Hello everyone,
Sorry! I meant to post yesterday, but between my three classes, lunch, dinner, studying and other various things, I didn't get a post up. :( This week hasn't really been too eventful either, which didn't help with my motivation to get a post up. Compared to a trip to Beijing, sitting in a dorm room really doesn't have much to offer. However, there were a few things that deserve mentioning from this week, so that's what I'll do now.
The first event that warrants mentioning is the fact that I've been asked to sing a song at a "rock" concert being held here on campus. I put rock in quotations because the song they've asked me to sing isn't what I would consider rock. But hey, I get to sing, and its a song I like, so I'll take it. The song is Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, if anyone is interested. And not only that, but playing guitar for me is a guy from our dorm that's from Hungary. And his name happens to be Adam as well. Which I find, for some reason, incredibly cool. :P This event has been postponed until sometime in late October, but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes when it happens.
The second thing worth mentioning in a short paragraph is that this was our last week before a seven day break from classes! From the 1st to the 7th, China celebrates National Day, which is like our Fourth of July. Except they get a whole week where there is no school in the entire country. Currently, I don't have any plans for the long break other than getting some college stuff set up for next semester. But I'll keep you all posted if anything does happen.
The last things I wanted to mention in this post is that I received a very nice care package from home. Not only did it come with things like food, playing cards, and an American chess board, but it also came with a collection of cards from some of the ladies I worked with over the past two summers. I've only opened a few of them, but they have all been very nice so far, and I am really grateful to have these connections to home. And so, I want to say thank you to all the ladies at Bank Iowa that send me cards in that package. I hope you are all having a good time back in the states. :)
That's really all the highlights for this week. Otherwise, its been a lot of classes, a lot of studying, and a little bit of walking around campus to find food and such. :P I will do my absolute best to post again next Monday and get back on track with my schedule. I'll let you all know how the long break was, even if I don't end up doing anything but staying at the dorm. There's bound to be something that happens for me to talk about. I hope... :P Thanks again for reading this.
Adam
Monday, September 30, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Beijing!
Hello everybody,
Its Monday again. So that means another blog post! Yay! And this week was filled with many adventures, most notably, a trip to Beijing. The capital of China. To begin with a recap from last week, the Tai Chi thing I was supposed to go to didn't happen. The people I was going with never showed up, so I decided to go for a 2.5 mile run instead, so the entire evening wasn't wasted. Also, according to the lady working the office here, the calligraphy class doesn't start until after our holiday week (Oct. 1st to the 7th.). So as soon as that gets going, if it still does, I'll let you know how it goes.
Other than those two things, the biggest point of my week was our trip to Beijing, from last Thursday to Saturday. After a five hour bus ride, we arrived in the capital city. And, wonderfully, we could see clearly down the streets we were driving on. In Shi Jiazhuang, the smog is so bad that we can't even see all of campus from our sixth story window. Beijing is not so, which was literally a breath of fresh air. After a quick lunch, we went to Tienanmen Square, the largest central square in China.
Right next to the square is the Forbidden City, which we found actually used to be the largest living quarters for the emperor of China. Almost 600 meters long, the "city"/palace had almost 90 buildings, if I remember the tour guide correctly.
Its Monday again. So that means another blog post! Yay! And this week was filled with many adventures, most notably, a trip to Beijing. The capital of China. To begin with a recap from last week, the Tai Chi thing I was supposed to go to didn't happen. The people I was going with never showed up, so I decided to go for a 2.5 mile run instead, so the entire evening wasn't wasted. Also, according to the lady working the office here, the calligraphy class doesn't start until after our holiday week (Oct. 1st to the 7th.). So as soon as that gets going, if it still does, I'll let you know how it goes.
Other than those two things, the biggest point of my week was our trip to Beijing, from last Thursday to Saturday. After a five hour bus ride, we arrived in the capital city. And, wonderfully, we could see clearly down the streets we were driving on. In Shi Jiazhuang, the smog is so bad that we can't even see all of campus from our sixth story window. Beijing is not so, which was literally a breath of fresh air. After a quick lunch, we went to Tienanmen Square, the largest central square in China.
