i'm in china

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:45:46 GMT

i just saw brokeback mountain, and it was fantastic, and so important for everyone in the country to see. last night was overwhelming, but fun, and all of the bands were awesome. the workshop i went to was really positive, and really good. here's to hoping that tonight works out even better. i think that this livejournal is done after this, or at least i won't update it anymore. my experience in china was amazing, and lifechanging, and i'm glad i was able to chronicle it to myself and you guys through this journal. thanks to anyone who took the time to read any of the entries. 2005 was a wonderful year, full of positive changes. i really feel good about 2006. i feel like it's time to settle down and stop running for a while. i've done my fair share of it, and i think i'm done with it for right now. anyway, take care 2005, and thanks for everything. it truly was a year on the run.

-andy-

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 14:33:11 GMT

so it's christmas, and i'm kind of sick, and my stomach is making noises i never thought were possible. home is good so far, i would obviously be enjoying myself more if i weren't exhausted all the time, and my stomach wasn't giving me issues. id like to hang out with you. let me know. i will update more in depth in the next couple days, im just not in the mindset to do so now.

-andy-

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:21:09 GMT

home sweet home.

-andy-

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:20:19 GMT

leaving today. home wednesday night. give me a call.

-andy-

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:21:01 GMT

so here are the movies i need to see when i get home:

king kong
walk the line
syriana
brokeback mountain
good night, and good luck

who's up for any of these?

-andy-

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:01:26 GMT

On Friday afternoon, after we took our tests I headed to the train station(which is apparently the biggest one in Asia) with Moor to hop on a train to head to her hometown. I was exhausted, as all week I had barely gotten any sleep, so I was very sluggish walking through the overcrowded train station. The security checkpoints were scary, as dozens and dozens of people were pushing their way through and putting their bags through the security detector, and there was no one stopping anyone. I can imagine being the security detector personnel there is most likely the worst job ever. It was positively freezing outside, as the biting wind chill coming in from the nearby deserts was really getting to me. Moor and I got on the train, which only cost ten quai(about a dollar and some change for a two and half hour train ride!) and we were soon on our way. The train is not so comfortable, and we’re put in a compartment with two benches facing each other with a table in the middle, with some people we don’t know. They’ve brought a ton of food and sausages and ramen noodles with them. Since I’m so exhausted I uncomfortably lean my neck on the window and fall asleep. Some time later, I wake up, lean my head back to the upright position, and look up to see all three random Chinese guys staring wide eyed straight ahead at me. I kind of jumped cause it startled me, and they in turn looked a little freaked out. Nothing new, in china at least. We arrived at the train station to be greeted by her father and her father’s driver. If I thought it was cold in Beijing, her hometown(I believe the name was Sha Cheng) was the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. As I looked around and for miles, there was nothing but trees, mountains and fields, I turned to Moor and said “I feel like I’m in Dr. Zhivago,” a movie she hadn’t seen, as I got nothing but an inquisitive look. Her father was very nice. I was kind of confused as to what his job actually was, but either way, he plays a big role in the local education department. He works for the government though, and is a party member, thus his driver is supplied by his workplace. Before they brought us home, we stopped by her dad’s office, a comfy floor in a nearby building. Her father likes to collect artifacts from the Tang Dynasty, which were fairly awe inspiring in both their apparent age and their impressive preservation. We headed back and got comfortable. Her father gave us hot tea, apples, grapes, and other snacks, as we sat around and talked about CNU, China, the process of learning the language, her father’s work, and the Japanese(of course). By this point in time, I had plain and simply had it with my hair. It was gross, too long and dirty. Too bad , every time I tell myself I’m going to grow my hair out “really long,” I just get bored of it and cut it for the sake of cutting it. Something new I guess. Fortunately enough, Moor’s father’s ex-driver’s wife(not too confusing right?) was a hairdresser in town, in fact, around the corner from their house. Thus Moor brought it to my attention I could get a free haircut. So before dinner, we headed over to the hairdresser to get my haircut while her father prepared the veritable feast we were going to have. I walked in to an empty hair salon, where you could have heard a pin drop when I walked in. it seemed as if the hairdressers had never seen an actual foreigner before in their life. Considering the remote location of the town, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t. I told Moor to tell her I wanted it shorter, and even. When Moor asked me what “even” meant, I knew I would be in for a ride. The haircut turned out to be just fine, and I liked it a lot. I think it looks pretty good. The hairdresser’s son came into the salon halfway through my haircut, and he was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen. An 11 year old boy, whose English name was Nick. He turned out to be a student at the local Billingual school, which we had been learning a little about in our classes. They make the most sense in trying to teach Chinese kids how to speak both their own language and English, but since they are very expensive to set up, and bilingual teachers are few and far between, there is not much economic incentive to set them up. Nick was one of the lucky few in China who gets to go to a school like this. So I spoke English to him for a little bit. He seemed a little shy, naturally, so we didn’t get to say much, but he was just sooooo cute. Especially because he reminded me just of my cousin Max. we returned home and gorged ourselves on plate after plate of lamb, fish, and garlic broccoli. They gave me some of what they called “acid vegetables.” I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I tried one as I felt I had to, and well, you can imagine what it must have tasted like. The thing about home meals in China is that it’s not really up to you how much you eat. You’re done when the host thinks you’re done. You can’t get away with not eating a particular dish if it doesn’t look too appealing to you, because the host, or maybe just a person sitting next to you, will flop whatever on there. Before I knew I had two fish heads on my plate. I successfully evaded it however by trying to stuff them underneath some bones and other scraps of stuff I had already eaten. After drinking a few glasses of fairly gross Great Wall red wine, talking to her mom and dad for a while. And watching a home video of her father’s recent trip to the actual Great Wall, I went to bed at 8 PM. And I woke up the next morning at 8 AM. 12 hours of sleep! Wonderful. Just what I needed. We awoke to find 2 inches of snow on the ground! The plan of the morning was that mr. driver(I never actually got his name) would drive me and Moor to a nearby Tang dynasty era town, that still had city walls and everything, which is unique in that most cities in China these days don’t have city walls, since pretty much everywhere you go the cities are expanding way beyond that and the city walls prove nothing but an inconvenience, or so they believe. Thus most of them get torn down. The best part about this day by far though, was the fact that since it was so cold, her father would not let me leave the house without wearing more clothing than the flimsy little winter coat I had brought with me. He rushed into the closet and pulled out a long, green, old Peoples Liberation Army trenchcoat he had saved from a long time ago, along with what my family calls a “Russian hat.” You know, one of those big…Russian hats. Both fit well and comfortably, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous situation, as I felt like I was back in the winter of 1958 saluting Mao as he walked through the streets of Beijing. I literally walked around town all day wearing this outfit, feeling totally ridiculous. But I guess that’s the price one pays to save themselves from the biting cold. After a half an hour drive to the walled city, we arrived and got out of the car to climb the city wall. We climbed a treacherous, icy slope in order to get to the top, with very few safe places to put our feet. But it was all worth it in the end, as when we got the top, once I was able to open my eyes because the windchill was forcing me to squint so hard, I saw one of the most beautiful views I’ve seen in china. Endless miles of forest, cloud formations like I had never seen, mountains all over the damn place….oh god it was awesome. When you’ve been in Beijing for a while, a place seemingly as far from any kind of nature as you could get, views like this can be quite emotional. We didn’t stay for too long since it was so damn cold. But we talked to a couple local old men, who just pointed at me and said “oh, Lao Wai,” which means “old foreigner.” It’s just the widely accepted slang word for foreigners. So I laughed when he said it and I guess to his surprise I knew how to speak a bit of Chinese. Speaking with older men is the best, because they typically speak slowly and clearly, for the most part, thus you can understand them much better. After a delicious Hot Pot meal with Nick the 11 year old boy and Moor’s mom in tow, we went to visit Nick’s school. Walking through the halls, I was reminded very much of my old elementary school, New Hampshire Estates. Thinking back to my younger educational experience, I couldn’t help but thinking about how strange it was that I was where I was at that moment, after all that had happened in my first 19 years. Weird, man. I would love to say we explored every nook and cranny of the town, but it was just too damn cold. We spent a few hours back at her home, curled up in blankets, drinking tea and watching television and talking, before they put me back on a 5 o’clock train back to Beijing. Moor was to stay another few days. It was a comfortable train ride, I got to sit and talk with some nice Chinese people, as we spoke Chinese for about an hour. After that amount of time of speaking chinese, my brain usually stops working so I just stopped talking and read a book. So all in all it was a very enriching trip to Moor’s house. Saturday night, we went to some “punk” themed party, and though I cringed at how stupid the idea was, I just thought it would be funny to go. Either way I didn’t really have to dress up or anything. Yesterday was spent going holiday shopping. Uhhhh, today I don’t have content courses and tomorrow im spending all damn day in the library. Home in two weeks. Hard to believe.

