6/24/2010 (still typed on 6/26)
After the language study (we actually read stuff out in English that was both grammatically correct and incorrect and we had to remember the last word in the sentence) and a reading comprehension portion. We ended pretty early so Elton and I head back to hang out. After watching some…interesting videos…I get a phone call from my language partner saying today we had a meeting date. I’m 100 percent sure she didn’t tell me this, but I depart and we go to a nearby KFC to talk. We can’t go anywhere far because it was a little after 3pm and the group had to meet back at 5 for dinner.
We talked about the Shanghai Expo and all that jazz. She told me about the USA pavilion’s 8 hour line :O I sort of want to see it just for China or whoever’s take on the States, but I also don’t want to be in line for almost half a day. Yang Ni told me that because I’m a foreigner I can cut in line, but I told her I really don’t want to do that (lest I get jumped by angry Chinese people, eh heh…). But really, I couldn’t do that in good faith.
I still want to see the Japanese pavilion just to see the inside and what they have going on in there. Other than that, Carly decided on going to pavilions of the countries that are less known, like Romania or Czech Republic. I definitely want to see as many pavilions as possible, but I want to go inside the lesser known ones.
I won’t lie, I want to get Haibao (海宝）memorabilia. He’s the blue guy, the Expo’s mascot of sorts. I’m getting pretty excited to see such a large event that spans international borders.
At 5pm the group walks to Canteen, a restaurant right off of campus to have dinner. We then hop on the bus and head to the performing arts theatre to see Chinese acrobats. The group really loved it, which I’m glad, because Whitney was starting to get homesick and kinda down. I was sitting next to her and she was so excited by the performances, so I’m glad something got her mind off of her homesickness. It was the same one we saw last summer with the guy balancing the pot on his head, the hoop jumpers, hula hoop girls, the guy and girl who performed to “My heart will go on”, and the finale, of course, the cage of death with the motorcycles while the Star Wars theme song played in the background.
Afterwards, we return to campus. I go out with Carly and Elton to get some lamb burgers (it was my first time having them). They are SOOOO good! I think it used to be the restaurant with the cat. They sectioned it off into two spaces where the back had the hotpot place and the front had the lamb burgers for only 4 yuan. They have a hunk of lamb skewered on this metal pole that’s attached to this stove top (I’ll take pics later) and they cut off small pieces of lamb and let it cook on the stove top. They mix it in with some shredded lettuce and sprinkled some powdered seasoning on it :D Simple yet delicious. Why oh why can’t the States have such good eats?
Monday, July 5, 2010
I'm behind, part 2
Anyhoodies, we made our way back to Shanghai. Alex decided that we needed a ‘group theme song’ so people started singing all of these songs *many were pretty throwback, haha* and yes, Don’t Stop Believing was one of them. I managed to doze off on the bus (rides in the rain usually do that to me) and wake up to find us back in Shanghai. It was kind of surreal to do that in another country. It felt like I was in the twilight zone having dozed off in Hangzhou and woken up in Shanghai. I do that in the States, but everything’s different in another country, eh?
I didn’t want to leave the dorm for dinner so I hunkered down with some bread and a few cookies and crackers, haha. Unusually unhealthy for me. After maybe an hour, Elton walks in and asks if any of us want to go out to eat because he and the guys were going to a restaurant near campus. I agree *to watch them eat, ahha* but I ended up getting a 2 Yuan vegetable soup. It was nothing to write home about, but it was cheap, I wasn’t that hungry, and it had vegetable matter in it.
We depart after some interesting conversation (the two other girls that came along sat together so I sat among four guys, eh heh…).
I have a quiz tomorrow which I feel eerily confident about since I started studying early :P I’m sleepy now :O Happy Father’s Day :D
It was on the second floor…which meant I didn’t have to climb all six like I do for class, heh. I get there with Elton because he has the same slot as me, and we walk into this small room with three laptops set up and two desks. We each take a seat, give the guy our Chinese names (which is easy for Elton because he’s actually Chinese :P Well, moreso than I, fufu). To sum it up, we each read a powerpoint talking about ‘head requests’, which is essentially making a request to someone. There are requests according to power, social status, and amount of intimacy between the two speakers. Like, the words you use are different if you’re asking something from your professor rather than asking something from a fellow student or a close friend.
Apparently, you’re not supposed to use 可以 when asking for something from a friend which is what we’ve been TAUGHT to do. Bleh. The power point also said that Chinese language speakers are often indirect when asking for something by placing 吧 at the end while native speakers use direct methods “你给我那个书”à “You give me the book” instead of having a 吧 at the end which is more “polite”.
