Silly English

Too late at night to write a long post, but not too late for a couple little tidbits of silly English that I found at various recent points in time!

On a box of chocolate moon pies:
"Confidence of creating deliciousness. This tastiness can not be carried even by both hands."

On a package of cookies:
"Galuptious red bean biscuit" (I had to buy them, naturally. They were galuptious!)

On a T-shirt in XiDan Market:
"Sky fragrant clothes human"

On a hot pink bag in a little shop outside the South Gate of Beida:
"Music Beer" (simple but eloquent, right?)

On the back of a girl's sweatshirt, next to (possibly describing?) a picture of Mickey Mouse:
"Beautifu" [sic]

And the mother of silly English, some excerpted lines from a song by the Korean singer Rain that I found in a bookstore...it looks like maybe someone accidentally put actual Korean words through an English spellchecker, so only the really weird ones came out unscathed:
"armature among nail ireful bullojumyon"
"gangryorhan maji nail mom sage palimony"
"new widgeon"
"toil god gather speaker scoria nil kimono"
"day mightily chef let it go"
and of course, "woman golf Alana item mode boohoo"

At some point when I am less sleepy I will write about my painful experience attempting to send a fax, techniques for fending off sketchy Chinese men, a slight disappointment at the fabled golden pig store, and visiting the really cool Beijing modern art district! Hen hao!

Insane Chinese Acrobatics Show

The past few days I was pretty ganmao (had a cold, for you silly English speakers), and it was very un-fun, especially last night when I magically additionally acquired a hurty tummy for reasons unknown, and I hadn't been getting much sleep, and I was generally a pathetic excuse for a human being. I tried to study some, but couldn't concentrate, so I decided just to go to bed and do my studying in the break I have between my first two classes on Wednesday. In the morning I got up an hour later than my alarm (although I made it across campus to my class on time because I am a speedwalking ninja!) and as soon as I got back from class I slept more instead of studying. Yay! It was all okay though because it turned out that my Hanyu quiz wasn't actually today, and I didn't have to perform the dialogue I had been trying to memorize with Kim for Tingli. So life was good, and I had some coffee and felt lots better, and after class I went with CIEE to see an amazing acrobatics show!!!!

It's hard to describe the mad skillz involved in the ridiculousness of this acrobatic show, but basically everyone involved had INSANE muscles and balance and coordination and flexibility. I have no idea how they can train to do this stuff without messing it up and breaking all their bones like 538790285739082 times. Maybe they do. Anyway, after a few acts I remembered that I had brought a camera and perhaps might want to take some pictures. So I did.

Fun balance-y flippy dudes, including some quite remarkable small boys:














Happy spinning-plate ladies!














Multi-level foot juggling!














Ridiculous upper body strength and balance and flexibility, and that thing he's balancing on is three little blocks that aren't attached to each other! Later he somehow knocked them all out from under himself but stayed balancing on that one hand. Also, at the end of their act, this fellow stood on one hand on the back of the other guy's neck as the other guy walked on his hands down the stairs. Of course.














Annnnnnnd the finale, 8 bazillion ladies with feather-antenna hats riding on one bicycle!














So maybe I didn't get the best pictures ever, but you can take my word for the fact that the entire show was insane and unbelievable and pretty much one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I found that I was berating myself afterwards for quitting gymnastics and not learning to do a no-hands flip or balance on my chin on a pole with my legs curled over by my ears. Seriously, what was I thinking? Oh well...hen hao!

Dumplings rule, with pics!

So basically one of the awesomest things we've done so far in China (in my opinion) was going to make dumplings with a Chinese family last Friday evening. It was basically the only actual activity I did all Thursday and Friday besides sleeping because I was a boring sickyface girl and went to bed at like 9:30 and it was fabulous.

So yeah, Friday afternoon we all piled onto buses and rode out into a little community north of Beijing, where they sent us in little groups to different families to make and eat dumplings and have fun Chinese chatting time. My group was me and Jackie (Jacqui?) Mills and Drew, and at first we were all like eheheh our family does not speak a word of English, this is going to be awkwardddd, but when we got there they were sooo nice and fed us all kinds of little snacks and it was fun. It was an older couple, and the grandfather was a little hard to understand, but the grandmother would come out from the kitchen where she was preparing dumpling ingredients to explain things. Their son (who actually spoke very good English despite having learned it in high school and never having practiced since!) and his wife came over for dinner with their little daughter who was four, and she was sooooo adorable. Interestingly, I found it a lot easier to understand the little girl's Chinese than the grandfathers, although usually small English-speaking children are kind of hard to understand unless you're used to the way they speak. She was a sweet little girl and we had lots of fun playing with her, although she didn't want to take a picture with me :( Witness our attempt:














That's her running away from my scary scary self.

But anyway, making dumplings was totally fun. At first it was painfully obvious which dumplings were American-made because they were soooo hilariously ugly, and the Chinese ones were so neat and uniform, but we got better. They prepared the fillings and dumpling skins for us so I don't really know the whole process from scratch, but I'll probably have to try to make dumplings for you when I'm back in the States because a) it is fun and b) I will be in severe dumpling withdrawal. Here's Jackie and me with one of our prouder dumplings:














And a dumpling-making action shot!














We never got as good as our Chinese grandmother, but it was still piles of fun, and our family was the best ever, and we exchanged contact info with the son and we might go on a fun trip sometime and they gave us each a box of chopsticks and it was a happy fun love time! Woooo!

But that's not all I did this weekend...Saturday morning Quynh and I went shopping in the city! First we went to Silk Market and then to Xidan. I bought a pretty pretty skirt at Silk Market for 40 kuai, for the first time feeling like a got a genuinely good price by bargaining. The lady wanted 90-something for it, and I was walking away (for real) when she yelled after us that I could have it for 40. It was the only thing I bought, but somehow the whole day's experience made me feel a lot better about bargaining. Before I was really intimidated and afraid to buy things that would require me to bargain, and although I still think it's kind of harrowing (it takes a lot out of you to have to argue for a long time just to get a decent price, so it's easy to get worn out and stop caring), I'm not so scared as I was before. It helped that I just got to listen to more bargaining exchanges, and it helped that my roomie was there for moral support (and more advanced Chinese comprehension), and it even just helped that I've been here for longer now and I have a slightly better feel for how much stuff should probably cost. It was a nice trip, and we rode the subway and strolled around in the newly arrived sunshine and ate delicious melon popsicles. Hen hao!

Saturday night we all went out for a joint birthday celebration for Eva and Shifu, who we know from Hip-Hop Club. Shifu isn't his real name, it's actually a Chinese form of address for a skilled worker or a master of something - he's called Shifu in Hip-Hop Club because he has mad hip-hop skillz! But yeah, so we had a big group of Chinese and American students and we all had delicious Korean barbecue together and sang Happy Birthday in English and Chinese and had 2 huge cakes and afterwards we went out to dance. At first we all took cabs to some out-of-the-way club that turned out to be closed, which was kind of a mess, but in the end we went to the usual foreign-student joints in Wudaokou and they played a fun African-tribal-danceish song at Zub and it reminded me of Graceland except more party-dance-club-esque. I was hen happy, but then it was late and I was tired so I didn't stay to dance long. Jacqui and I went home early, but not before buying baozi...at 7-11! Basically, American 7-11s need to carry baozi. Yeahhh.

