我的空调坏了

So, my air-conditioning is broken...indefinitely, and Beijing weather is really starting to get humid.

It's hot as hell in my room, though I feel like since the Olympics will be starting soon, the Chinese government will implement their weather altering methods to make it rain more and make the weather cooler. I have, after all, been seeing more and more foreigners and they wouldn't like this weather very much.

We went to San Li Tun yesterday, a very popularized foreigner's street, where everything you find is around US prices plus! Wow, these prices really remind me of back home. You can find what we ate on this website www.beijingsaddle.com, authentic Mexican food...well as authentic as you can get in Beijing. I've also noticed that prices all around are rising because some places need to import things, which are more expensive now that the Olympics are making high costs on everything. Anyway, things just seem more expensive now since I've been away from America for such a long time.

For example, Olympics tickets, OLYMPICS! WOW!, are going for around $100 for the "expensive" ones. I feel like "DAMN! That's hella expensive", not realizing that I just spent around $90 for a Kanye West concert back in the states, and that wasn't a once in a lifetime event, I can see him anytime. The Olympics, now this only happens once in a lifetime, unless you are a baller and travel around with all your money going to the countries where the Olympics are hosted, but even then, this is the only time it will be in Beijing, China for a long time, probably never again, at least in my lifetime. Also, experiencing Olympic fever in the city as a study abroad student is quiet an experience in itself.

Anyway, back to San Li Tun. The street was filled with places that catered to foreigner night life. The places read "Budweiser" all around, and shops such as Adidas (with 5 floors), North Face, and even American Apparel were present on the street. Not only that, we witnessed a massive change in the nationality demographic, I probably saw more foreigners, usually from Europe, than I saw Chinese people (not including the fuwuyuan or the taxi drivers). That was quite an experience, something not to copy too often, after all, my meal was around $25 US.

So now I am sitting in my room, thinking about how I have to study for the midterm that is tomorrow. It didn't feel like too long ago when I had my first midterm, oh well, we really do only have 2 weeks until the summer intensive program is over.

It's hard to see it says Budweiser 5 times.

This is the restaurant that we went to.

We are also planning our trip in between the summer and fall semesters now. We want to take a train to Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, and Yunan, then afterwards fly back up to Beijing for fall semester, free of Olympic chaos. It should be fun, but I also should study for the midterm tomorrow and try to keep myself cool somehow.

edit: It's raining and we can't open the window anymore, at least they brought us a fan...that squeaks and clicks every once in a while.

Here's a picture of some Chinese Tabasco I stole from San Li Tun because I felt like I deserved it, seeing as how I paid about $25-30 US.

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在地道的北京饭馆吃饭的经历

Yesterday I experienced eating dinner at one of the weirdest, though most authentic Beijing restaurants I have ever been to.

A group of my friends were initially supposed to go to San Li Tun (a very touristy bar street) for one of my friend's birthday. She turned 21 today, but we wanted to surprise her with some good Americanized Mexican food, who knows, maybe a hamburger. Though we all know that these foods come with the American price tag as well.

So, later on at night, it turns out that our friend, whose birthday it was , was at the airport dropping off her siblings so she couldn't make it. After hearing this news, a bunch of us lost interest in traveling anywhere to eat and more than half of us decided to go get dumplings at the nearby dumpling restaurant, the default to any "where should we go to eat?" question.

Derrick, being the only Thai friend we have at EAP, suggested that we go to find Thai food. After looking online for about 10 minutes, we found a place that said cheap dishes for around 20 kuai a dish, roughly $3 US. This sounded like such a great idea since the majority of other Thai restaurants charged about 100 kuai a head.

After deciding, we take a cab and head towards Wudaokou, the area of the restaurant. We have the taxi driver talk to the restaurant attendant because we didn't exactly know the directions. After finding it and stopping at the destination, we looked around in all locations next to the "DVD store" that they man said was next to the restaurant.

We finally found it, it was this strange, dirty hole in the wall, and true to his words, it was next to a DVD store, a sleazy one at that (which we found out later by going in). We went down this narrow, dark, smelly corridor, expecting anything. We see a small shop with no chairs or tables to eat and no A/C. The man greeted us only after Derrick had seen the Thai writing on the walls and the familiar pictures of Thai dishes.