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:46:34 GMT

Wow, so I had probably the most surreal experience I had in China just now. Earlier in the day my friend Justin invited me to a “Thanksgiving Party” on the south campus of our school, Capital Normal University. Apparently it’s an all English speaking party for some of the English speaking students at CNU, and they want some foreigners to come. So I agreed and at 6 PM we were on our way to the south campus. Myself, Justin, another Justin(who lives right next door to me), Jessica, and Alia were making the voyage. I wasn’t aware that it was some kind of a performance, as I found out on our way there. There were going to be about 6 or 7 groups of Chinese students performing skits in English, and other musical and ballet performances. When we got to the room on campus, we arrived to a room full of Thanksgiving decorations, pictures of turkeys, and of course….one other foreigner! As we prepared for the inevitable bombardment of people requesting our services as language partners, and I prepared for the bombardment of “hey man, you look like Harry Potter!”, we had some snacks and sat down. After having some pictures taken of me with various students there, the performance started. The first performance was a kid playing the sound of music them song on his accordion. This guy named Matt, a student at Reed studying at our university, was asked to help host and organize the event, so he gave a history of Thanksgiving after the first performance. One of the resident English Professors was also hosting it, and let’s just say she had quite the edge to her. After Matt’s nice, short and thorough history of Thanksgiving(I saw him making eye contact with me, and I was nervous he would ask me to chime in and help him out, as I didn’t remember a damn bit of thanksgiving history, as the last time we had studied anything about it in my school experience was in second grade when we all had to wear black paper construction pilgrim hats to school and perform a Thanksgiving play), the English professor said “OK, I asked for a history and he gave us kind of a lecture. Anyway, the next performance…” after laughing at the smug remark, In between performances, Matt tried to tell Thanksgiving jokes to everyone, and I cringed when he began as I knew that there would be very few people who understood it. His first joke was: “why did the cop arrest the turkey? He accused him of participating in Fowl play!” the whole room was silent, as for the next five minutes were spent explaining the joke, the play on words, and the difference between foul and fowl, and everytime matt tried to move on, the English professor insisted that he explain it in full. It was VERY awkward. This of course absolutely did not compare with his next joke, which of course, was, the dreaded why did the chicken cross the road joke. He first asked everyone if they had ever heard it, and after receiving a resounding response of silence, he decided to move on to the next one. However in the middle of his next joke, the English professor interrupted him and said “excuse me, I think many people didn’t get that last joke.” He went on to explain how he decided not to tell it because no one would get it, but after the professor insisted on it, he pretty much had to tell it. After the punchline the room was as silent as a funeral procession. The teacher then asked him to explain it, as for five minutes poor Matt had to explain all the intricacies of the chicken joke, and why exactly it was supposed to be funny. I could honestly not believe my ears, all of it was too good to be true, culture shock beyond my wildest dreams. I guess you had to be there. The next performance was this very funny play about tax collecting, where a boy plays a street kabob salesman, and a tax collector comes up to him to collect his taxes. Then, we flash forward five years, where, as the narrator says, “china’s economy has advanced incredibly and things are very different.” The same tax collector comes up to the same kabob salesman, who is selling his kabobs for three yuan and not one yuan like the last time, and he has a big sign that says “Lamb! No Bird Flu!!” it was pretty unreal. Then they began talking about why they collect taxes, and after a nice “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” they began to explore the party and why they supported it. As I said, pretty unreal. After a few more performances, including a Britney Spears song, where in the middle the singer said “ok, the rest is too hard for me,” and left the stage, the night was over, and before we could get out to go to dinner, as we were all starving, the bombardment began. I was really glad I stayed to meet people, and I even thought I might make it out of there with just one harry potter reference, but of course, it all began soon enough. One girl came up to me and said “you know, you look a lot like a british actor…” and I go “ah yes, Daniel…” and together we go “Radcliffe! Harry Potter” She literally started shaking and starting speaking as if she was about to cry. “I don’t really know how to say this, but…you look so much like harry potter! I can’t believe it!” I felt like John Lennon after the concert at Shea Stadium. It was uncanny how many people came up to me with the same reaction. In addition, I also had some wonderful conversations with people, and the culture shock I felt was more due to the fact that I was speaking English to them than anything else. If I had just been speaking Chinese, it wouldn’t have been weird, but for about 15 minutes I pretty much forgot where I was. About ten people asked me to be their language partner, as they are in high demand but short supply. I ended up giving my phone number out to about 6 or 7 people, which I probably shouldn’t have, considering I don’t have a ton of time left here, but I guess I’m just too nice. Either way, when I made it out of there I realized my heart was racing and I needed to take deep breaths for about ten minutes in order to catch up with myself. I guess it’s hard to explain, but it was just one of the most surreal and intense experiences I’ve had here. im so thankful I went, and I think it was really invaluable. After a delicious dinner at the local porridge restaurant(which I just found out is open til 12:30, cool! Not much late night fare here) I came back and….wrote this. Anyway, still working on my Xian thing, I just absolutely needed to write all this down before I forgot it. Goodnight!

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 03:52:48 GMT

below you will find an entry about my vacation to yunnan province. hopefully you will read it!

