Days 4-6

I won't be able to remember the numbers of the days from now on, probably. Maybe I'll be able to start coming up with witty titles to my blog posts, but don't get your hopes up. Because I am the least creative person I know.

Tuesday was the ACTUAL scavenger hunt. We were given a piece of paper with 26 tasks to do on it.   Each task you completed would get you an amount of points, and the group with the most points at the end would get free dinner and a movie courtesy of the RAs. My group didn't get that far. We documented a trip on the subway for 15 points, found a restaurant that sells 北京烤鸭 - Beijing roast duck for 15 points, and another 45 points for getting the restaurant staff to show us how cook it. We didn't actually end up eating it though. We eventually ended up at Peking University, which was absolutely incredible.

We met this really cool guy who was writing poetry with water on the ground. He had these two water dispenser brushes in either hand and he was writing a different character with each brush. How do you even do that? And it looked so beautiful too! When I try to write with both hands at the same time, not even different letters, and DEFINITELY not in Chinese, it always turns out to look hilariously awful. Like a newborn infant tried to write their name that they don't even know yet. Ergo, I was super impressed with this guy.

That's my Chinese name!

We got lunch in Wudaokou, which I guess is popular for nightlife. I am seriously the only college kid who doesn't party, so I guess I won't find out what that's like. During the day though... I guess it's okay. Large. Expensive. Our lunch was tasty at least.

When we got back from that there was a panel on what the community is like. That was pretty interesting. We met one of the RA's old host mom. After that we chose which two week trip we wanted. I got the one I wanted with all of my friends, just by the skin of my teeth. So that was a relief.
After that, a few friends and I went to one of the largest shopping malls in the world. It was ENORMOUS. Six floors, jam packed with stores.

There was an HSBC there!! Which was great because it's only a ten minute cab ride away=10 kuai. Which is $1.57. I guess I can count that as my service charge. Not bad! The converse are more expensive here than they are in the US, though. I didn't buy anything.

This is the view from the bridge over the street in front of the mall (3 prepositions in that sentence!).

When we got back, we got ready for convocation. The Chinese professors had a skit prepared for us. It was adorable. We had a speaker, Kaiser Something. He was extremely interesting. He's the guitarist in China's first heavy metal band, and is a journalist for several of the really big news sources/blogs in China. He's super important, as it turns out. Cool guy too. We went back to campus and I can't remember doing anything else, so I probably just went to sleep early. Again, party animal.

Yesterday kicked off the start of the language pledge. As of right now, we have to speak exclusively Chinese from 8am (7:45 yesterday morning) to 4pm while we are on campus. It wasn't as difficult as I expected it would be! Hopefully this won't be that bad for the first few weeks. I know my Chinese will improve immensely, which is the goal. Hooray! We had Chinese classes this morning from 8 until noon. Weirdly enough, four hours of Chinese went by really, really quickly. We went out for lunch at a noodle place right after we got out.

This was what I ate. Cold noodles, spicy, delicious. Can't be bothered to rotate the picture. Sorry.

After that my friend and I went to the supermarket to buy school supplies, then I did homework/studied for the rest of the day. We have tests every day we have class! Woohoo!

Today was pretty much the same as yesterday. Chinese classes in the mornings, lunch, and then back to do homework and study.

This was my lunch today. Donkey meat! Super delicious!

I have my first area studies class in half an hour. It's called "Globalization of China's Environment". I'll let you know how it goes when I post next!

再见!

UPDATE: Globalization of China's Environment was not my cup of tea. Switched into Chinese-English Literary Translation. Challenges! Apparently the guy who teaches that class is a linguistics nerd. Woohoo!

Days 2-3

Yesterday we had a few lectures in the morning, and then we were told to go get lunch on our own. I went with my neighbor and her roommate and we went to the supermarket to get some stuff we needed. I came back to campus for an advising meeting, chose my classes, and got lunch by myself. Then there was a travel info session - we have the option of either the Silk Road or the Manchurian express. I want do do the Manchurian express, since you start off at the North Korean border and travel to the Russian border. So cool. After that a huge group of people went out for some pretty expensive (in comparison to other food you can get in Beijing) Korean barbeque. It wasn't bad. Didn't blow me away. Then I came home and went to sleep, like the true party animal that I am.