There were four of us and Derrick felt sorry to both parties. He understood why we wanted to leave, so suggested that he just order a small dish for himself and we leave to get other food. After deciding this and talking to a very happy restaurant employee, he led us even further down this corridor, which sloped downhill. The hall got darker and darker until he showed us a place called "Ganji", not the original name of the restaurant we saw on the website called "Pad Thai". We went in and he was still very welcoming, showing us a larger room, with very few lights on. All 4 of us sat down at a circular table and the fuwuyuan immediately brought us nice Olympic logo cups and a pitcher of baikaishui (tap water, stuff you don't drink here). After standing for about 10 seconds, the man that led us down to the restaurant promptly sat down at the table with us, asking us questions about where we were from, if we all knew Thai, what we were doing in Beijing, just the normal casual talk. It turns out that there are a lot of Thai people, but not very many Thai restaurants.

We all decided to say, agreeing that eating at the restaurant would be a very memorable experience. Oh, I forgot to mention that all of us were from Berkeley, so we all talked about how much we missed home and how eating at this rather fancy hole in the wall would be an experience we would always remember, even going back to the US.

So let me describe this new "Ganji" restaurant in detail. We sat down in an area, where the only light was showing from the back "kitchen-looking" area and a light above our heads. The rest of the restaurant, which was dark because none of the lights showed included an expensive looking projector and a screen. This placed look so much more fancy and expensive than we thought it should have, only because there were no other customers in the entire restaurant. The place was staffed entirely by the one guy and two other fuwuyuan that were just sitting behind a counter. Whenever they would come to bring us Sprite or water, they would speak in the softest tone, not saying anything more than what they needed to say.

While we were talking about the place, we noticed that it wasn't a bad room. There was an abundance of chairs and very hip decorations. We came to the conclusion that the downstairs restaurant was a front for illegal Thai drug activities or human trading. Just as we were talking about that and the movie "Infernal Affairs" we heard very loud giggling in the back. Wondering where it came from, we agreed that it was probably a brothel in the back.

After waiting about 15 minutes after we ordered and thinking that they might poison us or make us sick, the food, which turned out to be much more expensive than advertised on the website, was good and very authentic tasting. Derrick, who has been eating Thai food all his life, was even the first one to say it was "bomb", which in his words means REALLY GOOD (好吃). Anyway, the food was very good, though spicy, as we had ordered it.

The guy who greeted us had disappeared and the two dishes that we ordered had already come, though not from the place that we thought was the kitchen, but rather from the front door. The kitchen was elsewhere. However, while we were eating and also while we were waiting we would hear shreiking noises from the back of the "kitchen-looking" room. This grinding noise made us worried that we got into some bad kind of business. We never did find out what it was, but after we had the meal, which turned out to be 100 kuai for all of us, we were very satisfied and even mentioned that we would order delivery, after all, the place was supposed to be known for the delivery, not the restaurant.

After, we went to the DVD store and talked about how it was an experience we couldn't have passed up, but next time we might try a more legit looking place.

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去内蒙古以后

The Chinese Olympics Committee is so ingenious...

As I was sitting in McDonalds eating my McNuggets, for the 5th time since I've been to China, I realized two very different but interesting things:

1. By implementing the slogan "Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni" and therefore creating the 5 Beijing Olympics symbols (Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini) the Chinese economy basically x5 their profits. In comparison to previous Olympics, for example the Athens 2004 Olympics ugly mascot, the Chinese Olympics will generate 5 times the revenue because there are 4 more mascots to buy to "complete" the package, which everyone will be bound to do. But not only that, the mascots are all so cute, who wouldn't want to go on an Olympic spending frenzy?

2. McDonalds in the states is viewed as something for people who are in the lower economic bracket, people who can't afford good food eat "fast food". However, in China, going to McDonalds is seen as a place that is frequented by people with money because the prices are relatively the same in the US as it is in China, therefore the people that can afford it are from a larger and richer economic bracket. The culture is therefore very different. But also, when I was in Wangfujing eating at McDonalds (trip #4 to McDonalds), Tammy pointed out how there had to be at least 5 different races represented in that one restaurant. McDonalds is a really big deal outside of the states.

