So, it’s be a long time since I last posted and life has changed quite a bit. One of the reasons that I’ve had so little time is that a few weeks after Huangshan, life started taking off in Beijing. I can’t believe the semester is already over, and it’s just been a ridiculous adventure up ‘til this point. About a month into the program—right after the Huangshan trip—I was feeling really down about my Chinese and in a somewhat hopeless mood. While I could understand simple phrases and respond as such, it still felt entirely foreign and removed. It was also around that time when I got my first case of what I call Mao’s Revenge or food poisoning. Needless to say, being down mentally and physically made for a pretty terrific combo.
Somewhere between then and now, things have dramatically changed. I made some terrific Chinese friends from a University about ten minutes away from Beijing University, and hanging out with them every weekend has hugely affected my experience. Although we have class every day from 9 to 5, you truly can’t get anywhere near proficient from that kind of environment. Spoken language is natural and fluent, and especially in Chinese, does not much resemble the written form. Although I still don’t understand quite a bit of what my friends say among themselves, the situation is dramatically improving, and I’m really excited about the level I’m getting to. I’ve also been introduced to the real life of college students in China. Sometimes as westerners in our westerner-only program, we can easily live within a bubble. I have always wanted to avoid this as much as possible, and making good Chinese friends has allowed me to gain so many insights into Chinese society and young peoples views that I would have never been able to see otherwise.
All of December I’ll be traveling. We’re leaving next week for a two-week program trip to Xian, Luoyang, Chengdu, Sichuan, and Guilin. After that, a friend and I are ourselves exploring Guangxi, Guangzhou, Hainan, Hong Kong, and Macau before I head back to Beijing to meet my family.
Some things I’ve been up to as of late:
1. Drove for the first time in Beijing (It is quite a scary experience, and I would not recommend it)
2. Hiked the Great Wall.
3. Started talking to a man in a café about Beijing, before I knew it he gave me his book with a signed message wishing me well, along with his business card. The restaurant owner then told me the man was an extremely famous Chinese economist.
4. Ate bull-frog. Actually quite tasty.
5. Was invited to a birthday party of Beijing’s 福儿代 (young twenty somethings’ whose parents are Beijing’s elite) where the birthday cake was as big as my bed.
6. Got a haircut at a Chinese place, and it turned out very very bad.
7. Had thanksgiving dinner in a Western-Asian Fusion restaurant where we were served chilled red wine, they didn’t understand when we asked for a room-temperature one, responding—why would you want warm wine?
8. Traveled through the ruins of the old summer palace.
9. Saw the national flag raising at Tiannanmen Square, followed by a visit to Mao’s tomb.
10. My hands caught on fire for ten seconds, received some burns, but all-in-all turned out okay.
11. Started learning Chinese minority dances (My friends are students at Chinese Dance Academy).
12. Learned how to cook my first Chinese dish: Eggs and Tomatoes. Simple, but delectable!
13. Made a 人人 (Chinese Facebook) account.
Muddled 