So I’ve been spending the last few days taking my family around Beijing, or in some cases they’ve been taking me around Beijing. It’s been wonderful to see them, it’s just exhausting to know that I’ve barely had any time to rest in the last two weeks! I’ve been running my body into the ground but I’m very happy and I’ve been excelling in schoolwork and my Chinese language. My vacation went very well!
First, last Saturday we arrived in kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan. after checking into our hotel, which was already one of the nicer hotels I’ve ever stayed in, and it only being a three star hotel, I could see that we would be living in relative luxury for the rest of the trip. We checked in and put our stuff in our rooms and set out on our journey to discover the joys of Kunming. It wasn’t long before we gave in and went to a Pizza restaurant(i.e. five minutes). So our first meal in Yunnan was of course, Italian food. However we would go on to see that Kunming, and all of Yunnan has quite a hankering for Italian cuisine for some reason. Either way, it was the best pizza we had had in China and it was well worth the amount of money we splurged on it. Afterwards we literally walked across the whole city. It was quite a shock to actually be in a place that one could walk across without needing a cab or some other form of transportation. We were trying to find a bike shop to inquire about renting bikes the next day in order to bike to the Xishan mountains, a place our guidebook had suggested checking out. After walking past some mosques, seeing 9th century Tang Dynasty pagodas, seeing two dead dogs being wheeled on the back of someone’s bike, and a street so smoky from the amount of kabob’s they were cooking there, we arrived at the shop and reserved our bikes for the following day. After a brief yet filling dinner at a fusion restaurant around the corner, we turned in early to prepare for our early wakeup call the next day. The following morning we woke at around 7:30 to get ready before our trek over to the bike shop. We agree on arriving at 9 however the store owner doesn’t show up until 10. We sit there, grumpy, knowing a whole hour of sleep had just been wasted. A couple bikers wearing professional looking bike clothing showed up with their own bikes, and it turned out they were heading to the same place we were. Once the store owner showed up, along with several other fellow bikers who were all also going to the same place, we decided to go together, though we were weary cause these guys looked like they meant business and we just wanted a casual bike ride for the day. Our premonitions were correct as we set out across town toward the mountains. It was an hour before we actually made it to the base of any mountains, as we biked through the sprawling outskirts of Kunming. The weather, though slightly chilly, was perfect for biking, as it would have been miserable to do this ride with the hot sun cascading down on us. As we biked past a monument to the great leap forward, we began to understand just how steep this bikeride was going to be, and how unprepared each of us were. When we finally got to the first point of incline, I made it no more than two feet before my bike stopped and started skidding backwards. The next hour and a half of us getting to the top of this mountain was mostly spent dismounting and walking our bikes over sharp rocks, while the rest of our new Chinese friends were plowing along like this was nothing. When we got to the top we breathed a sigh of relief as we had an hour long lunch break, during which I said nothing out of complete exhaustion. The town at the top of the mountain however, was quite amazing. All dirt roads, no cell phone service(and not having cell phone service in China is pretty rare) very inaccessible, and just all around old feeling. Our Chinese friends led us to a courtyard of a little restaurant where they sat down to order hot green peppers and an assortment of other spicy food-yes, yunnanese people like their spices. We had however not been expecting to run into a restaurant, and we wanted to get rid of the food we had brought so we all sat down to a nice lunch of ritz crackers and chunky peanut butter. The ride back was supposed to be easy, but this was where it was just getting started. We agreed to take a longer way around the mountain to return to kunming. After all, how hard could it be? As soon as we set out, however we found ourselves biking over thick padded down brush on feetwide paths overlooking steep ravines to which there was no bottom in sight. We got to a fairly steep downhill where we had to dismount, at which point the oldest of the Chinese kids dropped his bike when he got to the bottom, ran back to where we were, grabbed my bike out of my hands and ran down the hill holding the bike over his head. Thanks, I guess! After watching Daniel fall over his handlebars at least twice, we got to a point where the path was as thin as ever , and on our right side was nothing but a steep ravine covered in brush. At this point, as Daniel described it, he heard a cry for help, turned around, and saw no andy, but instead saw my bike turned over with flattened brush right next to it. I had lost my balance and done three backflips before grabbing onto the brush to stop my slide. At this point I decided that I could get pissed and frustrated if I wanted to, but I decided to laugh instead. Why not? The rest of the ride was very strenuous and it was another two hours and many flips before we got back. and of course the trip couldn’t be complete without Norby’s bike tire popping less than half a mile before the end. To give our thanks to these kids, without whom we would have been lost, we went out for, guess what, pizza, and on their recommendation too. After consuming 8 whole pizzas, we said our goodbyes and were on our way toward the train station to catch our overnight sleeper to Dali. The sleeper train was fine, though a bit jerky at points. Our train ride was neat because I would wake up in the middle of the night to look out my window and see dark silhouettes of mountains passing by, and the occasional car on the lonely road. We arrived at 6 in the morning or so and left the train station to an overwhelming crowd of tour guides, bus drivers and cab drivers seeking new clients, and all before sunrise at 6 AM on a rainy Monday morning. Our trip to yunnan really opened my eyes to how much China has tapped into the Tourist industry, which I will talk about later.
Anyway, the travel agent I went through to book this vacation had told us that the only rooms left in Dali for the dates we wanted were at the brand new five star Dali Regent Hotel. I wasn’t really sure what five star would mean. It could either mean the nicest building I’ve ever set foot in, or some motel 6 with a palm tree and a hot tub, just considering all the different standards there are here. however, it was definitely the former. DEFINITELY the former. We got in really early and were able to go right to our rooms. These were the first soft beds I had slept in in more than a month and a half. I can’t even go into the extent of how nice these rooms were, all for less than 60 or so dollars a night for one room, between two people. Not too bad. It is vacation after all, isn’t it? After a nice morning sleep, we walked around Dali for most of the day, eating delicious Tibetan goulash, and hiking out to ancient Tang Dynasty pagodas that had been built in the 9th century. Looking around Dali, I saw little evidence of a current culture outside of the tourist industry. It felt like everyone there was living their lives with the keen awareness that people like us were around. Every corner we turned was another travel agent office, every restaurant we went to had a hefty western menu. Endless coffee houses, shops selling Yunnan garb, and very well maintained ancient China image. While I hadn’t expected it to be that way, it was still a fascinating experience to be in a town that depends on the curiosity of people like you. It made me feel pretty bad, but whatever. We tried to find the entrance to a set of cable cars that could take us deep into the mountains on the outskirts of Dali(all the mountains were literally shrouded in beautiful clouds), but all we came across were endless Marble mines, as Marble is one of the biggest exports out of Dali. We walked through some surrounding housing areas, reminiscent of Beijing’s hutong alleyways, where the majority of the Common Dali people, also known as the minority Bai people, we finally got back to the city. After a delicious dinner we stopped by a place called the Bohemian Music Café, where we were the only people besides the café owners. We could just from any number of CD’s to listen to, ranging from the Beatles to Nirvana to everything else. It was wonderful to get a chance to talk about music that we loved, as I had not just experienced the simply joy of talking about music with somebody in a long time. We hung out and chatted for a while with an Israeli we met named Donny, while listening to the Nirvana Unplugged album. After spending a few hours there we made our way back to our hotel, on the other side of town.
The following day we finally figured out where the entrance to the cable cars were, and we took one through the mountains, which was absolutely breathtaking. As we cleared the first peak and saw where the car was taking us, we were surprised to a giant chess board lying at the base of the gondola, with life size chess pieces. As soon as we got off our cable car, we came across a man with a pet monkey by his side. He was probably a Bai minority, as we noticed and met several Bai people who seemed to have genetic eye deformities, as this gentleman had. It seems as though the only two words this man knew in English were “Hello” and “Monkey.” As soon as he saw us he let go of both of these words quite forcefully, yelling “HELLO! MONKEY!” right at us, followed by a quick snap of the fingers and a little jig performed by the monkey. It seems as though this man was also in charge of the giant chess board, because when armand jumped on top of one of the pieces, the man turned to us and waived his arms as if we were doing something wrong, except since the only two words he seemed to know were “hello” and “monkey,” all he could do to tell us to get off was yell “HELLO! HELLO!” at the top of his lungs. I am not trying to judge this gentleman, it was just quite amusing. After playing around in a beautiful mountain stream for about an hour, and hiking(climbing stairs) to the (relative) top of one of the mountains, we headed back to our hotel to nap and get ready before we returned to town for dinner. We went to a restaurant called the bamboo café and reconvened at a few other cafes and bars before heading back home for the night. All in all it was a really good night. The following day we hopped on a bus to go to Lijiang. The ride was scenic and gorgeous, straight out of a national geographic. The ride itself was crazy, our driver must have spent more time switching lanes than he did driving in our own lane. When we were going around windy mountain curves where we couldn’t tell if there were any oncoming cars, he simply just honked a lot and we hoped for the best, by best I mean not ending up in the deep ravine below. I knew when were in Lijiang when I could see the famous Yulong Xueshen(jade dragon snow mountain) ahead of us, as all tourist books on Lijiang depict this mountain as being the highlight of Lijiang, a snowcapped mountains o beautiful that Lijiang’s whole identity seemed to be linked with it. It took us a while to find our hotel, but walking around the old town of Lijiang was a treat. Cobblestone streets and streams and bridges and lanterns and beautiful buildings everywhere. It was obvious that the town had been considerably revamped in recent years as the Chinese tourist industry is a market that has been seriously tapped, probably a little too much, but it was still beautiful nonetheless. We ate dinner at a Tibetan restaurant across the street and walked around town. The next day was our “explore Lijiang day.” We got a little shopping done and tried to make plans for the next day, trying to find a way to get out to the mountain. We also reserved tickets to see a performance by the Naxi orchestra, a 24 member orchestra, that we would see the following night. I can’t really remember too much about what we did that night but it was probably fun? The following day was probably the best of our vacation. We woke up early in the morning and met up with the guide we hired to drive us to the mountain. We met up in a nearby parking lot, before he took us to his car, a huge supped up SUV with huge lights on top of it. I can’t really explain it, it looked like it was out of The Fast and The Furious. I don’t know. The day before we had met up with another CET student from the Harbin program named Doug, who we had met at the beginning of the year. We just ran into him in the street, having no idea he would be in Lijiang. We also found our classmate, Alec, roaming through the streets of old town. He had told us he was going to be in Lijiang when we were there, so I had been trying to call him for a whole day but to no avail. We were especially worried because he had set off to Yunnan all by himself, and he doesn’t know too much Chinese, and the little that he knew could have been relatively useless because there are so many different dialects in yunnan due to the amount of minority peoples there are there. We all set off to the mountain together, and decided to take a chairlift up to a place called yak meadow, a beautiful meadow(true story) that was pretty high up and overlooking the mountain. While the previous day had been very cloudy, we really couldn’t have picked a better day to go. There were beautiful clouds in the sky and it reminded me of north Carolina. Same shade of blue you might often see in the sky at Guilford. The sky was huge, huge as it is in New Mexico. It was so therapeautic to feel like I was on the other side of the world but still find little bits of home in everything I saw. As we were walking through the different shops and seeing all the different tour guides wearing rather fake looking headdresses, trying to make the tourists feel like they were getting a cultural experience, when in fact most tour guides we talked to were actually Han Chinese, the majority people in China, many of them were calling for us, though not the usual “HELLO! YOU WANT TO BUY THIS!” that we usually get. We were literally getting shouts of “I LOVE YOU!” left and right. One of them even said “HELLO! ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME!” and I couldn’t believe my ears. Some American guy must have come in and played a joke on her, saying that’s what most Americans like to hear or something. The minority people issue in china is really interesting and is something we’ve been studying a lot lately. Mots people don’t realize how ethnically diverse china is, in terms of all the minority peoples that live there, but so few of these peoples have actually been recognized as minorities by the government, and there are literally hundreds of ethnic groups that have totally different ancestral blood lines from the han Chinese that are still waiting to be officially recognized as a minority by the Chinese government, for if the government allows too much freedom or too much ethnic diversity they could lose more control as the han majority. Or like in Tibet, they have been rebuilding some of the monasteries destroyed during the cultural revolution and training some people to be Monks, but all Monks in china now are government employees whose job can obviously be revoked the second they step out of line or speak up. It’s crazy how much the Chinese government has the minority peoples under wraps. They support them speaking their own languages and supposedly support a certain amount of ethnic diversity, but just enough that will make them seem diverse without actually condoning diversity. , and the little they do support usually pertains to their “crazy” clothes, or often at muslim xinjiang restaurants you will see fairly scantily clad bellydancers dressed in outfits that most muslim women would not wear. We were reading an article describing how the han Chinese seem to use many minority peoples as an outlet for eroticization, and I can definitely see how that’s true. Anyway, sorry for the ramble.
The mountain was gorgeous, and I had a wonderful talk with Norby on the way down in the chairlift. Also, I ate Yak. True story. Anyway, it was great really having a heart to heart with Norby, as I had been growing stressed out and tired over the vacation, so it was wonderful to get some things off my chest and have Norby to listen to me. He’s a great guy, and while we are very different people, he respects me and respects our differences, and I respect him, and he really listens, and in China I’ve learned that that is honestly all I ask for in a friend. I have learned and will continue to learn a lot from Norby.
Anyhow, we all got really sunburned from being up that high and without any sunscreen, and no cloud cover, so that wasn’t too cool. That night, we went to a performance of the Naxi Orchestra. It was composed of 25 Naxi Minority people, and it was really awesome to see, except for the fact that the conductor literally talked for 15 minutes between songs. We had really awesome seats though and it was truly a once in a lifetime experience to see something like this, traditional Chinese music that really is rarely heard, much less performed, anywhere anymore.
Afterwards, we went to this bar street to find a place to hang out, and this place literally felt like las vegas. We went there the night before, and it was the same thing! Basically, it’s a street full of restaurants and cafes and bars, and there are people singing in every one of them. What will happen is one table of people will start singing a song to another table across the way in another restaurant, and then scream “YA SO YA SO YA YA SO!”, which basically means “let’s hear what you’ve got.” Then the other people will sing back and so forth. And they’ll sing anything: traditional Chinese songs, modern Chinese songs, “The E ast Is Red”, or even Rod Stewart. Yes, Rod Stewart. So we found a table that looked like fun and sat down with them. Chinese people will often take up any opportunity to speak Chinese with foreigners, cause it seems that any foreigners speaking Chinese is just a hoot, as a lot of them don’t expect us to know any of it, so when we do, it’s especially amusing I guess. We also ran into a guy who was in the orchestra, and he recognized us cause we had been sitting in the second row. We talkedto him for a while and he was a really cool. So anyway, we sat down with a table of older businessmen from Shanghai who had flown in for a business trip. We hung out for a couple hours as they taught us all songs to sing, and we taught them how to sing “we are the champions” and “I get by with a little help from my friends.” It was really fun, incredibly valuable and enriching. It really felt wonderful. Afterwards, on our way out, we were invited to sit down with a table full of girls, who all turned out to be tour guides in Lijiang. We hung out for another few hours and I got an opportunity to speak Chinese the whole night. All of them said I had very good Chinese, which was very reaffirming. We went home late, all with smiles on our faces, as we were going home the next day. We had a wonderful breakfast at this place called the Prague Café, and I was going to rent a bike and ride around the outskirts of town, but I could feel myself getting pretty sick so I didn’t. we took an easy day, and went shopping a little bit. I bought some beautiful scarves for my family and some good tea for my roommate, before we grabbed a cab to the airport to go to the airport. Although the funniest thing we saw at the airport in Kunming was that inside customs, you could buy a whole sheep leg that came with a carrying case and everything. So basically you could buy a sheep leg and bring it on the airplane as a carry on as you made your way to your destination. How funny is that?
Anyway, this has been really long. But I had a wonderful vacation and it was amazing to actually go to a place I had studied for so long and see so many things I had studied about in action. The next day I went and met my family at their hotel, and I will try to write all about that later.

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:06:46 GMT

tonight was loads of fun. really, the entire day! ive been working on a microsoft word really long update, on my week long vacation to yunnan, and my travellings with my family, so i've been waiting to unleash that until i update again. but for now this will have to do. after we took our test, our floor played a soccer game against the capital normal university history majors. we lost 10 to 8, but the game itself was fun. by the end it was just like a pickup game, and everyone was just having good spirited fun. early in the evening, at 6 a few of us went to a CET sponsored night out at the beijing opera. of many of china's traditional arts the opera is just about the youngest but one of the few authentic ones remaining. we were able to sit at a table very close to the stage and we had an endless supply of tea. at one point i called for a waiter to refill my tea cup and i tried to put it in a place more accessible for him. however i knockd my cup over and spilled water all over the table. at this point the waiter promptly turned around, left and was not seen for the rest of the night. without tips, what's the point of really good service anyway? the opera was fun, lots of acrobatics, beautiful makeup, though almost the entire audience consisted of foreigners. was this china, or new york? one could not tell from just looking at the audience. after a nice evening at the opera we all returned and i went out to go bowling with some new english friends ive recently made. on top of being awesome people i really love hanging out with them because of their accents. i hate to say it but it's true! anyway, after a nice multicultural(hardly) bowling experience i returned here and im too exhausted to go more into detail about my night. i must go to bed now for tomorrow im heading to the beijing botanical gardens. should be sweet. goodnight!

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 17:50:26 GMT

just got back from a week of travelling in china, and i will say more later but for now i must say today i found an exact copy of my favorite scarf that i lost last year in a store in yunnan province of southwestern china! what are the odds! alright so there's this extra blue thing on it but otherwise it's a replica. hen hao! anyway, im exhausted and my parents are in town! ill write more later.

-andy-

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 02:52:54 GMT

I’m really surprised that I haven’t gotten sick yet(knock on wood), but I just hope that I don’t get sick while my parents and sister are here or while I’m in Yunnan. The only real memorable parts of this week started on Wednesday in my 21st Cenutry Beijing class. The class itself can be frustrating sometimes, and while I learn a lot in it I don’t always get much from the class conversations because of the fact that there are so many kids in the class. usually it’s just a couple kids turning what could be a five minute conversation into half the class. someone even said in class that you could get AIDS from going to a public bathroom in China! I learn new things everyday! Just in case you didn’t know, that was sarcasm, hard to detect on the internet. We didn’t have class on Thursday morning cause our language class went out to lunch instead, and it was our homework to learn how to order dishes on our own.