On Sunday I went to Beijing International Christian Fellowship again, and didn't get lost this time, and fixed my heels so they don't give me blisters, and it was fun and they had a free lunch afterwards for new people and I made new friends and actually ran into another girl in my program who has been going to the same church since last semester but I just didn't know it. It was a beautiful sunny day and the church service was amazing and I was just sooo happy! I was going to try to take the bus back to campus, but it was so nice out I ended up just walking all the way back to Beida by accident. I basically did nothing all afternoon, and then in the evening it was like oh shoot now I have to study! but Jacqui and Richard and I went out to this little coffee shop in Wudaokou to study, which was strange because they only turned on the lights at the tables where people were sitting so it got really dark after a while and we felt like they were trying to kick us out. But the most fabulous part was this rather drastic notice that I saw next to the bathroom sink:

"Please frugally use water - otherwise the last drop of water in the world would be the tears of our human beings"

It was awesome. Then the place closed and we still had mostly just talked and not done any studying, but we found a tea house that is open 24 hours AND you get unlimited beverages plus little snacks for 18 kuai per person (a little over $2 American). I don't know how they make any money, but frankly that is AWESOME and I think we might have to go there all the time. Feichang hao!

Anyhoot I have class in 20 minutes and I need to eat a little fooooood and maybe look over my words because every Monday is super-duper-3 quiz Monday! A quiz in every class! Hen haooooo

Peking Opera and other, less hilarious things

I've been either really busy or feeling really icky lately, so when the choice comes up to blog or take a nap, the latter pretty much always wins. On Tuesday afternoon I fell asleep at 3 pm and woke up at 7! I was a little groggy for a couple minutes and then I realized that ahhhh I had been supposed to meet my tutor at 7! I put on shoes and grabbed my work and ran to the building where we meet, but when I got there at about 7:15 my tutor was nowhere to be found. I called her and she was like it's okay, are you free on Thursday? I was confused but apparently she had gone back to her room and was doing other stuff now and couldn't come 15 minutes after our scheduled meeting time. And then on Thursday at our meeting time I got a text message saying she had stuff that she forgot about and could we meet on Friday? Haha so at least my tutor and I are equally disorganized, so we don't get mad at each other. Yay!

Oh man, so my tutor is part of this "English Corner" group that meets on Thursday nights to practice their English, so I went along last night (after another huge nap o'amazingness) and it was totally fun. They have a different topic every week, and when they run across words they don't know, they write them down and then send them all out in an email with the definitions. It's all kinds of cute. I got to have the final say-so on English language matters, too, being the native English speaker. It's nice to know what's going on for a change. They wanted to know if the English names they had picked were normal ones (one girl was named "Duckie," which I thought was awesome) and what is the English word for the king's second wife (this one stumped me) and what do you call people when they both like each other but they're not technically dating yet so you can't say girlfriend and boyfriend. Obviously this was the perfect opportunity to begin the global spread of "not-girlfriend"! Mahahaha. Joy also made me tell English Corner about the Duckie Maniac Club, because she thought it was so cute. They liked the concept, especially the girl who was named Duckie. :) Chinese people seem to like hearing about my family, and are always impressed that I have three brothers. After all, due to the one-child policy most people don't even have one brother. China would totally get a huge kick out of my brothers. Hi brothers! Hen hao!

I am sick with a sore throat and accompanying grossness. Practically everybody is sick this week. I blame it on pollution, and also maybe the fact that nobody covers their mouth when they cough or sneeze. Since yesterday morning I have drunk almost 8 liters of water, and I take my vitamins every day and sleep like a fool, so I should be better soon I hope. Tonight we are going to make dumplings with a Chinese family! I am totally excited, and if I learn how to successfully make dumplings you shall all have many dumplings when I get back to America. Hen hao!

Probably the highlight in silliness of my past few days, however, was Peking Opera. We went Wednesday night, and it was hilarious. I was preparing myself for it to be a little bit torturous, but it was mostly just fun. Imagine, if you can, an Asian soap opera where all the characters are played by clockwork Teletubbies with creepily exaggerated makeup. Now imagine a Monty Python parody of said work with voices provided by Alvin and the Chipmunks and music provided by a horde of first-graders with percussion instruments. Add a bunch of dancefighting and you pretty much have the traditional Chinese art form of Peking Opera. In short, it is one of the silliest things I have experienced in China. The story (from what I could get from the occasional tangled English subtitles and the action on stage) is as follows:

A woman and her sister come to a monastery. The older one is looking for her husband, who went to the monastery and never came back. They run into an old monk (obviously the bad guy) who tells the woman that she is a demon girl and doesn't deserve to have her husband back. The two women threaten the old monk, and when he continues to be rude to them, they summon a flood to the monastery. The part of the flood is played by a passel of people holding large blue squares of fabric attached to sticks. An army comes out to fight the girls, and there is a huge long fight scene with constant loud Chinese percussion and elaborate dancing. I think the older sister gets hurt, but they say something about going to meet at the bridge with the bad monk. I think. At some point there is another dancefight where 6 henchmen throw javelins at the younger sister, one at a time so she can neatly and conveniently bounce them back at the soldiers who threw them with her feet or sword. It was like a juggling show, seriously. The younger sister tells the older sister that if her husband shows up, she will kill him (the exact words being "I will shoot him with my sword") for deserting his wife. When the husband appears, the younger sister wants to kill him, but the older sister keeps standing in between the two. The husband makes excuses for himself, saying that he didn't leave her, they just wouldn't let him out of the monastery. He swears that he was thinking of her ("I missed you when I had to listen to the sounds of wooden fish, if you believe the subtitles) and wants her back. Also he is wearing platform slippers. His wife reveals that she is no mortal woman, but an immortal snake who became a woman so she could have love (maybe, I'm mostly guessing at this). She sings a song with lots of long high whiny notes that slide up and down (remind me about this sometime when we're speaking in person and I will imitate it for you because the silliness of this sound cannot be accurately conveyed in words). The husband says that he doesn't care if she is a snake, he still loves her. The younger sister does not kill the husband, although she comes close a lot of times. Then it's the end, and everybody leaves to ride the bus back to campus and learn a new dance at Hip-Hop Club. At least, that's what I did.

I can't remember if I ever mentioned this or not, but this one time in China I saw 2 guys smoking while riding bicycles. That is the ultimate Chineseness right there; integrating smoking AND bicycles. If only they had also been spitting and arguing over prices with each other at the same time.

I might have done other exciting things recently, but I'm kind of dizzy and I'd rather go back to bed than try to think of them. Hen hao!

Back in Beijing

We waited in a really icky crowd for a really long time in the Xi'an train station, and when we finally got on the train I was so wiped out that I took a nap for an hour or so. The trip back was nice (I think the train is all kinds of fun), and I enjoyed Spidermanning up and down the bunk beds some more. At 5:30 am they turned on the lights, and shortly after came around and yelled at us to wake up. It was lovely. Fortunately CIEE gave us all permission slips to miss our 8 am classes. However, I still needed to shower and study and meet with my tutor for an hour and a half and eat before my 12:30 class (we got back to campus around 8)...I couldn't get any work done on the train. So, no rest for me. Fortunately my tutor helped me with my homework and studying, and with the help of coffee I made it through the day. Our Kouyu teacher gave us bananas! Which reminds me that the CIEE teachers also gave us bananas as we were gathering to leave Xi'an (maybe it's a teacher thing), as well as a little souvenir terracotta warrior for everybody. Hooray!

