First of all, THE HIGGS BOSON IS REAL!!! THEY FOUND IT AND PARTICLE PHYSICS AS WE KNOW IT EXISTS!!!!!!!!!!! This is really exciting. I'm kind of obsessed with the Higgs Boson Particle. It proves that the Higgs Field exists, and the way particles interact with this field is what makes things have mass.
And now back to China.
Today was the third of our excursions. We left at 8AM for the Marco Polor (or Lugou) Bridge which was built in the 12th Century and has lions too numerous to count. It is where the Japanese invaded to begin the second Sino-Japanese War on July 7, 1937, so we went on the 75th Anniversary of this event. After exploring the bridge, we walked through the old city of Wanping, and went to the museum to commemorate this war. The museum was very well organized, and had an extensive chronology of the Chinese perspective on the war.
The excursion ended early, so after a quick lunch in the cafeteria on Bei Da's campus, ten of us took the subway to the Silk Market. I had a great time there, and it is so much more fun to bargain for things when you can actually speak some Chinese. I pulled out my tai gui le, my numbers, I even tried to help my friend lower a price by telling a vendor who I bought something from that she was my friend (wo de pengyou). It felt really good to be a little more self-sufficient this time around. I bought two drawing/painting/some sort of artistic medium that I can hang on a wall, a silk scarf that has purple butterflies and flowers on it, a raincoat with a hood (it's "North Face," "Gore Tex," and two-tone green), and a "LeSportsac" backpack that has a pattern with elephants, lions, and giraffes on it. I'm really happy with my purchases, and I'm especially happy that I used Chinese to get the prices I was willing to pay.
I had noodles with eggplant from the cafeteria for dinner, took a well-earned shower (it was extremely hot today, though very cloudy), and relaxed for the remainder of the evening. I get so tired here!!
Today is awesome because I successfully used Chinese language away from Bei Da's campus.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Lama Temple
This morning, I had my first oral quiz in Chinese class. I went first, and I was alone in the classroom with my teacher who asked me some questions in Chinese and I answered them in Chinese. It was not as bad as I was expecting, I felt prepared, and I know enough Chinese to be able to understand and speak for those few minutes, which is really cool.
The lunch meeting was jam-packed with information today. We have an excursion tomorrow and the bus leaves at 8AM sharp. There was no Public Health class today. Most importantly, the travel agent came to collect our money for the trip to Hongzhou, and there was some information about that. Be prepared for an extremely long blog post after that trip because I will not have internet access during that long weekend. I will be keeping a handwritten journal that I can transfer here, but since it will cover five days, it will be a very long and hopefully interesting post.
Since we had the afternoon off, I went with Marissa, Caleb, Maitreyi, and Pooja to the Lama Temple. Lama as in Dalai. It was kind of like the Forbidden City in architecture and layout, but the content was entirely Tibetan Buddhist. There were a lot of people going to worship there because the Maitreyia Buddha at the Lama Temple is the largest Buddha carved out of a single piece of wood. It is 18 meters above ground and 8 meters below, which boils down to it being simply enormous. All of the courtyards, buildings, and statues were absolutely beautiful, and it was a really great way to spend the afternoon.
The subway stop we got off from literally runs underneath the temple, so we had to walk the perimeter to get to the entrance. On our way, we noticed the hutongs (old neighborhoods of small, interconnected buildings) and shops selling Buddha statues, sandalwood, incense, and other such trinkets. It was really fun to browse on our way back, and some people bought statues and incense. We ended the excursion with ice cream, and it made for a truly wonderful afternoon.
I had dinner in a cafeteria I had never been to before, and I enjoyed my chicken, eggplant, green beans, and rice very much. I ended my evening with some nice relaxing before going to bed on the early side. I've been failing to do that all week because I've been so busy, but it's going to happen tonight!!
Today is awesome because I went to the Lama Temple, had a great time, and got to check it off my tourist list!