With professors and higher ups, you use 您看, something like “you see” with the formal usage of ‘you’, followed by 能不能 or 能。。。吗？
Anyway, the first part of this study is to read all of this info then apply it to the situations that are on the screen. We had to speak it on the spot which felt really awkward. The first time I did it, I completely blanked and there was maybe a 15 second pause, haha. I really do hate this part of the study. After that was listening comprehension about what we just learned. We were given situation, then hear what the person would have said (their head request) and we pick whether it was pragmatically appropriate and grammatically correct, pragmatically inappropriate and grammatically correct, or pragmatically inappropriate and grammatically correct. Long story short, I was happy to be out of there. Too bad I have to do it for five more days :P
As far as my situational Chinese… I often have no idea what I want to do or talk about with my language partner, so I finally look up some places in Shanghai that I haven’t been to yet. Since this is my second time here in Shanghai, I always feel a little bad when my partner asks if I’m been to such and such place, and I either respond “yes” or “we’re going sometime this week.” :/ SO, to remedy this, I hop onto Google (Hong Kong version, heh).
I’m searching around partly for places I haven’t been to and partly for off-the-beaten-path locations. I stumble across the Shanghai natural history museum (上海自然博物馆 ). I read a few reviews…and I’m sort of not surprised, haha. Not the best reviews in the world, but I LOVE natural history museums (mostly the animal part, I could care less about the human evolution). I was also excited about the gift shop :O The poor reviews were by expats, but there were one or two good reviews by tourists and stuff (however that much counts…). It’s a really old museum but I really don’t mind. Old or pristine, it’s what’s inside that counts :P
So at this point, I’m all hyped up to go to a natural history museum in China. My partner arrives and I tell her where we can go for the day. She has no idea where it is (I copied down the address but she still wasn’t familiar with it) so we go back up to my room so she can look it up on the map. After that, we head out and wave down a taxi. The trip was only 26 yuan, a little under 4USD. BUT…on the way there, Yang Ni (my partner) makes a phone call. When she hangs up she says “The museum is closed on Mondays”. :O
:O
>:O
Of course the day we decide to go is the only day of the week that it’s closed. GAH.
Instead of wandering around aimlessly, we walk to the subway station and take it to another part of downtown (not 南京路 Nanjing Rd.) We go to the giant circular bridge raised above the street that gives you a really cool view of the city and we walk around (this is where my current Facebook profile pic is located). We then go inside to this GIANT 10 story mall. Methinks the minimum amount of floors in a Chinese mall is five…. The stores were mostly high-end and all that jazz.
On the fourth floor, Yang Ni finds the restaurant she was looking for. It’s a place that serves traditional Shanghai food. I had chicken in duck blood soup (I had duck blood once before). The duck blood has the consistency of 豆腐 (tofu), but slighty chewy once you starting biting it. It has no real taste, surprisingly. I added some vinegar and chili sauce to spice it up a little. It tasted better after that :D I also ate some glutinous rice balls in fermented rice soup à 酒孃小圆子。
Haha, Yang Ni warned me that the taste was…interesting. And sure enough it was (I may add this entry to me food blog…). It tasted like I was eating rice in wine. I believe the type of rice they put in it is used to help make the wine. Either way, the taste was a bit strong for me. I jokingly asked if her intention was to liquor me up, haha. She said it wasn’t strong enough and it wasn’t that type of wine. I had maybe three sips of it, but the taste was a little too strong for me :O
The Shanghai spring rolls were pretty good. By biased self still likes the Cantonese version better, but they were still 好吃。
Last but not least, the Sweet Glutinous Rice Cake. It tasted good, but too much glutinous rice at once can be overkill on my palette, haha. They had sort of a flowery taste to them. Definitely sweet, but tactfully so. Almost like chewing on a rose petal; that type of flowery sweet.
It was a good meal and we decided to try for the museum the next time we met :D
6/22/2010 (but typed on 6/26)
I’m getting perfect scores on all of my quizzes so far. Now, instead of just writing the characters, we have to write the character, pinyin, English translation, and make a sentence. The total score has also been moved up to 120. I think everyone in the class is doing fairly well, even if some of them struggle with memorizing the characters.
After class I go to the language study with the dude and just to reading comprehension exercises that I was totally fine with, and it didn’t take an hour something of our time, maybe a little over half and hour :D
The class meets in room 620 for a lecture on Lu Xun (that I’ve heard before) and afterwards we proceed to the museum in the park. I kind of skim through it since I’ve already seen it and we walk to Pizza Hut afterwards. The pizzas are pretty good, I admit, but their apple juice is awesome! It’s kind of like you’re eating liquid apple candy, but it’s tactfully done. It was sweeter than the average apple juice found in the states, but I didn’t think “this is sugar water”. It was just nice and sweet, if that makes any sense.
Anywhodies, we all get back to the dorm and Carly and I hunker down for a night in. Elton appears in our room after a while (Carly and I have an open door policy where we leave our door open and people can wander in at will…which they do). He accidentally left his room card in his wallet which was in his room and Ryan (his roommate) was off somewhere. SO, he ends up in our room and talks for a bit. This began at maybe 6-7pm. I also think this is the day I got the program on my computer to surf sites that I previously couldn’t so I was in and out for some of the conversation. When I got back, we looked at a couple of videos and stuffs.
