Weeping Willows (literally)

Heyo!

Last night we went to a place called Houhai for pizza. Its another area where all of the expats/foreigners/white people frequent. This time, I can see why they go there!

Houhai is filled with trendy bars and restaurants each with their own character lining a "lake". You can even rent boats for a pretty decent price and have a little tea party on the lake with your own private musician.




Today we went to the Summer Palace and it FAR exceeded my expectations. We had from 10am-2pm to scourage the area and I thought we would get bored with it fast, but not so. We hiked up to the top of a hill and saw some temples, then we walked around this GIANT lake. The lake was so big, that we thankfully came upon a boat dock and took a boat across to our meeting spot, just a few minutes before the buses were to leave without us!








Summer palace is probably a WHOLE day thing. Also, though rainy, the temperature was just perfect and the rain made all of the weeping willows and bridges and the lake look so beautiful. Needless to say, we've all vowed to come back here on a pleasant sunny summer or fall day (2 of the people I went with are also staying here through December).

:-) Oh, and for those who've been asking. I'm not sick of the food yet. I really like it. So, I guess my weight loss regimin wont get in kick for a while!

First Test

Hao bu hao.

It wasnt anything special/easy/hard. Not looking forward to these weekly. Hopefully I'll get out around town today...

:-)

Today was a much better day. I feel good, despite an oncoming cold (yes, even when its supposedly 100 degrees outside! [I still dont feel it, though- the heat, that is]).

It amazes me how cheap things are out here. I know I talk about food a lot, but I think thats a big part of their culture. Tonight my roomie and I went out for some noodles (for Tammie's sake, b/c I havnt had any yet) and for 2 bowls of noodles and a pot of tea it cost 14kuai, a little less than $2. I think I picked the right country. My mama always said that I had champagne tastes with a beer budget, well, I'm putting my money where my mouth is (no pun intended).

Also, thanks for everyone's comments/emails/facebook messages! I'm glad this blog could be of interest to you!

I don't think you have to "sign up" to comment, so by all means, be sure to comment on here!

I love and miss y'all!
-Bugs/Ashley/Ash/Mergen

Sleeeeeeeppppp

I think home sickness/culture shock is already starting to set in after only a week. Hopefully it'll go away soon.

This weekend my progam is taking us to the Summer Palace and is making us do "the Summer Palace scramble" which is just another glorified scavenger hunt.... it feels like I'm a summer camp again... I hate summer camps.

**edit**
I feel better now that I've talked to my mom and had some caffine. :-)

Mama's Home Cookin'

My roommate invited me to eat some of her friend's (I think its her boyfriend, but she denies it) mom's home cooking. She sent it to him and this is considered a "traditional" chinese meal. It is glutenous rice with pork/fruit in center wrapped in some kind of leaf. It was actually pretty good:

This one has fruit:

And my new breakfast:

Not as great as the original. Notice Nestle takes the lead on producing it instead of General Mills. Obviously, these are sugar-coated.

Oh, Mr. Jacob! I found Cucumber-flavored Lays potato chips today!

再见!

First Day of Classes and No 英文

Classes run from 8:30am to 12:30, with a 10 or 20 minute break every 50-minutes. We then have lunch and then have a 1-on-1 with our teachers for 20 minutes in the afternoon.

Class went by pretty fast. We're all of relatively similar abilities.

Today was the day that the language pledge began. No 英文 (English) allowed by any means. At first we were all really nervous about it and thought it would be tedious, but once lunch came along we dropped the 你好s (hellos) and started making conversation.

Its actually pretty fun. Its like a giant game of charades. Lots of gesturing, pointing, making faces. We can be written up for saying just one word, so everyone is trying their best. Even the more advanced students are sitting with the less advanced ones and are trying to explain things as best as they can in Chinese. Its actually pretty great.

The language pledge, does, however, put a little bit of a damper on social activities. Most of us arent ready to hold long enough conversations to play cards, sit around and chat, or whatever. So that means we all run to our rooms and play on our computers, read, do homework, or most often times- sleep.

But thats that. My roommate is cute and keeps leaving me notes on my nightstand/computer (in English).

Life is good.

Roommates

Ni hao!