Post-class I picked up my clean laundry and was so massively happy about having clean laundry that I made up a song about it as I walked, in Chinese, to the tune of "Rawhide." This evening I went to hip-hop club (there were 573874891798 bazillion people there this time and they were doing audition-y things for this big performance they're doing in a couple weeks? but I didn't get picked, oh well) and when we came back we had a birthday party for Pei with delicious cake! I ran away when it degenerated into a cake fight, though.

And now, since it's 1:40 am here, I'm finally going to go take a shower, finish my homework/studying, and hit the sack. Tomorrow morning won't be fun, but I only have class in the morning, so after 12 I'm home free! There's going to be some good napping then...feichang hao...

Xi'an, Day 2

We got out of the hotel at probably 10:30 on Sunday, and hit the streets to see the sights of Xi'an. First we went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is in a Buddhist monastery. There's some legend behind it about a monk and a Monkey King, but I never quite understood exactly what was up.

Highlights of Big Wild Goose Pagoda:
1) breathtaking gardens surrounding the pagoda
2) a building containing a huge mural telling the story of Buddha, carved in different colors of jade. It was ridiculous artistry: a three-dimensional mural, with all of the faces and landscape and articles of clothing painstakingly carved out of various beautiful stones and fitted together in a giant masterpiece that covered three walls.
3) I saw a monk playing on his cell phone. This seemed contradictory to me somehow. Oh well.

Behind the pagoda was a huge plaza containing what our guide had informed us was the largest fountain in Asia. Boy, when Asia makes fountains, they do not mess around. It was a confusing taxi ride/walk to get around to the other side of the pagoda, and then we had to wait for the fountain to go off. In the meantime, I got some ice cream in my first ever visit to a KFC, anywhere in the world. Interestingly, KFC (Kan de ji or something in Chinese) is huge in China, far more popular than it is in the US, and more widespread than McDonalds, as far as I can tell. Anyway, I really needed soft serve ice cream, and it seemed like the place most likely to have it. It looked like vanilla but tasted like almonds. What can I say...it's China.

Also, while we waited for the fountain, Jacqui and Erika and Enrico and I were approached by several small children who had been sent over by their parents wanting to get a picture with us. Because obviously when you are at the biggest fountain in Asia, the real tourist attraction is non-Asian people. Hen hao! Also they were the cutest kids ever. The babies in China are totally adorable because their parents dress them in so many layers of clothing that they are about as wide as they are tall, little spherical child-bundles who can't put their arms down all the way. Also quite a few of them have those split-bottom pants that Chinese parents like to use instead of diapers. I suppose I can deal with that...saves on the waste from disposable diapers. Apparently Pampers is launching a huge campaign to get Asia to start using disposable diapers. Fabulous, because the world's largest population needs another way to mess up their environment even quicker. Hen hao!

When we were small-child-watching, I noticed that some of the little girls had sparkly feathery crowns with shiny dangly things on them, so I got one for myself at a little stand. I was in a cheerful mood, and it seemed like a good idea. Besides, obviously I wasn't conspicuous enough as is. Chinese people gave me the weirdest looks ever, which was amazing. A little girl who was in front of us at the edge of the fountain pointed at me and exclaimed with wide eyes "ni shi waiguoren!" (you're a foreigner!) I laughed and responded to her in Chinese...her parents may have been a little embarrassed, but I enjoyed it.

When the fountain went off, it was incredible. It was choreographed to kind of cheesy music, but the fountain itself was gigantic (football field, maybe? bigger?) and had so many kinds
of jets and streams of water playing in complicated patterns...we watched the entire show, which was about 20 minutes long. At night there are colored lights in the fountain, which is really awesome, although we had to meet to leave for Beijing at 4, so there was no other chance to see it at night. Oh well.

The cab driver back to the hotel tried to cheat us, but we knew from the paper CIEE had given us with travel suggestions that it was supposed to be a 6 kuai taxi ride back, and once we protested in Chinese he gave in pretty quick.

Other funny things that happened in Xi'an that I forgot to mention:
-we were in a mall, and the background they were playing was "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid
-I saw a lady with hair that was long on the sides but with a patch on top that was maybe 4 inches long and stuck straight up. It was not a good look for her. Or anybody, ever.
-we went to a sweet mosque on Saturday which was really pretty, and outside it was a bazaar where they sold traditional goods and practiced the traditional Chinese art of trying to fleece foreigners. Hen hao!

Xi'an, Day 1

We got into Xi'an at 6:30 or something disgusting like that, and they took us to breakfast and told us to eat a lot because lunch might be late. Needless to say, I didn't need to be told twice. There was a mysterious orange beverage being heated next to the coffee that was labeled "Hot Fruit is Treasure," which delighted me, although it was gone before I could try some.

After breakfast we launched right on off for Bing Ma Yong, the terracotta warriors and horses, which is outside the city to the east. On the way we passed a hotel called Xi'an Tourism Victory Hotel, which is a pretty good hotel name, if you ask me. I wrote down all the silly things I saw in Xi'an so I wouldn't forget to mention them all. Hen hao!

It was a longish bus ride out to Bing Ma Yong, but it was okay because we were really sleepy. We wandered around in various museum-type areas, but they were all kind of disappointing...we'd go in expecting armies of terracotta men and instead there would be a handful of them in a little exhibit or something. We kept going from building to building, always expecting that the building we were in was It, the big main attraction, so we took pictures like crazy. Of course, we were misguided in our disappointment, because there was in fact a huge big pit that we went to last with bazillions of warriors lined up in long rows, and it was crazy and awesome. Witness:














There's a lot of them fellas, ain't there? Yeah, it was pretty cool. Also the buildings were all freezing, maybe to preserve the terracotta? Or possibly just to make tourists uncomfortable. Dual-purpose! Woohoo! It was rainy and gross that day (both days in Xi'an, really), and
we actually saw a woman outside with a big broom that was mostly a messy bundle of sticks attempting to sweep water out of the way so we wouldn't step in puddles. As far as I can tell, this is not a particularly effective puddle-management technique.

One of the most fabulous parts of our visit to Bing Ma Yong was the fact that the wastebasket in the bathroom was...wait for it...a Teletubby* wastebasket. The natural choice for a museum housing what they proclaim as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Feichang hao!

*note: if you are Jacki, Teletubbies should make you think of the Oregon Trail.

After we got our fill of terracotta, we went to the Xi'an City Wall. It was pretty cool and historical-like, and at night it is covered in neon lights, as things tend to be, in China. The highlight of my Xi'an City Wall experience was definitely my photo-op ambush, though. I was standing on the wall, minding my own business, when a random Chinese man came up, put his arm around me, and smiled for the camera as his friend took a picture of him with the foreigner girl. Before I even knew what was going on, they were gone. It was all kinds of silly.

That night we returned cold and tired to a hotel for dinner. It was a good dinner, featuring the excitingly Western food of French fries. We were all excited about our French fries, and we tried to ask them to bring ketchup, but the red substance that they brought out turned out to be sweet-and-sour sauce. Oh well, maybe ketchup is asking for too much. This is China, after all. Also I discovered a hilarious Chinese beverage that is not quite as bad as it sounds: Hot Coke. It seems that the Chinese believe that drinking cold beverages will make you sick, so they drink hot Coke, infused with ginger. When the teachers told me what it was, I said they must be lying (it looked like coffee, a normal hot beverage), but nope! Hot Coke. Mm-mmm.