The highlight of our evening was when Elton and Carly was discussing movies and music and she mentioned “Requiem of a Dream”, methinks, and there’s that one song that’s really famous and everyone has probably heard it before but they didn’t’ know the title. It’s one of those intense songs, so we started playing around with it. At first we joked about going to the library with the song in the background and how you’d do everything intensely. From there it kind of spiraled out of control and we tried to think of all of these mundane situations that you could perform with the music in the background. Two of mine were favorited by them: Petting the cat and eating samples at Costco. This went on for about an hour and something. Carly managed to get some of it on film (hopefully this wont’ end up on Youtube, haha). We made a list of things we’d do to the music next time. Yeah, this is what we do when we’re not studying :D
6/23/2010 (typed on 6/26)
My partner didn’t show up today :O I heard that there was some big exam but my partner didn’t tell me we were rescheduling. I found that out the next day, eh heh. So I got a free afternoon, save for the language research thing. I had to speak again. UGH. Annoying~. With those head request sentences. Boo.
There was another girl waiting downstairs and I wondered if she was a replacement for Wang Ni to hang out with. She wasn’t, heh, but we talked for a good while. She’s a freelance recruiter for models. She’s looking for Western models and she gave me her name and number and everything. I had a few people in mind that would maybe want to model, so I told her I’d help. We also discussed teaching in China and their ever growing demand, and learning Chinese fluently. She gave me some really encouraging words, especially about the teaching in China part. She also suggested I seek out a Chinese boyfriend. Haha, like I haven’t already started my search ;D Wouldn’t my grandmother be ecstatic, haha. I also got to practice some of my Chinese with her :D We eventually parted ways and I headed back up to my room.
Carly and I had some rare free time, so I took her to Duolun lu, the antique district of that area. We were looking for scrolls and I saw this one huge and beautiful one of fish, but it was 360 yuan. A little steep for me.
Anyway, I don’t think too much else went on today. Elton came to hang out in our room again around 8, maybe, and we watched some you tube videos. Either yesterday or today I was introduced to “The Grapist”, which, if you like slightly immoral humor like me, you’ll enjoy it :D
Elton left around midnight, maybe, and we went to bed soon after.
I didn’t want to leave the dorm for dinner so I hunkered down with some bread and a few cookies and crackers, haha. Unusually unhealthy for me. After maybe an hour, Elton walks in and asks if any of us want to go out to eat because he and the guys were going to a restaurant near campus. I agree *to watch them eat, ahha* but I ended up getting a 2 Yuan vegetable soup. It was nothing to write home about, but it was cheap, I wasn’t that hungry, and it had vegetable matter in it.
We depart after some interesting conversation (the two other girls that came along sat together so I sat among four guys, eh heh…).
I have a quiz tomorrow which I feel eerily confident about since I started studying early :P I’m sleepy now :O Happy Father’s Day :D
It was on the second floor…which meant I didn’t have to climb all six like I do for class, heh. I get there with Elton because he has the same slot as me, and we walk into this small room with three laptops set up and two desks. We each take a seat, give the guy our Chinese names (which is easy for Elton because he’s actually Chinese :P Well, moreso than I, fufu). To sum it up, we each read a powerpoint talking about ‘head requests’, which is essentially making a request to someone. There are requests according to power, social status, and amount of intimacy between the two speakers. Like, the words you use are different if you’re asking something from your professor rather than asking something from a fellow student or a close friend.
Apparently, you’re not supposed to use 可以 when asking for something from a friend which is what we’ve been TAUGHT to do. Bleh. The power point also said that Chinese language speakers are often indirect when asking for something by placing 吧 at the end while native speakers use direct methods “你给我那个书”à “You give me the book” instead of having a 吧 at the end which is more “polite”.
With professors and higher ups, you use 您看, something like “you see” with the formal usage of ‘you’, followed by 能不能 or 能。。。吗？
Anyway, the first part of this study is to read all of this info then apply it to the situations that are on the screen. We had to speak it on the spot which felt really awkward. The first time I did it, I completely blanked and there was maybe a 15 second pause, haha. I really do hate this part of the study. After that was listening comprehension about what we just learned. We were given situation, then hear what the person would have said (their head request) and we pick whether it was pragmatically appropriate and grammatically correct, pragmatically inappropriate and grammatically correct, or pragmatically inappropriate and grammatically correct. Long story short, I was happy to be out of there. Too bad I have to do it for five more days :P
As far as my situational Chinese… I often have no idea what I want to do or talk about with my language partner, so I finally look up some places in Shanghai that I haven’t been to yet. Since this is my second time here in Shanghai, I always feel a little bad when my partner asks if I’m been to such and such place, and I either respond “yes” or “we’re going sometime this week.” :/ SO, to remedy this, I hop onto Google (Hong Kong version, heh).