The lunch meeting was jam-packed with information today. We have an excursion tomorrow and the bus leaves at 8AM sharp. There was no Public Health class today. Most importantly, the travel agent came to collect our money for the trip to Hongzhou, and there was some information about that. Be prepared for an extremely long blog post after that trip because I will not have internet access during that long weekend. I will be keeping a handwritten journal that I can transfer here, but since it will cover five days, it will be a very long and hopefully interesting post.
Since we had the afternoon off, I went with Marissa, Caleb, Maitreyi, and Pooja to the Lama Temple. Lama as in Dalai. It was kind of like the Forbidden City in architecture and layout, but the content was entirely Tibetan Buddhist. There were a lot of people going to worship there because the Maitreyia Buddha at the Lama Temple is the largest Buddha carved out of a single piece of wood. It is 18 meters above ground and 8 meters below, which boils down to it being simply enormous. All of the courtyards, buildings, and statues were absolutely beautiful, and it was a really great way to spend the afternoon.
The subway stop we got off from literally runs underneath the temple, so we had to walk the perimeter to get to the entrance. On our way, we noticed the hutongs (old neighborhoods of small, interconnected buildings) and shops selling Buddha statues, sandalwood, incense, and other such trinkets. It was really fun to browse on our way back, and some people bought statues and incense. We ended the excursion with ice cream, and it made for a truly wonderful afternoon.
I had dinner in a cafeteria I had never been to before, and I enjoyed my chicken, eggplant, green beans, and rice very much. I ended my evening with some nice relaxing before going to bed on the early side. I've been failing to do that all week because I've been so busy, but it's going to happen tonight!!
Today is awesome because I went to the Lama Temple, had a great time, and got to check it off my tourist list!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Hospital Visit #2 and July 4th Celebration
This morning in Chinese class we learned the song "Beijing Huanying Ni" (Beijing Welcomes You), which was the promotional video for the 100 day countdown to the 2008 Olympics. It is so catchy, and we realized that we had learned the majority (da bufen 大部分) of the characters in the song. It also has an epic moment of Jackie Chan, and I highly recommend watching it. I've actually downloaded it for my iTunes library; it's that awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxgaH3bZwuE&list=FLNrXv5UceKnZWvmRXWxv7tQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Instead of a Public Health lecture, as you can tell from the title of this post, we had a field trip today to a community health clinic. It is a smaller facility, one of two hundred in Beijing alone, that does only primary care. We started in the public health area of the building which had a consultation center for nutrition, exercise, screenings for chronic illness, and general health and behavioral advising. The initiatives there were good, but there were few people in the space. They attribute that to the lateness of the day, and I hope they are correct and that many more people had been served by the facility.
In the main outpatient center, the most utilized clinic was for traditional Chinese medicine. There were many people mid-therapy as we walked through, including a man who was casually sitting in the room with acupuncture needles in his face. We were all extremely interested in these therapies and how patients choose those over the biomedical therapies, so the next academic session when we have our TCM class is much anticipated by all.
We finished the site visit with a bit of a conference/Q&A session with the director of the center, a doctor from PKU, two representatives from the Beijing CDC, and one from the Haidian District CDC. We live in Haidian District. It was interesting, but there was a large language barrier today, so that made communicating more difficult. I've found that because we are talking about such a specialized topic, these professionals who have fantastic everyday English do not know all the words that we use to describe various bits of anatomy or the name of a disease or therapy. It's the specificity of the field that makes English/Chinese challenging for people to communicate, but it's all part of the experience.
Compared to the hospital we visited last week, this clinic was small, less crowded, and less modern. We have been discussing disparities in China pertaining to health and socioeconomic status, but this visit really reminded me that China is still a developing country. To have facilities at such different levels within one city is extremely demonstrative of the struggles this nation faces in striving for equity. It was as if we had jumped into a photo from Africa or Haiti and then suddenly we were back in a big modern city, and it made me sad that there are such gaps within miles of one another.
In the evening, we had our 4th of July Celebration with our language partners. We were supposed to be celebrating in real time with the US, but the holiday ended 6 hours earlier in eastern time, which is 3 hours pacific time, so it was just ironic. Gu Laoshi ordered food for us, and we began the evening with a singing of the American and Chinese national anthems. It was fun to sing with Helen because both of us like to sing and we taught each other our respective country's songs.