Getting back to the hotel was really nice...some people went out to party because it was Saint Patrick's Day, but I stayed in and did a crossword puzzle. Hen hao! Also I was happy because I had forgotten my toothbrush, but the hotel gave them to us! Woo for dental hygiene!

Also, sometime when we were riding on the bus (I forget when exactly), the tour guide decided to have impromptu karaoke time. She had a heck of a time getting people to do it at first, but once we did it was pretty fun. Except probably less fun for the people sleeping in the back of the bus. Oops. One of the guides sang a traditional Chinese song, and it was not only breathtakingly horrendous, but also louder than all the other singers put together. Yesssss. Also, at one point, as our guide was up in front of the bus talking, we went around a curve and she completely tipped over, complete with a little shriek. She was fine, so I don't have to feel like a terrible person for thinking it was totally hilarious. Which is was. She informed us that the next day we were free to go wherever we wanted in Xi'an "except the PlayStation." What? We were confused by the video game reference, until it was clarified that, in actuality, we were allowed to go anywhere except the police station. Oh.

Weekend, Part 1: Pre-Xi'an

On Thursday our Hanyu/Tingli class-posse went out to Wudaokou and got Japanese food and then went out and danced until we melted into pools of sweat and our limbs fell off. It was fun, although my ears rang for like an hour after leaving Propaganda (I can feel my mother cringing at that) and my lower back was crazy sore on Friday. I mostly just slept and bummed around Friday morning/afternoon, because we were meeting at 4:10 to take the train to Xi'an (where they have them there terracotta warriors). I realized before leaving that I only had 2 pairs of clean socks for 4 days...whoops! So I had to take my laundry out and get 2 new pairs of socks. It all turned out fabulously, and I was so happy to have clean laundry waiting for me when I got back from Xi'an!

The train to Xi'an was overnight, a 12 hour ride. It took like an hour just to get to the train station by bus, and then another to actually get on the train and leave. Woohoo!

Riding the train overnight was actually totally awesome. We were in hard sleeper class, which means there are 6 beds to a compartment, and the compartment doesn't have a door. I slept on the middle level, and it was all kinds of fun because the compartment is so small that I could reach all the bars of the beds so I could swing and climb around like Spiderman! It was excellent. Most of the time was spent sleeping, though. On the train, they turn the lights off at 10 and on again at 5:30 or 6. Hen hao! The crazy Chinese people were asleep in their beds by like 9 though. What a silly country.

Sweatshirts and racial profiling, hip hop and picnics

I finally got a Beijing University sweatshirt! I've been wanting one for a while but they never had one that was a zip-up AND had Beijing Daxue on it in characters AND was my size and in a color I liked. But yesterday Eva and I were in Wu-Mei checking out the Beida stuff, and they had sweatshirts that met all of the above qualifications, except they were a little bit too big for us, but we got them anyway. Hen hao! And when we wore them back in our dorm, everybody on the hall wanted one. So I'm pretty sure that eventually like all of CIEE will have the same navy track-jacket sweatshirts, and we'll be like some awesome foreign sports team. Yeahhhh. Somebody in my Kouyu class even asked where I got my sweatshirt. It's totally the best one that they have. But the best part about it is that when I wore it to meet my tutor last night, she informed me that the Chinese characters on the shirt are the handwriting of none other than dear ol' Chairman Mao. Fabulous! If you're interested, his handwriting is kind of messy. Whatever, Chairman Mao. Your "xue" is all kinds of silly-looking.

The other fabulous thing that happened yesterday was I got racial-profiled. Some chick walked up to me in the dining hall and gave me a piece of paper, smiled and walked away. When I looked at it it turned out to be an advertisement for a Chinese tutor, including such awesomeness as "I hope to share my learning experience with you and earn some pocket."
Yep. I was totally ordering food in Chinese in a competent enough way, but obviously I need a tutor because I am a white person! Hen hao!

BTW, my tutor is totally awesome. We mostly just chat during our tutoring time, and it is pretty random...I tried to explain the Duckie Maniac Club to her, and she thought it was the bestestest thing ever and totally cute. We talked about a cappella groups and I learned that some group from Pennsylvania (which is Pan sha fan ya or something equally silly in Chinese)
performed on campus last fall, which I thought was totally awesome, and we sang songs and talked about the one child policy. Hen hao!

So tonight a whole bunch of CIEE peeps went to the first meeting of the Beida Hip-Hop Club, which some of them were in last semester and they said it was really fun. They want a lot of people in the club because there is some huge performance coming up soon with famous Chinese celebrity people (Yao Ming is the only one I'd recognize) and they're supposed to have a 60-person dance team. Except when we got there, there were like 5 Chinese people, and then all of the CIEE posse trooped in. There were maybe a dozen of us, and the Chinese people were totally surprised/amused by our numbers. We schmoozed and introduced ourselves for a little while, and then Julie (who was in Hip-Hop Club last semester) explained that they wanted us to freestyle but were too embarrassed to ask. Ahaha. We all sat down and a teeny little Chinese girl got up and broke out some crazy amazing dance moves. It was insane. Then another dude got up and danced, and some other folks, but most of our posse was pretty unwilling. Except then we wanted to see the dude dance again because he was really good, and he was like no no and we were like if you dance we'll all dance. Then everybody got up and grooved in a group a little bit but it kind of turned into a huge circle and then they were like heyy go freestyle in the middle! So basically, Eva and I busted out some freestyle hip-hop action together in front of a bunch of Chinese people. It was fabulous. Hip-Hop Club definitely has the ghettoest Asians around this place. Feichang hao!

When we all got back to our dorm afterwards, I did a little homework, and I was hungry, and then Eva walked by with a jar of peanut butter and some bread and honey and we were like SNACK TIME and it turned into a picnic out by the elevators with all sorts of sandwich spreads and mangoes and marshmallow pies and other foods and a bunch of people from our hall came out and we all sat on a blanket on the ground and had a little late-night peanut-butter-and-sweetened-condensed-milk sammich picnic. And, P.S., sweetened condensed milk is ridiculously awesome. And in Wu-Mei, you can buy it in a convenient squeeze tube. Rock. Annnnnnnd now I should finish my homework, because I have class un less than 8 hours. Ooch. Hen hao!

For everything else, there's MasterCard

Sugar-syrup-coated tomatoes on a stick: 2 kuai
Sheep flavor potato snacks: 1.5 kuai
Seaweed flavor peanut crackers (Premium Soft Crunch!): 3 kuai
Knowing that China will never run out of weird new food for me to try: priceless

...and sugar coated tomatoes are better than you might expect. Hen hao!

How Could I Forget

I realized this morning that I didn't even mention the best part about visiting Stone Flower Cave. It's up on a mountain by a little village and some run-down souvenir shops, and as we were walking by the shops, I heard an interesting rendition of a very familiar tune coming out of one of them. It was a thumping-bass hip-hop remix of...get ready for it... "Do Your Ears Hang Low." There were no words, but the tune was unmistakable. It was unquestionably the highlight of my day.

