Day 5

Day 5,
originally uploaded by printsmart102.

Today was my first day of classes. I haven't written in a while so I'll cover the last weekend up until today.

On Saturday, we went as a group to Chaoyang park. We met migrant students whose parents are migrant workers in China -- workers who move from the countryside to bigger cities to get a better job -- and played typical games with them, except without much communication. It's interesting that I know more Mandarin than 4 of the chaperones and one of the program directors, all of whom were the administrators of the event. Despite this, they managed it very well and we as a group made lots of new friends. Personally, I met a guy whose american name was Johnny.. He was from Guangdong in southern China, northeast of Hong Kong. I talked to him and his friend about my life in the US. They were interested to know about a lot of topics, such as city life, what work was like in big cities (i.e. the difference between Atlanta and NYC). Additionally, public transit, cars, driver's licenses (I showed them mine and we talked about the bad driving habits in the US and
Beijing) sports, computer games and video game addicts, and the higher-ups in corporations who are in part causing the global economic breakdown. We took pictures and he had a pretty nice camera phone for a migrant. After they left we Americans went to play basketball. In China, you pay for everything - we had to pay 5 yuan ($0.85) to get into the park and more money to rent a basketball court. So after sweating off about 10 pounds we walked around some more and left as a group. The park as well as the rest of the city was looking very smoggy that day, and has been getting worse ever since.

On Sunday, we went to TianAnMen square. TianAnMen roughly translates as "gate of the peaceful gods." It's famous for the 1989 protest incident.. While we were there, we saw the famous tomb of Mao, as well as the iconic end of the square with his huge portrait looking down. As we took pictures in front of it (5 of us, 3 from Atlanta, 2 from other schools, and a chaperone) people started gathering to take pictures, also, and to get into the picture. After fewer than 3 minutes, there were about 40 people gathered around, taking pictures and posing in ours. Apparently Americans are a rarity, even at TianAnMen square. After leaving, we went through some shopping roads to meet for lunch at a place called Brothers Jiang, which is like a Chinese McDonald's (with Chinese food.) You get a plate of raw vegetables and meat and a raw egg first. On this plate there were also things I didn't recognize as well as a bowl of yellow flower petals. I stared at this plate and
tried to eat the raw things before they handed us a boiling pot of soup and rice noodles. So we poured the vegetables, egg, and meats into the soup and stirred it - eventually it was pretty good. Everyone sweated a lot over their soup and it began to get very hot in the restaurant - it was in a basement, anyway, and badly ventilated. Later, we went to the Beijing City Planning Museum. It was mostly boring except for the scale model of Beijing spread across an entire room, and various models of the olympic facilities and important city districts.

Today, Monday, was my first day of class. The placement test we took on Sunday helped the administrators the assign us spots in various classes - I was placed in the third class with one other student from the program. The rest of the students in my class were college-age and older, and they were all American, or Indonesian, or French. The entire program was split into four classes - a level 1 class, with about 8 people, a level 2 class, with about 9 people, a level 3 class with me and one other person, and a level 4 class with one person. To my credit, the person I'm in class with and the person who's in level 4 are both Chinese. The class went well - I met my teacher, classmates, and started dialogues and did homework. Instead of being close to the top of my class, I'm now almost at the bottom of my class in reading, and at about the middle in speaking. Hopefully that'll change.

Today, also, I went onto American soil for a day at the American Embassy. It was ok, although they talked a lot, even though they had interesting things to say about careers in foreign affairs and general precautions about the city life. Although I won't openly oppose APSA or my sponsors, it seems that much of the information given (precautions about the subway, cabs, being alone, buying things) won't be an issue as long as we aren't allowed to go anywhere outside of our rigid schedule.

There's nothing else today. I just finished my homework- to write 10 sentences about Beijing - and now I'm writing about it. Later I'll go hang out with friends and then go to bed.

PS - The sun rises at about 4 AM every day here. It's bizzare. Also, when we got here it was possible to see they sky and your surroundings. Now, the smog obscures seeing more than ~6 blocks in any direction. Also, it rained yesterday. That's all.