There were a lot of dishes at dinner. There was cold tofu in a heart-shaped mold that had a very light, clean flavor that I very much enjoyed. Also with the cold dishes that I did not like as much but still tasted good were mushrooms, Sichuan spicy beef, cucumbers in soy sauce, and cooked lettuce. Our hot dishes were tomato, egg, and spinach; sweet and sour shrimp (very American/mei guo, but so tasty because it was familiar); a scallop served in its shell with rice noodles on top; a vegetable dish of sliced mushrooms, celery, and red pepper; a whole fish that I was too full to try; steamed buns with duck that was stir-fried with peanuts and peppers in a kung pao reminiscent way; a fried meat dish that I think was chicken; fried rice; taro eggroll-so delicious! the filling was creamy and purple, so of course I liked it; a meat soup; the most delicious corn soup I have ever had-the corn flavor was very intense, the broth was light, and there were egg drops in it; and sliced watermelon and cantaloupe for dessert.
While the food was good, I really enjoyed talking with Helen. We compared notes on how our lessons were going and I tried a Chinese sentence of my own with her today. She said it was very good, and I always feel so triumphant when I can communicate in this language that is so new to me. She has been preparing for her TOFL which is a week from Saturday, and I think she's going to be fine because her spoken English is so good. I love spending time with my Chinese friend!
We left dinner at 8, I stopped to buy a lu cha 绿茶 green tea, then I tackled the dorm issue of getting hot water. Andrea has done it the last few times, so I took a turn getting our hot water recharged. Our room has a card, and I took it, my phrasebook/dictionary, and my small vocabulary that includes the words re shui 热水 hot water and the ability to tell them my room number (er ling liu ling jiu 二零六零九 20609). My attempt was successful!!! It was truly a triumph to come back with the card ready to recharge our water supply so I could take a nice shower.
I am now preparing for tomorrow's oral exam in Chinese class. We have 14 questions and will be asked 6. One of the six is to give an introduction, and I've got that down, so I just have to finish prepping the remaining questions. They're pretty basic: introduce your roommate, do you have a Chinese friend, introduce your teacher, things like that. We only have a few verbs, so there's only so much we can say. I feel good about it though because I'm preparing by writing, which means I have to process what the question means so I can answer it. It'll be okay, it's just the first time, and our teacher's philosophy is that we test to learn rather than learn for the test. I really like her and I'm going to miss her during the second session when we have a new teacher!
Today is awesome because I successfully spoke Chinese.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Reunion with an old Friend at the Olympic Village
My sophomore year of high school, Yizhou came to the US from the Xinhua University High School. She stayed with her aunt, uncle, and cousin, and was a member of my class for the year. We became fast friends, but then she and her family moved to DC, and I haven't seen her since that year, but we've kept in touch through e-mail throughout these last four years. Yizhou is a wonderful person, and I was so excited to start planning to see her in Beijing when I got accepted to my program.
Tonight, we met at the East Gate of PKU at 5:30PM to go to the Olympic Stadiums and have dinner together. She told me to bring a friend, so Victoria came with me. Yizhou is a brave, brave soul for driving in Beijing, and after a big hug we went over to the stadiums. The Bird's Nest is HUGE!! You know that an Olympic stadium has to be huge, but seeing it in person really puts its scale in perspective. It is a real focal point, as is the Water Cube, which is now a water park open to the public.
We walked around the park, took lots of pictures, and generally chatted and caught up. After a while, we got quite hungry, and headed away from the stadiums to get dinner. We ate a a homestyle Chinese restaurant and ordered gong bao ji ding (kung pao chicken), spicy garlic green beans, the most delicious eggplant dish I've ever eaten, and a very mild dish with tofu, shrimp, peas, and corn. I thoroughly enjoyed everything we ordered. Chi hao! (very delicious) I did take what I thought was a piece of green bell pepper, but it was actually a spicy pepper, and it instantly gave me the hiccups. I had to hold my breath for a moment to make them go away, and it was pretty funny, if a little embarrassing.