Thursday afternoon myself, Melody and Daniel took a cab to Wanfujing so I could go check out the hotel my parent’s are going to be staying at when they get here, and make sure everything was alright. After checking out the hotel, which happens to be right across the street from the vegetarian restaurant that Jacob Cunningham told me to go to, we walked down the mall street of Wanfujing, where I hadn’t been before. Wanfujing is an area just east of Tiananmen Square that has really just come under construction in the past fifteen years. It’s where the first McDonald’s in Beijing was, and it’s also the site of two huge shopping malls. We had just learned in class that when they were building the foundation for the mall and clearing out the site, they came across 20,000 year old bones, dating back to who-knows-what dynasty, and instead of halting the project and excavating the site, they continued to build on top of them! There could be a whole underground city under there for all we know, and now there’s a huge shopping mall there. We took a look inside to find floor upon floor of American stores, Christian Dior and all of that stuff. I had never seen so many foreigners in one place in china. We went to the basement of the mall and entered what appeared to be the “Ancient Chinese Artifacts” area, and passed by big wax statues of old Buddhist priests. It almost felt like we were looking in a museum of the last remnants of Chinese Cultural Heritage, except all that was left were these cheesy tourist trap knockoffs, only to leave that part of the mall to see a KFC and a Starbucks side by side. What has China turned into in the face of modernization and western influence? What is a third world country doing building skyscrapers when it should be concerned about the hundreds of millions of impoverished, starving people all over the countryside, 2/3 of whom don’t even have clean water to drink? In the face of the upcoming Olympics, it seems like all eyes are on China, and all efforts in development and progress are going into building the urban image of Beijing, as the way the foreigners at the 2008 Olympics see Beijing will be the way the whole world sees China. I suppose to the government that’s just more important than taking care of its own people.

Now trust me, my 21st Century Beijing class isn’t “learn about how much China sucks” class. There are many amazing things about China, and the negative parts aren’t attributable to the people at all, as they have grown up in a heavily censored Communist Society their whole lives. It’s just crazy to me how even when people start to ban together to protest the Government, they bring back images of Mao to be their rallying figure, when it seems like very few people are aware of what Mao really did, or the negative aspects of his policies and reforms. It’s a negative cycle that I wonder if the Chinese people will ever be able to break out of. Will they always find themselves in this same, blind spot? It seems like the current government has all but used Mao’s image, seen everywhere today, from the gates of the Forbidden City to the Yuan bill, to trap the people into complacence. We just wrote a paper on this stuff, perhaps I will post mine sometime later.

So anyway, that was cool, and we had something for dinner, and I forget what it was but it was probably good. Friday after our test, we all went bowling! It was my first time ever using a real bowling ball, and not just one of those little junior ones, or “duck pins” as I believe we call them in D.C., and needless to say I came in dead last. And I mean DEAD last. Shi Yue had gotten me and Armand two tickets to accompany him to see this concert at the Forbidden City Music Hall that night, to see this Scottish folk singer perform, so we got dinner at a local Hunan restaurant and then were on our way to the music hall. We got there just as it was starting, and the woman(I think her name was catie adams?) came out to start her set. She played the Harp to accompany herself, and the songs she played were not super impressive but very pleasant to hear nonetheless. She played old Scottish folk songs, along with a duet of a famous Chinese song with this Chinese music student who accompanied her. Then the concert went downhill when Emily introduced the next act to the stage, a man simply known as “George.” George looked like every 15 year old girl-getting-dropped-off-at-her-first-party’s worst nightmare: like an awkward dad who simply had not a clue how to dress himself. He had long gray hair, and his Chinese was awful, even by my standards. His voice was bad, his songs were fairly boring, and his guitar playing was mediocre at best. At one point me and Armand turned to each other and made eye contact, sending each other the message of “what the hell is this guy doing in the Forbidden City music hall?!” I’ve seen literally hundreds of guys like this play guitar before at every open mic night I’ve ever been to; he reminded me of any street performer you might see in the U.S. he was bad enough that it made me want to call up the music hall the next day and ask them if I could do a performance there sometime! Though we didn’t have to pay, as Shi Yue had some connection in the box office, these tickets were apparently more than 300 RMB, incredibly expensive here in China. I hope that Chinese people don’t look at George as the representative for modern American music. It took them a while to get our coffee at intermission and we were just sitting down to a table when the concert started up again. So we just finished our coffee and left. We walked from the music back to Wanfujing. On the way we stopped in Tiananmen Square. There really is nothing as stunning and eerie as Tiananmen Square at night, nothing that I’ve ever really seen at least. We walked all over the place, walking through Wanfujing, and stopping off at a few other places before ending the night at Ho Hai, meeting up with Daniel and Norby and them.

And then I did some other stuff yesteday which i will write more about later. I came up with the classes I want to register for next semester.

➢ Tibetan and Himalayan Rel
o Eric Mortensen
o T F 2:30-3:45 PM
o 10566

➢ Social Problems
o Kathryn Schmidt
o M R 2:30-3:45 PM
o 10167

➢ Music Theory II
o Tim Lindeman
o M W R 10:00-11:15 AM
o 10181

➢ Inequality in Latin America
o Maria Amado
o M W 11:30-12:45
o 10729

think that's a good idea anyone?

-andy-

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 02:11:29 GMT

so, i finally got around to uploading some pictures, so here is a more or less comprehensive summary of the photos i've taken so far on this trip.

click this below link to see more:

tiananmen square, my first night here

a local hutong we saw on our bike trip

me and my friends melody and linda on the shirdu trip

the guitarist of the band brain failure

armand, will and i out on these dingy little bamboo boats

this is pretty

long update, sorry!

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 07:01:52 GMT

So, this weekend was pretty fantastic. First let me start on Thursday. At about 3 pm, my 21st Century Beijing class went on a bike ride through a Hutong, which. If I haven’t described it yet in this journal, is basically a neighborhood of little one room houses that date back to 1300 C.E. In the face of the upcoming 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, the city is tearing a good number of these down to build highways and shopping malls right over them, as they’ve been doing for the past three or four years since receiving the bid for the 2008 olympics. we went to a protected Hutong that is not going to be torn down to ride around, not necessarily to learn anything specific but just to see what it was like there. It was not my first time going to a Hutong, as I had gone with my roommate to visit his Aunt in her Hutong before. Some people in my 21st Century Beijing class couldn’t understand why people would want to live there, and couldn’t understand the protest against tearing them down, but it was clear after riding through the area that these aren’t just houses, these are people’s whole lives, and no matter how small they are, by American standards, this is their life, this is their culture, and most everyone we met there had been living in the same Hutong home their whole life. It’s pretty upsetting that the city is just tearing down Hutongs everywhere seemingly without hesitation, but it’s really nothing new to the Chinese people, as for the last fifty years the Government has been destroying a good majority of the old culture that they can get their hands on.

Anyway, after the bike ride, which was very refreshing considering I hadn’t been on a bike in a good month, (still haven’t gotten one, every single kid in our program has had his or hers stolen) we tried to get a cab to go to my favorite restaurant in Beijing, a place on the way back to campus. However, it was raining, and since Beijing gets so little rain because the city is built very close to a desert, the City basically has no idea what to do when rain hits and it seems like their whole infrastructure breaks down. Basically, we walked for literally an hour and a half trying to get a cab, and not one of them wanted to pick us up. Even the few that were empty drove right by us, refusing to stop in the rain, or just refusing to pick up foreigners like us. Tipping is technically illegal in Beijing, and in all of China, and while though it is not enforced, it just not a part of the culture. Thus if tipping were indeed a part of the culture, I would think foreigners would have the advantage in getting a cab since some people seem to think we all have dollar signs for pupils, but it was not so. We weren’t planning on walking all the way to the restaurant, but before we knew it we had walked a good three or four miles before getting to the restaurant. So we went in and feasted on seemingly endless plates of dumplings and rice and eggplant. Have I mentioned how much I love the eggplant dishes they have here? I hated eggplant back home, but coming to China has turned me into an eggplant fiend. After eating for a while, rush hour was over and it was pretty easy to get a cab. I was absolutely exhausted, but I was pretty proud of us for walking that far, and it just felt like I really did something.

Friday we had our weekly language test and then I just kind of chilled for the rest of the day. Traffic was ungodly since Saturday was National Day, thus everyone and their mother was on their way into Beijing for the big celebration in Tiananmen Square. However I bought a fruit peeler, which means I can now eat fruit here, so that was cool. For dinner we went to a restaurant around the corner, which apparently specializes in serving country food. The most popular dish at the restaurant seemed to be this huge sizzling pot of random vegetables and meats, not unlike the way fajitas are served in the U.S. the funniest part about this meal was that in order to avoid burning themselves, the waiters that had to serve these dishes were literally sprinting down the hall with these enormous sizzling pots of food in their hands. If they were to trip and fall on this stuff they would easily receive third degree burns. We were eating in a room upstairs, so every time a waiter ran by with one of these pots, you could hear the sizzling begin down the hall, and it would get louder as the waiter got closer, to the extent that it sounded like a huge rush of water was coming down the hall and about to sweep into our room to drown us any minute. Needless to say it was pretty terrifying when the waiter turned the fast corner into our room to put this sizzling pot on our table, as I had visions of him tripping right before our table and splashing all of us with boiling hot oil and food. Oh well, it is china after all. My favorite dish at the restaurant were these little potato balls that look a lot like the General Tso’s Surprise they serve at Sunflower Restaurant in Vienna, VA. I forget what the name of the dish was, but the English translation of it was literally “farmer’s little potatoes.” So I thought that was funny. Afterwards, we just kind of hung out and went places. Not too interesting.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to begin our weekend trip to Shirdu, a little town a couple hours south of Beijing rich with rivers and mountains. It’s a popular daytrip destination out of Beijing, and we were to spend the night there and return on Sunday. My roommate organized most of it, and wanted a lot of people to go so that it would be cheaper for everyone, so we ended up with 16 people on the trip, which was way too many, and my roommate later admitted to that. The trip down was fine, we took two vans that were provided by this travel agency he booked it through. We had drivers too. The ride down was nice, although this car we took was equipped with literally no shocks, so even when we were driving on normal, flat, paved road, it was often really bumpy. It was the first time I had actually been out of Beijing, so it was very nice to be out of the city. We got to the place after a couple of hours of driving, which is good considering it was National Day, the anniversary of when Chairman Mao Zedong stepped to the front of the Forbidden City at Tiananmen Square and proclaimed China the People’s Republic of China. Since there would be nothing to really do in Beijing, at least enjoyably, because traffic would be awful, we decided it was a good weekend to get out of the city. So anyway, we get to the place and eat lunch. The lunch was pretty bad and I had my first vegetarian panic attack when I realized that the fried vegetables I thought I was eating were just a bunch of little fried fish, that hadn’t been cut up or anything and you could see their little faces and eyes and stuff. My rule for eating meat over here is I can’t eat anything with a face on it or else I’ll freak out. Afterwards, we cross this bridge over the river in order to get to a trail we’re about to hike. I’m not sure who designed this bridge, but whoever it is, they should be shot.. it was a wooden bridge not unlike one you might see Indiana Jones running over to escape from the bad guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As soon as we stepped on it and it started swaying back and forth, I asked myself “is this normal?” and apparently it is! I felt like I had beer goggles on as I was crossing the bridge, as I was clinging onto the side for dear life the whole way across. It was shaking in the way that it might if a Hurricane with 160 MPH winds were hitting it, except there was no damn hurricane! Anyway, we cross the bridge and hike for a few miles, past a natural spring that runs downstream and feeds the whole river at the bottom. The whole way over there are people everywhere trying to sell me bundles of incense that I can use to light and pray to various Buddha statues that rest along the path. It’s unclear whether these statues are legitimate or if they are just tourist attractions. At one point we have to climb about 100 steps to the top of this hill, and these steps are really steep, so im exhausted and out of breath by the time I get to the top of the hill. And of course, as soon as I get to the top I’m accosted by another three people trying to sell me bundles of incense. Yes, that’s right, I’m out of breath, exhausted, just climbed 100 steps, and the first thing I want to do when I get to the top is not pull out my bottle of water, but BUY YOUR STUPID BUNDLE OF INCENSE. Yeah right! Some people just don’t think.