Here is my roommate, Haiyan (Jane is her English name):

Last night the students took their tongwu (roommates) out to dinner. We picked a dumpling place close to school. This was by far my best meal out here thus far! We had vegetable dumplings, pork dumplings fried and steamed, tofu, chicken of some orangy sort, chicken bone, beef... it was great!

(my favorite is the dish in the upper left hand corner. The hye-roller things are actually flattened tofu with scallions and red bell peppers inside of them. You take that and put the chicken stuff on top of it and voila! haochi! (good food). For 10 people, the bill came out to 160kuai, which is about $25. As you can see, we liked it:

(as you can see, I am sooo archaic with my peace sign. Its all about getting your guns up in China!)

Interestingly, in China one person pays for the whole bill with the understanding that the other people will reciprocate in the future. However, our roommates have learned about (in their words) "going Dutch". I got the bill this time.

Afterwards I went out with some students to the ex-pat district of China where all of the bars and clubs were. I have no idea where all of these white people came from! They were all dressed to the nines like in the states. Although, the thing I have learned is that 9 out of 10 times if I see a white person, they are NOT American... hen you yisi (very interesting). Also, I learned that they party late. Thus, 3am came and went.

Today the students with a handful of Chinese roommates went on a scavenger hunt through Beijing. We had to collect bus/subway tickets, go to a local hospital, learn to fax something, figure out how much a tailor costs, etc...

The scavenger hunt took FOR FOREVER. We were all pretty senile by the 6th hour. And cabbies are so fickel about whether or not they want to take us back to our school. Apparently, our location is too far away from the city center and they oftentimes refuse us. Our group split up and the Chinese roommate convinced his cabbie to take them, our cabbie dropped us on the curb. We ended up crankily taking the subway and walking 20 minutes home after the long day...

Today I was able to communicate better with my roommate and I think things will look up as far as my progress in Chinese. I also talked to the community director about moving from the 150 level to the 200 level (where I belong) and it looks like that I just need to give them the final word and they'll move me!

Thats it. I guess I need to learn to be brief. I just like not having to type this out 20 different times...

Here's a magazine cover I found. I thought it was a little funny:

Settling In...

Howdy doody!

Things are beginning to slow down. No, I lied. I think they're actually starting to speed up. I took my placement test yesterday. The written part was hen nan (very difficult), but I thought that the oral went very well. Today we got a tentative placements and I'm in 150, which is not as high as I expected. At first I was a bit upset about it, but once its sunk in, I realize that my speaking ability/confidence is nowhere where it should be, so, this will be good.

Last night we sojurned out to Wangfujing Dajie. It's a street with lots of glisty lights and stores that arent so cheap. At the end of the street was a night market which served delacies. It was quite interesting to see scorpions wiggling on a skewer.






To get to Wangfujing Dajie, we had to take the ditie (subway). That is when I learned that my school faaaaaaaaaaaaarrr away from that essential mode of transportation. We are about a 25-minute walk away. That doesnt make me happy, BUT, there are two ways to get there. One which is a straight shot with no hustle bustle. And the other with this in the way:

Random dancing/flag twirling/tangoing in front of the Russian convention center at about 9pm at night. Not for tourists, just for kicks. It was quite interesting and refreshing to see, despite our long walk!

I also found this on Wangfujing Dajie. Ironically, it is in the bottom of the hotel that I have decided that my parents MUST stay at.

I met my roommate about an hour ago. Her name is Zhang Haiyan (Jong Hi-yan). Zhang is her last name, and I her first name is Haiyan. She's very sweet and very willing to help me. Her english is great, but that wont matter come Monday when the 24-hour "language pledge" kicks into gear.

I don't think she moves in officially until the 28th, but I'm not 100% sure on that given my chinese skills (or lack there of). Only thing I'm worried about is that she'll be around ALL the time and will want to talk/practice. That's nice... and not. Sometimes you just don't know what to talk about, right? Anyways, it shall be a great getting-out-of-the-box experience.

She's in a meeting right now with the other roommates and should get out soon. After that we're required to take our roommates out to dinner to mingle. fun fun.

The food: not so bad. People told me it would be very different from what I'm used to, but I havnt been shocked/estonished/appalled yet. The veggies swim in oils, the meats have a lot of fat connected to them, and we get watermelon with every meal from our "cafeteria." Its not bad yet. They offer us PB&J every meal as well, so I can always fall back onto that need be.