Going to Church in China

This morning Jackie and I embarked on an adventure to go to the church that Sa Jia Li Ya's been attending in Beijing. Beijing International Christian Fellowship is a church for foreigners only (I showed my passport to get in), and Chinese nationals can't attend. We walked across campus and took a bus to the general area, except a) we were both wearing unfortunate shoe choices and b) the directions to the church were confusing because there are about 348902849038209 bazillion streets with the same name. So it was a little bit of an arduous journey. Bu hao!

We finally managed to get there like 5 minutes before the service...BICF actually reminded me a lot of PCC in Rochester. It definitely had the sort of large interdenominational vibe, which I suppose is the sensible way to go with such a diverse congregation. There was a lot of singing before the sermon, and we even did a Chinese song, which was interesting. They put up both the phonetic lyrics and the characters, so I could pretty much tell the meaning of the words by the characters, which was cool. After all the walking and feet pain and getting lost though, I was mostly looking forward to just sitting down and listening to the message. The speaker was really good, although I think there's a rotation of who preaches. The sermon was on 1 Corinthians 12, but he angled it towards our specific audience, talking about how it applied to foreigners and relating to life in Beijing. It was very relevant, and I think I'd go back there, although I'm interested in seeing what other Beijing churches are like, particularly the state-sponsored ones. It's an interesting environment here for religion. After the service we got lunch with some other girls who are studying abroad at Beida (although not in my program), and we rode back to campus together and I learned that there's a small group Bible study on campus, so I'll probably check that out sometime, although this next weekend there won't be any churchly things in my life as we're going on the big CIEE trip to Xi'an. From which, by the way, we get back at like 7 am Monday morning. And I have class at 8. Ouch...I hope I can get enough work/sleep accomplished on the train.

This afternoon I took a delicious nappy-nap and bummed around. I met with my tutor tonight! She is fabulous. She helped me study for my 4 zillion quizzes tomorrow, aka three (one in every class! hen hao!). I studied some more tonight, and I'm feeling pretty good about my level of preparation for tomorrow...I hope there's not any work that I was supposed to do and missed hearing about. It's a constant threat when the teachers are speaking all quickly-like in Chinese.

I am all kinds of sleepy right now...I hope my staying up late this weekend didn't destroy my awesome old-person sleeping schedule forever.

All Sorts of Silliness

First of all, happy birthday to my two silly little brothers who are now 12 and 17 (ahhh so old)! It is your birthday in China right now even though it's still March 9th in the US, so ha. I didn't get you any presents, but I promise when I come back from China I'll bring you all sorts of silly things. Hen hao!

So I actually went to Wal-Mart again yesterday because Erika and Enrico wanted to go so I went along to show them where it was...I didn't get lost at all this time, but it's still a pretty long walk. My hip joints are allllll kinds of sore this morning.

There were a couple funny things about Wal-Mart that I forgot to mention before. One is that a lot of employees have English names on their nametags in addition to their Chinese ones, and I definitely saw two male employees named "Polly" and "Lori." It was fabulous. The other strange thing about Wal-Mart was the bathroom...it was a pretty good bathroom; they even provided soap and had a totally functional hand dryer, but the best part was that they had self-flush squatty potties. It seems like such a contradiction to me, like a funny combination of Chinese tradition and modern civilization. Silly China. Silly Wal-Mart.

I got more stuff at Wal-Mart, even though I had just been the day before...I got some more candied hawthorne strips (so delicious!) and some hawthorne berry juice and other random things like this doughnut thing that looked like it had brown sugar on top but it was really some random light brown fibrous substance. But the best acquisition of all was CHEESE. They don't have cheese in China. I mean, they do, but Chinese dairy products are generally not to be trusted. My doughnut-thing had Chinese butter on it and it was weeeiiiirrrdd. But magically, in the midst of Wal-Mart, we came upon cheese. And not only cheese, but the most quintessentially American cheese of all: Kraft Singles. The white kind, not even the yellow kind. After wavering over the price (20 kuai seems so expensive even though it's not even $3 American), I decided to spring for it. We had been in major cheese withdrawal. I ate a piece of cheese straight out of the package while waiting for the train at the subway station, and it was fabulous. Totally worth it.

So last night when I got back from Wal-Mart there was almost nobody on my hall, and it seems that they had all gone out to dinner and then to some club, but my roomie came back early because she is sick so we had a quiet little chill night on our hall. For those of you who were wondering, my roommate's name is Quynh (read: Quinn) and she is from Oregon and she is Vietnamese and she's kind of like the Asian answer to Sarah Mastroianni, for those of you who are acquainted with the inimitable Sarah. Quynh is fun and talkative and she was here last semester so her Chinese is a bazillion times awesomer than mine, plus she knows all the ropes already. My roomie is awesome! She plays Chinese music and swears that she's going to get me hooked, and it's true...sometime we will go do karaoke and sing silly Chinese ballads except I don't actually know the words. Whatever! Also we watch this Korean reality show called Full House about two Western girls who live in a house with some members of the Korean boy band Super Junior and they play all these silly games and it's pretty ridiculous. Hen hao!

I feel like I know less about Asian pop culture than like everyone else on this program...about half of the CIEE students are some kind of Asian I think. I feel like I'm starting to be able to distinguish between Chinese and Korean and Japanese people by appearance. Starting to. A couple of people in the program are actually native Japanese/Korean but go to school in America. It's actually harder sometimes for the people who look Asian because the Chinese are less forgiving to them if their Chinese is not perfect. Some people had a hard time getting into a club the other night because they didn't believe they were foreigners at first and it was free admission for foreigners or something. As much as I feel conspicuous here (and I'm sure vendors assume they can make me pay a higher price because I'm a waiguoren), looking different is mostly to my advantage. People stare pretty shamelessly, but they're also willing to help me. The other day in the dining hall a woman came up to me and asked if I needed help ordering...I guess I radiate confusion, even though I did pretty much know what I was doing. Waiguoren hen hao!

We are leaving on a trip for Stone Flower Caves now...doesn't that sound pretty?

Stuff Mart!

This morning I went to class and whatever, but that wasn't interesting. This afternoon, however, I decided to venture out into Beijing on a quest for Western items that I couldn't find on campus, such as peanut butter. My destination: Wal-Mart. Of course there is a Wal-Mart in Beijing. It's actually vaguely near campus. But only vaguely.

I looked in my Insider's Guide to Beijing to find out where the Wal-Mart was, and I found it on a map before setting out. There were only 2 roads involved, so I figured it would be easy. What I didn't figure was that I'd kind of forget the name of the road I was supposed to turn onto, so I would go too far and have to come back. When I successfully found the Wal-Mart road, I strolled on down it for a while, and it was quite a while, so I asked which was the subway was (because I Wal-Mart was right next to the subway station and I didn't want to be a total bozo American and be like WHERE'S WALMART ITS WHERE WE AMERICANS LIKE TO HANG OUTTT) and it was still farther down and I found the subway station but Wal-Mart didn't appear to be there, so I started walking back and then I glanced up and in a hole between 2 other buildings I saw a sign that said Wal-Mart Supercenter! It took me a little bit to figure out how to get around to the Wal-Mart, but when I succeeded it was awesome. Wal-Mart is a little different here, but not too much. They sell different stuff, mostly, although there were some of the same brands. One big difference is that in China you can buy alcohol at Wal-Mart. You know, the beer department...it's right around the corner from the condiments. Hen silly!