So, aside from those realizations I should update about the last five days. I just came back from Inner Mongolia this morning. We took another red eye 10 hour train ride back to Beijing, just the same as we took going to Inner Mongolia (which IS a province of China, unlike Outer Mongolia). We at so much food there, but not all of the meals were good. I only recognize a couple of the meals as "edible," some of the others seemed either so dirty or unappetizing that I will only mention their dirtiness and lack of appeal.

Day 1 Inner Mongolia: We arrived in the morning, went straight to breakfast and then to the DESERT! In the desert we had a lot of games to play. These games were more like activities. They had the desert car ride, the space ball (basically a huge plastic ball you roll in), camel rides, and more. I only went on the desert car ride (a fast ride in an open car driving in the rolling sand dunes), the long and very hostile camel ride (which was accompanied by an argument in Chinese about how the camel leader had no manners and was very rude), and finally a ride where you sit in a wooden box and slide down a gigantic sand hill (where I got a lot of sand in my eyes). After the sand slide, I ran up the hill to get to Tammy, who was still waiting at the top. It was a lot farther than I thought and running while inhaling sand didn't feel very healthy either. I felt like death.

Day 2: Basically a lot of driving around led us to the grasslands, where we had a nice lamb dinner, though the presentation of the entire lamb standing, head bobbing, fried in entirety made me lose some of my appetite. We ate, slept in Mongolian yurts (basically a short tent that fit about 6 people, in Chinese: 蒙古包), and then the next morning rode horses and had the opportunity to ride ATVs and Motorcross bikes, all of which were not affiliated with EAP and therefore not trusted. One of my friends ate shit because the ATV wheel fell off...in the end they expected him to pay for the broken wall. What shady Mongolians. I felt like they were always cheating us.

Day 3: I was pretty satisfied with the trip, but as I said, I could have done without it. It was a whole bunch of travelling and the rest was a bunch of nothing, just a few activities.

Anyway, one of the highlights of the trips was during one of the bus rides. Our bus driver, to start out, was a little crazy. He drove really fast and honked at all the cars in his way. Tried to pass large trucks holding cement on narrow roads and full speed over bumpy country roads, not paved. So...one day, on the way to lunch. We are playing a game of Mafia in the bus, as usual, when all of sudden we stop. I see our driver bolt out the door and run up to a small bus parked in the middle of a large street right next to him. They both start cursing and the only thing I get from it is "cao ni ma", which is "fuck your mom" in Chinese. Man, they were going at it. I thought someone was going to go down, but the other driver and our tour guide helped to break it up. We were on our way after that, but after that moment they never let our driver lead the 4 bus convoy anymore.

We also had A LOT of lamb: lamb hot pot, lamb grill, lamb legs, lamb, lamb, lamb. AHH. Anyway, we're back now, as of yesterday, only to realize that the fall people, which includes me, were not allowed into campus. The Olympics is clamping down on our campus because the USA Basketball Team is practicing here at a new stadium. So, if our cards don't swipe, we're not allowed in. We got it fixed, but we were worried we wouldn't make it to class this morning, haha.

ALSO! My A/C in my room is broken, and it is a very painful experience. My computer, as we speak is overheating, adding to the heat. It's already about 29 degrees in my room, I'm sweating like a pig, but I want to update you guys on Nei Menggu and coming back to an Olympic take over in Beijing. I'm going to San Li Tun today to get some American food and maybe buy a computer fan. Yesterday I went with Tammy accompanying her to meet our teacher's daughter, who she will be tutoring in English. There I went around the 7 floors of a coooooool mall. I ended up having to buy dark denim jeans because I felt bad about wasting this one fuwuyuan's time. She was nice, listening to my bad Chinese. She didn't know much English, so I ended up having 3 people tend to me, I HAD to buy something. They are nice pair of jeans but I think I'll return them so I can buy a nice shirt from Nike and just use some Gap cards I have in the US to buy my denim jeans.