I know I write about food a lot, but it is a pretty big part of my experience of China because the food is so different from what we eat in America. There are many types of Chinese food, but outside Asia, they are all clumped together as "Chinese." Here, any non-Asian food gets clumped together as "Western." In the US, we have a Chinese restaurant next to a Mexican restaurant next to a Middle Eastern restaurant next to a burger joint, and we can eat any of these things because there is no one prevalent style for "American" food. It's just a different way of thinking about things while I'm here, and I really love Chinese food.
I was so happy to reunite with Yizhou. Though we've both grown up a lot these last few years (and gone through a few different haircuts), it is really nice to know that friendships can last. People always say to their international friends that they will come visit, but the realities of life usually prevent that from happening. I am so lucky to be able to see Yizhou in her home city and have her perspective on the things I am discovering. I got to tell her about learning Chinese and the things I'm finding different and exciting, and she is sharing her home with me. It was so nice to be together again, and I can't wait until our next outing.
So, that was the highlight of my day. The ordinary part was that we have a new set of vocab words in Chinese, another dialogue to memorize, and dictation homework. We did a quiz in class where we had to unscramble words to make a proper sentence, and that went much better than the first time. We watched the extended video for the song "Beijing Huanying Ni" (Beijing Welcomes You) that had a bunch of celebrities in famous locations each singing a few lines of the song, and we're going to learn part of it in class tomorrow. Lunch was pizza and we got an update on tomorrow's Independence Day celebration, the trip to Hongzhou, and reconfirmed the field trip for tomorrow.
In Public Health we finished our lecture on food safety. I was very frustrated today. The professor gave us a rundown of how China successfully regulated food production to prevent any sickness due to food during the Olympics in 2008. There were subsidies given to the producers to have extra safe practices, but once the games were over, the producers did not find these procedures sustainable, so the food safety regressed to where it was pre-2008. I just don't understand why it was that they could go back rather than bring everyone else up to the proper safety standard. It was very interesting to have a breakdown of how the bovine milk industry has changed, though.
After class was homework then the meetup with Yizhou, and it was a really great day that ended with a nice skype home.
Today is awesome because I got to reunite with a great friend in a place I've been very eager to see!
Oh, and I want to give special greetings to my readers who have been keeping up with my adventures. I really appreciate that you care enough to read my posts, and I hope you continue to find them interesting/entertaining/a sign that I am alive. You rock!
Tonight, we met at the East Gate of PKU at 5:30PM to go to the Olympic Stadiums and have dinner together. She told me to bring a friend, so Victoria came with me. Yizhou is a brave, brave soul for driving in Beijing, and after a big hug we went over to the stadiums. The Bird's Nest is HUGE!! You know that an Olympic stadium has to be huge, but seeing it in person really puts its scale in perspective. It is a real focal point, as is the Water Cube, which is now a water park open to the public.
We walked around the park, took lots of pictures, and generally chatted and caught up. After a while, we got quite hungry, and headed away from the stadiums to get dinner. We ate a a homestyle Chinese restaurant and ordered gong bao ji ding (kung pao chicken), spicy garlic green beans, the most delicious eggplant dish I've ever eaten, and a very mild dish with tofu, shrimp, peas, and corn. I thoroughly enjoyed everything we ordered. Chi hao! (very delicious) I did take what I thought was a piece of green bell pepper, but it was actually a spicy pepper, and it instantly gave me the hiccups. I had to hold my breath for a moment to make them go away, and it was pretty funny, if a little embarrassing.
I know I write about food a lot, but it is a pretty big part of my experience of China because the food is so different from what we eat in America. There are many types of Chinese food, but outside Asia, they are all clumped together as "Chinese." Here, any non-Asian food gets clumped together as "Western." In the US, we have a Chinese restaurant next to a Mexican restaurant next to a Middle Eastern restaurant next to a burger joint, and we can eat any of these things because there is no one prevalent style for "American" food. It's just a different way of thinking about things while I'm here, and I really love Chinese food.