I succeeded at getting peanut butter, although I failed at getting a knife to spread it. It seems to me that they pretty much don't have butter knives in China, just the huge sharp chopping kind. Whatever, I will make do with my lone spoon. Hen hao!

So I figured I'd be a little lazier coming back from Wal-Mart, seeing as I had walked like an hour to get there. So I took the subway to Wudaokou, which is the closest station to campus, and figured I'd just walk from there because I did it last weekend so I should know how. However, this time I came out of a different exit from the subway station, so when I turned right to go to campus like I had last time, it was the wrong direction. I walked in the wrong direction for like 45 minutes, and then I knew it was wrong because I should have arrived by then. So I asked, and sure enough I had been walking east instead of west. Whoops. But at this point I was dead set on walking and too stubborn to change my mind and take a bus or a cab, so I trucked on back 45 minutes to the subway station and then another half hour to campus. I rule.

I had only been on campus for like 30 seconds when I made a friend! I was strolling along and a dude was walking next to me, and he said "ni hao" so I ni hao'd back, and he asked me if I was English and I said no, American, and we had what was pretty much the exact textbook conversation that they've been hammering into our heads in my Kouyu class...he asked me how my Chinese was and how long I had studied Chinese and how long I was going to be in China and what was my major and we talked about China things, and I learned that his name is Zhao Jian (or Alex) and that he is a teacher at a school in a place where I didn't really know where it was, and now we are pals. Hen hao! I want to make some Chinese friends so I'm really immersed in the culture.

It was like 8 or something when I finally got back to my dorm and I had left in the early afternoon...it was a long day but really awesome. I ate a late dinner of delicious vegetable baozi and egg and a 7 up that I had a silly time ordering because I don't know how to say "7 up" in Chinese, but I was like "the green one," and it worked out all right and I told the dude "feichang hao!" and it was full of silliness and we laughed, yay.

Anyway, right now I am allllll kinds of tired considering that I've been up since 7 am and I spent all of my time from 3 pm to 8 walking to and from and around Wal-Mart. Hen hao! I will sleep well tonight...no class tomorrow, and I'm meeting with my tutor in the morning!

Our lovely room

I meant to do this post earlier, but I didn't have the pics to back me up until now. Our room is basically a cheap hotel room with furniture that has been worn in college-student style. We are fortunate to have our own bathroom with a real toilet, although our shower is kind of hilarious - it's like a foot off the ground and the showerhead is so low that I have to get my limbo on in order to wash my hair. The bathroom also contained this amazing little notice about the tap water:

Dear Guest:
The water where inside the tap is hot spring. It is good for your skin, but it can't for drink.
The coldwater in the tap is for drink after boiled it.

Thank you!
Shaoyuan guesthouse

The other really silly feature of our room was the sign I encountered on the nightstand when I moved in:














The irony in the juxtaposition of the ashtray on the nightstand next to the sign made me laugh.

Sorry I haven't posted other pictures so far, but I have them...it's kind of a pain to upload things to photobucket, but I do it just for you. Feel the love. You can look at my other pics at this address: http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w11/rebekahbex/

Mmmm time to rest up for my last day of classes this week...noon on Thursday my weekend begins! Hen hao!

Sunshine and friends and fruit on a stick

My amazing jetlag schedule of going to bed early and waking up early is failing a little bit...my alarm went off at 6:40 this morning but I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed until 7. Whatever, though, I ran a little late but I made up for it with my amazing morning hustle skillz of getting all the way to Wen Shi Lou in like 7 minutes. Hen hao! I had a quiz in Kouyu that I totally didn't know about (I could have sworn that she said our only homework was to memorize the dialogue), but whatever because my Kouyu words are all things I knew already, so there were only like 2 characters that I didn't get. Hen hao! Then I hustled my little booty back to Shao Yuan because they were taking the CIEE group picture at 9:50 and my class ended at 9:50...good planning on their part, right? I got there at like 9:58 but I was still in time to slip into the picture. Hen hao! It was sunny today and vaguely warmer and I was so happy!! Taiyang feichang hao!

I have a morning break on Mondays and Wednesdays, but today I used it to study study and finish my homework...piles of fun. Hanyu was a lot less confusing today, though. I worked with the same kid as last class and he's still all kinds of smarter than me, but at least this time I contributed instead of sitting there like a lump with a dumb look on my face. Tingli was easier today too, but it might just be because I previewed the material at home a little bit so I wouldn't be lost. Also I made friends with the dude sitting next to me, which was the only thing preventing the class from being a total snoozefest. His name is Patrik, and we determined that all the truly cool people spell their names with Ks and no Cs. Hen hao!

This evening a bunch of people ordered in but I wanted to go out and get food on campus so I ventured out on my own and ate at a place I had never been to before and figured out how to put more money on my meal card and added 50 kuai to my card. That's a little over $6 American, but it will totally last me a week...I love this country. I got a big fat baozi at dinner that was about the size of an orange, and it cost me 7 jiao, which is less than 10 cents. China is sweet. After dinner I went to Wu-Mei to get water and other groceries, and on my way out I passed the fruit-on-a-stick place and I noticed that they had something very strange-looking, and when I asked, my suspicions were confirmed...they were tomatoes on a stick, coated in sugar syrup. It seemed so gross and weird that I almost got one just to see what they were like, but my hands were full carrying 4 huge things of water. Maybe another day. Probably by the end of the semester the fruit-on-a-stick people are going to be putting all kinds of random substances on a stick figuring I will buy them if they look weird enough, because it's pretty much true.

Anywayyyyyyyyyy I should probably go study and do homework seeing as I haven't done any yet this evening and everyone else on my hall is all stressin' out over their work. If I can get done early maybe I can watch silly Korean reality TV with my roomie and go to sleep early like the old person I am inside. Feichang hao!!!

I met my tutor finally!!

My tutor couldn't come to the meeting when everyone else's tutors came to meet them, and she sent me a note and then we arranged a meeting on the phone, but I hadn't ever met her until tonight! Her name is Joy and she is so adorable and nice and I love her!! She thinks I am hen aixiao (good-natured, I think) and she says that I am like a cartoon, I think because I make silly noises and laugh a lot and talk with my hands. We talked about a lot of random stuff...at one point we talked about monopolies and anti-trust laws...I forget how we got onto the topic, but she said that China doesn't have anti-trust laws because so recently the government ran all the industries, so government companies still have monopolies. Oh! I remember, we were talking about CCTV, because it is the *official* TV station, and I told her about watching it in Chinese class. And she helped me with my homework that I was soooo confused by and now it is all clear to me! Hooray!

Today was a little bit of a discouraging day before, because I was really confused in my Hanyu class (that was the one that had the confusing homework), and we were working in pairs and I felt like I wasn't bringing any knowledge whatsoever to the partnership, and I forgot to do my little assignment for Kouyu, but fortunately we got out of Hanyu early so I got it done and it was all good. I still felt really bad though, and really dumb for forgetting homework on the very first night, like it didn't bode well for the rest of the semester. I was just confused all over the place earlier today, because I got a text message from Jacqui but I couldn't call the number back so I called what I had in my phone book as her number, but it turned out to be Annie's number except I didn't realize it until after I had finished talking to her and I was all kinds of confused, and then I went to pick up my laundry and I couldn't find the laundry place for a while and then it was right in front of me the whole time, I had just thought that that building was a bank so I didn't bother trying to read the characters on the sign that said that it was a laundry place. Anyway, in the end it was okay and everything was straightened out and I got my clothes, but I felt kind of harried this morning and early afternoon, and it was bu hao. But I took a little rest/pseudo-nap this afternoon, and after meeting Joy I just totally feel better. It really put me in a good mood, because I think I will learn a lot from her. And boy do I have a lot to learn! But at least for tonight my homework makes sense. I still haven't had dinner yet though, and it's 9 pm...I'm not really hungry, I kind of ate a lot of random food this afternoon, but if I don't get food now I won't be able to later because the places that are still open close at 10. Whatevs. I need to look up different kinds of vegetables so I can order food better...I had pork and leek dumplings today for lunch but I don't know how to say the first character of leek, which is bu hao because I like leeks. I need a crash course in food words.