Picture TIME!

The fireworks show.

The 4 person piggy-back. Poor Chris.

:).

蒙古包.

Humpy.

Crank dat Soulja Boy represent.

Sand slide! And painful run back up.

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Practicing my Chinese with the locals

Damn. The Olympics are taking over China. I've heard, in addition to the crazy license plate laws (alternative license plate digit days, one blog back), they have ground missiles for the purpose of anti-air missiles attacking any of the Chinese Olympic venues. It's really insane. So, just to see it myself, I went with Tammy and Xiao Monster (one of our friends here). We went to the Olympic Green, which was the area with the most Olympic venues, including the most important one, the Bird's Nest (Niao Qiao), where the opening, track, and closing ceremonies will be taking place, not including the other events that will also take place there.

The architecture was amazing, though Tammy and I both thought it would be a little bigger. It was cool to see and the lights from the building were awesome. Of course though, we took pictures of it in the dark and through a fence, since these new Olympic laws and enforcement systems have put chain fences around anything that would resemble or even look like Olympic events or people would be involved. We spent so much time at the Olympic Green because we wouldn't have time to take more pictures of it at night before the damn 外国人 (foreigners) start coming and invading our space. Anyway, we're going to Inner Mongolia this week and we won't have any time for the next 5 days (we're going by train 火车) how exciting, not really. This is the second of two trips with EAP and I'm not that excited to go. Maybe it's because of the fact that we don't get to shower and we're spending the night in a sandy yurt, but that might also be the reason I kinda want to go, to be a little adventurous? I hope it will be fun, going to Mongolia is not a place that I would originally plan on going for vacation.

Anyway, there was a story that I was meaning to tell that happened earlier this week. So...I got a haircut in China....and it wasn't that bad. We went to this place very close to our apartment. I went with Tammy and another friend, thinking that we would all get really bad FOB cuts because we didn't know how to say anything, trim, shorten, thin. Basically all we knew how to say in terms of haircuts were cut and wash. But, it turned out quite well. They did my fauxhawk thing like I usually have it in the states, but I think here it was a little better, probably because it cost 10 KUAI, WHAT THE HELL!? My haircut, which I get in the states for $18, and once even $78, was only about $1.25 in China, and it was good. So then we were more confident and the girls went to get theirs cut (I was used as the guinea pig since I was a guy and my hair didn't matter as much, I guess if they messed up I would just go bald). Anyway, it was an amazing experience because it was the first time we actually talked to native Chinese people and they understood what we were saying. We had a good conversation for about 2-3 hours because they decided they wanted to cut Tammy's hair for nearly 2 hours. Here is the process that they took cutting Tammy's hair: washing, drying, cutting, washing, drying, straightening (1 hour), and finally some final cutting touches. The straightening took so long because they would seriously straighten 20 hairs at a time, no joke, and very carefully too. They were awesome, we ended up talking about Chinese 明星 (famous people) and what their names were in China. For example, Kobe Bryant is 科比　(Kebi) and then they just told us the names of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. What was funny was that they were talking about them and we would pretend we knew what they were talking about, then later ask them about the people they had already asked us about and we would all laugh...It was funnier in the moment, you had to be there. We talked about sports, getting haircuts, going out (夜生活), and even some of the economic logistics or the Olympics (奥运会). Anyway, it was a tight experience because we got to put our Chinese to work and only speak Chinese, something I've been wanting to do since I started looking at PiB, only to realize that EAP was the only program to award direct school credit.

We made a pact to only speak Chinese starting soon, thank God. Speaking English was killing me.

Then I went to Gome (www.gome.com.cn) to get a mouse for my computer since my old one broke. This new mouse is ballin'. It's white, my favorite color on cars now and it's by LG so they said it wouldn't break. But I was able to manage to tell him about exchanging and if there was a warranty, without using any of those words. After that, Alex and I went to get tea and just went back to the apartment. This happened a couple of days ago. I'm surprised at how well I can get around. Alex even mentioned to me how he was proud that we could get around, though right after one of the employees said something to me that was so incomprehensible it was funny. We are also starting to pick up "er-hua", which is basically the Beijing way of saying things. Instead of saying Xi Men (West Gate) you would say Xi Mer, etc.