I’m searching around partly for places I haven’t been to and partly for off-the-beaten-path locations. I stumble across the Shanghai natural history museum (上海自然博物馆 ). I read a few reviews…and I’m sort of not surprised, haha. Not the best reviews in the world, but I LOVE natural history museums (mostly the animal part, I could care less about the human evolution). I was also excited about the gift shop :O The poor reviews were by expats, but there were one or two good reviews by tourists and stuff (however that much counts…). It’s a really old museum but I really don’t mind. Old or pristine, it’s what’s inside that counts :P
So at this point, I’m all hyped up to go to a natural history museum in China. My partner arrives and I tell her where we can go for the day. She has no idea where it is (I copied down the address but she still wasn’t familiar with it) so we go back up to my room so she can look it up on the map. After that, we head out and wave down a taxi. The trip was only 26 yuan, a little under 4USD. BUT…on the way there, Yang Ni (my partner) makes a phone call. When she hangs up she says “The museum is closed on Mondays”. :O
:O
>:O
Of course the day we decide to go is the only day of the week that it’s closed. GAH.
Instead of wandering around aimlessly, we walk to the subway station and take it to another part of downtown (not 南京路 Nanjing Rd.) We go to the giant circular bridge raised above the street that gives you a really cool view of the city and we walk around (this is where my current Facebook profile pic is located). We then go inside to this GIANT 10 story mall. Methinks the minimum amount of floors in a Chinese mall is five…. The stores were mostly high-end and all that jazz.
On the fourth floor, Yang Ni finds the restaurant she was looking for. It’s a place that serves traditional Shanghai food. I had chicken in duck blood soup (I had duck blood once before). The duck blood has the consistency of 豆腐 (tofu), but slighty chewy once you starting biting it. It has no real taste, surprisingly. I added some vinegar and chili sauce to spice it up a little. It tasted better after that :D I also ate some glutinous rice balls in fermented rice soup à 酒孃小圆子。
Haha, Yang Ni warned me that the taste was…interesting. And sure enough it was (I may add this entry to me food blog…). It tasted like I was eating rice in wine. I believe the type of rice they put in it is used to help make the wine. Either way, the taste was a bit strong for me. I jokingly asked if her intention was to liquor me up, haha. She said it wasn’t strong enough and it wasn’t that type of wine. I had maybe three sips of it, but the taste was a little too strong for me :O
The Shanghai spring rolls were pretty good. By biased self still likes the Cantonese version better, but they were still 好吃。
Last but not least, the Sweet Glutinous Rice Cake. It tasted good, but too much glutinous rice at once can be overkill on my palette, haha. They had sort of a flowery taste to them. Definitely sweet, but tactfully so. Almost like chewing on a rose petal; that type of flowery sweet.
It was a good meal and we decided to try for the museum the next time we met :D
6/22/2010 (but typed on 6/26)
I’m getting perfect scores on all of my quizzes so far. Now, instead of just writing the characters, we have to write the character, pinyin, English translation, and make a sentence. The total score has also been moved up to 120. I think everyone in the class is doing fairly well, even if some of them struggle with memorizing the characters.
After class I go to the language study with the dude and just to reading comprehension exercises that I was totally fine with, and it didn’t take an hour something of our time, maybe a little over half and hour :D
The class meets in room 620 for a lecture on Lu Xun (that I’ve heard before) and afterwards we proceed to the museum in the park. I kind of skim through it since I’ve already seen it and we walk to Pizza Hut afterwards. The pizzas are pretty good, I admit, but their apple juice is awesome! It’s kind of like you’re eating liquid apple candy, but it’s tactfully done. It was sweeter than the average apple juice found in the states, but I didn’t think “this is sugar water”. It was just nice and sweet, if that makes any sense.
Anywhodies, we all get back to the dorm and Carly and I hunker down for a night in. Elton appears in our room after a while (Carly and I have an open door policy where we leave our door open and people can wander in at will…which they do). He accidentally left his room card in his wallet which was in his room and Ryan (his roommate) was off somewhere. SO, he ends up in our room and talks for a bit. This began at maybe 6-7pm. I also think this is the day I got the program on my computer to surf sites that I previously couldn’t so I was in and out for some of the conversation. When I got back, we looked at a couple of videos and stuffs.
The highlight of our evening was when Elton and Carly was discussing movies and music and she mentioned “Requiem of a Dream”, methinks, and there’s that one song that’s really famous and everyone has probably heard it before but they didn’t’ know the title. It’s one of those intense songs, so we started playing around with it. At first we joked about going to the library with the song in the background and how you’d do everything intensely. From there it kind of spiraled out of control and we tried to think of all of these mundane situations that you could perform with the music in the background. Two of mine were favorited by them: Petting the cat and eating samples at Costco. This went on for about an hour and something. Carly managed to get some of it on film (hopefully this wont’ end up on Youtube, haha). We made a list of things we’d do to the music next time. Yeah, this is what we do when we’re not studying :D
6/23/2010 (typed on 6/26)
My partner didn’t show up today :O I heard that there was some big exam but my partner didn’t tell me we were rescheduling. I found that out the next day, eh heh. So I got a free afternoon, save for the language research thing. I had to speak again. UGH. Annoying~. With those head request sentences. Boo.