Ooh, I found the type of wheat digestive crackers that I like at Wu-Mei...I promise that wheat digestive crackers are a bazillion times tastier than they sound. They are delicious and a little bit buttery tasting...hen hao!

First Day of Class

So today was my first day of class...I know you silly Americans are all getting ready for your spring break, but whatever. Hen hao!

I woke up at 6:40 because I am awesome and I can do that and still get a decent amount of sleep because I go to bed way early like the old person I am. I had Tingli (Listening) from 8-9:50, and the word on the street is that it's a way boring class, but the first day was OK. We mostly introduced ourselves and did a little listening exercise. There's 4 CIEE people in our class, so hen hao! And we made some new friends: Julian, who is French, and Saki, who is Japanese and in every single one of my classes. We are hen haopengyou. I had a break after that, so I went back and chilled and then took advantage of my free time to get early lunch at 11:30. There is a lunch hour from 12-12:30 here where there are no classes for anyone, so you have to go early if you can to miss the insane lunch rush. I went to the dumpling place with Jackie and got egg and leek dumplings and they were delicious (dumplings are my LIFE), although they came with the amazingly flavorless, ubiquitous corn soup. Seriously, it tastes like nothing. Even the corn taste is extremely faint. I tried adding soy sauce and spicy stuff to it, and it was a little better, but still way silly.

In the afternoon I had Kouyu (Speaking) and Hanyu (regular Chinese). My Kouyu class is sooooooo easy, it's totally too low a level for me, but I already signed my life away and switching classes is really difficult. As loath as I am to be in a class that's so mindless, I think it will pick up after a little bit, and I think my spoken Chinese will improve no matter what level I'm in just because of the immersion environment. The Hanyu class was harder to keep up with...I can definitely handle it, but I have to concentrate to understand the teacher all the time. It's a lot of mental effort; hard at the end of the day when you're tired. I spoke lots of Chinese though! I totally volunteered answers in Kouyu and was like kachinggggg I rule. And I talked to Saki in Chinese a bunch. It's funny because now that we're among international students, Chinese is our lingua franca. Now that classes have started we're supposed to speak only Chinese from 8-5 during the week. Sometimes I forget, but I got on a roll today and was speaking Chinese even after 5. Hen hao!

I went to dinner with Vanessa and Amanda and afterwards we went to Wu-Mei to get desserty things (they are not all about dessert here and we ladies felt deprived), and I hadn't brought any money but my nice mommy Vanessa got me fruit on a stick which I had been wanting forever because it is coated in shiny shiny sugar syrup and it was yummy! I got the hawthorne berries on a stick...they are pretty good but full of seeds, which makes them a little awkward. We reached some conclusions about stick food too:
a) food on a stick is awesome
b) all food is better on a stick
c) you can't help but be happy eating food on a stick! Hen hao!

I have 2 quizzes tomorrow already...I studied my characters this evening, and I'm going to review them a little more in bed and then go to sleepies. I miss my flashcards and whiteboard...I can probably find flashcards here pretty easily, although a big ol' whiteboard and markers might be trickier. Right now I'm operating off a single notebook...I suppose I should get me some for real school supplies sometime.

I'm gonna play with Sa Jia Li Ya on Sunday! Hen hao!

I forgot to pick up my laundry today so I only have one more pair of socks! Silly Li bei ka. Also I could have sworn I brought my leg long underwears with me to China, but when I tried to find them today it seems like that is a lie. Bu hao, because it is a bit chilly out these days. Not as bad as Rochester though, I'm sure! Hen hao!

Forbidden City, etc.

So yesterday was our field trip to Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City. The weather was all kinds of cold and wet and gross, and my camera battery died after like 4 pictures, so I think I'll have to go back sometime when it's nicer. It was really pretty and very well-kept-up, but there's not much to tell really. I learned that the emperor had thousands of concubines and we wondered how exactly he managed with that, and I learned that they had huge huge vessels all over that were supposed to hold water for putting out fires and the ones in the inner section were covered with gold but the Japanese scraped it a lot of it off during the war, and I learned that seeing the Forbidden City is not as nice when it's cold and grey and raining out. Bu hao!

After the tour we decided to find lunch instead of taking the CIEE bus back to Beida, so we took a bus to Xidan and ate in the food court of a shopping center, and when I was trying to get out of my seat to go to the bathroom, I put my hand down on the edge of my tray and it shot my food up, catapult-style, and I got soup on my pants and the floor and Pei's backpack (fortunately it was thick soup so it wasn't too messy), and my baozi landed on the floor and got all dirty, which made me very very sad because baozi (steamed buns with various fillings, for you Westerners) are one of my favoritest things to eat here, or probably anywhere. Oh well, I'm sure there will be lots more baozi in my future. Hen hao!

The shopping center we were in was riDICulously large...it had like 8 floors, and I only got as far as like the 5th, but the best part of it was that the first floor where we came in was like Candyland! There were soooo many kinds of sweets and it was all colorful and I was like a small child I was so happy. Jackie and I spent a really long time trying to read labels and guess based on the pictures and eventually I got a couple random preserved fruit things that I didn't really know what they were but they've been tasty so far, albeit rather sticky and messy.

After I got shiny shiny candy, me and Jackie and Steve wanted to go home but everyone else was still shopping, so we ventured out on a mission to figure out the subway system! We went around and asked random people where the "ditie" was until we found it, and then we wandered around reading signs and asking questions until we figured out getting tickets and which direction we should be going and which stops we needed to transfer at and whatnot and we totally didn't mess up or get lost at all! One of the transfers was really silly because there was construction and we had to go up a bunch of stairs and walk around in a big circle outside and go across a street and crazy places and then back underground to get on the next line, and then they made us get another ticket. Bu hao. But then we were waiting in line (people make little lines so when the train comes they are all neatly in line at the doors, which is funny now that I think about it because the Chinese are not all about waiting in line politely) and speaking English with random snippets of Chinese, and the dude in front of us turned around and asked if we were American and we ended up making friends with him and his name was Sebastian and he was from Mozambique and spoke like 5 languages and was studying Chinese at Yuyan Daxue and had just bought canvases to finish a collection he was painting of modern art based on traditional African life, and he invited us to come to the opening of his art exhibition so we gave him our email addresses and it was AWESOME. And then we got off at the right stop and walked back to campus and didn't get lost and were so proud. It was way gross weather, but it was a sweet sweet time. Feichang hao!