Thanks for reading/skimming.

Zaijian.

Moving In

I am officially in my dorm now. It is smack dab in the middle of a community. The zoo is not in sight, smell, or mind. Here is my dorm room:

My room's not too bad. Needless to say that the bathroom situation is an entirely different story. They will take a lot of getting used to, not being able to flush toilet paper, sinks that look like horse basins, and showers that can take up to 15 minutes to get warm water. Good news is that I won't have to squat. We have one chinese toilet and 3 western ones on my floor (4th floor). My floor is all girls, 3rd is all boys, 2nd is mixed. I think I got the short end of the stick... but whatever.

I had my first real chinese meal tonight. I went with 6 kids from UNC who have been traveling around China for the past week, so I followed their lead. A large meal for only $2.50 American is a great deal, but I do forsee my shapely figure to size down a bit.

I went to a "French Walmart" tonight and that was hectic. Cheap quality goods, but, the crowning glory of my sojurn was finding my chocolate koala bears that I loved when in Japan and a six-pack of corona for less than $2. (I didnt buy that last one, fyi)

This new life is going to take a while to get used to...

Anways, thats that.

-Bugs

PS- I can edit my blog, but the government has my actual site blocked, so I don't think I can read it. I'm going to work on that....

Not in Kansas Anymore

Tuesday, June 19, 2007
9:22am


I have survived the journey! Not without a few minor bumps in the road, but nonetheless, I am safe and at my hotel in Beijing.

The storms Sunday morning in the Dallas area made my departure look pretty bleak, however, my flight to Tokyo was only delayed an hour. Upon learning of my hour delay, I decided to hit up a travel store in DFW and pick up one of these to make my journey a little more comfortable:


I’ve never really used one, but they look pretty simple and a lot of people around me had them. So after purchasing this contraption, I decided to try it out while waiting to be called to board the plane. Apparently, these contraptions work a little too well. Perhaps 45 minutes after dozing off I suddenly awake to an empty lobby. They had already started the boarding process! Luckily, there were a lot of people in line and I wasn’t the last person on the plane.

I get to my seat and turns out I’m sitting next to an Indian businessman. He made me hesitant at first with his talk of just coming from Dubai and moving between the US and China every few months. Then he revealed to me that the second he saw me he thought I was either in the CIA or was a US Air Marshal. I was taken aback, but in order to secure my position, I neither confirmed nor denied his assumption.

Boy, they fed us well on the plane! 3 meals on the first flight (including Sushi and other wonderfulness) and one meal on my second 3-hour flight to Beijing. The in-flight entertainment would have made my mom and dad proud. Now I may say that I have officially watched “Wild Hogs,” and I don’t think my life will ever be the same!

Needless to say, I slept the vast majority of the 13-hour flight and ended up not getting up from my seat once! I was quite astonished at my tenacity. Although, I can’t give myself all of the credit, that neck tube thing really does work wonders!

I switched planes without a hitch (the Indian businessman walked me to my gate) and got to Beijing airport. I prayed and prayed to see my bag on that conveyor belt thing and eventually did! Yay! The most stressful part of my day was trying to convert my US$ to kuai. My flight landed at 8:30pm and by the time I got through customs and retrieved my luggage, it was a little after 9:00. The banks in the airport close at 7 and 9. I eventually found an ATM and was able to pocket a small amount of kuai for my taxi ride.

Taxi driver got lost, and a 30 minute drive turned into an hour. However, I got to see a lot of Beijing and I felt pretty safe and he wasn’t a crazy driver.

First impression of Beijing: The pollution is incredible! Even at night you can see a thick smog envelope everything! A view from my hotel window:



T Sq:


It's not overcast! It's just smog. I guess that’s the reason for all of their flashy Vegas-y lights. Also, I am having a hard time being able to grasp the enormity of the city. NYC x 10. It is huge and I don’t know where to begin.

Today I will be spending time in my room attempting to refresh my memory of the Chinese I learned of what felt like ions ago. I’m sure I’ll venture out for some dinner and lunch, but I need to get my bearings first.

Thanks to EVERYONE who sent me their well-wishes. I really appreciate all of your concern and love!
And by request from Benjamin, here are some Engrish signs I found in my room

Is This For Real?

I am testing this out. Thanks, Uncle Tommy, for the idea!