Well now I think we have to get ready for Mongolia since we are leaving tonight at 6 pm, in about 2 hours, taking an overnight train over to the desert. They told us to also bring a coat for the grasslands, which are supposedly cold and windy. We will have access to a hotel shower everyday except for one, where we will be sleeping in a traditional Mongolian yert, which is a house made out of mud and dirt and sand...essentially. Anyway it should be fun.

I would like to update with pictures of the haircut people and other things, but I guess I'll just leave you guys with the Olympic venues for now. Tammy has the rest of the pictures.

I don't know if you can see but the white car is in a lane with an Olympics symbol. Apparently, only Olympic registered vehicles could ride in it, most of which didn't have license plates. The cops patrolled this lane and the license number rule on the streets.

An Adidas ad that I thought was cool.

The Nike store display of Yi Jianlian, Kobe, Lebron, and more.

"Crouching Tiger Hidden Bacon"

Niao Qiao, the Bird's Nest, an amazing looking Olympic venue.

Some cool looking hotel building, I think it's holding rich people and or athletes.

The swimming stadium.

Another shot of the hotel.

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Olympic Frenzy

Going to class is starting to become a little more normal and a part of my schedule. It used to feel weird going to class here in China, but I feel more like I'm going to classes in Berkeley, though in worse weather, without my bike, in crappier clothes, afraid I might need to use the bathroom, and always studying for the day's ting xie (basically a vocabulary quiz everyday).

We also just had a test, one for du xie (written, the first portion of our 4-hour straight class) and one for ting shuo (speaking/listening, the second portion of our 4-hour straight class). The first one is taught by an actual professor, who I thought initially might be a child molestor or rapist because one day in class he approached Tammy only and pulled her aside to another room. I followed them and waited in the hallway, where there were no students. Haha, paranoid. But I guess in the end it turned out the room that they went into was the faculty lounge and he just felt awkward about it, but he wanted to ask one of the students in our class to teach his daughter in high school (or speaking partner, or so I've heard it been called here). I guess it's probably because Tammy is the best person in the class (best Chinese pronunciation: English ratio in the class). Anyway, the other teacher is just a graduate student, I believe. I thought she was a pretty cool teacher until she gave grades back today about the test. It was totally BS. She gave Tammy not a great grade on no grounds, the fucking test was ok, but #1, the ting li (listening comprehension) tape was fuzzy and a lot of the speaking was incomprehensible so everyone got a bad grade, #2, she gave Tammy a bad grade, saying she didn't use as many words or used them correctly, not having taken a recording or even taken any notes about the speech. How can they, after not taking down notes, answer any questions the students have about getting anything wrong. BAD SYSTEM, I realize now that Zhang Laoshi 還是我最喜歡的老師 (Teacher Zhang is still my favorite teacher). Anyway, BLAH, we'll go talk to her tomorrow or something. I hope she really isn't a biased teacher.

NOW, to the exciting stuff. The Olympics are about to begin...and guess what?!!? BNU (my school) is holding the USA Men's BASKETBALL TEAM. What does that mean? I get to see Kobe (Kebi in Chinese), Lebron, and EVERYONE practicing in the gym that BNU built especially for the athletes and DAMN is it nice. BNU signed a contract with the Olympics to build it and it's a nice ALL GLASS WINDOW BUILDING. The windows are crystal clear, the courts look amazing (from the outside), they have an indoor swimming pool, and most of all there is air conditioning...but, they don't allow anyone that's not affiliated with the USA Team even near the venue. Afterwards, we'll be able to use the facilities, but only after the Olympics, we'll probably even have to pay a fee to get in. My goal is to get a picture or see, or maybe even get a signature or talk to the players. I am after all, a huge US Team supporter, right?

