The midterms are over and learning for them has improved my Chinese quite a bit. Inspired by a student of Sinology I had decided not to study any tones as memorizing doesn’t work, I can’t speak them anyway and most Chinese also understand me if I don’t use them. That doesn’t mean that I won’t try to learn them by speaking.
In the midterms we solved some exercises in teamwork and I would have never thought that one day a Chinese would copy from me in a Chinese exam. ;-)