After our first packed afternoon, we went to the Phoenix Suyuan hotel for the night. The next morning, after a normal breakfast consisting of eggs, french toast, and buttered toast, we traveled to easily my favorite of the sites, the Great Wall. Now, the Great Wall is a lot more daunting than is often advertised on pictures and such. For starters, the section we visited was mostly stairs. And not just stairs, but incredibly steep, uneven stairs that climbed almost vertically up the side of a mountain. I was able to climb to the first outpost on one side of the wall, and then turn around and reach the highest point on the other side. It felt incredible to be doing that, and it still hasn't really sunk in that I've now walked on something I'd only dreamt of seeing before now.
Here is the first wall of stairs I had to climb.
In this picture, I made it to the first small outpost, where the wall forks.
I also reached that red temple you can see on top of the mountain behind me.
After lunch, we visited the summer palace, which didn't impress me nearly as much as the other places we had been. It was interesting, but nothing like the Great Wall or Tienanmen Square. Again, a quick dinner, and then back to the hotel for evening. Our final morning in Beijing brought us to the temple of heaven, where the Emperor would pray on the same day ever year for the blessings of heaven on the entire population of China. It was an interesting location to see as our last one of Beijing.
And with that, our tour of Beijing was over. We got back on the bus for the five hour ride back to campus. I used Sunday to rest after the long trip, and I definitely can't wait for the other trips if they are all going to be like this one. That's about all I have for this post, too. I'll keep it going next Monday of course, unless something exciting happens before then. Thanks again to anyone reading this.
Adam
Monday, September 16, 2013
I'm In
Hey everyone,
Update number five here. I'm thinking that it is probably going to become my habit to always update this blog on Mondays. Unless something absolutely amazing happens during the rest of the week, I will probably just save everything I have done during the week and share it all at once. And this week, I learned that saying, "I'm in" when someone asks if you want to do something is a great way to make memories.
I also, unfortunately, learned that one should always take their camera with them if they are going somewhere. This lesson came on Saturday, when I was invited to "a park" by a Chinese woman introduced to us earlier in the week. Her invitation went something like this: "I would like to invite you three to a park for eating dinner." I've been to a couple of the parks here, and so I accepted and didn't bother to bring my camera to a place I could visit any day.
To my great surprise, we were driven almost all the way across town to a water park, where we not only were treated to dinner, but got to meet ten 12-year-old students who spoke better English than I do Chinese. Heck, they were acting as translators for their parents, who were along for the day. Not only that, but we got to visit a studio where two men write poems in classic Chinese calligraphy. One man has written poetry for the current president of China. The other man is locally famous in our city, and was kind enough to give us each a piece of work he had completed recently. Free of charge. We were shocked, as we were told while walking back to the car: "If you are ever short on money, sell that here and you'll be set." Needless to say, we all decided to hang on to something that valuable, as that isn't something you can plan to get again.
On Sunday, I was supposed to go on another visit with another Chinese person we were introduced to, but I woke up with a bad cough and feeling very tired. I ended up staying in pretty much all day that day. Thankfully, it was just bad allergies from the day before, and I am very well recovered today. In fact, I was invited to try a calligraphy class by one of my teachers, and to join a Tai Chi class type thing tonight by a group of students here. After the lesson I learned by saying "I'm in" on Saturday, I said it again twice today and look forward to both of these experiences.
I'll let you know next week how they go, and hopefully there will be some other "I'm in" moments between now and then as well. Also, my trip to Beijing is coming up this Thursday the 19th. We'll be gone until Saturday the 21st, exploring places like the Forbidden City and Great Wall of China. I'll definitely have pictures to share from those places, as well as stories about what all happened during our trip. Thanks again to anyone that is reading this.
Adam
Update number five here. I'm thinking that it is probably going to become my habit to always update this blog on Mondays. Unless something absolutely amazing happens during the rest of the week, I will probably just save everything I have done during the week and share it all at once. And this week, I learned that saying, "I'm in" when someone asks if you want to do something is a great way to make memories.