I was so happy to reunite with Yizhou. Though we've both grown up a lot these last few years (and gone through a few different haircuts), it is really nice to know that friendships can last. People always say to their international friends that they will come visit, but the realities of life usually prevent that from happening. I am so lucky to be able to see Yizhou in her home city and have her perspective on the things I am discovering. I got to tell her about learning Chinese and the things I'm finding different and exciting, and she is sharing her home with me. It was so nice to be together again, and I can't wait until our next outing.
So, that was the highlight of my day. The ordinary part was that we have a new set of vocab words in Chinese, another dialogue to memorize, and dictation homework. We did a quiz in class where we had to unscramble words to make a proper sentence, and that went much better than the first time. We watched the extended video for the song "Beijing Huanying Ni" (Beijing Welcomes You) that had a bunch of celebrities in famous locations each singing a few lines of the song, and we're going to learn part of it in class tomorrow. Lunch was pizza and we got an update on tomorrow's Independence Day celebration, the trip to Hongzhou, and reconfirmed the field trip for tomorrow.
In Public Health we finished our lecture on food safety. I was very frustrated today. The professor gave us a rundown of how China successfully regulated food production to prevent any sickness due to food during the Olympics in 2008. There were subsidies given to the producers to have extra safe practices, but once the games were over, the producers did not find these procedures sustainable, so the food safety regressed to where it was pre-2008. I just don't understand why it was that they could go back rather than bring everyone else up to the proper safety standard. It was very interesting to have a breakdown of how the bovine milk industry has changed, though.
After class was homework then the meetup with Yizhou, and it was a really great day that ended with a nice skype home.
Today is awesome because I got to reunite with a great friend in a place I've been very eager to see!
Oh, and I want to give special greetings to my readers who have been keeping up with my adventures. I really appreciate that you care enough to read my posts, and I hope you continue to find them interesting/entertaining/a sign that I am alive. You rock!
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
An Unexpected Adventure
I'm exhausted, so this is going to be short and disjointed.
It was a normal school day, and I went with six other people to the Lao She Teahouse, except the travel agent messed up and we didn't actually get to go because there were no tickets. We ended up eating food from American fast food (best McFlurry of my life), and then we rode the train home for studying and sleeping.
The Teahouse is diagonally across the street from Tiananmen Square, so it was a rather bustling area. I enjoyed the company of my friends, and even though we didn't get to do the activity we initially wanted to do, it was a fun adventure anyway.
I had a difficult food day today. For breakfast, I tried Snow White flavor yogurt, and it was very bad and I couldn't eat it, so I ate an apple instead, but I was disappointed. I think eating yogurt has helped me not get sick. For lunch, they provided cheeseburgers from McDonalds and mayonnaise-slathered veggie sandwiches from Subway, and neither was even remotely appetizing, so I went to get lunch on my own. It's really hot in Beijing right now, so I noticed that I was very angry because I was hot, tired, and hungry, and I made myself calm down once I got into my air conditioned dorm room. Then we didn't go to the Teahouse, which subverted my expectations. I've been craving plain food lately, so stopping for fast food that was familiar was comforting, but I'm going to look for non-pork baozi tomorrow for dinner and Beast or plain yogurt for breakfast.
Today is awesome because I got to eat some plain food while on an adventure with friends.
Ok, now that I've slept I want to fix this.
Our Public Health lecture was the best one yet. It was quite long, but it was the first one to use qualitative data. Our professor talked about Health Promotion and addressed social determinants of health. She went through a case study of an intervention that PKU collaborated on that involved increasing health awareness and health service utilization among young migrant workers. Gu Laoshi sat in on part of the class, and when the slide had a statistic for 2-week morbidity, he asked what it meant, and as an example, he had us calculate a 2-week morbidity if 10 of the 40 students on our trip had gotten sick. It was pretty funny and a nice break from a lecture that was over 2 hours long.
I have to place a caveat here about food. I love Chinese food. When I eat it, I always enjoy it. However, after a solid two weeks of only Chinese food, I have been craving food with fewer flavors and less salt. This week, I have been snacking on cucumbers and apples because there is not simple produce in Chinese cuisine (ie, they do not eat salad or serve a steamed vegetable without added seasonings). Since the food is saltier than I'm used to, I am finding that dehydration comes faster than usual. It's not that I'm unhappy with the food here, it's that I need to find a little more variety. I mean, when we're in the states we don't eat only one type of cuisine, so I don't feel too bad that I ate American food yesterday. I did, after all, eat Chinese for breakfast and lunch, and it was delicious.