Last night was another night where I stayed in and went to bed early...the weather was still yucky, so we just ordered takeout from Manfu (delivery is FREE here because they don't tip in this country and ahh China is so deliciously cheap), and after that I pretty much crashed and went to bed. I slept like 11 hours, it was ridiculous. Today I didn't do much, just bummed around in the morning...the most productive thing I did was take my clothes to the laundry. I brought like NO clothes with me to China. Hen hao! Then we went to lunch on campus...getting food on campus is a little bit amazing because it's like 3 or 4 yuan for your food, which is approximately 50 cents. If you get a drink it frequently costs as much as or more than your food...I'm thinking I should get a water bottle and fill it from the huge things of water I have in my room so I won't always be having juice or sweet drinks with my meals. And so I can be even more cheapo, because $1 for a meal is just too much...mahaha hen hao!

This afternoon I took another stab at the application for the summer volunteer program in Africa that I'm thinking about...it was kind of demoralizing because I kept feeling like I have no qualifications. Like, I'm all about doing nice helping-type things for people, but I couldn't really think of any volunteer work in particular to write about, I've just done little things here and there. And I feel like I don't have any skills...I know lots about linguistics and I feel like I'm a generally useful person to have around, but I can't really name any specific areas of expertise that would be relevant. I don't know. But I would be good at doing humanitarian work! I promise! Whatevs. And also I was having a hard time contacting my tutor and I tried to read my textbooks a little bit and got a little frustrated and I sort of retreated into my bed and just curled up in a lump for a while. But then my roomie came back from shopping and chatted with me and other people came back and I got less lumpish and more normal and non-antisocial. Hen hao! And we ordered food again because it's cold out and we are hen lazy and delivery is free. Oh also today I got more silly foods, including cucumber flavor potato chips and green tea pocky, which are weird because they are made with milk and Chinese dairy products taste very...different. I got jam and what I thought were plain sliced rolls to spread it on for breakfast, but actually the rolls have some unknown orange stuff inside them, so we'll see how that goes. I'm all about the food adventures.

My language tutor finally called me back tonight! Her name is Joy and I get to meet her on Tuesday and I can just tell that she is going to be adorable. Hen hao! Oh and I called MIF this afternoon talked to lots of people and I miss everybody but it was funny because it was like 3 am there so everybody was a little sleepy. It was cute. Everybody should send me emails or something, I'd be happy to hear from you! You can IM me at silly times too, because they'll be normal times in Beijing...I'm 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast.

Time to take another stab at productivity...what what

Busy day, busy people!

I woke up on my own today at 6:40 and it was kind of awesome...jet lag has really kind of adjusted me very appropriately to the times I need to wake up here. This morning we had a huge awesome breakfast and then did team-building exercises, which were pretty awesome. Probably the best was the one where we had a big group of people and they'd tell us how many hands and feet we could have on the floor (it was a little Twisteresque), and we'd have to figure out how to support 13 people with, say, 8 feet and 6 hands. Wooo! After that we went to get our books and find out our courses. Soooo on the downside I have 8 am classes every morning and I can't take any electives because I'm not in a high enough level, but on the upside I have no Friday classes!! I never thought that would happen to me, especially not at Beijing we-work-so-hard Daxue. I'm thinking maybe this will allow me to take some sweet long weekend trips. Or just sleep a lot on some Fridays...hen hao!

So I went to lunch with some peeps, and we were looking for some pizza place, but we couldn't find it, so instead we went to a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant. It was pretty decent, and I had my first experience with the awesome public bathrooms that have no stall doors, as well as walls that are like 3 feet high. And no toilet paper. Hen hao! I was really worried about squatty potties before I left home but somehow once I got here they didn't faze me at all. Woo!

In the afternoon we went shopping in Wu Dao Kou, and I bargained for the first time ever. I wasn't very good, although I did talk her down more than 20 kuai from the original price, so I didn't feel like a total loser. Plus the sweatshirt I got is pretty awesome and has backwards letters and silly non-words on it. But bargaining made me feel flustered...I could feel my face turning pink as I did it, and it didn't help that my vocabulary isn't large enough to argue well or understand everything the vendor is saying to me. Oh well, practice makes perfect. There was soooo much clothing with hilarious Chinglish on it that I wanted to buy, but I didn't have the patience or stamina to bargain for it. Whatevs, I have lots more time here and I'll probably be better then anyway.

I still haven't met my language tutor...I have to call her sometime because she couldn't come to the meeting. I should probably do that soon. Tomorrow we are going to Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City! All kinds of touristy I'm sure, but I'm still excited. For some reason my camera batteries died even though I put in new ones yesterday, so I'm not very happy about that...bu hao bu hao!

These green tea cookies with peach chips are growing on me...I can't really taste any green-tea-ness, but the peach chips are pretty exciting. Oh man I ate so much food today. And every other day I've been here really. I think the family-style eating makes me eat more because there aren't set individual portions. Don't be surprised if I come back from China I've, like, doubled in size. The food here is good but Beijing cuisine is so oily! I kind of wish I had access to kitchen facilities...oh well. I should join the gym maybe, or hip hop club. Walking everywhere probably helps, but it makes my poor little feets hurt. Bu hao.

Jackie and I got lychee beer today in Wu-Mei...it's basically nonalcoholic but it is way delicious! Pretty much just like lychee-flavored soda. And lychee is hen tasty!

Mmmmmm well we are meeting at 8:30 tomorrow morning to leave for Tiananmen, so I'm-a go sleep now, even though everyone else just went out to some clubs to party down. I'm such an old fogey, but I don't want to be dead of sleep deprivation tomorrow for our day of walking around and seeing important things. There will be lots of other times for late night dance party action. Hen hao!

Beijing hen hao!!!!

Oh man it's been crazy times...there was a 14 hour flight, and then the airline losing one of my bags, and meeting lots of other students, and zillions of activities. I didn't get my backpack until last night, because the airline lost it and I had to go through this whole process to get it back and yesterday I went out and bought some of the stuff in my missing bag like razors and soap and almost as soon as I got back from shopping they called to say they had found my bag. I maintain that my buying things caused it to come, just like washing your car makes it rain.

There's been so much silliness in the past few days that I just can't remember it all...I've eaten tons of awesome food and seen even more really silly food items...today I bought "Mexican tomato chicken" flavored potato chips and green-tea-peach cookies. Also I ate jellyfish at lunch. It's a little weird texture but not bad.

Yesterday we took a placement test in the morning, which was really really hard and kind of demoralizing, to the point where I just gave up reading the reading comprehension passages because I was struggling so much and it wasn't helping me figure out the answers anyway...I placed into intermediate I written chinese and beginning II spoken, but I switched down into beginning II written as well once I saw the book. I'm not crazy about being in such a low level, but I think it's where I need to be to not be in over my head. Whatever.

After the test they sent us out in little groups on a scavenger hunt in the city of Beijing. I wasn't thrilled at first, because our tasks seemed really extensive, like finding out all the bus routes from a certain spot and then taking a bus to some shopping center, but it turned out to be all kinds of fun, and I spoke little bits of Chinese to people and it was awesome. We went to Carrefour, which is a French Wal-Mart style store, but of course all the stuff is labeled in Chinese with occasional English, so I had a crazy time buying things. I ended up getting mostly Chinese stuff because the American brands were so much more expensive. My sense of prices is changing rapidly...I'm like ew, 20 kuai, so expensive, even though it's like $2.50 American.

Time for dinner! More updates later! Hen hao!