Fast times in Beijing

Soooo it's been a long few days..full of excitement, academics, and adventure.
Academics
I am in the 3rd level Chinese class out of the four classes that are offered through my program. A very loosely read and hardly understood interpretation  of my Chinese class sylabus led to some misunderstandings in the first few days of class. I was initially a little overwhelmed because we had to read dialogue in characters, write in down in pinyin ( a system for Chinese so that you can pronounce a word correctly with the right tones e.g. 美国 is měi guó, and then we had to memorize the dialogue. I didn't really know how to manage my time and properly memorize it at first. I am getting the hang of everything now and I do not feel overwhelmed by the work load. Our proffessor is the most adorable Chinese woman I've ever seen in my life. She's really trendy and pretty. She cracks jokes in Chinese all the times...it's seriously priceless. We were learning the two different words in Chinese for hating something or hating someone. She explained hating a person like this : "It's like when you love someone, but they don't love you back SO YOU HATE THEM!"  


I already feel like I am learning so much inside and outside the classroom. I'm really glad to be here.


Now on to ADVENTURES!

My gym

Lunchtime with Rudy at the Cafe!

Where to start?! I have not written in my blog in a few days which means I have a lot to catch up on. First of all, let me explain my typical day in Beijing. I wake up at 7-7:30 and go buy a coffee. Up until a few days ago, I had never drank a full cup of coffee. EVER. I decided coffee was a better alternative to soda and weirdly enough I really really like the feeling of drinking coffee. I always get iced coffee. I can definitely dig it. I study Chinese until my 9:00 am class. We recite the dialogue from above and then we take a new words quiz. We study new grammar patterns for the first hour of class, then in the second hour we learn new vocabulary words. On tuesdays and thursdays, we give oral presentations about Chinese culture in Chinese. We gave a presentation on giving gifts and the cultural differences regarding eating and manners between Westerners and Chinese people. I actually really like giving presentations. It's really good practice. After class, I go eat lunch with Rudy and Sydney...and the very occasional Antoinette and Dave at the Cafeteria or dining hall or Canteen as our Brit friends like to call it (but hold up...I'll get to them :) !)  I usually come back to the dorm and study a little before going to the gym which I am now a member of.  Then one of my favorite parts of the day! Dinners with the Brits and that one Irish guy- Aaron. Everyone from my program lives on the 11th and 12th floor. The Brits live on the top floor, the 13th floor and we go and eat at all different Beijing restaurants. They are all very nice and fun. 


One day,we all went to get pizza at this bar called Helens which is next to two of our favorite bars slash clubs- Propaganda and Sensation. Our new Irish friend Aaron was absolutely positive that his way of getting to Helen's was the right way. Well as it goes- it was not. It was a street too early and after he had identified that it was in fact not the right street, we tried to find a road to connect us to the next parallel street. We thought we found a road that would do that. We did not. About 15 Brits, Americans, and two Irish guys walked through this sketch mcsketch walkway. It was a dark smelly ally and when we eventually did get back to the main road, we were literally about 15 ft closer to the restaurant an hour later haha. It was an adventure nonetheless. 

I also met my language tutor.(Up!) Her name Tu Lei. She's really cool and funny. She won't speak English to me but she told me that she understands what I am saying most of the time. (yay!!!) We went on this three hour Walmart trip. There are three floors!! AHHH! 

It was a really fun weekend. The Brits, Irish, and my fellow Americans all went out. Thursday night, we all hung out in Ross's room. It was about fifteen people all hanging out in a tiny room. We played a nice game of Never have I Ever and learned quite a bit about everyone. We started out playing circle of death and one of the rules that I chose was that all the Americans had to speak with an English accent and all the Brits and Irish had to speak with an American accent. I have never laughed so hard in my life. Thursday was a night full of laughs and memories. We went out to Sensation on Friday and Saturday. Yesterday, we had to wake up at 9 am for this scavenger hunt all across Beijing. It was terrible. Everyone was really hungover and it was hot. We had to meet at Summer Palace at 3 am.


This post is from a few days ago.