I also, unfortunately, learned that one should always take their camera with them if they are going somewhere. This lesson came on Saturday, when I was invited to "a park" by a Chinese woman introduced to us earlier in the week. Her invitation went something like this: "I would like to invite you three to a park for eating dinner." I've been to a couple of the parks here, and so I accepted and didn't bother to bring my camera to a place I could visit any day.
To my great surprise, we were driven almost all the way across town to a water park, where we not only were treated to dinner, but got to meet ten 12-year-old students who spoke better English than I do Chinese. Heck, they were acting as translators for their parents, who were along for the day. Not only that, but we got to visit a studio where two men write poems in classic Chinese calligraphy. One man has written poetry for the current president of China. The other man is locally famous in our city, and was kind enough to give us each a piece of work he had completed recently. Free of charge. We were shocked, as we were told while walking back to the car: "If you are ever short on money, sell that here and you'll be set." Needless to say, we all decided to hang on to something that valuable, as that isn't something you can plan to get again.
On Sunday, I was supposed to go on another visit with another Chinese person we were introduced to, but I woke up with a bad cough and feeling very tired. I ended up staying in pretty much all day that day. Thankfully, it was just bad allergies from the day before, and I am very well recovered today. In fact, I was invited to try a calligraphy class by one of my teachers, and to join a Tai Chi class type thing tonight by a group of students here. After the lesson I learned by saying "I'm in" on Saturday, I said it again twice today and look forward to both of these experiences.
I'll let you know next week how they go, and hopefully there will be some other "I'm in" moments between now and then as well. Also, my trip to Beijing is coming up this Thursday the 19th. We'll be gone until Saturday the 21st, exploring places like the Forbidden City and Great Wall of China. I'll definitely have pictures to share from those places, as well as stories about what all happened during our trip. Thanks again to anyone that is reading this.
Adam
Monday, September 9, 2013
Another Week, Plus Trip #1
Hello everyone,
Jeez, it seems like forever since I've posted on here. And the reason why is a mixture of my being busy, and my being lazy. :P So, as the title says, another week is down in our four month trip to China. The time seems to be both going very slow when I'm in any given moment, but also very fast when I look back and realize I've almost been here a month already.
Things have started to get a bit better with both of my major struggles from last time. Our internet connection has mostly stabilized. There are still some moments where the internet doesn't want to work at all, but for the most part I can log in whenever I have time to. The language issue is still a struggle, but we are learning more of the language every day. We can now understand prices, and when people ask "What do you want?" Any questions beyond that are still mysteries, but at least we're getting the basics down.
We have also started to meet more people here. The professor with us from Kearney is living in an apartment off campus, and has introduced us to some of the people living in her building. She is also Indian, and invited us over for a homemade Indian meal one night. That was entertaining, and really did give us the chance to talk to and connect with our professor.
As far as actual schooling goes, we have started both of our other classes: literature and history. Both classes are taught in English by Chinese professors. Both professors speak relatively good English, and have created very comprehensive PowerPoint presentations to help with anything they may not be able to say accurately. I am very interested to get more in depth in those classes, as so far we've only had introductions in both. I will keep you all updated with interesting facts I learn in these classes. For example, in literature class, I have learned that one of the most famous Chinese literature pieces, when translated into English, is over 2300 pages long. Even as an avid reader, that is a massive book that will take a long time to get completely read.
Now, with all of the basic living things out of the way, we took our first trip this Saturday! The trip was to Baiyangdian, or the largest man-made lake in China. It took almost three hours to drive there by bus, and the place we were going was on an island in the lake, which took another half hour by boat to get to. The lake is so large that they have had to put "street" signs up to tell boats where to go:
Now, as you can see from this picture, the smog in China is thick. And yes, that's smog, not just fog. I've gotten a little more used to it since I've been here, but looking out my window on sixth floor and not being able to even see all of campus is a little scary still...