The Olympics is also trying to crack down on the society, in different ways... They are cutting the number of cars by allowing only license plates ending in odds and evens take alternating days on the road. This increases the amount of cars on the street and would potentially cut traffic, increase public transportation, and most of all, cut the pollution for the day by half. Oh boy, decreasing smog. This is in addition the weather shit that I KNOW they've been doing. Good weather, clean air, blue skies, breathing clearly. That's what Olympics in Beijing is all about. I think the Olympics really will revitalize China to the powerhouse it should have been, bigger than the US. Anyway, it's getting there. Go CHINA! (I'm not a communist).

We wanted to go see the Olympic Green yesterday, where the majority of the Olympic venues are located (including the Bird's Nest, etc.). However, we didn't go because we spent the entire day shopping in Wangfujing, and SHIT, we're still not done. We discovered 3 hidden malls, one including the most amazing shop I've ever seen in a mall...an AUDI dealership. IT WAS IN THE MALL, and the only cars that were there were RARE CARS:

My BABY, the R8, the car I took 50 pictures of.

This MONSTER TT, with I think two V6s, so...a W12. SICK.

This gorgeous WHITE S5, wow the white looks hot.

An RS6 I'd never even heard about.

A ridiculous TT 3.2 Quattro, race colors.

This STORE!? In a mall in Wangfujing, and across there was a BMW AND VW place. I had been to this mall before and I hadn't gone far enough down. I'm glad I did. I went with Tammy and one of our friends, he bought some kick ass NIKE shoes from the Nike store, of which there were probably 4, and all legit, with legit US prices too. Tai gui a. Anyway, it was nice to see such a wide selection of shoes that I feel like the US does not have. I talked to Tammy about it, the stores like Nike and Adidas are not as impression or do not have as large a selection in the US. Tammy has the pictures, I'll update them later, but wow, I wanted to buy so many shoes. Good thing I didn't, I ended up going to a Li-Ning store and getting some awesome stuff. A Chinese track jacket, awesome Shanghai shirt, free polo and some socks, under $70 US. It was the most I've ever spent in RMB here, for a day's work, but I think it was totally worth it.

After, we went to McDonalds and had some food, good change (though I've already had it 3 times) because I don't feel like I have to diarrhea after. Then! we went to the night market (the smaller one that also sold little souvenirs and had a video arcade with DDR). We were looking at the food and I remembered all the food I ate last time, the scorpions, silk worms. BUT WHAT THE HELL!? I saw a skewer with scorpions, normal, but one of them was still moving. DAMN! That's fresh. It turns out that's not the one I was looking for originally, I knew it wasn't right, but I remember going in that one. The real one we only found after we were done shopping, and looking, but not finding a taxi that was in service.

Anyway, the highlight was getting the awesome clothes from li-ning, check out www.li-ning.com, the crazy scorpions, and of course...the Audi Store. Oh, not to mention trying to help out the foreigners who were looking for the Beijing Grand Hyatt. What RICH SO-CALers. Anyway, I always feel like helping them out because, even though my Chinese is not that great, I feel like I want to be a translator, also help the foreigners bargain because I KNOW they are getting ripped off.

The cab ride back was ridiculous, I just can't wait to see all the changes that are going to take place because of the Olympics, less cars, wow, more people on public transportation, no yay. There are already so many things the government is putting up around the city to make it look more foreigner welcome and more 好看 (good looking).

They JUST put this up in front of our school the other day.

@ Audi.

Tammy called this my Myspace picture.

One part of Wangfujing, you can tell it's really touristy.

I can't wait to plan my trip for the break (summer-fall break).

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Tianqi hen hao

沒有人要跟我談談 :( .

It's pretty ok in Beijing right now, the weather is abnormally awesome. Last night I was even cold and I saw an awesome dark blue sky, that was the result of an extremely random 20 minute rain. Oh China and it's weather altering means of clearing up the sky. So what I hear about it is that the Chinese government has control over its skies and can induce rain or whatever it want with intentions to clear up the weather after or to clean the streets or something, weird huh?