There was another girl waiting downstairs and I wondered if she was a replacement for Wang Ni to hang out with. She wasn’t, heh, but we talked for a good while. She’s a freelance recruiter for models. She’s looking for Western models and she gave me her name and number and everything. I had a few people in mind that would maybe want to model, so I told her I’d help. We also discussed teaching in China and their ever growing demand, and learning Chinese fluently. She gave me some really encouraging words, especially about the teaching in China part. She also suggested I seek out a Chinese boyfriend. Haha, like I haven’t already started my search ;D Wouldn’t my grandmother be ecstatic, haha. I also got to practice some of my Chinese with her :D We eventually parted ways and I headed back up to my room.
Carly and I had some rare free time, so I took her to Duolun lu, the antique district of that area. We were looking for scrolls and I saw this one huge and beautiful one of fish, but it was 360 yuan. A little steep for me.
Anyway, I don’t think too much else went on today. Elton came to hang out in our room again around 8, maybe, and we watched some you tube videos. Either yesterday or today I was introduced to “The Grapist”, which, if you like slightly immoral humor like me, you’ll enjoy it :D
Elton left around midnight, maybe, and we went to bed soon after.
Okay...so I'm behind
Really behind.
I'll go ahead and post these, and if I have time, I'll add pictures and stuffs :D a little over a week left :O
6/18/2010
Ah, such a fun day :D Classes went on as usual, but my language partner and Whitney’s language partner are roommates (I think) so we all decided to go out to eat dinner at 5pm. Elton tagged along at the last moment so we took a bus down to the Pudong area, I’m guessing. I wasn’t really paying attention. We eat at this restaurant that’s pretty snazzy looking inside this GIGANTIC mall. I mean, it took us a good ten minutes just to navigate through the stores, going up escalators in and out of stores. We finally meet up with Leah and her partner and eat. Whitney and I shared some stir fried boneless chicken with rice and vegetables. It was okay (says the hardcore Chinese cuisine critic). >:D
We split the check and head out afterwards. I didn’t know we were going to see a movie until they mentioned it after dinner. Whitney and her partner left for McDonald’s to see the World Cup while the rest of us went to see Toy Story 3, haha. My first movie theatre experience in China. It was very interesting. We also saw the movie in 3D, but what isn’t in 3D nowadays? I really did have a LOT of fun that night, because I’m typically the stay at home person who finds fun in studying and reading books :J I think it’s good for me to hang out like that on occasion :D
I wont’ give anything away, but I really like it. It was ‘deeper’ than the previous two movies, if that makes any sense. And a little traumatizing at parts. It was definitely funny and I had a really good time. I feel like my partner and I have less awkward moments between each other now, so that’s good. Oh, and before we headed out for lunch we talked about Chinese online shopping websites, baidu forums, and internet slang, like 囧. It kind of looks like a face with the eyebrows slanted and the mouth open. It’s a sort of “ I can’t believe you said that” emoticon, but it’s actually a Chinese character. I learned a lot, and she showed me some videos and stuff. I learned that on the baidu forums and newsfeeds (帖子) you can discuss politics, but the government will still censor out things they find threatening or offensive to China and the Party. I thought that was interesting that even though they censor and/or delete some comments, that still let a forum topic like politics exist. HRMMMM……
6/19/2010
Our trip to Hangzhou :O We left at 8 in the morning on a two-ish hour bus ride. When we arrived, it was pretty hot. Last summer when we arrived it was starting to rain :O Our first stop was the hotel which was the exact same hotel as last year. So, nice hotel two years in a row :D We were room 1022. I was happy we had a fairly high up room (even though our view was just a smidge of the city and part of the hotel since it sort of wrapped around in a U-shaped). We spent about thirty minutes settling in. The pillows were SOOOOO SOFT :D
After we settled in, we headed out for lunch. It was one of those places where the food is already ordered. I think they had a tofu dish that I really liked. After that, we headed out to West Lake. It was a blazing inferno D: I just can’t take hot weather. Just because I was born and raised in the South (Southern Georgia, of all places), I dislike the heat. I can stand it better than some people, but I still want hot weather punched in the face :P I smartly brought my umbrella (unlike last time) to shade me from the sun.
The boat we used to get around West Lake was smaller than last summer’s. I, the genius that I was, sat outside with my umbrella in one hand and camera in the other. I’m so glad I brought I competent camera this time :O I put on sunscreen on my face and body before we left, so when I started sweating, sweat mixed with sunscreen started dripping into my eyes and they started burning. I’m sure it looked like I was crying because I felt tears coming out so I used my shirt sleeves the best I could to alleviate the pain in my eyes.
