Food and the Future!

Okay, even though I'm completely illiterate and can't speak very well, I have to say that the food here is motivating me to learn. I've discovered my love of strawberry milk tea, baozi (steamed buns with meat or vegetables inside), these crunchy egg/meat pancake thing that I don't know the name of, jiaozi (dumplings), and kebabs :) So much good food and it's all so cheap! I can now successfully order all of the above and even joke around with the street vendors a little bit. For example, tonight I was helping my friend order 5 baozi and the vendor said it was yi bai kuai (100 RMB) instead of 5 (less than $1) just to mess with us and we were so proud of ourselves to be able to understand and respond "tai gui le!" (too expensive!). It can actually be much safer to eat something from a vendor that is cooked in front of you than eating things from a restaurant where you can't see what's going down in the kitchen. So far the food from the vendors has been excellent and hasn't made me sick. 

It's getting late and I need to wrap this post up. We are leaving on a 2 week trip across China tomorrow! I won't have my computer or internet access but I will be keeping a journal and taking pics so you shall hear about it when I get back! If you need to contact me you can call my new cell phone via skype. You can contact my parents for the number and directions. 

So until I'm back in Beijing...Zai Jian!

The Great Wall

Today we spent the afternoon at a section of the Great Wall just outside of Beijing. My pictures can't even begin to accurately portray how beautiful it was. It was also a really intense hike!

Sense of Direction

I've only been here for 2 days now, but it feels more like a week! Today I woke up at 5am (again) and couldn't go back to sleep. But I woke up just in time to watch the clouds clear and for the sun to appear. It was like the campus was a completely different place bathed in sunlight instead of drizzle and fog. It stayed completely clear and hot for the entire day. But enough about the weather, although I will say that the humidity is making my hair realize it's ability to curl and poof. I look a little like I stepped out of the 80s. 

I have a Chinese roommate named Nikki who I haven't met yet. She is finishing up an internship in Shanghai. She feels really bad that she wasn't here to help me adjust so she's told all of her friends among the other host students and roommates to come introduce themselves and check on me. It was crazy, within 5 minutes of getting my new cell phone and new number my host student, Tiffany, had texted Nikki my number and 10 minutes later Nikki called. Her English is perfect but she says she is going to speak Chinese with me as much as possible. It's a little lonely without her and I'm looking forward to when she moves in.

Since I've been waking up so early and I have no roommate yet, I've had some time to walk around our campus and explore it a bit on my own. This is making me pretty popular with other people in my program who get completely turned around the moment they leave our building. Our campus is really straight forward because it's a rectangle with only 4 gates in/out: north, east, south, and west. My program's host university is the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). It has about 13,000 students, of which about 3,000 are international students, mostly from Korea, Europe, and Africa. Besides the 80 of us, there are only about 20 other American students on campus. We are living in the 2 international student dorms so we'll get to meet international students from other countries. However, they haven't moved in yet so my hall is strangely quiet. 

UIBE is located in the Chaoyang district in North Eastern Beijing between the 3rd and 4th ring roads. We are      East of the Olympic Stadium. The campus is actually very pretty with a lot of trees and it's about the same size as SCU's campus. I'm glad it's not too big! There is a grassy knoll type area right near the main cafeteria and yesterday one of the host students was telling us in a very scandalized tone about some "foreign women students" who sunbathed on it last year in nothing but bikinis! Oh if they could only see SCU when it get's above 75 degrees :)

The Chinese students we've met have been incredibly eager to help us and answer questions, but they are very curious about American culture. Yesterday our program held a Q & A panel of Chinese students to answer questions about the differences between American and Chinese cultures. They kept asking us if American High School and College is like Glee and Gossip Girl! That's where they get their info about American culture hahaha.

My first morning I was so proud of myself lol. Armed with a campus map and a sense of adventure, I first found the ATM and then a little coffee shop. Turns out they have Frappuccinos here and it was great because there was an English Menu. I managed to remember how to order and say thank you "xie xie." I got stared at a little walking around campus but I'm sure I'll get used to it. 