Afterwards, we went on these boats on the river, and by boats I mean bamboo sticks wrapped together with barbed wire. Their oars weren’t oars, but equally long bamboo sticks that we used to push off the bottom of the river to steer. After nearly falling off the boat with my first step onto the boat to the chorus of about 6 Chinese people yelling at me to step in the middle and not on the side, except I can’t understand any of that, we take off and slowly move down the river. We boat by a small sheep farm that clearly serves the restaurant we just ate at. After a few minutes, I turn my attention to the farm as I hear a chorus of sheep yelling in horror, and I see the guy who was our waiter at lunch coming into the pen. The sheep all know what’s coming, as they all run away as fast as they can, except for one sheep who basically gets himself cornered. The waiter simply walks over, palms the sheep by the head with one hand, picks it up and walks out with it, deaf to its cries and blind to the obvious pain it’s in as it is being CARRIED BY ITS HEAD! while it appears to be kicking as hard as it can to escape. Myself, will and armand all just looked at each other in disbelief. This after they offered to kill and cook an entire sheep for us for dinner. I was going to pass on that tonight.

After dinner, we went to this ethnic…thing. It was a dance of sorts, except it was all kinds of random dances, followed by some plain music routines. different people would come out dressed in different costumes, occasionally doing this banging-the-floor-with-sticks-really-hard routine, and then doing some kind of a western dance routine that would make any Chinese parent want to avert their kid’s eyes, then a firebreather came out…it was basically a hodgepodge of Chinese culture. I wasn’t sure if it was in celebration of National Day.

We then went to our hotel, where our group had four rooms reserved, four beds to a room. As soon as we got there, I had to go to the bathroom pretty badly. Now, I had heard of the notoriously disgusting Chinese countryside public bathrooms, but hadn’t experienced it until now. I walked into the bathroom only to see three Chinese guys popping a squat. There are no dividers in between any of the…things, and I call them things cause they’re not necessarily toilets. I had a friend come to guard the door while I went to the bathroom later that night. I can remove myself from my comfort zone pretty well at this point, but that’s the one line that I can’t really cross. Sorry, China.

Anyway, the next day we did random activities until about 3 PM and then we got out of SHirdu and back to Beijing. One of the cooler things we did was we went to a beach area where we could go boating and play volleyball. Instead of volleyball, we decided to play dodgeball. We asked one of the Chinese roommates what the Chinese word for dodgeball was, and though I forget the word, the literal English translation is “Crazy Escape Ball.” That’s pretty funny. So anyway, we played what was quite possibly the most scenic game of dodgeball EVER played, as we were surrounded on all sides by mountains and rivers. It reminded me a lot of being in New Mexico. We went to the main town to eat lunch, and afterwards Will and Justin went bungee jumping. I didn’t want to do it, as my rationalization was that I don’t really trust bungee jumping in America, and I have even less reason to trust it in China, especially since there’s no way the people in charge of it would be able to calm me down cause I wouldn’t be able to understand them too well. There was a microphone and PA you could speak into right before you jumped, so Will and Justin got on the PA and their potentially last words were “we’re only being held on by Velcro around our ankles!!” and that’s when I knew I had made the right decision. Well, at least it was over water. It was really a pretty view actually. They did well though, and they survived. Their way of getting them out of the bungee is having a boat waiting at the bottom with a guy who holds up a long stick for the bungeer’s to grab onto, and they pull them down.

So then we got out of there, having had a very interesting weekend in Shirdu, and we went back to Beijing where we had to get all of our homework from the weekend done. We drove by a field where they were doing slash and burn cultivation, at least that’s what I hope they were doing.

Monday wasn’t too interesting. But Tuesday however was Rosh Hashanah and myself and four other Jews in the program, Will, Armand, Andrew and Josh decided to go to synagogue. We went to this place that Josh had found on the internet(and we got excused absences from our morning language classes). It was a sect of Judaism known as Chabad Labuvich(don’t know if I got that spelling down), and I guess it stems out of Russia. The address we had seemed to be a house of sorts. So we took a cab around the Third Ring Road around to the Chaoyang District where we arrived at a gated community of sorts. We went up to the guide and showed him the address of the place. He looked at us and then stroked his chin in a circular motion, signaling a beard, and then we knew that that was his way of indicating a Jewish person. We all laughed and nodded our heads and he pointed to where we needed to go. I walked past the first actual houses I had seen in all of Beijing, and knocked on the door. For a moment there I forgot we were in Beijing, and it almost seemed like we were in some gated community in West Palm Beach, Florida. A woman comes to the door and asks us to wait a few minutes as the service is actually going on in the Renaissance Hotel around the corner. So we wait and walk there with her and her family, who are apparently from South Africa, and have been living in Hong Kong the last few years until they moved to Beijing. So we get to the room, which is just a ballroom at the hotel, and I walk into my first orthodox/Chabad service, the first one I’ve participated in in my life, and it took me going to China to do so! It’s very traditional, and there’s a screen in the middle of the crowd, separating the men and the women. We sit down to find the whole crowd bobbing up and down with their talit’s covering their heads, dovening as it is called. The Rabbi is speaking faster than I thought was humanly possible, and they have a guy up front turning a sign that indicates what page we were on, trying to keep up with the impossible pace of the service. We’re on our feet for a good hour and a half and I can’t really understand much of what’s going on. The whole service, maybe 100 words of English are uttered, half of which are page turning instructions. The service is over soon enough and we are all exhausted, thus we treat ourselves to a nice lunch at Steak and Eggs, which is not too far away. We go to a grocery store around the corner called the Friendship Store, which has a lot of imported goods, including fruit loops for 60 Quai or so. In China, that is unbelievably expensive.

So anyway, I’m doing well today. I’ve been swimming a lot of laps, trying to keep myself in shape as I am not able to do simple things like ride my bike around campus like I was able to do last year. Not necessarily shape, but I just don’t want to rock the sophomore 15. Anyway, sorry for the long update(4 and a half pages…wow) but I hadn’t updated in a while, so yeah. Send me e-mails! Love all of you, miss you, looking forward to seeing you!

Fall break trip to Yunnan! More on that later.

-andy-

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:13:53 GMT

woah i had no idea that everytime it said "0 comments" that there were actually comments there, except only i can see them! cool!

-andy-

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 14:51:04 GMT

wait, patch adam's son goes to guilford?!?!

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 13:33:34 GMT

i had a pretty interesting weekend. it all started on friday, which was my birthday of course. after my language test, which i later found out i got an 18.1 out of 20 on(i was pretty stoked on that), me and armand, Daniel, Justin, and will went to Big Pizza, this all you can eat buffet place of mamahuhu mei guo fan(mediocre American food). The food ain’t that great, but it really hits the spot in certain situations. I just felt like splurging a little bit on my birthday. After hanging out and watching some movies in the afternoon, we all got ready to go out to dinner. Before dinner, I got presents from my four favorite Chinese roommates! My own roommate, James, got me another pillow, as I had been talking about how hard it is for me to sleep with just one pillow, like I had been doing. Sang Moor Ge, Kimmie’s roommate, got me a beautiful necklace. Shi Yue, Alec’s roommate, got me a collection of five Chinese books that are apparently regarded as the five essential ancient Chinese classics, though I haven’t really looked at them yet. They are in English, of course. And Melody, Geneal’s roommate, got me a Capital Normal University t-shirt, like I had been talking about wanting! Chinese people listen a lot better than Americans do, it seems. Anyway, By the time dinner rolled around, 21 of us walked around the corner to go to the Korean BBQ place. Since I knew there would be a lot of people I wanted to go somewhere local and convenient. A five cab caravan of people to some restaurant across town would be a nightmare to coordinate and most people here are pretty indecisive just like me. So we ordered a virtual shit-ton of food, and my roommate James was sweet enough to get me a cake and arrange everything with the waiters and all. It was a beautiful cake and it was really good too. Along with having cake, another Chinese birthday tradition is to have noodles on your birthday, so after having literally gorged myself full of food, having had two big pieces of cake, I had to eat this big bowl of noodles. It was some sort of egg drop soup. I didn’t end up even trying to finish it. The cool thing about China is that eating all of the food on your plate can be considered a sign of disrespect, cause that indicates you didn’t have enough and you want more. So if you don’t like something, the host will never be offended. We were going to go bowling afterwards, but the bowling place closes at 12 am and it was already 10:30 by the time we got out of there. Bummer. Another weekend, I guess. So a group of us went down to Ho Hai to hang out on the rooftop of this café, and we hung out there for a few hours. It was a beautiful night, but I’m kind of getting tired of going there every weekend, so hopefully this weekend I will do something different. I’m probably going to be doing something with my roommate this weekend, as it is National Day on October 1st, the celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It’s the busiest travel weekend of the year in China, so I don’t see myself venturing out too far away from here. I can’t imagine what traffic is going to be like.

