Friday Night sumup

Ok, so it's hard to post during the week because when I'm not eating or in class, I'm doing homework or sleeping. But Friday is our day of rest. (After taking our weekly test of course). This week's was wayyy harder than last week's. But I am not really stressed about the work as much. I know I am keeping up with the grammar even though memorizing characters is still pretty difficult. But more importantly I can already see how much my classmates and I have improved in our conversations with each other. That's really what's exciting. It's a lot easier to be social and we're even able to make jokes now. This language pledge isn't so annoying after all.

Other happenings of the week: I decided I'm going to Inner Mongolia for my social study week and I'm going to write my paper on Inner Mongolian folk dance and music. So that should be fun. Also, extracurriculars have started. So far my Chinese popular music extracurric has been fun. I listened to Beijing Huan Ying Ni like fifty times. I wish I was exaggerating. I am compulsively looking up Chinese pop music now and I can't wait to go KalaOK-ing. Also today we went to see Toy Story 3. In IMAX 3D. In English but with Chinese subtitles. Since we were in an American mood we had dinner at MaiDangLao (McDonald's). The food was pretty much the same as U.S. Mickey D's except my meal cost about 3 dollars US. So then we went to our really plush/pretty theater, that sold us tickets that were still 11dollars US! I felt so cheated. But Toy Story was amazing. I cannot even talk about how much I love Toy Story. So I won't. It was great, not gonna lie, I sorta cried several times. I'm so glad our generation has grown up with Andy.

Then we attempted to take the train home, but people here go to bed insanely early so when we tried to transfer trains the trains had stopped running. So we had to exit the station and try to get cabs which literally would drive past us and pick up Chinese people. But we all finally got on cabs and now I'm back in my room. Tired but happy.

Tiananmen Square

So this Sunday we did some less physically taxing touristy things. First, we went to Tiananmen Square. Because it currently doesn't really serve a purpose besides holding Mao's mauseloem, the Monument to the People's Heroes, and general "look how pretty China is and how peaceful the history of this place is" things, there wasn't much to do there. So I took some pictures.

The Tiananmen Gate to the Forbidden City

Monument to the People's Heroes

Great Hall of the People

Random Really Big Screen That Played A Montage of China's Famous Landmarks To A Quintessentially Chinese Soundtrack

After spending the whole 5 minutes it took us to take pictures of this place, we took the train over to Wanfujing, a very famous Chinese Shopping District. It had everything from a high end shopping mall to little shops in side streets teeming with souvenirs and strange foods. (See scorpions below [many of them were still alive])

长城！！！ (Great Wall)

You've been waiting for it...And here it is. A good way to end the work week? If HBA hasn't worn me out mentally yet, today it wore me out physically. I have never climbed that many steps in my life. ever. I almost died. But getting to the top and being able to take pictures of the craziest thing man ever made was worth it.

To the left you'll see our happy faces before we realized we'd soon be drenched in sweat and our paler comrades would be sunburned.

A warning sign on the way up. I'm not sure which was the fire-forbidden area exactly.

Pretty huh?

More funny warning signs.

Yay!

My First Week...in short

So Wednesday was Yoonji's Birthday and even though it was the same night of our first essay, we decided to take our mind's off schoolwork for a while to go celebrate.

We happily went a few blocks away from campus to the local mall. Not gonna lie, this mall pretty strongly catered to tourists. You can't see from here, but the entire bottom floor is a decked out KFC, which apparently is a really big deal here.

The placemats only begin to describe the cuteness that was this restaurant. Diversity! Pleasure! Experience! I'm almost sure we had all three...

The waiter was unbelievably patient with (and mostly amused by) our broken Chinese. He even, after noticing Yoonji's birthday present sitting on the table, brought her a cake (see below) and put an instrumental version of "Happy Birthday" on the radio.

Thursday was almost in its entirety spent studying for our first weekly test. Below is a picture I took on the way home from class. This is the scenic route between the academic building and conference center (where we're staying). This picture doesn't do it justice. It not only doesn't capture all the great landscaping but it was also taken after it rained. Beijing, btw, rains for like 5 minutes everyday. And sometimes there is thunder, lightning, and insanely loud wind, but no rain. I don't understand it. But I'm not complaining since I'm not usually outside when it does actually rain.

So after a several hours of panicked study and fewer hours of sleep I took my first test.
I was really worried because at Yale most of our tests are done in Pinyin and here Pinyin basically doesn't exist. So studying about 200 new characters for today's test was terrifying. But the test was actually a lot easier than I had anticipated and immediately after it was done we all went to our second 中文桌子(Chinese Table). This time we ate at a neighboring university. The food somehow was even better than last time's. I experimented with a whole bunch of yummy dishes I don't remember the names of. And we were all pretty amused by the chicken that came with head and all.（See below)

Food Makes Everything Better

Look at that happy family! I probably should've gotten a better view of the food because we all know food>people. But I'm in a good mood today. And the beaming faces at the Chinese Table below exemplify why.