Anyway, the weather has been incredibly clear. I am including in this the time that I went to the Great Wall and saw the most amazing night sky in a long time. Because we were in an incredibly rural area away from the cities, there was little interference in the sky with city lights. I swear I saw every single constellation and named every formation in the sky that I could, which is limited to the Big Dipper, the Northern Star, ummm Orion's Belt, and...the...MoooOOon!

The moon was very bright, Tammy showed me this awesome trick she found out on the camera. She explained to me the mechanics of the aperture or light intake or some shit but I forgot because I am camera illiterate, but pretty much the camera takes a long time to take a picture so if you are aimed at the moon and move the camera around while it is taking the picture, it makes cool shapes that looks like spilled glow stick. Just like this:

It was hard to be precise in what I was trying to draw. It didn't really turn out to look like anything.

Look above my head to see the moon :)

In any case, the weather has been amazing and I have been able to see much more at night even comparative to the states where all the AMAZING city lights block all the stars and such.

ACADEMICS
In class, we just had our first examination, which included a written (not bad) and a spoken/oral (horrible). My ear is just not used to listening to fast Chinese, whereas I feel the people with a Taiwanese or Hong Kong background (having guang dong hua or pu tong hua spoken at home) have a huge advantage over me. Laa! I will just have to listen in on locals' conversations.

We're going to go shopping today nearby the Dongwuyuan Zoo, maybe we'll even go into the zoo to see the sad pandas. Don't think it'll be as exciting as my sister's monkey expeditions.

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今天我們大家一起去照片.

今天我們大家一起去照片.

Writing the rest of it in Chinese will take a long time, so I'm saving that for when I'm REALLY good at Chinese, which is very soon.

So today, we took a group picture for EAP, all the little EAP (Jia Zhou da xue sheng). It was cool, except the EAP group was so rowdy that it took such a long time to get ready before we could actually take the picture, which was done with 3 different cameras and taken at least 3 times with each camera. We finally finished but the damn person standing next to me on the bleachers, also known as the student that I have to share a tutor with, was making really stupid gestures that sometimes almost blocked my face. Hun zhang! Anyway, it was fine, I just did my normal smile the entire time. I stood in the middle-ish in the back.

After we finished taking the pictures, we went back to class for our ting shuo portion of class. Upon getting out of class at around 1130 am, we were going to go get jiao zi for lunch. BUT! as we were walking to nan men we saw other people taking pictures and as they passed by I could hear them speaking Chinese, but it sounded like mei guo de zhong wen ("American" chinese). I could tell they were from Pu Bei Ban (Princeton in Beijing program), the program that I was going to sign up for but didn't transfer any credits to Berkeley.

Anyway, one of my friends decided she wanted to jump in the picture so I did too. We stood there and I spoke Chinese the entire time I was there to not draw attention to myself. I didn't want to look like a Jia Zhou da xue sheng. So, they took the PiB picture and I was in it. Maybe I'll see the picture on the PiB website this year, it will be on the right side of the picture, bottom corner if any of you care to look.

It was pretty exciting. Then after I went to go get jiao zi, fill my student card to pay for food, and then try to do my laundry (to no avail), I am here sitting in my room and writing some e-mails.

I just wrote an e-mail to hopefully get a part-time internship position with a marketing company or with some ad hoc program with AT&T. Don't know for sure right now.

Here are some pictures from Chengde and Great Wall (that I didn't put up earlier):

Chengde

At the mini Puning Temple in Chengde
On the Great Wall

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"I Climbed the Great Wall" again...

...but this time the section of the wall was much more treacherous, exciting, and less touristy, BY FAR. The stretch of wall we climbed started from Jin Shan Ling to Si Ma Tai. We were SUPPOSED to stay the night on the wall and be able to see the sunrise in the morning, but that plan didn't work out because the government intervened at the last moment and told us that we weren't allowed to for security reasons.

What do you think people around the world would think of this headline "150 UC students missing on the Great Wall of China" right before the Olympics start. Right? Either way, China is looking out for its ass before this Olympics goes down, I've been seeing a lot of governmental clamp down and massive campaigns to clean the environment.