I was also really proud of myself yesterday for knowing exactly where we were upon exiting the subway. I recognized the landmarks around Tiananmen, so I easily knew which street to cross. It is always really cool when I succeed independently in China, be it with directions or with language.
It was a normal school day, and I went with six other people to the Lao She Teahouse, except the travel agent messed up and we didn't actually get to go because there were no tickets. We ended up eating food from American fast food (best McFlurry of my life), and then we rode the train home for studying and sleeping.
The Teahouse is diagonally across the street from Tiananmen Square, so it was a rather bustling area. I enjoyed the company of my friends, and even though we didn't get to do the activity we initially wanted to do, it was a fun adventure anyway.
I had a difficult food day today. For breakfast, I tried Snow White flavor yogurt, and it was very bad and I couldn't eat it, so I ate an apple instead, but I was disappointed. I think eating yogurt has helped me not get sick. For lunch, they provided cheeseburgers from McDonalds and mayonnaise-slathered veggie sandwiches from Subway, and neither was even remotely appetizing, so I went to get lunch on my own. It's really hot in Beijing right now, so I noticed that I was very angry because I was hot, tired, and hungry, and I made myself calm down once I got into my air conditioned dorm room. Then we didn't go to the Teahouse, which subverted my expectations. I've been craving plain food lately, so stopping for fast food that was familiar was comforting, but I'm going to look for non-pork baozi tomorrow for dinner and Beast or plain yogurt for breakfast.
Today is awesome because I got to eat some plain food while on an adventure with friends.
Ok, now that I've slept I want to fix this.
Our Public Health lecture was the best one yet. It was quite long, but it was the first one to use qualitative data. Our professor talked about Health Promotion and addressed social determinants of health. She went through a case study of an intervention that PKU collaborated on that involved increasing health awareness and health service utilization among young migrant workers. Gu Laoshi sat in on part of the class, and when the slide had a statistic for 2-week morbidity, he asked what it meant, and as an example, he had us calculate a 2-week morbidity if 10 of the 40 students on our trip had gotten sick. It was pretty funny and a nice break from a lecture that was over 2 hours long.
I have to place a caveat here about food. I love Chinese food. When I eat it, I always enjoy it. However, after a solid two weeks of only Chinese food, I have been craving food with fewer flavors and less salt. This week, I have been snacking on cucumbers and apples because there is not simple produce in Chinese cuisine (ie, they do not eat salad or serve a steamed vegetable without added seasonings). Since the food is saltier than I'm used to, I am finding that dehydration comes faster than usual. It's not that I'm unhappy with the food here, it's that I need to find a little more variety. I mean, when we're in the states we don't eat only one type of cuisine, so I don't feel too bad that I ate American food yesterday. I did, after all, eat Chinese for breakfast and lunch, and it was delicious.
I was also really proud of myself yesterday for knowing exactly where we were upon exiting the subway. I recognized the landmarks around Tiananmen, so I easily knew which street to cross. It is always really cool when I succeed independently in China, be it with directions or with language.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Getting Lost
I got so lost on my way to Chinese class today. I knew which quad we were supposed to be in, but I had not identified building four, and it was very difficult to find. I was with Andrea, Nate, and Caleb, and we went past building 4 to building 3, got a little lost in the second half of building 2, called both of our program coordinating professors for directions, and eventually made it to building 4. I was late for class (no more than 6 minutes, though), and I walked in when everyone had already started their quizzes.
Today's quiz involved unscrambling characters to make a sentence, then writing the sentence in characters, pinyin, and English. I had trouble with one of them, but it went well overall. When I finished, I was taken to the hall to learn our new tongue twister and read the dialogue in the book. We learned our new vocab, and since it involved directions, we played around with city and campus maps for the end of class.