Anyway, on Saturday I decided it was time to stop the onslaught of meat and go for some veggie food. So my friends Alec and Jesse and I ventured down to the Qianmen district to find a particular vegetarian restaurant that was mentioned in this guide to Beijing I have. We actually found the place, which was enough to satisfy me, because it was one of the first things that I had really done on my own here, and I felt somewhat accomplished after having found it, no matter how small the task might seem. We ordered three dishes, and these nice people from Colorado who were sitting right next to us didn’t come close to finishing their food so they gave us all their leftovers. The place reminded me a lot of sunflower restaurant back in Vienna, VA. After the meal, I felt so much healthier, and we hopped in the car to ride back home.
I had signed up to go to the concert of this guy who is apparently the godfather of Chinese Rock, a man named Cui Jian, that night, so I met all the other kids that signed up for it at 5 and we all went out to dinner at a Hot Pot place around the corner. After that we headed to the conert, which is in an arena not far crom campus. The place was really crowded, as this was an extremely historical event. Cui Jian’s music is very political and very liberal, and he was at Tianemen Square in the famous protest in 1988, and has written many songs about it. He hasn’t been allowed to perform in Beijing in twelve years, so this was a pretty emotional event for him and all of the fans there, many of whom were much older, old enough to remember what it was like in China around the time of the Tianemen Square protests. The crowd was really vigorous and emotional, and singing along to just about every song. The music itself wasn’t something I would really see myself listening to back home. It sounded a lot like Phil Collins to me. But it was great to see live music again, and I kept on marveling at how good the drummer was. And on top of that I was with good friends. All in all, it was an amazing, historical, and culturally enriching evening. He played for almost three hours. Afterwards I went back to the dorm and went to sleep, as I was exhausted from being out late the night before.

Sunday, I worked for most of the day, after an amazing brunch at a restaurant called Steak and Egg in Chaoyang district. It’s one of the few restaurants like it in Beijing. I kind of went crazy there, ordering two pancakes, two scrambled eggs, two pieces of bacon, French fries and two biscuits. I felt like I was about to explode afterwards, but I needed it so badly. I just used my technique of “eat faster than your stomach can catch up with you” to stuff it all down there. The restaurant is owned by some jewish looking guy named Paul, who apparently refuses to speak Chinese to his waiters and waitresses and has been living in China for three years but only knows a few words of Chinese. He sounds like quite a bastard, if you ask me. Anyway, we went back to the dorm and I did work for the rest of the afternoon, until 8 pm or so, when I went back down to the Chaoyang district with my friend Shi Yue, who is roommates with Alec, to go my first Beijing punk show! We were seeing the band Brain Failure, who are actually signed to Epitaph Records, and went on the Warped tour this summer. They sound a lot like the Ramones and The Clash, and while I wouldn’t usually be interested in seeing a band like this back home, I really wanted to see what it was like. We found the club, and I arrived to see a bunch of Chinese punk kids with Mohawks and Operation Ivy shirts and checkered pants. Just like the good old days of DC Ska! We got there early, giving Shi Yue and I a lot of time to sit and talk. Shi Yue is the one whose father is the chief editor of the National Naval Newspaper, and from looking at Shi Yue you would never guess that was what his father did for a living. Shi Yue and I talked for a long time about China, America, politics in general, and about what’s going on in China today. He also told me a lot about his relationship with his father and how the two of them don’t get along at all, as Shi Yue is far too liberal for his father’s approval. H.

So anyway, the concert itself was a ton of fun. There weren’t a ton of people there, as it was a Sunday night and it cost 30 Rinminbi. Brain Failure really market themselves towards an American audience, as all of their songs are in English, they’re on an American record label and they are returning for the fourth tour of the states next month. Though it seems like the punk scene is very big in China, it seems like there is only so much one punk band can do if they’re trying to “make it big” or something. A mosh pit erupted in front of Shi Yue and I as the music began, and Brain Failure played a good 30 to 40 minutes of music. Anywhere else I might have stood outside while a band like this played, but I will really remember last night forever. There I was at a punk show halfway across the world…it was just such an amazing experience, and I was very lucky to share it with Shi Yue. As I was getting in the cab, I was joking about how Chinese people seems to say everything twice, like “ni hao, ni hao” or “xie xie, xie xie” and the driver heard me and started saying everything twice. It was really funny. I actually got to speak Chinese to him and he seemed to understand me! That was a pretty big confidence booster.

Anyway, I have a paper due Wednesday afternoon on why Mao’s portrait was recently placed on all Yuan bills, replacing the former depictions of all of China’s minority peoples. So I’m working on that, and also working on a Character stroke worksheet.

Also one of my favorite things about using new speakers is when it highlights different frequencies in a particular song, and you end up hearing a guitar or bass line that you had never heard before and it makes the song that much better!

Anyway, ill talk to everyone later, and thanks again for all the birthday love!

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 02:26:37 GMT

happy birthday to me.

-andy-

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:07:28 GMT

So it’s been a few days since I last updated. The work here is really hard, and I would say that this is probably the most challenging academic environment I’ve been in, and I really do want to do well here. I definitely have a good amount of motivation to do work. I had a pretty stellar weekend. Friday night we went back to the ho hai region. We hung out there for a while, and I had really wonderful conversations with two of the Chinese roommates, whose American names are melody and moore, who I’m fast becoming friends with. I’m starting to use some of the Chinese I’ve been learning, and the stuff we’re learning in class is slowly becoming relevant to actual conversation.

Saturday, I went to a district called Dongcheng with Armand and Jesse and Armand’s roommate, in search of cheap guitars to buy. We found one cute little shop, and when we went in there were a couple guys playing wooden flute versions of Kenny G songs, who is apparently big here? It seems to be true so far that China gets everything that was big in the U.S. about five years after it was actually popular. They’re on some sort of time delay, I guess. Armand and I found two guitars that we really liked and decided to buy them. I bought mine for 280 quai, the equivalent of about 34 or 35 u.s. dollars, and also got a gig bag and a capo. It plays really well and sounds fantastic. I hadn’t been planning on bringing it home, but now I’m starting to think about bringing it back. I’m glad that I’ll be able to keep up with the guitar, and still have some chops when I get back home, which is one thing I was worried about losing. After that, we went to the Xidan district, but on our way there we passed by a KFC. We all kind of stopped and looked at each other, as we hadn’t eaten anything all day, and we just sort of knew what we had to do. I feel bad supporting any KFC, but I think we all just needed it right there and then. How consistently can you really eat Chinese food, when you think of it? Luckily there is obviously a lot more variety of food here than we see in the states. I’m not just eating General Tso’s chicken everyday, in case you were wondering. Anyway, after we devoured our food we went on to the Xidan district, basically the biggest open market in Beijing. I was in the market for some speakers and maybe a few more shirts. I was able to bargain two shirts that were going to cost me 280 quai a piece down to 60 quai, since they were both clearly knockoffs anyway. Going to Xidan was probably the biggest culture shock I’ve experienced so far. As soon as we entered the area, there was just a massive flood of people as far as the eye could see. I felt really uncomfortable and really out of place. People buming into me, keeping my hands on my wallet and camera. I got to take the cutest picture of this Chinese baby. I don’t think there is anything cuter in the world than a cute Chinese baby. They’re up there with koalas. Imagine walking around a city and seeing a bunch of koalas running around, standing on two feet, and that’s what Beijing is like! Koala city!
Anyway, we took the subway back, and then got ready to go out yet again. We all kind of needed to decompress a little bit after our Xidan experience, so we decided to head out to get some Italian food. We went to a place called Annie’s, which is in the Chayong district, a more western area of town where all the embassies are. It was quite an expensive meal(110 quai a piece!) but it was well worth it. The food was about as good as a decent Italian meal would be in the U.S. I had Gnocchi and got nostalgic about lunch and dinner dates with Shara at Elizabeth’s Pizza last year. We all had pretty bad table manners. Will spilled my soda on me accidentally, and I accidentally let out a good 3 to 4 second belch as everyone in the room turned around to stare at me. It was weird going in the restaurant and seeing a bunch of white people. Anyway, I don’t really like being in western parts of town, but sometimes it proves to be a nice way to decompress. I can’t be all China all the time. Sunday, I was supposed to go to my roomate’s house for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday in which the whole family gathers to have a big dinner. It kind of seems to be like the Chinese version of Labor Day. However I didn’t feel that great and he lives pretty far away and I had a lot of work to do, so I had to stay back here and do work.
So I worked the entire day, until dinner time when I went out to dinner with Alec, Will, Glenn, Alex, Kate, Alec’s roommate Shi Yue and his family. His father is the editor of the National Naval newspaper, and lives on a military base that you need papers and identification to get in and out of, where no Meiguoreun(Americans) are allowed to get in. He’s been working for the Navy since the very beginning of the Cultural Revolution. He apparently had to get permission to take us out to dinner, and had to report the dinner to his boss the next day. It was almost like he was spying on us! Not really. The food was delicious, and this restaurant has a few musicians hired, that will go around and sing songs to tables upon their requests. So before we knew it, this group of musicians, dressed up in traditional Chinese dresses and suits, came in and started singing some songs. They had a keyboard and this Cello-like instrument that only had two strings which were apparently made of horse hair. They plugged both the Mic and the keyboard into the same big bass amp, which they turned up pretty loudly, and the mic kept on feeding back. I guess one could call it “ghetto” if they wanted to. Either way, it was quite an interesting experience, and it even got better when they started singing a song that was written for Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution. The father was singing along, and it didn’t take long for the rest of Shi Yue’s family to join in. It was pretty unreal to see things I’ve only read about in books coming to life like that. That’s happened to me a lot here, and that’s a very good thing.

I’ve settled down into a routine, and now that things are more stable and I’ve been around the city more, I feel a little weird. It’s another smoggy day outside, and there’s a big part of me right now missing north Carolina sunsets. About two or three days a week, we have huge blue skies, and the rest of the week is just kind of grey. The sky here reminds me a little bit of the one in new mexico, in terms of its size at least. However I can’t see any stars at night. I guess that’s one thing I’ll have to wait to see until I get home. Things are good, I just don’t want things to get static. Days like this will come around, I guess.

I’ll update again when something happens! Feel free to contact me.

