The rest of September

Overlooking the Forbbiden City from Jinshan Park


Sunset in Jinshan park. To the south is the Forbidden City, and South of that is Tiananmen Square. It was pretty pretty. Right after this I went and bought a Chengyu dictionary in Xidan one of the largest shopping areas in Beijng. A Chengyu is usually a four word idiom and has a related story that gives it meaning. For example one is literally "paint snake add feet" and the meaning, which can be guessed(sort of), is doing something that is completely unneccesary.



Yeah for old temples and older stuff next to temples!


Yeah so this is out of order, but a decent shot of what we ate for Mid-Autumn Day Festival (sometimes called the Moon Festival, though a lot of Chinese holidays are based on the lunar calendar. So.. how can one be more moon festive than another I don't know)



Chingrish. Awesome! This is a trashcan sign btw. The Chinese says unable to recycle.


Buddist Temple, this was the only picture I took of a building, the rest are like really old trees. The tree pictures are just dizzying otherwise I would post them.


Yeah for Mid-Autumn Day Festival. This is a picture of all the guests at Wang Hao's for dinner.


Okay the smelly tofu in Beijing isn't that smelly. It really doesn't taste bad at all, but the smell is just too much for me to handle.


I should mention that everything is fried, steamed, or boiled. The vast majority of food is fried. Chinese people don't eat much sweet stuff. I can't find any really good desserts unless they are candy bars from abroad. The bakeries here, are nothing compared to the West. But the red bean stuff is good crutch for my sweet tooth. That and ice cream helps.
So greens are the new milk. Especially because of the problems Chinese milk had this year.


YAY! tofu its everywhere.


I was a little slow and half the meat and those white ball things are already gone.


Typical Subway traffic ~3pm on a Tuesday I think. Late at night its not so bad.


At Tiananmen Square.

到了Yeah..

From Mickey Sep 5, 2008

I had my first test today, it was oral and written, and it didn't go great. I am not really worried about the grades here though, i think they are a little inflated due to the extra practice we constantly get.

From Mickey Sep 3, 2008

My Chinese name is 李海鹰. if you want it in standard romanization it is li hai ying with some inflection markers. I am going to a place called Chuan Di Xia all day Saturday.

It is a little outside of beijing. I figure the air will be good there. Its not bad here yet, but if it doesn't rain soon it will be pretty hazy. i have a written and oral test every friday over the week's lessons.

From Mickey Aug 31, 2008

Today we met our teachers divided into classes and got our first homework assignment. :( We have class 20 hours a week. Everyday in the morning from 8:25-11:30. Then on Mondays I have Wushu at 4:30pm, not sure how long it goes. Wednesdays I have a project to go out and talk with locals about something or other from 12:30-2:20pm. Starting not this week but next week i will have 1 on 1 and 1 on 2 drill sessions twice a week each in the afternoon. In addition to all the class work and time we have activities, like camping on the Great Wall, cultural lectures, museum tours, etc. almost every weekend. Some but few of the activities are during the week. It is a little intimidating how intense the class is going to be. I didn't really understand what the teachers said today. I was placed in the second year level which will be a little rough in the beginning.

Yeah this is everyday for lunch, the food here isn't great, but whatever. Going out is pretty cheap and much better than the cafeteria.



I hung out with some of the other Chinese roommates last night, mine went home for the evening. It was fun. I wil l definitely spend time with many of the Chinese roommates, that is the best way to practice. There is lots going on everyday, and i will write often. Probably every other day.

From Mickey Aug 29, 2008

So the air is way worse than i imagined. Apparently this has been the best month for air quality in 10 years. Further, the factories surrounding Beijing will be operational again after September 20, so the air will get worse. Everything is in characters which is neat, but a little intimidating. My roommate came today, he speaks a little english, and seems nice. I think he has lived here before. It turns out that none of the roommates go to school here. Then go to schools nearby and just live here for this program. It was a difficult first meeting, my lack of chinese skills and his lack of english. But we established he comes from somewhere in the middle of china and that he goes to beijing agricultural university.

Starting monday my language pledge begins. We pledge to only speak Chinese from Monday (Sept. 1) to the end of the program. The staff, and most of the students take this pledge really seriously. I also start class on Monday. I have class in the morning and so metimes in the afternoon, i have not received a schedule yet. The food here is awesome and really inexpensive. We eat in the cafeteria for lunch with breakfast and dinner on our own at the surrounding shops or cooking in the kitchen. The other participants in the program are pretty cool. There are a couple of people who have never taken Chinese before, that's pretty ballzy i think. Though after that placement test and trying to buy some stuff I feel like I have never taken Chinese.

I am going to dinner with my roommate tonight and several other students. It should be fun. Sorry i didn't write yesterday, i am still a little jet lagged. I fell asleep in the afternoon and missed a meeting, then i fell asleep at like eight and didn't wake up till this morning.


Yeah the room really isn't bad at all, and the Chinese style toilets are pretty comfortable, certainly cleaner than western style. Especially because they don't really clean the western toilets.



Waiting to enter China. They had special lines for people affiliated with the Olympics, Foreigners, and Chinese. But distinctions and lines only matter a little bit in China, as I am in the Chinese Nationals line.

PS it will take a little while for me to get the email list up. I cant use outlook because of the internet restrictions. So i have to put everyone‘s email in gmail.

From the Beginning

Passing the laptop.
Leah is setting up her new laptop (my previous one) as I pack to leave for China. She's sad, not because I'm leaving, but because the laptop doesn't come with a camera...

We leave to deliver Lily to my cousin Jennifer tomorrow. The following pics are our trip to visit family.



Yeah So leaving the dog was sad...

I don't think she minded to much.

The blog's beginning

So I am just now starting a blog of my travels. China has a nice little firewall that prevents me from using MS Outlook, which has all the email addresses of people I said I would keep in touch with. I have been slowly, very slowly transferring said email addresses to Gmail. However, my progress finally slowed to a stop. Therefore I have begun this blog.

I will try to start from the beginning of my time here, but may miss a few things.