Lunch was in building 3, which had a connecting walkway with building 4 one floor below us, so it was really easy to get there. In the lunch meeting, we were given our options for travel packages for the long weekend. The two packages were to either go to Yellow Mountain and Hongzhou or to go to Xi'an and a different, very steep mountain. I'm choosing the Hongzhou trip because it is an area with tremendous natural beauty, and it seems to be where my friends are going. I want to find a way to get to Xi'an if I can because I really want to see the terra cotta soldiers and the high school that has an exchange partnership with my high school, but for the long weekend this is the right choice for me.
We had a lecture on Environmental Health in China for Public Health class today. It was very interesting because the experts and government of China are fully aware of the problems and are trying to figure out a way to fix them, but because of the way China is developing, it is difficult to figure out which problem to prioritize. They have to tackle air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, endemic diseases, and the global impact all at once when these issues have historically come in stages. While the statistics of pollutant quantities were not the most relevant or interesting, I think this might be my favorite lecture overall.
I had an easy evening doing homework and such, but I did go out for dinner with Julia, Matt, Jeremy, and Robert to celebrate Robert's birthday. We ate in the Chinese restaurant in the building diagonally across from my dorm, and it was quite good. We ordered a tofu dish that was extremely delicious, though slightly frightening when the sauce started sizzling from the fire that was lit underneath it. We also had Chinese broccoli with garlic, black pepper beef, and there was a pork dish I didn't eat.
After dinner, I did some reorganizing in my room, finished my homework (I had to memorize a dialogue for class), and got to relax before bed. Today was just a simple day at school.
Today is awesome because I got to circumvent the line of non-students trying to get into the University and go in the student entrance, which made me feel really cool.
Today's quiz involved unscrambling characters to make a sentence, then writing the sentence in characters, pinyin, and English. I had trouble with one of them, but it went well overall. When I finished, I was taken to the hall to learn our new tongue twister and read the dialogue in the book. We learned our new vocab, and since it involved directions, we played around with city and campus maps for the end of class.
Lunch was in building 3, which had a connecting walkway with building 4 one floor below us, so it was really easy to get there. In the lunch meeting, we were given our options for travel packages for the long weekend. The two packages were to either go to Yellow Mountain and Hongzhou or to go to Xi'an and a different, very steep mountain. I'm choosing the Hongzhou trip because it is an area with tremendous natural beauty, and it seems to be where my friends are going. I want to find a way to get to Xi'an if I can because I really want to see the terra cotta soldiers and the high school that has an exchange partnership with my high school, but for the long weekend this is the right choice for me.
We had a lecture on Environmental Health in China for Public Health class today. It was very interesting because the experts and government of China are fully aware of the problems and are trying to figure out a way to fix them, but because of the way China is developing, it is difficult to figure out which problem to prioritize. They have to tackle air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, endemic diseases, and the global impact all at once when these issues have historically come in stages. While the statistics of pollutant quantities were not the most relevant or interesting, I think this might be my favorite lecture overall.
I had an easy evening doing homework and such, but I did go out for dinner with Julia, Matt, Jeremy, and Robert to celebrate Robert's birthday. We ate in the Chinese restaurant in the building diagonally across from my dorm, and it was quite good. We ordered a tofu dish that was extremely delicious, though slightly frightening when the sauce started sizzling from the fire that was lit underneath it. We also had Chinese broccoli with garlic, black pepper beef, and there was a pork dish I didn't eat.
After dinner, I did some reorganizing in my room, finished my homework (I had to memorize a dialogue for class), and got to relax before bed. Today was just a simple day at school.
Today is awesome because I got to circumvent the line of non-students trying to get into the University and go in the student entrance, which made me feel really cool.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Super Chill Day on the Hottest Day Yet
It was really hot today. Hotter than yesterday; like 95 degrees and sunny, and the sun came through the smog. It was so hot that standing in the shade for just a few minutes made me start to sweat. This is what a Beijing summer is supposed to feel like, but we haven't been experiencing it due to rain that I attribute to Tropical Storm Doksuri, which hit southeastern China yesterday.