Today we had some activities in the morning, and then a scavenger hunt-type  thing. We were given a piece of paper with some Chinese characters on it. We were told it was a location and to go find it without using a taxi. My group and I figured out that we were supposed to be going to the Lama temple, which is an enormous Tibetan temple. We figured out that the subway is the fastest way to go. It took about an hour in total to get from campus to the temple. The subway in Beijing is way smoother and jostles you less than the subway in DC! So that was nice.

And it wasn't even that crowded!

This temple. Oh my goodness. It was so incredible. Breathtaking. Huge. There were people everywhere with incense, bowing and praying. It was awesome. This place gave me chills. Let me show you with too many pictures.

 This was the biggest statue I've ever seen in my entire life. Holy crap.

I took like 50 more pictures. If you want to see more you can email me.

We made our way back to campus, and met up with two other groups. We got lunch at a noodle place. I got beef and noodle soup. It was COVERED in cilantro. Oh well.
Did nothing for the rest of the afternoon. Got 20 dumplings and 3 glasses of fresh soy milk for 13 kuai (less than 2 dollars) for dinner, which I shared with friends. Another info session. Free food outside the IES building, but I'm too tired to function right now. Will post again soon.

再见

Getting Started

So, this is my travel blog. Right now I am studying abroad in Beijing and trying my hand at becoming proficient in Chinese. We will see how this goes.

The plane ride was 14 hours long. I watched five movies and my eyes were bugging out by the end. Some were good!
List of good movies I watched in order of preference:
-The Bucket List
-The Avengers
-Captain America
List of movies I didn't like:
-The 5 Year Engagement - depressing
-Haywire - what was going on in that movie. It was so disjointed and nothing was explained and everything was terrible. I did appreciate that the main character was actually a trained MMA fighter before she fell from grace into being an actress, though.

View from the plane when we were about 30 minutes from Peking airport

IES staff met me at the airport. We waited for a while to collect the other people who were arriving around the same time. I met a few people. We took a bus to the university.

Tonight is the end of the first full day, which consisted of going to a Chinese supermarket to buy supplies and several lectures on living in China and the ecological footprint. I took the placement test, which did not go well, but hopefully the professors will understand that everyone is still exhausted from jet lag. After dinner, we had some sort of ice breaker programs. These were pretty fun. There were several rotations. Most of them were just games where you try to learn the other peoples' names, but some were weird and fun. Like charades. I had to act out a panda riding a bicycle. How are you supposed to act out a panda? Or the Great Wall? Or Confucius? Anyway. One of the games was called "Chinese, my Ass" where you had to write out characters with your butt (yup) and your teammates had to guess the characters you were trying to write. In the air. With your butt. This was pretty difficult. There was one more where you closed your eyes, and picked a number between 1 and 6. The lower the number, the simpler the food. I picked 2 since I was being wimpy, and I got cucumber flavored potato chips. 1 was strawberry/grape oreos, 3 was some sort of cherry candy, 4 was some pickled vegetable, 5 was dried fish with hot sauce, and 6 was pickled chicken bones. They had chicken feet at one point, but weirdly enough they ran out.

In terms of food: breakfast was something called shouzhuaba (I think), which was some sort of pancake with a fried egg, bacon, lettuce, thousand island dressing, and hot sauce. Really yummy.
Sorry for the blurry picture.

For lunch we all went to a restaurant somewhere, and they just brought out some food for us. Most of it I had no idea what it was, but there were some spicy green beans, lotus root, a bunch of meat dishes and some tofu. Everything was really tasty.

For dinner we got pizza. China!

Bonus blurry picture: next of the supermarket there was a hair salon. All of the employees were outside dancing/exercising to music. It was adorable. And they all had really great hair.

The group of people to the right of the sign who are waving their hands in the air.

Welp, until next time.