After that subsided, we eventually docked. West Lake was beautiful, as usual, and it’s interesting to me that I’ve seen it both on a rainy day (the prettiest version according to many) and a dry day. After taking a walk through pretty scenery back to the bus, we headed over to the tea shop. Long story short (since I’ve been here already), I ended up buying a small canister of green tea, 120 yuan, 17 USD. I will spend some dollars on food, I admit :D I’m going to get some of the flower tea somewhere else. I know it was a legit tea house an all, but that spiel she gives is still a little touristy, so I’d like to go to an off the beaten path tea place and buy some (or cop out and go to Carrefour, haha).
We left the tea house and headed for lunch where food was pre-ordered :/ Afterwards we went to a pagoda near the lake (I only went to the second floor than back down because I’ve been there before). Yes, I could have used the exercise and maybe I would have seen something new, but I didn’t want to test my insurance twice with those stairs, haha. So, I left early and made my way to sit on the steps facing the pagoda and started to sketch it in my notebook. All of these Chinese people started looking over my shoulder and standing near me, watching me. I won’t lie. That’s annoying no matter what country I’m in. >:J
Dinner was next where we ate more pre-ordered food and then back to the hotel. We had to be up by 7:30am the next morning, eat breakfast in the dining room, and be checked out and everything by 8:30am. Haha, interesting things happened. Carly and I, for some reason I can’t remember, started talking about nutrition and organic food, and the whole fair (or free?) trade label that promises the country that produces the product gets a cut of the profit, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the people in the field get a cut. No matter what the product, from clothes, electronics, and most foods, there is some sort of labor or slave labor involved. THEN we got on the topic of human trafficking and sex trafficking.
We picked a happy topic after that and laughed for a while, then we sort of segued into some “girl talk” and ended up staying up until 2 in the morning :O Carly went ahead to bed and I took my shower first because I felt so disgusting. I wish the water pressure in the shower was a bit stronger :P I know they’re conserving water and all but, well, I’m a spoiled American brat ;O
6/20/2010
Father’s Day! I will call my dad >^..^<
Miraculously I get up the next morning at 7:22am and start to get ready. We gather all of our things and head down for breakfast. It was pretty okay, sort of on par with the breakfast I had last summer. But I do love anything buffet style :DDD
We finished up, gathered, and headed out to leave such a nice hotel. It was rainy (essentially the other weather type in Hangzhou, it’s twin being a raging inferno of heat…) and we ride to a large Buddhist temple. By this time it’s a little drizzly and I lend Naomi my umbrella. I walk past the first temple complex to the back one where there’s less tourists and noise. It was so much more peaceful back there :D On my way back, I pass some monks chanting to a drum. It was so beautiful so I paused and listened it. The moment was absolutely gorgeous. It was raining just enough to create a light mist, and I was surrounded by sacred space and music with this rhythmic chanting. I wanted to take video just to record the chanting but thought better of it; it just didn’t feel right. That and taking pictures of the giant statues of the gods within the temple. Of course, other people did…
By the end of our time in the temple, the rain picks up just a little bit. I wasn’t about to search through hundreds of people to find Naomi so I waited just outside under some trees. I was waiting for someone I knew that had an umbrella so I could walk with them. I see Ryan come out (without an umbrella because he lent his to Amy) and we decide to go ahead and walk to the bus. Long story short, we ended up pretty much soaking wet. I was so glad I had water resistant sandals because I HATE the feeling of wet socks. I was so uncomfortable in my skin because I hate being damp from the rain.
After we all gathered on the bus, we rode to get lunch and then to History Street with a bunch of vendors selling stuff. I saw these CUTE key chains that had plastic food in them, for 1 yuan! SO, I bought nine :D I considered buying a dress or skirt and one of the stores for 50 yuan, but decided against it. Then I saw the bakery and bought three different types of bread. One is a pineapple bread of sorts, another is a Taiwanese crescent, and the third is a milk pudding bread, methinks. I tried to first two (and will write a report on the tastes) but the third one I’ll try tomorrow.
I LOVE BREAD AND BAKERIES :D
Anyhoodies, we made our way back to Shanghai. Alex decided that we needed a ‘group theme song’ so people started singing all of these songs *many were pretty throwback, haha* and yes, Don’t Stop Believing was one of them. I managed to doze off on the bus (rides in the rain usually do that to me) and wake up to find us back in Shanghai. It was kind of surreal to do that in another country. It felt like I was in the twilight zone having dozed off in Hangzhou and woken up in Shanghai. I do that in the States, but everything’s different in another country, eh?
I didn’t want to leave the dorm for dinner so I hunkered down with some bread and a few cookies and crackers, haha. Unusually unhealthy for me. After maybe an hour, Elton walks in and asks if any of us want to go out to eat because he and the guys were going to a restaurant near campus. I agree *to watch them eat, ahha* but I ended up getting a 2 Yuan vegetable soup. It was nothing to write home about, but it was cheap, I wasn’t that hungry, and it had vegetable matter in it.