When we arrived at the island, we found out that it was just a small center where they put on shows. If any of you have been to Branson, Missouri, its a lot like that, except all in Chinese. We watched two shows there, one performed all by midgets and the other performed on a stage that was a foot under water.
After the garden, we had another boat ride and bus ride back to the dorm. Overall, the trip was interesting. I wish the tour guide had spoken English, however. I wish I could tell you more about the history of the lake, or about some of the site history at the lake, but you know as much as I still do. Hopefully, as we go on other trips, we will get guides that speak English.
That's about it for this post. I hope I didn't bore you all too much with the wall of text here. It's been a week since my last post, though, and I wanted to get everyone caught up to where things are. Thanks again to anyone who reads this, and I'll be updating again when I have more to share.
Adam
Jeez, it seems like forever since I've posted on here. And the reason why is a mixture of my being busy, and my being lazy. :P So, as the title says, another week is down in our four month trip to China. The time seems to be both going very slow when I'm in any given moment, but also very fast when I look back and realize I've almost been here a month already.
Things have started to get a bit better with both of my major struggles from last time. Our internet connection has mostly stabilized. There are still some moments where the internet doesn't want to work at all, but for the most part I can log in whenever I have time to. The language issue is still a struggle, but we are learning more of the language every day. We can now understand prices, and when people ask "What do you want?" Any questions beyond that are still mysteries, but at least we're getting the basics down.
We have also started to meet more people here. The professor with us from Kearney is living in an apartment off campus, and has introduced us to some of the people living in her building. She is also Indian, and invited us over for a homemade Indian meal one night. That was entertaining, and really did give us the chance to talk to and connect with our professor.
As far as actual schooling goes, we have started both of our other classes: literature and history. Both classes are taught in English by Chinese professors. Both professors speak relatively good English, and have created very comprehensive PowerPoint presentations to help with anything they may not be able to say accurately. I am very interested to get more in depth in those classes, as so far we've only had introductions in both. I will keep you all updated with interesting facts I learn in these classes. For example, in literature class, I have learned that one of the most famous Chinese literature pieces, when translated into English, is over 2300 pages long. Even as an avid reader, that is a massive book that will take a long time to get completely read.
Now, with all of the basic living things out of the way, we took our first trip this Saturday! The trip was to Baiyangdian, or the largest man-made lake in China. It took almost three hours to drive there by bus, and the place we were going was on an island in the lake, which took another half hour by boat to get to. The lake is so large that they have had to put "street" signs up to tell boats where to go:
When we arrived at the island, we found out that it was just a small center where they put on shows. If any of you have been to Branson, Missouri, its a lot like that, except all in Chinese. We watched two shows there, one performed all by midgets and the other performed on a stage that was a foot under water.
After the shows, we went to the Lotus Garden, which was about ten minutes away by boat again. This was a very nice place, and had many cool things to look at. Below are pictures of lotus flowers, and one of me with a giant Buddha statue that was in the center of the garden.
That's about it for this post. I hope I didn't bore you all too much with the wall of text here. It's been a week since my last post, though, and I wanted to get everyone caught up to where things are. Thanks again to anyone who reads this, and I'll be updating again when I have more to share.
Adam
Monday, September 2, 2013
Fun, and Many Struggles
Hello again, anyone who may be reading this.
Well, its been almost two weeks since I landed in China. And I've had mixed feelings about it ever since. Some parts are very cool, and I have enjoyed them. Many parts have been very frustrating as I have been making the transition to living in China. I am going to start with the positive, because its always best to begin with that, in my opinion.
So, the fun. Since arriving, I have met quite a few people from quite a few different countries. Russians, Peruvians, Chinese, Indonesians, and many others. I have gotten to study with some, play ping pong with others, and attend musical shows with still others. These parts of the trip have been incredibly fun, and I do look forward to getting to hang out with these new friends more as the semester continues.
Also, the trips we have scheduled begin this Saturday. Our first trip is to "The Biggest Lake in China." That is its tourist definition from what the other abroad students and I could find online. The other trips are to interesting locations as well, spread out through the semester. I am still looking forward to those trips, and I think they are going to be very interesting.