-andy-

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 06:34:20 GMT

so yesterday i got some letters from my mother and grandmother, so now i know that letters actually can get through to me here. if you feel so kind as to write me a letter, feel free to do so, at this address:

Andrew Freedman
Capital Normal University
83 Xi San Huan Bei Road
Hai Dian District
Beijing 100089
People's Republic Of China

it's also in my userinfo, so, yeah. anyway, it's been a fun week since my last update. did i talk about my roomate in the last entry? i'm not sure. anyway, when he first got here we got along very well, but he slowly began to get on my nerves because he would make plans for both of us without even consulting me on them, or asking me if i was even available. it's clear that the chinese and american values of friendship are very different. i'm not saying that all chinese people are like this, but there is not as much emphasis on personal space or personal, "quiet time" here. since i wanted to do something about it instead of just avoiding him, i sat down and had a talk with him, and i think we said some really good things that needed to be said. i told him that i wanted to be his friend, and i loved that he was inviting me to places and wanting me to be as cultured as possible, but that i was a pretty quiet person that really needed my personal space and personal time. i told him that he shouldn't expect for us to do everything together, and that wasn't a personal attack on him, as i explained to him that there is no one that i would feel comfortable spending every minute of my time with. he then told me that CET basically told him and the rest of the chinese roomates on this program that they should "babysit" us, or at least that was the word he used. i told him that he shouldn't feel the need to compromise himself just to spend a lot of time with me. after all this is a very new experience for both of us, and i emphasized that we need to keep an open dialogue in the room about everything. he seemed to take it pretty well, and things have been much better since the talk, although now i think he's taken it a bit too much to heart, cause now when im hanging out with my friends he seems to feel uneasy. i know that the experience of living with a chinese roomate is incredibly valuable, and i feel like im taking full advantage of it, i just need a way to decompress every now and then, and i think that was what i was most worried about. i didn't want to feel suffocated.

anyway, we've been having quizzes in language class everyday, and it's pretty hard. talking in chinese and trying to formulate sentences can be exhausting. the act of trying to wrap my mind around the language just rips my mind apart. i'm starting to recognize characters though, and now i can pick up basic parts of conversation when listening to people talk to each other. my current vocab is pretty useless though, unless im talking about my family, or im meeting someone for the first time. I’ve had some funny slip-ups in trying to talk in Chinese. A girl came by looking for my roommate the other night, and since I didn’t really know what else to do other than wave my arms and shake my head, trying to symbolize that james was not here, I decided to give my Chinese a shot. I said “wo xiao zhonguoren.” Thinking I had just said “I know very little Chinese language,” I realized soon after in horror that I had just told this girl that I was in fact, a little Chinese person. I don’t know if she picked up, and she probably just didn’t understand what I was saying, but I had a good laugh about it afterwards. This guy Andrew, who is also a Guilford student, told me today that he proudly knew how to say “I have a broken toilet,” since his bathroom problems were the only thing he knew how to talk about, since he had to talk with the fuyar(maid) about. After telling me what he said in Chinese, I informed him to his dissapointment that all along he had actually been saying “I am broken toilet.” Oh well.

Anyway, things are going well. I have a lot more to say but I will update tomorrow. Take care!
-andy-

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:42:56 GMT

wow, how come i never got into bjork before? this is seriously some of the better music i've heard in a long time. the album "vespertine" is really good. anyway, a week ago today i woke up for the first time in beijing, and a week later, my whole outlook on this country has totally changed for the better. things are going very well. all my classes have started, and i am happy to say that i really enjoy all of them! and the courseload is heavy, but not too heavy, and i still have plenty of time to explore beijing and all.

the food around here has been really good, and hasn't been giving me too much trouble. in the mornings i go down to this stand right outside the gates of the university, where this lady is making these egg pancakes, and it only costs you two quai to get two of them with this sauce and some scallions, basically making a spicy omelette sandwich type of thing. two quai brings you to about 18 cents. for lunch i usually get this really good chicken sandwich from the school cafeteria, kind of like an asian version of something you might be able to get at a fast food restaurant in the states. it's really good. i was right about china-it's very very hard to be a vegetarian here, and i'm glad i started eating meat before i came here or else i would have freaked out when i got here. i don't eat too much meat, and if i tried really hard i could probably be a vegetarian, but with the language barrier, and considering you really do have to look for the vegetarian restaurants here, it would be nearly impossible. so for now i'm just trying to enjoy eating meat. usually for dinner i splurge a little and end up spending something like 20 to 30 yuan, which basically ends up with me spending maybe 4 dollars a day on food. it's pretty amazing how cheap things are here. it's not necessarily that they are cheap, but in america, things are just so expensive.

my roomate arrived on wednesday. his name is james, or zhou lin. or lin for short, as his mother apparently calls him. he showed up with a few plastic bags worth of stuff, making me embarassed of my two huge duffel bags of crap that i brought over. myself and four of my friends here all took our roomates out to dinner to a restaurant not far from campus, and they seated us in this private party room. we all drank tsingtao and shared the several plates we got. in china, usually one person orders for everyone, and usually a few people pay for everyone else, depending on who invited who out to dinner. since the food is so cheap, at least for the american students, compared to what we have to pay for a dinner in the states, we paid for everything, and it's a custom here that when you invite someone to dinner, that implies that you're going to pay for them. but our roomates have a pretty good understanding of western culture, so it seems, so my roomate said that we could all "go dutch," but we insisted. the chinese students really seem to come to school to study. some of these roomates have 10 hours of classes a day, and when they're not in class they're probably studying. not many people get to go to college in china, it seems, so they don't take this opportunity for granted. all of them seem to be very very smart. my roomate's english is almost better than mine, as he is a fourth year english major. i'm very lucky to have been paired with him!

yesterday he took me and my friend daniel to a park not far from campus. we took the bus three stops to it, and paid the two quai admission to get in. once we got in, we saw sites that you usually just see in postcards from beijing, as the parks of beijing are apparently world famous. it was beautiful, full of willow trees and beautiful flowers, and there was a big lake right in the middle of it. we took a boat out on the lake-only 30 yuan to rent it out. the funniest part of this excursion was that all the boats we walked past were green with red stars, and big metal poles protruding from the middle, resembling big guns/cannons. it was really funny, as every day i see a few more things that really make me feel like im in china. that was definitely one of them! we walked around for a while, and then came back to the campus, where my roomate decided he needed to go home to try and fix things with his girlfriend. i like him a lot, i just get kind of exhausted after hanging out with him because he talks a lot. i know that he was just excited to meet me and spend time with me, and it's pretty clear that he likes me a lot, i just hope that he doesn't get the impression that we're supposed to do everything together. anyway, he's home for the weekend now, and it's nice to not have a roomate for right now. he's already helping me out a lot with my language though, and i really think i will grow to appreciate him a lot.

oh also, right before we went to the park he had to go draw money from the atm down the street, and he had his bike, so i rode on the back of his bike with him, sitting on the little platform where a basket usually goes, just like everyone else seems to do in beijing. it was really fun, and it must have been hard for him to keep his balance while towing my fat ass around.

this looks like it will be a fun weekend. im done updating for now. i want to hear how all of you are doing, so if anyone wants to write me, feel free! take care! xiajian!

-andy-

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 02:35:48 GMT

tianemen square.

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 01:04:24 GMT

I tried to update yesterday, but my internet has been really terrible, and a gliche in the net deleted a whole entry of mine! It was very long too, and I felt as if I had really written it well. You can read my other journal, http://www.livejournal.com/users/andygoestochina, for another update talking about my first few days.

Thursday night, my friend will took me down to tianemen square. Since it was my first night out being able to explore Beijing, it was definitely an appropriate thing to see. It was really one of the most breathtaking things I’ve ever seen. We got there right as dusk was turning into nightfall, and the oil lamps illuminated the square. It was quite a gorgeous site, and the sky was something to see. It was a very nice welcome to china. After walking around other parts of the city, including a square where we witnessed these cute old women doing traditional dances, we went back home and I slept for quite a while.

Friday, we did the usual orientation stuff during the daytime. In the evening, my friend will took me and some other kids down to this international neighborhood where a lot of westerners seem to hang out. We went to a restaurant called golden elephant, a thai/Indian fusion place. The food was delicious! after the golden elephant we went to a place called kai. It was pretty empty at first, and we had to wade through several children who were jumping on us and asking us for money. kai bar is more of an international cafe, but it was really cool. I met people from Tajikistan, England, Germany, Canada, and the States as well. Beijing truly is an international city. Everywhere I go I meet people that know people I know. It’s quite amazing how small of a world it is. I met this Oberlin college student at the kai bar that knows alie plotsky. But of course it’s not unusual, cause the world of college students at liberal arts schools in the states is quite small. On the way back to our dorm, we just passed an offramp on the third ring road(like the third beltway of Beijing) to find traffic backed up because of an accident. To my jawdropping amazement, our driver began to reverse up the third ring road in order to make it onto the offramp, as other cars started to do the same. I was with will, who said “that’s the most china thing I’ve ever seen.”

Last night, however, has been the most enriching night thus far, in terms of cultural immersion at least. Let me start with the daytime though. We woke up early and went to the summer palace, the old summer getaway of many ming dynasty emperors. This place is at least 800 years old, and it’s absolutely georgous. It’s right on kumning lake, and you can take boats on it. So me and these kids whitney(one of the three sophomores on the trip), josh, and armand went out on a boat. It was awesome, even though the water was very dirty. By the end of the ride we were all very very hot. It was really unreal being there, it felt like I had just jumped into one of the pictures you see in tourist guides. That has been really hard so far, to find a way to actually grasp the fact that im here. Well im sure that will come soon enough.

After an otherwise frustrating afternoon, where my camera stopped working and I couldn’t upload any photos on the internet, and livejournal deleted a whole entry of mine, I went down to the basketball court to join in on a game with the other guys. We’ve played basketball every day weve been here so far, and it’s looking like that will be a routine here. I like that a lot, and I love to play basketball, and it will be a nice way to work off that greasy Chinese food. It’s also a cool way to meet new people, as we usually go down with eight people and rotate teams of four against the Chinese kids that play down there everyday. It’s amazing how many people from the area come out to watch us play, as we are Americans and that’s fascinating to them. There was no one watching any of the other games, but a huge crowd around ours. Everything that people say about being a tourist attraction in china is true. Everywhere we go, people stare, and whitney, who is African American, is always being asked to have her picture taken with someone. No one really seems to mind being stared at yet, it’s just the way it is here. Perhaps one of the more interesting things about our basketball games is that we have this kid Dylan playing, and by kid I mean he’s 25 and a CCE student at Guilford. He’s also about 6 foot 6 and at least 250 pounds, so he really must come off to everyone like an american giant. Most all of the Chinese players are not any taller than my height, so Dylan must come off as really huge. When he’s playing, it’s almost unfair, cause he just kind of grabs every rebound and usually has at least three or four more opportunities to put the ball in if he misses it. Anyway, the exercise feels great, and I actually made three baskets. We plan on going to a dumpling place for dinner, and we invite one of the people we met at the bball court to come with us. He’s actually Korean, not unusual since 80% of the international dorm is Korean. We meet up at 8 pm, and he brings two of his friends. It turns out about 16 people are trying to go to dinner, so we ditch the dumpling place idea since wed have to get in a cab, and we go to the local Korean bbq place. Which is awfully convenient since our new Korean friends can just order for us. It’s done the same way that Mongolian bbq is. They bring a lot of raw meats and vegetables and we put it on the grill on our table. It’s really cool. I sit at a table with will, armand, chris and two other Koreans. They tell me their names and I can’t quite understand, but then they tell me their American names are eric and dennis. For now I call them eric and dennis and promise myself that I will learn their real Korean names in time. Awkward, the cleaning lady just came in while I was in my boxers. They don’t understand when I try to tell them that I don’t want my room cleaned just yet. fuck!