We depart after some interesting conversation (the two other girls that came along sat together so I sat among four guys, eh heh…).
I have a quiz tomorrow which I feel eerily confident about since I started studying early :P I’m sleepy now :O Happy Father’s Day :D
I'll go ahead and post these, and if I have time, I'll add pictures and stuffs :D a little over a week left :O
6/18/2010
Ah, such a fun day :D Classes went on as usual, but my language partner and Whitney’s language partner are roommates (I think) so we all decided to go out to eat dinner at 5pm. Elton tagged along at the last moment so we took a bus down to the Pudong area, I’m guessing. I wasn’t really paying attention. We eat at this restaurant that’s pretty snazzy looking inside this GIGANTIC mall. I mean, it took us a good ten minutes just to navigate through the stores, going up escalators in and out of stores. We finally meet up with Leah and her partner and eat. Whitney and I shared some stir fried boneless chicken with rice and vegetables. It was okay (says the hardcore Chinese cuisine critic). >:D
We split the check and head out afterwards. I didn’t know we were going to see a movie until they mentioned it after dinner. Whitney and her partner left for McDonald’s to see the World Cup while the rest of us went to see Toy Story 3, haha. My first movie theatre experience in China. It was very interesting. We also saw the movie in 3D, but what isn’t in 3D nowadays? I really did have a LOT of fun that night, because I’m typically the stay at home person who finds fun in studying and reading books :J I think it’s good for me to hang out like that on occasion :D
I wont’ give anything away, but I really like it. It was ‘deeper’ than the previous two movies, if that makes any sense. And a little traumatizing at parts. It was definitely funny and I had a really good time. I feel like my partner and I have less awkward moments between each other now, so that’s good. Oh, and before we headed out for lunch we talked about Chinese online shopping websites, baidu forums, and internet slang, like 囧. It kind of looks like a face with the eyebrows slanted and the mouth open. It’s a sort of “ I can’t believe you said that” emoticon, but it’s actually a Chinese character. I learned a lot, and she showed me some videos and stuff. I learned that on the baidu forums and newsfeeds (帖子) you can discuss politics, but the government will still censor out things they find threatening or offensive to China and the Party. I thought that was interesting that even though they censor and/or delete some comments, that still let a forum topic like politics exist. HRMMMM……
6/19/2010
Our trip to Hangzhou :O We left at 8 in the morning on a two-ish hour bus ride. When we arrived, it was pretty hot. Last summer when we arrived it was starting to rain :O Our first stop was the hotel which was the exact same hotel as last year. So, nice hotel two years in a row :D We were room 1022. I was happy we had a fairly high up room (even though our view was just a smidge of the city and part of the hotel since it sort of wrapped around in a U-shaped). We spent about thirty minutes settling in. The pillows were SOOOOO SOFT :D
After we settled in, we headed out for lunch. It was one of those places where the food is already ordered. I think they had a tofu dish that I really liked. After that, we headed out to West Lake. It was a blazing inferno D: I just can’t take hot weather. Just because I was born and raised in the South (Southern Georgia, of all places), I dislike the heat. I can stand it better than some people, but I still want hot weather punched in the face :P I smartly brought my umbrella (unlike last time) to shade me from the sun.
The boat we used to get around West Lake was smaller than last summer’s. I, the genius that I was, sat outside with my umbrella in one hand and camera in the other. I’m so glad I brought I competent camera this time :O I put on sunscreen on my face and body before we left, so when I started sweating, sweat mixed with sunscreen started dripping into my eyes and they started burning. I’m sure it looked like I was crying because I felt tears coming out so I used my shirt sleeves the best I could to alleviate the pain in my eyes.
After that subsided, we eventually docked. West Lake was beautiful, as usual, and it’s interesting to me that I’ve seen it both on a rainy day (the prettiest version according to many) and a dry day. After taking a walk through pretty scenery back to the bus, we headed over to the tea shop. Long story short (since I’ve been here already), I ended up buying a small canister of green tea, 120 yuan, 17 USD. I will spend some dollars on food, I admit :D I’m going to get some of the flower tea somewhere else. I know it was a legit tea house an all, but that spiel she gives is still a little touristy, so I’d like to go to an off the beaten path tea place and buy some (or cop out and go to Carrefour, haha).
We left the tea house and headed for lunch where food was pre-ordered :/ Afterwards we went to a pagoda near the lake (I only went to the second floor than back down because I’ve been there before). Yes, I could have used the exercise and maybe I would have seen something new, but I didn’t want to test my insurance twice with those stairs, haha. So, I left early and made my way to sit on the steps facing the pagoda and started to sketch it in my notebook. All of these Chinese people started looking over my shoulder and standing near me, watching me. I won’t lie. That’s annoying no matter what country I’m in. >:J
Dinner was next where we ate more pre-ordered food and then back to the hotel. We had to be up by 7:30am the next morning, eat breakfast in the dining room, and be checked out and everything by 8:30am. Haha, interesting things happened. Carly and I, for some reason I can’t remember, started talking about nutrition and organic food, and the whole fair (or free?) trade label that promises the country that produces the product gets a cut of the profit, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the people in the field get a cut. No matter what the product, from clothes, electronics, and most foods, there is some sort of labor or slave labor involved. THEN we got on the topic of human trafficking and sex trafficking.