Now, with that said, this trip has had struggles almost daily since I landed. The language barrier was, and still is, a much bigger problem than we were told before we left America. Yes, most of the Chinese students I have met know how to say "hello" and "goodbye" in English. Just like I learned how to say "ni hao" and "zaijian" before I left America. But, just like I still can't speak Chinese, they still can't speak English, and communication has been one of the hardest things since arriving here in China. To anyone looking to go on this trip in the future, I would suggest learning some Chinese before hand, and not just hello and goodbye.
Not only has communication in the country been a problem, but communication outside the country has been a major problem as well. I didn't find out until after I arrived that the Foreign Student dorm we are in does not provide wifi to dorm rooms. We had been told that the new campus would have that free wifi. Instead, the wifi is only located on floors one and four, and even then only at certain times in the day. This doesn't mean that we can't get internet in our rooms for our stay, though. In order to get a wired connection, we all shelled out almost 300 yuan. The connection didn't start until September 1. And even when it did, it has been down more often than it has been available. To make matters worse, the technicians responsible for setting it up fall in the group of Chinese people that don't know English. Meaning asking questions and getting things fixed is a nightmare in itself.
There have been other little glitches along the way, but those are the biggest things that I wish I had been told before I left the United States. I hope that I can save some other students this hassle should they decide to take this trip as well. That's really all I have time for now. I'm down in the first floor lobby again, as my wired connection hasn't worked for the past four hours or so, and people are starting to fill in and want more time before the wifi is turned off. I'll update again as soon as more happens, which will probably be after our first trip.
Thanks again for reading,
Adam
Well, its been almost two weeks since I landed in China. And I've had mixed feelings about it ever since. Some parts are very cool, and I have enjoyed them. Many parts have been very frustrating as I have been making the transition to living in China. I am going to start with the positive, because its always best to begin with that, in my opinion.
So, the fun. Since arriving, I have met quite a few people from quite a few different countries. Russians, Peruvians, Chinese, Indonesians, and many others. I have gotten to study with some, play ping pong with others, and attend musical shows with still others. These parts of the trip have been incredibly fun, and I do look forward to getting to hang out with these new friends more as the semester continues.
Also, the trips we have scheduled begin this Saturday. Our first trip is to "The Biggest Lake in China." That is its tourist definition from what the other abroad students and I could find online. The other trips are to interesting locations as well, spread out through the semester. I am still looking forward to those trips, and I think they are going to be very interesting.
Now, with that said, this trip has had struggles almost daily since I landed. The language barrier was, and still is, a much bigger problem than we were told before we left America. Yes, most of the Chinese students I have met know how to say "hello" and "goodbye" in English. Just like I learned how to say "ni hao" and "zaijian" before I left America. But, just like I still can't speak Chinese, they still can't speak English, and communication has been one of the hardest things since arriving here in China. To anyone looking to go on this trip in the future, I would suggest learning some Chinese before hand, and not just hello and goodbye.
Not only has communication in the country been a problem, but communication outside the country has been a major problem as well. I didn't find out until after I arrived that the Foreign Student dorm we are in does not provide wifi to dorm rooms. We had been told that the new campus would have that free wifi. Instead, the wifi is only located on floors one and four, and even then only at certain times in the day. This doesn't mean that we can't get internet in our rooms for our stay, though. In order to get a wired connection, we all shelled out almost 300 yuan. The connection didn't start until September 1. And even when it did, it has been down more often than it has been available. To make matters worse, the technicians responsible for setting it up fall in the group of Chinese people that don't know English. Meaning asking questions and getting things fixed is a nightmare in itself.
There have been other little glitches along the way, but those are the biggest things that I wish I had been told before I left the United States. I hope that I can save some other students this hassle should they decide to take this trip as well. That's really all I have time for now. I'm down in the first floor lobby again, as my wired connection hasn't worked for the past four hours or so, and people are starting to fill in and want more time before the wifi is turned off. I'll update again as soon as more happens, which will probably be after our first trip.
Thanks again for reading,
Adam
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