Ok, so... things that have happened recently... well, we went to the MuTianYu section of the Great Wall last weekend (on my birthday!). It was pretty, even though it was one of the more rebuilt sections. The really fun part was the luge-slide on the way down. Basically, you sit on a little seat that has runners on the bottom and there's a handbrake and you just.... slide down this metal pathway. It's... possibly the least safe thing ever. Especially when you've got a plan to go really fast down most of it that involves stalling so that the slow people in front of you get a good head start and then whizzing down (past the men who are hired to sit along the path and yell at people for going too fast or too slow) until you have to stop and wait for them to go again.
There was a group of adults who took a baby on this ride. I found this horrifying.
We also were supposed to take a trip to a museum that ended up being closed, so we ended up in Jingshan park, which is right behind the forbidden city. It's always really beautiful to look at the contrast between the forbidden city architecture and the modern Beijing around it.
We leave on Thursday to go to Nanjing and Shanghai for the weekend and then begin our week of freedom. I'm going with a group that's staying an extra night in Shanghai, then travelling to Hangzhou and then North to Xi'an before we head back to Beijing. It should be fun. I won't have my computer with me, so I'll have to wait to post about it. I hope I have enough room in my camera for all the pictures I'll want to take...
Ok, time to go back to working on my paper. I'll upload some pictures later, since I'll probably be in this cafe for a while and will want another study break.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
lame update (so much school!!!)
So, apparently the website has decided that I'm spam... which is really irritating.. I'm hoping they'll get to my review request soon so that I don't get deleted...
But yea... I haven't posted because not much of interest is going on... I have upwards of 4 hours of class every day. Tuesdays I have 7 hours (including Chinese lunch table). I haven't had this much school since high school. plus, like, epic amounts of reading and chinese homework. so much for "if I'm only in 2 classes, It'll be easy to get the work done!"
We're going to the great wall on Saturday... it won't be nearly as crazy as the last time I was there, but that's ok... I don't think I've been to this section before, so it could be cool?
I'm bonding with my roommate... she's a sweetheart. I think I like her because her attitude is less... girly and silly than other Chinese girls I've encountered. I mean, she still has girly elements to her, but she speaks in a mature way and seems to be at least somewhat serious some of the time. it's really nice. She can't come to the great wal with us, but I'm hoping I'll get to hang out with her sometime this weekend... our schedules during the week are kind of different, and we both have work to do.
But yea... I haven't posted because not much of interest is going on... I have upwards of 4 hours of class every day. Tuesdays I have 7 hours (including Chinese lunch table). I haven't had this much school since high school. plus, like, epic amounts of reading and chinese homework. so much for "if I'm only in 2 classes, It'll be easy to get the work done!"
We're going to the great wall on Saturday... it won't be nearly as crazy as the last time I was there, but that's ok... I don't think I've been to this section before, so it could be cool?
I'm bonding with my roommate... she's a sweetheart. I think I like her because her attitude is less... girly and silly than other Chinese girls I've encountered. I mean, she still has girly elements to her, but she speaks in a mature way and seems to be at least somewhat serious some of the time. it's really nice. She can't come to the great wal with us, but I'm hoping I'll get to hang out with her sometime this weekend... our schedules during the week are kind of different, and we both have work to do.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Mini-trips
Ok, so in the past couple of days, there's been an interesting experience in a massage parlor (The details of which I won't get into, since they're a little embarrassing for the guys. Nothing bad actually happened more than a little awkwardness and some miscommunication), a trip to the Forbidden City, a trip to the Temple of Heaven (Those pictures are still on my camera). Having been to both places before, I didn't really get much out of them the second time... I watched the people mostly. I really want to go to the Summer Palace, since it's supposed to be beautiful and I haven't been there before.
We also went to the park near our dorm and floated on the lake in a boat for a while... it's actually a really nice park. There was also a Bumper cars rink, which we watched for a bit then went one round on since the Chinese people seemed to think the point was to avoid hitting other people. It was fun.
Classes start on Monday, I'm looking forward to have something really mentally absorbing, although we've already had a lecture with our first professor, and his accent is so think that it's basically incomprehensible. But that's ok...
I also got placed into the second highest section of Chinese, and my schedule is pretty sweet. (No classes til the afternoon on Fridays!) We have about a hundred pages of reading for Monday/Tuesday, but that should be ok. I guess I'll start on that now.
(That's our dorm, which also is our classrooms)
EDIT: I had forgotten how much I missed squat toilets. Weird, I know, but they are so much easier than Western public toilets.
Also: There's a website about online censorship and blocking that *isn't* blocked in China. The irony amuses me intensely.
Also: For Nadja, who probably isn't reading this (I can't remember if I even told her about it), They played Walk it Out in one of the dance clubs we went to... Pretty much nobody in China knows how to do the walk it out except me, and I suck at it. I really wished you were there. They also played the song I'm addicted to, Just Dance by Lady Gaga.... it was awesome.