First, I'd like to mention a few potentially negative things that still can't bring my good mood down. So Beijing is as polluted as you think it is. There is a pervasive fog hanging over every day rain or shine. But it hasn't really affected me yet (except for that time it rained and I coughed the rest of the night). Otherwise, I don't mind it because this campus is BEAUTIFUL. The landscaping feels very Chinese (whatever that means, maybe it's the fengshui). Also seeing pagodas on the drive here from the airport instantly made this the prettiest place in the world.

Second pseudo-con, the ever frustrating language pledge. It's putting a real damper on my social life. We all see each other in the elevator before class in the mornings, but we can't say anything interesting so we whip out our notebooks and/or iPods and walk to the SAME academic building in silence. But look how happy we became at Chinese Table! When did those anti-social gloomy robot children decide to put on those giant smiles? (If you think the answer is when I told them to smile for the camera, then you are only paritally correct.) More importantly, after a great morning of classes (great because we now understand a bit more how to prepare for them the night before) we are all feeling more confident with our Chinese. We laugh at our circumlocution and celebrate when others understand what we're trying to say. The walk back home from classes was joyous. A) because no matter how silly we sound, we still want to enjoy this program together and make ridiculous conversation and B) because we had just eaten this DELICIOUS meal together with our super friendly teachers. And imagine...this will happen twice every week.

The small classes and the one-on-one time with these teachers is drastically improving my language ability and I can't imagine how much more confidently I'll speak Chinese after 9 whole weeks of it. (more confidently than Spanish even?) Not only are they great educators but they are the sweetest people ever! Just look at that peace sign! The adorable woman flashing it was my one-on-one teacher yesterday. She has already agreed to go watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-qx_1wXy8 (the end-of-semester video that my Chinese class at Yale made last month). I can't wait to be able to talk to her more fluidly so that I can learn more about her. But not just her! All the other teachers. And my Language Partner. Language Partner or (China Friend as the literal English translation is) is a student at this university who is assigned to each of us. This student can help us with homework, Chinese in general, or even just go out to eat or shop. I met my Language Partner yesterday and we went to the supermarket. She helped me carry back these HUGE jugs of water I bought along with the rest of my groceries. (I bought enough breakfast food to last me the first half of the summer for only about $10US). I can't wait to get to know her when we're not lugging around heavy bags too!

So basically things are looking up. I'm having a lot of fun even though I am also doing A LOT of homework. And honestly, coming home to a clean newly-made bed, new towels, and emptied garbage cans after class everyday always makes me smile a little. Let's see how the rest of the week goes!

First Day!

Look at those lovely faces. The lefternmost (it's a word now) is Celia who I've known all year from my Chinese class at Yale. The others are Harvard kids I met this morning. We were all in the cafe here on campus bumming free wifi. But now we have internet set up in our rooms. (Thank you Yale VPN for keeping my favorite websites within my reach). But the point of this picture is to highlight one of the pros about this program. We're all confused and lost and thus INEVITABLY super friendly. It's great. Making friends here is going to be easy. The teachers also seem quite nice and approachable. They even tell us that Beijingers are nice to foreigners so I really am nothing but optimistic about my interactions with other people here.

NOW TIME TO VENT. uuuuugggggggggggghhhhhhhh language pledge! Remember how I said I was excited to be frustrated by it? I think that was because in my sleepy stupor I forgot how unpleasant the feeling of frustration is. Us second year students all sound like 5 year olds. We can no longer make friendly conversation. We try very hard, but our basic grasp of Mandarin only allows for basic exchange of information. We are slowly creating our own pidgin language. I have high hopes for the future. But after a day of haggling at cell phone dealerships, internet stores, and supermarkets all with my broken Mandarin, I feel exhausted and overwhelmed. For now I am consoled by how ridiculously cheap the food is (3 boxes of Pocky for ~2US$). Hopefully this Pocky will get me through this first night's homework which is already too much for my tired brain to process.

Don't cry for me yet. All I need is more sleep and a wider Chinese vocabulary and I'm sure this feeling of confusion/detachment will go away. My adventures will become more exciting as I become more equipped to experience them.

I hope this post doesn't feel too lazy. But it's 1:30am. I just finished packing (I hope my suitcase isn't overweight!) and I'm exhausted. I've been in NYC a total of 4 days this summer. I crammed as many this-is-what-home-feels-like activities into the little time that I had and I can't believe it's already time to fly to China. I was hoping my pre-China post would be a bit more philosophical. I imagined it would be full of questions about my current self and my post-China self. You know, questions about adjusting to a different culture, my motivations, apprehensions, what I hope to learn, reasons I made this choice, et cetera. But honestly, attempting to summarize every emotion/question I've had since committing to study in China, in this one sleepy post my last night Eastern Standard Time, just doesn't seem fair.

I can say that I'm incredibly excited. I'm excited to be in a foreign country for the longest I've ever been. I'm excited to be confused and out of place. I'm excited to be frustrated with my language pledge. I'm excited to have posts way more interesting than this one. I trust they will be...Beijing here I come