Everything is so cheap here! $1=6.2ish RMB and a typical dish is $2-3! I went to the local campus market/grocery store and got a bunch of food and supplies and it only came out to 31 kuai (RMB) which is less than $5! I am definitely excited to go shopping.

This week we are having orientation and preparing for our 2 week trip across China along the ancient Silk Road. It's incredible the complexities of the relationships between different ethnic groups within China. In fact, we now cannot go into the western most province because of recent rioting and unrest, which is a bit disappointing. The sessions this week are a lot of information but are proving to be really helpful and fun. We've been exploring a lot of the local restaurants. My favorite so far is the 24 hour noodle place right outside West gate. They have the most entertaining wall mural and I posted a picture below :) No you don't need to get your eyes checked. That's definitely Avatar milking a cow. 

I've been spending a lot of time trying to memorize the names and faces of the other people in my program. It's interesting to watch groups and friendships start to form. I met a guy named Kevin in my program who goes to San Jose State! We actually had the same Chinese Prof. who teaches at both SJSU and SCU! It's a small world :)

Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall in the afternoon! Hopefully I'll have time to post more in the next few days. I have so many observations about Chinese culture that I just don't have the energy to delve into now. So until my next post, Zai Jian!

Ni Hao from Beijing!

你好 From Beijing!

After a long 12 hour flight we finally landed in Beijing! However, I quickly learned that nothing in China ever happens as quickly as you want it to. The customs line only took about 25 minutes, but then I had to wait about an hour for my bags to finally come around on the carousel before I could meet up with my group. But really, I can’t complain. I only had to take one flight and it was on time. There were thunderstorms that created major delays for some people and I heard our program coordinators have to go pick up more students later tonight.

I guess it really didn’t hit me until I got off the plane in the Beijing airport how much I “wasn’t in Kansas anymore.” I just had this incredible feeling of being utterly alone in these crowds of people, with not a single person familiar to me. It was simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.

The next thing that hit me was the humidity. It’s so humid here that I feel like I’m swimming through the air. I knew it was going to be hot, but I guess I’d just forgotten what this kind of humidity is like.

It started pouring on the bus ride from the airport and I took some pictures of the city in the rain. I still can’t believe I’m going to be living and exploring a city of 20 Million people!

Everyone in my program has been super nice so far and I’m already making some friends. We went out to dinner as a group at a local restaurant and they brought us twice the amount of food we could have consumed. They just kept bringing more and more food! 

I’m super jet-lagged and am off to bed. I promise tomorrow I will give more details. So I’ll just leave you all with the final picture of the view from my room. Beijing is so pretty at night J

Farewell America!

Well, it's finally here!!! I'm all packed and my room is cleaner than it's been all summer. My flight leaves in the morning out of San Francisco for Beijing, China. It hasn't hit me yet that this dream I've been dreaming for 5 years isn't just some far away fantasy. It's real, and it's happening tomorrow.

It's been quite the adventure already just preparing for this trip this summer. I had to switch companies at the last minute to get my Visa, I lost a friend who has inspired me for as long as I can remember, and I was diagnosed with a new medical condition on Monday so I had to deal with the scramble to get enough medication to take with me to China. But in the end, even though it felt like there were more roadblocks than clear paths, it all just fell into place over the last few days and I am almost feeling like myself again. I am so determined to live out this dream that I wasn't going to let ANYTHING get in my way of getting on that plane tomorrow.

I was sad to say goodbye to so many incredible people this week. All of you make my life so beautiful and I'd  like to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has supported me in this dream, even if it's a bit insane. I get a bit sappy when I'm sleepy :)

It's currently 2am here in California and I'm definitely starting to get tired. However, Beijing is 15 hours ahead of the West coast (12 ahead of the East) so it's 5pm there right now! So my plan is to try and stay up as late as possible so I will sleep on my flight tomorrow. Grand scheme to switch night & day for the win.

My next post will hopefully be from CHINA! Although it might take me a few days to figure out how to go on the internet. But I'll tell you all about my flight and first impressions then. Goodnight!