I Washed Too Many Socks At Once...

But at least this time I didn't turn them green.

Living in a country where I don't speak the native language is proving to be quite the interesting adventure. Even the simplest tasks are sometimes impossible to do right. Like for example laundry. The first time I washed some medium color clothes, I tossed in a couple pairs of socks (just like I've done a thousand times in the States). When I pulled them out I discovered they had aquired a definant lemon-lime green color. This time my mistake was my own fault. I put a few too many socks in the washer and now I am having a difficult time find enough places to hang them all. (The dryer machine here is a waste of yuan). I'm slowly getting used to the crispy feeling of air dried clothes.

Sometimes it gets unbelievibly frusterating. Like when I'm trying to write a paper and the computer keeps writing characters instead of letters. Or when I go to the shopping market and the sellers double or triple their starting price because they know that Westerners 1. don't know how much it should cost, and 2. usually have poor bargining skills.

Overall, China is proving to be a great experiance. I am really liking my Chinese language course. I have my first exam on Monday. We just finished up on Traditional Chinese History and will start the next session after National Day Holiday Week.

To appease certian people who have repeatedly requested pictures (and because I want to) here are some more pictures:

Way back on September 7th we went to the Imperial Academy and the Confucious Temple. in ancient times when a scholar passed his examination his name would be engraved on one of these large stone slabs. I decided that it was somewhat fitting (and a cool picture) for me to stand amoungst the names of people who had spent plenty of time studying for exams in the pursuit of higher education.


The next two pictures are from that same day, only at the Buddhist Temple run by Tibetan Lamas. The first one is of a temple structure with another odd little structure in front of it. I'm unsure of the purpose of the building. The other little one (with the fence around it was covered with coins which people were throwing. As I understand it, if you can get your coin to land on it you get some luck in return.

This other picture is of a man using a stick of incense to sweep out coins which he would then share with his wife so they could throw them back again hoping to get one of them to stick.



On September 21st we went to the Capital Museum which just opened in March of this year. It was phenomenal. Here is a picture of what ancient Chinese people used for money. Kinda looks like it would hurt to carry around. (The holes are to put it on a string).


I couldn't resist testing out my camera's macro mode on on of Beijing's many roses.


Hopefully I'll add some more in the next few days. On Tuesday afternoon we leave for our National Day Holiday trip. I'd tell you where we're going but I don't remember.

Too Much Too Do To Wait For The SLOOOOW Internet

So I've attempted twice to write posts regarding my lack of posting but I keep getting interupted by new or different things to do. I finally figured out how to get pitures up on here so I hope you enjoy.
This first one is of Captial Normal's North Campus (where I live and go to class). It is a really classy looking place. Just the other day for some big event they lined the steps along the banisters with potted flowers because some big event was taking place. We aren't sure what the event was but all of us are greatful because the entrance looks even cooler now.

A lot has been going on since I wrote last. We made a trip to Beihaide which is on the Ocean. About 45 mins north of Beihaide is the place where the great wall meets the ocean. It was awesome to see and I wish I could go back. At one of the shops along the shore I found two georgeous paintings. I got a resonabledeal on them and they have definantly livened up my dorm room which was fairly bare white before.

The weekend trip was quite a bit of fun even though I was sick the first day. I did feel good enough by Sunday to take a dip in the ocean and now I can say that I have been swimming on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Beihaide is for the Russians as Cancun is for Americans. It is also a place where a lot of the wealthy Chinese go to retire and vacation.
Although the weather doesn't look great in this picture it was actually very nice. In general here there is usually a nice layer of clouds (smog?) which occasionally the wind blows away.

Time seems to be flying by. All of the sudden October is approaching but it doesn't feel like I've been here that long.

Last night Christy, Heather and I went to go look for Yashow Market which Christy had been to before but didn't really know where it was. We took the bus and subway and got to the general place before we ot direction turned and ended up wandering around the back streets of an apartment complex. We finally found a busy street but there was a rod iron fence blocking us. We had no idea what to do until a Chinese man kindly showed us that section of fence where one of the rods was missing and we were supposed to squeeze through (a little bit more than 1 foot wide and about 4 feet tall). We then found a Finnish man who owns a Mediterean (sp?) resteraunt here in Beijing who showed us the way to the right direction. Despite our detour we had plenty of time to shop and even got bagels with cream cheese (oh sooooo good).


Here is a picture of all the girls in our group.
The yellow shirts are a part of a running joke in our group. From left to right: Aunt Jan, Julie, Me, Jessica, Christy, Heather and Monica is on top of the lioness.

So I still have lots to write about (including today's outing to the Temple of Heaven), but that will have to wait for another time.

I hope that this suffices for all the people who have been asking me for information (at least temporarily).

Mmmmm.... Chinese Food

I just remembered a fun story from the other day. Natsun, Tom and I went out for lunch at a small local resturant (of which there are hundreds in the area). None of us really spoke chinese so we looked at the pitures in the menu and pointed at stuff that looked good. One of the dishes came out and it was small little pieces of meat with some spieces and garnish. It was very tasty, but we couldn't quite put a name with the taste. It wasn't beef and it certainly wasn't chicken or pork. Pretty much it tasted exactly like you would expect dog to taste like. Since over the past week we had been asked numerous time if we wanted beef, chicken, pork or dog, we were a bit worried that it might actually be dog. We ended up getting the waiter to write don what it was and showed the characters to Loraine. It turned out to be mutton.

