Those were the first words of my speech, and already I was getting a little laughter and a lot of confused looks. I guess some things don't translate so well. Two weeks ago was the end-of-semester ceremony at the university where I study Chinese, so all the Chinese language students, teachers and staff (around 40 people) met together in our classroom for speeches, awards, pictures, etc. I was chosen as the representative for our class, and thus was one of the two students asked to give a speech (in Chinese, of course). With only about a day and a half to prepare, I managed to come up with a short speech in Chinese, which I got a Chinese-speaking friend to proofread. I didn't have time to commit it to memory first, so I read it off a paper, but I think it went over pretty well. It was the first time I've really had to speak in Chinese in front of a crowd like that, but not the last- the next week I was up in front again, although this time it was a smaller crowd (just the teachers and our class), and I wasn't speaking, but singing.

Yes, you read that right. For our final oral exam, our teacher told us that we had to stand up in front of the class one by one and speak in Chinese for around 5 minutes. My classmate Tom and I found out we could sing instead of talking, so the night before the exam we wrote up some Chinese songs, and the morning of the exam we got there a little early and made something up on Tom's little keyboard to go along with it.

Was it rough? Yes. Did they still love it? Absolutely.

I managed to put up some of the less-rough part for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mZWHb7dqOk
For those having trouble reading the subtitles, it says:

Wang Teacher- you are not in our dormitory- Wang Teacher- you are not in my house either- Wang Teacher- but in my dreams I meet you - Wang Teacher- next to your donkey

I wake up (wake up), and I miss you (miss you) (repeat)



I should explain that I had a dream a few weeks ago where our speaking class teacher, Ms. Wang (in Chinese "Wang Teacher") was in the crowd, with a donkey, which she gave me so I could escape from people who were trying to kill me for stealing a giant gold coin.

P.S. Sorry I forgot to post this last month after writing it.