Anyway, I got to sleep in today since it's our day off. I woke up around 10, had a slow start to my day, then around 11:30 I went to Carre Four, the supermarket, with Marissa. I like going to ordinary places here because even the everyday things are different and interesting. I went to get more wipes for my broom, and I totally handled the salesman on my own this time. I really feel like I'm picking up Chinese fast, but if you ask me to say something, I'll probably just say "wo bu shi laoshi" which means "I am not the teacher." I could tell you my name or my surname or that I am a foreign student at Peking University, but that's the phrase that I always come back to because it was one of the first things I learned.
I got some apples and mini cucumbers for snacking this week, and I'm so glad I did because there is nowhere to get a salad or a plain cooked vegetable; everything is in sauce or unsafe because of pesticides and water, so I've been trying to play it safe with packaged and cooked things. But I washed an apple today with my bottled water, and it tasted amazing, so fruit is back in my life! I also got some bread, dried fruit, and cleaning spray.
I really wanted to go to the Olympic Village today, but nobody was free to come with me. I ended up sticking around campus, and I think in the long run it is better that way because of the heat. All you really do at the stadiums is walk around outdoors and take pictures, so perhaps a cooler day. I walked around campus with Andrea and Nate, and when we came home, there were two girls who were moving things in the elevator, and they offered their refrigerator to us. Nate took it, and it was just an instance of kind people and good timing. He lives down the hall from us, so we might mooch some fridge space.
I made a list today of all the excursions we have planned, all the recommended sights, and the things that I want to do. I included the things we've already done, but I now have an enormous checklist of things to do, parks, temples, markets, museums, and areas that I want to see. I even looked up the directions from our dorm to each location, and many of them go together, so it should be a good way to fill days and free afternoons/evenings. I don't know if I'll get to all of it, but it's made me do some research on what's up in Beijing so I can start filling my Sundays in advance. I felt kind of lame staying in the air conditioning all day because there's a whole city here to explore, but I can't do it alone, and when nobody responds to my calls and texts, I'm a little bit stuck here.
Today is awesome because I set goals for myself.
Anyway, I got to sleep in today since it's our day off. I woke up around 10, had a slow start to my day, then around 11:30 I went to Carre Four, the supermarket, with Marissa. I like going to ordinary places here because even the everyday things are different and interesting. I went to get more wipes for my broom, and I totally handled the salesman on my own this time. I really feel like I'm picking up Chinese fast, but if you ask me to say something, I'll probably just say "wo bu shi laoshi" which means "I am not the teacher." I could tell you my name or my surname or that I am a foreign student at Peking University, but that's the phrase that I always come back to because it was one of the first things I learned.
I got some apples and mini cucumbers for snacking this week, and I'm so glad I did because there is nowhere to get a salad or a plain cooked vegetable; everything is in sauce or unsafe because of pesticides and water, so I've been trying to play it safe with packaged and cooked things. But I washed an apple today with my bottled water, and it tasted amazing, so fruit is back in my life! I also got some bread, dried fruit, and cleaning spray.
I really wanted to go to the Olympic Village today, but nobody was free to come with me. I ended up sticking around campus, and I think in the long run it is better that way because of the heat. All you really do at the stadiums is walk around outdoors and take pictures, so perhaps a cooler day. I walked around campus with Andrea and Nate, and when we came home, there were two girls who were moving things in the elevator, and they offered their refrigerator to us. Nate took it, and it was just an instance of kind people and good timing. He lives down the hall from us, so we might mooch some fridge space.
I made a list today of all the excursions we have planned, all the recommended sights, and the things that I want to do. I included the things we've already done, but I now have an enormous checklist of things to do, parks, temples, markets, museums, and areas that I want to see. I even looked up the directions from our dorm to each location, and many of them go together, so it should be a good way to fill days and free afternoons/evenings. I don't know if I'll get to all of it, but it's made me do some research on what's up in Beijing so I can start filling my Sundays in advance. I felt kind of lame staying in the air conditioning all day because there's a whole city here to explore, but I can't do it alone, and when nobody responds to my calls and texts, I'm a little bit stuck here.
Today is awesome because I set goals for myself.
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