Classes and What-Nots

Note: This week has been very busy and everytime I try to post I get interupted with something. So now that it is Friday and I am done with classes I'm going to try again. Also, I don't know how practical it is for me to try and put Chinese characters in here so I'll just use pīnyīn when I post unless it is a really special occasion. Pīnyīn is the letter/phonetic version of chinese characters. Although many of the letters and letter combonations are pronounced very differently than is natural to Westerners.

On Monday morning I had a "not-really" class, meaning that my class met but we didn't do anything other than meet the teacher and get our books. Chén Lǎoshī (Professor Chén) asked us all to introduce ourselves and say how much experiance we had with Chinese. Her face when I said "none" was priceless. I don't think that she fully understood what the "beginning" Chinese class really meant. The first couple of days was rough going, but it has gotten better as she learns the best way to explain stuff to us and we get better at understanding what she means. She speaks English fairly well, but sometimes her accent makes the words sound a lot different than we are used to and sometimes she askes us how to say and spell things in English. Since half of us in the beggining class have never had Chinese before, she gave us Chinese names. Mine is "Shā Lā" which doesn't really mean anything, but according to Chén Lǎoshī it is "a pretty girl's name." Oh yeah, instead of "Rip" my Chinese surname is "Rén". So if I was to indtroduce myself to someone I would say "Wǒ de míngzi Rén Shā Lā."

Tuesday was a bit more interesting. She brought in pīnyīn pronunciation charts for little kids. As silly as we all felt using materials targeted for Chinese kindergartens the posters were very helpful. A few of the people in my class have had a semester of Chinese at Calvin and say that what we have learned in just 4 short days is more than what the typical beginning class at Calvin learns in several weeks.

Besides pīnyīn pronunciation we have also learned and practiced tones, basic sentance stucture, 3 types of question sentences, numbers up to the ten thousand level (wàn), bunches of vocab, how to write characters (left to right and up to down). I am definantly learning things here in China.

I am also really liking my history class taught by the Calvin prof (Bays). Today as a fun little break from our normal lecture we read Daoist poems we had written for homework. Our prof and his wife, Aunt Jan (she asked us to call her that because calling her Professor Bays would get confusing) said that this year's Daoist poems are the best group they've heard since starting the exercise (I don't know if that is true, but it certainly is a cofidence boost). The central belief of (ancient) Daoists is the idea of non-striving so that the world and all that is in it can go back to its natural state. The Way (Dao) cannot be explained by mere human words and "is like water. Water benefits all creatures but does not compete," (from Daoist text "Laozi"). There is also the idea that in everything good there is already something of the bad and vice versa. "If you want to take from something/ Be sure to give to it," (Laozi). In class we also talked about the Daoist paradox and how it is impossible for there to be a true Daoist (striving to be non-striving).

Thursday (xīngqīsì) we had our first excursion. We went to the Imperial Academy and the next door Confucian Temple. Both were unfortunatly under repair so it was hard to really get to see the place amidst all the scafolding and constuction. Because of that, we decided to also go to a nearby Buddist Temple run by Tibetan Lamas called Yong He Gong (I'm not sure if that needs any tone marks or not). I took lots of pictures at all three places and I will include a few here and try to figure out the best way to display the rest.

I am quite glad that today is Friday. This was definantly a busy week and I am ready to relax. As an added bonus yesterday we had some rain and it has been windy which has blown away the smog so it is sunny and we can actually see the mountains!

Currently I am experiancing technical difficulty with uploading pictures. Sorry!

By the way, I'll probably be doing most of my posting on the weekends as I don't seem to have enough long stretches of time for posting during the week (I'm too busy learning characters!)

Wu-Mart

I just got back from Wu-Mart (Thing-Mart) . Kind of like a Wal-Mart but not really. It has lots of different things like food, cosmetics, household stuff and the like, but it is much smaller than what North Americas would typically think of. There aren't as many variaties of certian items.
Earlier today part of our group went out for a brief walk around the campus area with Loraine and Aunt Jan. Loraine is Chinese and is helping our group with a lot of different things like how and where to take the bus, subway, etc. Aunt Jan is Professor Bay's wife and knows quite a bit about Beijing, too. Afterwards I went to lunch with Christy and Heather at a little place near campus we had two dishes of these very good xaio long boa which are mini versions of another dish. Basically they are a hamburger-like meat wrapped in a doughy breading. I like them very much. You also dip them in soy sauce.
In about ten minutes a bunch of us are going to the market. I really need a towel as all that is in our room are hand towels and that really doesn't cut it for showers.

View

Here is the view from my room.

Pretty nice, huh? We are on the 7th floor. If you'd want to send me anything address it to me at the following address:

Room # 725

INTERNATIONAL CULTURE PLAZA

Capital Normal University, North Campus

83 West 3rd Ring Road

Haidian District

Beijing 100089

China

Just like emails, don't include anything political or ask me for such information.