Anyway, back to dinner. It’s absolutely delightful. We sit there for a good hour, laughing and eating and talking. They have decent English, or they can at least understand what we say to them. We do a lot of toasts together and high fives and say things like “best friends!” the Koreans seem to especially like me, calling me “crazy,” or funny at least, kind of in the same way that I am crazy or funny at home. They say I can come stay with them anytime in south korea and ask if they can come stay with me in D.C. I tell them sure! After dinner we go back to our dorms and hang out. They’re about go to a dance club but I am too exhausted, so I turn in and go to bed. It was the best night so far, and I hope we will have many more. Im excited to see my new Korean friends on the court again today.

Anyway, I will update more later. Take care!

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 23:38:17 GMT

i also wanted to say how awful the hurricane aftermath is making me feel. just looking at the pictures and reading the stories makes me wish there was more i could do to help, and it's hard to focus on anything else when i know that something so terrible is happening back home in the states. i'm trying not to think about it too hard over here, but i can't help it. anyhow, the internet in my room has been very slow lately, and i have been trying to upload photos lately but to no avail. i will try again later today. i took some very breathtaking pictures of tianemen square on thursday night. i also have photos of my room and the university and the surrounding neighborhood and all. so i will try again later. anyway, take care.

i took this from shara's journal, and all of you DC folks should pass it on.

400 families will be arriving this weekend at the DC Armory (from New
Orleans).
The delivery site is:
First District Station
415 4th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20024
Phone: 202-698-0515
Fax: (202) 727-4026
http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1239,Q,543658,mpdcNav_GID,1534.asp
Deliveries accepted 24/7.
They stressed their biggest needs at this time are bottled water and
anything that would constitute a "care package"...toothbrushes,
toothpaste, soap, undergarments, etc.
they will also accept a whole host of
other things...toys, clothing, etc.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 23:34:21 GMT

hey guys. so in case you did not know, i am now in china, and just spent my third night here. all is well, my room is really awesome, the neighborhood we live in is awesome, and the kids i'm on the program with are definitely awesome.

so anyway, i don't even know where to begin, or what to make of the
experience so far. my flight to beijing from tokyo was delayed an
hour, thus making my already anxious state of mind that much more
anxious. when we got there, we were greeted by all the CET academics programs staff, and
promptly put into buses on the way to capital normal university. on
the way there, we rode with a bunch of kids who were enrolled in the
CET chinese language program at the beijing institude of education,
the school where this program was last year, and it was sad to part
with them as i liked a lot of those kids and they were all very
intelligent. at first i was unsure about the kids in my group, cause a
lot of them seem like so-called "dudes." but after talking to them
some more, everyone is turning out to be really nice, and i'm bonding
with these kids already. there aren't really any "punk kids" here, but
i can deal. all of us here are bonding more ove the fact that we're in china, and realistically i wouldnt be friends with a lot of these people if we were home in the states. i think it's really cool that we're all becoming friends, and it is certainly helping me grow a lot.
as soon as we got to the dorm, after the nice half-hour
ride into the city which was just unreal(people riding bikes on the
wrong side of the freeway, men sleeping in the back of trucks on dirty
mattresses, people riding bikes going up highway ramps, endless
apartment buildings!), we unloaded all our stuff and went up to the
8th floor, where all the CET chinese studies program students are
staying. our chinese roomates aren't here yet, they will apparently
get here next week, thus giving us time to settle in. it's a very nice
room. all the walls are painted white, and the furniture looks brand
new, probably straight out of whatever the chinese equivalent of ikea
is. there is an ibm computer here for me to use, and a nice color tv,
with a dresser and a bookshelf. it's basically a hotel room. my window
overlooks the third ring road of beijing(imagine if DC had continuous
beltways, this is the third of those, outside of the first and second,
obviously). i learned that capital normal is apparently different from
beijing normal university, so the university isn't quite where we
thought it was when looking at the map. after unpacking a little bit,
i went to bed but was promptly awoken by a bad case of jetlag at 5 in
the morning, only three hours after i actually went to sleep. but i
just wasn't tired and i'm still not too tired. anyway, i just kind of
fell in and out of sleep til 6 am until i decided to get up and walk
around some. the biggest moment of culture shock so far has been when
i looked out my window first thing in the morning, and it was light
outside but i could barely see the buildings across the street because
it was so smoggy outside. however, as the sun came up and the day grew
longer, the smog dissipated, as is apparently the pattern here
everyday, and this has apparently been one of the more beautiful days
that beijing has seen in quite some time. the skies are bright blue
and it's very warm outside. it's been very windy today, possibly a
reminder of the nearby deserts that seem to be encroaching in on
beijing's territory all the time. we had breakfast at 7:30 in the
restaurant in the basement of the university, a family style course of
steamed buns, rice porridge, fried eggs, and toast and jam. it does
the job. we had an orientation course, and new faces kept appearing
that i hadn't already met-either they came in later or had already
spent the summer in beijing and moved in earlier. it's weird being
around these kids cause there are so many reminders of people from
home. it's such a small world! this kid named will solomon, who lives
across the hall from me and is a sophomore at vanderbilt(there are
three sophomores on this program; me, will and whitney from wake
forest. but im the youngest of course!) is close with charlotte ager
and is also from DC, and went to whitman high school. he goes to
temple sinai! this kid armand gottlieb, a junior at bowdoin, is
friends with zach tcheyan. probably the weirdest one of them all is
this kid alec walker, who goes to hampshire and of course knows peter
schechter. so here i am all the way across the world, talking about
kids back in D.C. out of all these kids, i like will solomon a lot,
and armand is also really nice. he plays guitar and has a band back at
school. though we're into different styles of music we can still agree
on a lot. sometime this weekend we're going to try and go find a
guitar store and maybe get some guitars. i like this kid named daniel
alderman, who is from presbyterian college in SC(ms. mcginn's alma
mater). there are a lot of other really nice people, and i would say
there is no one on the program that i dislike.

anyway, the culture shock hasn't been too bad, mostly because it all
still feels unreal. i went to a local supermarket and bought a case of
bottled water, a case of toilet paper, and 5 coat hangers for 40
Rinminbi(the local currency...i still don't really understand the
difference between yuan, quai and rinminbi). that's basically around 5
U.S. dollars! apparently, mostly due to the upcomings olympics, there
are currently over 8,000 construction sites in beijing. when you look
out in the morning, one of the only things that raises above the smog
are the many construction cranes you can see in the distance. this
building was one of those, and is brand spankin new. it's so nice! i
didn't realize until we got here that we have maid service! one of the
weirdest things about china is how EVERYONE is employed. there are so
many jobs, and everyone seems to work. apparently at the front of
every restaurant in beijing(or most of them), they hire someone to
just stand there. not even open doors or greet, but just to stand
there! however, the language barrier is harder than i thought, and
simple things can be very difficult to communicate. this morning, a
maid came by my room and my door was open cause i was in the process
of unpacking, and she said something that i didn't understand, and
since i didn't want her to come in and clean cause i still needed to
clean a lot, and i didn't see much point in her cleaning the room with
all my stuff everywhere, i tried to use hand motions to convey to her
that she didn't need to clean the room. but after a few minutes of
blank stares, all i could really do was put the do not disturb sign on
the door and look apologetic. i felt really bad, but it was all i
could really do.

the food is pretty good in the restaurant downstairs, and that's the
only place we've eaten so far(breakfast and lunch). lunch was great,
and it seemed like the dishes would never end! we had some kind of
kung pao chicken, beef with chinese brocolli, some sort of crispy beef
with tofu skin pancakes(chinese tacos), rice, tofu, some vegetables, a
hot and sour soup, and some other stuff. i digested it pretty well and
it doesn't feel bad in my stomach. the highlight was when i
accidentally bit down on a red pepper in the kung pao chicken, and
once i bit down i knew it would be only a matter of seconds before the
spice hit me. i walked outside and began preparing for what would
ultimately be probably the spiciest taste i've ever experienced. it
felt like my mouth was literally exploding. now i feel fine, though my
tongue is still a little sore. but overall the meal was quite
delicious, and i came away from my first real chinese meal with
confidence. there was also this weird dessert, like a cooked mini
pumpkin. it was delicous. we'll see how other restaurants, other,
because of course here, things are pretty posh and the rest of beijing
isn't like this too much. tonight we're going to a restaurant near
campus called lao beijing. we'll see how that goes. anyway, even
though it still feels unreal, i have not been out of the hai'dan
neighborhood yet, and there is still so much to see. as part of the
orientation, on saturday morning we are all going to the summer
palace, a previous residence of many chinese dynastic emperors. or
something like that. a lot of people on the program seem to know
chinese, and i'm really really excited to start the language classes
and start communicating with people as best i can. it will be totally
different from learning a language in the states, just cause i'm
totally immersed over here.

classes start monday, and all is well. i keep thinking about how
amazing this program is, and how insane it is that we get to do these
things. apparently CNU is the only university in the country that
permitts the pairing of chinese students with westerners. i don't know
if that's true, but i believe it. living here is hard and frustrating
so far, mostly because of the language barrier, just like i expected,
but i can't help but take extreme delight in it. it's hard to explain.
just downstairs there is a huge indoor swimming pool and outdoor
basketball courts and soccer fields. i can tell it's going to be very
beautiful around here. the neighborhood is nice and bustling during
the day, but at night the streets calm and there aren't too many
people around, and it's very quiet, so it's very possible to take a
safe walk with a few friends in the neighborhood after everything
quiets down. there are big bike lanes on most of the roads too! everything is cool
here, and i have barely begun. i'm very tired now, but my laptop is up
and working and i seem to have accidentally taken the gettysburg DVD
with me(it was in the computer), so i guess ill have a little more
entertainment if im bored or lonely. but, it's so mindblowing being
here. this is just about my first few days, and a lot has happened since then! things just seem to be getting better. i really don't want this to fade. the rest of my updates won't be as long and dense, so don't worry, there was just a lot to get off my chest.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 09:49:43 GMT

my second day in china. i just played a game of basketball with 8 or 10 other kids in the program. we switched off playing four on four with four other chinese kids that we met down there. i'm not sure if they're students at capital normal(the university i'm taking classes at), but they were certainly better than us and they were certainly fast, unlike us fat americans! anyway, i will update more later, but i just wanted to say how terrible this stuff in new orleans makes me feel. it's crazy that stuff like this can happen in america, and the aftermath of it all is just sickening. god, i can't even think of words to express what's going on in the world, and it's weird being over here, away from all of this. anyway, my heart goes out to those in new orleans. i hope that will can go back to school soon, or i hope that things turn out ok. anyway, tonight i'm going to dinner at this thai/indian place in beijing, and then we'll see what happens. take care, i hope all is well in the states with you guys.

love, andy