We also went to the park near our dorm and floated on the lake in a boat for a while... it's actually a really nice park. There was also a Bumper cars rink, which we watched for a bit then went one round on since the Chinese people seemed to think the point was to avoid hitting other people. It was fun.
Classes start on Monday, I'm looking forward to have something really mentally absorbing, although we've already had a lecture with our first professor, and his accent is so think that it's basically incomprehensible. But that's ok...I also got placed into the second highest section of Chinese, and my schedule is pretty sweet. (No classes til the afternoon on Fridays!) We have about a hundred pages of reading for Monday/Tuesday, but that should be ok. I guess I'll start on that now.
(That's our dorm, which also is our classrooms)EDIT: I had forgotten how much I missed squat toilets. Weird, I know, but they are so much easier than Western public toilets.
Also: There's a website about online censorship and blocking that *isn't* blocked in China. The irony amuses me intensely.
Also: For Nadja, who probably isn't reading this (I can't remember if I even told her about it), They played Walk it Out in one of the dance clubs we went to... Pretty much nobody in China knows how to do the walk it out except me, and I suck at it. I really wished you were there. They also played the song I'm addicted to, Just Dance by Lady Gaga.... it was awesome.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Today was interesting... it started with really delicious bao, progressed through adventures into the world of really gross instant coffee, continued on through the park where there were bumper cars, a motorboat with crazy Chinese children chasing us around the lake, and poorly read classical Chinese poetry.
A big group of us went and got Pizza in Hou Hai tonight, and then ended up in one of the lounges around the lake. It was pretty.... well... embarrassing actually... there ended up being a lot of sort of... stereotypical "American Tourist" behavior and we actually emptied the place of Chinese people. I was sort of ashamed to be there... I guess the owner didn't mind, since he knew one of the guys in our group, but like... I felt uncomfortable knowing I was part of a group that was so loud and rude and probably off-putting to the Chinese people around us. I guess I would just rather try to not validate those kinds of stereotypes if I can avoid it, since they represent a part of American culture that I really don't like very much.
I was in the last cab to leave Hou Hai, and Carey, Shazad and I ended up at the South campus instead of the North campus of Shou Shi Da, which isn't abnormal, since most taxi drivers don't know where or what Shou Shi Da even is. So we were walking along on the way back to the dorm when there's a crunch from down the road and when we turned around, there was a motorcycle lying on it's side. Shazad went over to see what was going on, and I tried to call the emergency number on my cell phone, but my Chinese vocab doesn't really cover "there was a motorcycle accident! please send an ambulance!" (I really only knew the word for motorcycle, and even then I was too stressed out/freaking out to pronounce it properly) and the poilceman kept asking me what I was saying. I finally had to run over to some men who were just walking up and handing one of them my phone and asking him to tell the police what happened.
What was scary was how many people in cars had sort of driven by and just looked at the guy lying there with his face scratched to hell and his leg hurt and not done anything... even as we were standing there waiting, pedestrians and cab drivers who were passing came over to watch. It was interesting to see Shazad's reactions and expectations for the situation... He kept thinking the by-standers were going to try to blame us or somehow get us into trouble. He's from Pakistan, and apparently that's a real danger there.
This was one of those times when I realized my language abilities should be way stronger. I guess it's lucky that there were ways around the language failure to make sure the man got help.
A big group of us went and got Pizza in Hou Hai tonight, and then ended up in one of the lounges around the lake. It was pretty.... well... embarrassing actually... there ended up being a lot of sort of... stereotypical "American Tourist" behavior and we actually emptied the place of Chinese people. I was sort of ashamed to be there... I guess the owner didn't mind, since he knew one of the guys in our group, but like... I felt uncomfortable knowing I was part of a group that was so loud and rude and probably off-putting to the Chinese people around us. I guess I would just rather try to not validate those kinds of stereotypes if I can avoid it, since they represent a part of American culture that I really don't like very much.
I was in the last cab to leave Hou Hai, and Carey, Shazad and I ended up at the South campus instead of the North campus of Shou Shi Da, which isn't abnormal, since most taxi drivers don't know where or what Shou Shi Da even is. So we were walking along on the way back to the dorm when there's a crunch from down the road and when we turned around, there was a motorcycle lying on it's side. Shazad went over to see what was going on, and I tried to call the emergency number on my cell phone, but my Chinese vocab doesn't really cover "there was a motorcycle accident! please send an ambulance!" (I really only knew the word for motorcycle, and even then I was too stressed out/freaking out to pronounce it properly) and the poilceman kept asking me what I was saying. I finally had to run over to some men who were just walking up and handing one of them my phone and asking him to tell the police what happened.
What was scary was how many people in cars had sort of driven by and just looked at the guy lying there with his face scratched to hell and his leg hurt and not done anything... even as we were standing there waiting, pedestrians and cab drivers who were passing came over to watch. It was interesting to see Shazad's reactions and expectations for the situation... He kept thinking the by-standers were going to try to blame us or somehow get us into trouble. He's from Pakistan, and apparently that's a real danger there.
This was one of those times when I realized my language abilities should be way stronger. I guess it's lucky that there were ways around the language failure to make sure the man got help.
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