Incredibly Busy Thursday

So I had 2 tests on Thursday, and they're the last tests before the CIEE semester ends and they cut off my grades, so from here on out it should be relatively smooth sailing. Yesterday was the super-busiest day ever, though. I had stayed up until 4 studying, then woke up at 6 to study more, then went to 2 exams, chilled a little bit, then embarked upon a journey to the Indian Embassy to see how I could go about getting a visa to go to India this summer.

One of the things I like about living in a big city is public transportation. At home, public transportation is pretty much limited to the Link bus that picks up old people so they can go grocery shopping, and while Rochester has a bus system, it's not a very convenient one. Using Beijing public transportation can be time-consuming, but the very existence of a subway system makes me happy. The Indian embassy is all the way on the other side of town from my university, but I can take a bus from campus to the nearest subway station and then subway it all the way to the embassy district quite easily. I was quite pleased at my navigational success; I didn't make a single mistake in getting there. The dudes at the embassy were pretty cool, too. One guy was asking me all these questions about where I was going and what I was going to do, and I thought he was grilling me to make sure that I wasn't actually going for some unapproved purpose, but really it turned out that he just wanted to recommend good places for me to visit! I was probably just paranoid because my actual intention is to teach English, but I have to pretend it's just tourism so I can get the visa. The visa form had all these spots where you were supposed to give a reference from India and stuff like that, and I was worried because the only reference I might have in India is the office of the program I'm volunteering with, and that might be suspicious, but the man was like "oh if you don't have references in India, don't worry, just leave it blank." Then I was worried about where to get passport-sized photos, because I had no idea, but they pointed me to a place that was just down the street and I got them taken then and there for cheap. The photos even turned out well, unlike most ID photos - everything was just really convenient. The only annoying part is that the embassy only accepts visa applications Monday-Friday, 9-11:30 am, which is when I tend to have class. Silly embassy.

After I got my visa stuff figured out and my photos taken, I grabbed some mediocre baozi at 7-11 and headed back to campus. I got back in time to nap for about an hour, after which I headed to English Corner and then directly from English Corner to Ren Bai Ge's place where my Hanyu class was having a party. We hung out some and then went to Propaganda and danced and danced and some random Chinese man kept dancing with me and trying to talk to me but the music was so loud I had no idea what he was saying. Whatevs. Also some Germans saw me and thought I was German and tried to talk to me in German, at which point I reflexively responded in Chinese, without even thinking about it. It turned out that they didn't speak Chinese any more than I speak German, but I was pleased/amused that it's become somewhat of an instinct for me to speak Chinese. Although I was only running on about 3 hours of sleep total, I somehow managed to stay out until 2 am. Needless to say, today is a resting day.

This morning my roommate informed me that she heard me speaking fluent Chinese in my sleep, having what seemed to be a conversation with my teacher, although naturally she could only hear my half of the conversation. I thought that was pretty fabulous. Hen hao!