Needless to say, we were forced to spend the night in the hotel, something that everyone had dreaded. This hotel was the ONLY hotel in Jin Shan Ling, therefore it could be as shitty as it wanted and people would still pay to stay there. I mean hell, we got access to the wall at 4 am in the morning (this was the EAP compromise for not allowing us to actually sleep on the wall). So the rooms, let me describe. I was enfuriated when I saw the option for housing that my other friends got, a nice room with nice walls, electricals working and bathrooms that were even better than the apartments that we stay in at BNU. Not only that, but they had their own living room area. It's ok though, they shared it with smokers and the complex was also really far away from the restaurant, which also wasn't really that great.

Our room was dank, smelly, and very spartican. Two beds, 1 bedside stand, a desk they used as a tv stand, a foot stool with a stained cushion, and a blankets, that we ended up shoving under the gaping hole underneath our door. We didn't want to be bitten by bugs or infested with cockroaches after all. Anyway, not only was the room shitty (although it did have A/C and a room light, which the last "4-star" hotel in Chengde didn't have) the bathroom was small, poorly lit and the toilet leaked water from the bottom, creating a massive puddle after every flush, that is if the flush worked. We would usually have to lift that tank cover and fill the tank with water to allow it to flush. Good thing we only spent one night there.

Anyway, when we were waking up before the sunrise at around 330 am this morning, I saw a fucking cockroach. Nasty as shit and crawling around on the floor, I so appreciate living in the apartments back at BNU now. I hear the apartments we are at are also supposed to be the worst. I can't wait for fall now.

In any case, we all started to walk up to the wall at around 4 am, trying to make it to a high peak before sunrise so we could see the sunrise over the hills and set on the Great Wall as we were on it. It was AWESOME. The stretch we walked on was very untouristy and the only people up there on the wall were with our program. For the longest stretch to the end we spent time with a couple of our friends just walking, crawling, climbing, sliding, falling, and being scared shitless from the missing walls that should have acted as rails. Many parts of the wall were actually very dangerous and lacking in safety precautions.

The wall at sunrise

A section of the Great Wall

Anyway, the 7-8 mile hike was amazing, though physically tolling. The views were spectacular and the group I shared the hike with were particularly funny and cautious too. But in the end, although most of us went at different speeds and in different groups, we all made it to the end. Something we can tell everyone now. And afterward, one of our tour guide group leaders whose hometown was in Chengde and who helped us to find and visit cool places told us that we were all heroes of China because no one could say that they were heroes until they conquered the Great Wall. I'm glad we all made it.

But the trip didn't only include the Great Wall hike. It included a massive a rave bonfire, that was both awkward and kinda fun. The hotel was putting it on for us as an apology to the fact that we were no longer allowed to sleep on the wall, a fact that the hotel had promised us prior to our arrival. We also visited places in Chengde, a paper cutting place that was pretty cool, two cool temples and in all places we went the weather was farrr superior to Beijing. The sky was blue, the air was fresh and not too humid and there weren't AS MANY bugs out during the day. Chengde was quite awesome but it didn't have the same feeling as Beijing. I'm glad we were able to make a trip there because I had a lot of fun. Also, don't trust what 4-star hotel means in China, because it could be the equivalent of a 2-star in USA, plus no functioning A/C.


There were also huge bugs, cool photo opps, people getting sick, a cool bus ride around on a small road, freaky robot looking deer, burning LOTS of incense, and hundreds of mosquitos. It was a really cool trip.

Oh! Also, we played a lot of Mafia. A LOT. You know, the game where you try to guess who is a mafia and kill him by voting him off. It's a really fun game if you know what you are doing. Although, it started to get really boring and tedious as soon as we reached the 50 game marker. Well, maybe not 50 games, but we started to have to learn new techniques and stuff because people could basically read each other very well and people were starting to form alliances and try to kill of people that were previous Mafia and really good at the role. It was really fun and we spent hours on end playing that AND ERS (egyptian rat screw), and oh boy do people, AHEM, get competitive...


Anyway, that's a good update for now. School starts again tomorrow, I'm going to try to get to sleep early. After all, all the Mafia playing the other night only allowed us to sleep for about 3 hours before we hiked for the next 4 hours. Gonna go get food now.

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