We picked a happy topic after that and laughed for a while, then we sort of segued into some “girl talk” and ended up staying up until 2 in the morning :O Carly went ahead to bed and I took my shower first because I felt so disgusting. I wish the water pressure in the shower was a bit stronger :P I know they’re conserving water and all but, well, I’m a spoiled American brat ;O
6/20/2010
Father’s Day! I will call my dad >^..^<
Miraculously I get up the next morning at 7:22am and start to get ready. We gather all of our things and head down for breakfast. It was pretty okay, sort of on par with the breakfast I had last summer. But I do love anything buffet style :DDD
We finished up, gathered, and headed out to leave such a nice hotel. It was rainy (essentially the other weather type in Hangzhou, it’s twin being a raging inferno of heat…) and we ride to a large Buddhist temple. By this time it’s a little drizzly and I lend Naomi my umbrella. I walk past the first temple complex to the back one where there’s less tourists and noise. It was so much more peaceful back there :D On my way back, I pass some monks chanting to a drum. It was so beautiful so I paused and listened it. The moment was absolutely gorgeous. It was raining just enough to create a light mist, and I was surrounded by sacred space and music with this rhythmic chanting. I wanted to take video just to record the chanting but thought better of it; it just didn’t feel right. That and taking pictures of the giant statues of the gods within the temple. Of course, other people did…
By the end of our time in the temple, the rain picks up just a little bit. I wasn’t about to search through hundreds of people to find Naomi so I waited just outside under some trees. I was waiting for someone I knew that had an umbrella so I could walk with them. I see Ryan come out (without an umbrella because he lent his to Amy) and we decide to go ahead and walk to the bus. Long story short, we ended up pretty much soaking wet. I was so glad I had water resistant sandals because I HATE the feeling of wet socks. I was so uncomfortable in my skin because I hate being damp from the rain.
After we all gathered on the bus, we rode to get lunch and then to History Street with a bunch of vendors selling stuff. I saw these CUTE key chains that had plastic food in them, for 1 yuan! SO, I bought nine :D I considered buying a dress or skirt and one of the stores for 50 yuan, but decided against it. Then I saw the bakery and bought three different types of bread. One is a pineapple bread of sorts, another is a Taiwanese crescent, and the third is a milk pudding bread, methinks. I tried to first two (and will write a report on the tastes) but the third one I’ll try tomorrow.
I LOVE BREAD AND BAKERIES :D
Anyhoodies, we made our way back to Shanghai. Alex decided that we needed a ‘group theme song’ so people started singing all of these songs *many were pretty throwback, haha* and yes, Don’t Stop Believing was one of them. I managed to doze off on the bus (rides in the rain usually do that to me) and wake up to find us back in Shanghai. It was kind of surreal to do that in another country. It felt like I was in the twilight zone having dozed off in Hangzhou and woken up in Shanghai. I do that in the States, but everything’s different in another country, eh?
I didn’t want to leave the dorm for dinner so I hunkered down with some bread and a few cookies and crackers, haha. Unusually unhealthy for me. After maybe an hour, Elton walks in and asks if any of us want to go out to eat because he and the guys were going to a restaurant near campus. I agree *to watch them eat, ahha* but I ended up getting a 2 Yuan vegetable soup. It was nothing to write home about, but it was cheap, I wasn’t that hungry, and it had vegetable matter in it.
We depart after some interesting conversation (the two other girls that came along sat together so I sat among four guys, eh heh…).
I have a quiz tomorrow which I feel eerily confident about since I started studying early :P I’m sleepy now :O Happy Father’s Day :D
Thursday, June 17, 2010
On a random aside...
I just found out that I've been admitted to Qinghua (Tsingua) University :D IT BETTER SNOW WHILE I'M THERE. Yays! Now to gather squalorships.
I actually caught up with the blogs!
6/17/2010
Oh wow, I’ve caught. I’m typing this up on the actual day of events. GO FIG. I took my second quiz on the words 晚会，刚才，门口，礼貌， 使用，保持，文明，服务 and maybe one other. I got a 105 J We get five extra credit points if we write the pinyin.
In my downtime I looked up some Asian horror movies and came across Men Behind the Sun. The video link was broken or something, so I watched the first hour of Philosophy of the Knife (or of Knives…can’t remember). Both are about Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII and the human medical experiments they conducted. It really says something when true events and/or films based on true events are listed in the horror genre. They got to teeth pulling in the latter film and I cut it off (that and because it kept freezing). Humanity at its worst, indeed.
We had a lecture on Chinese religion and philosophy, all of which I knew because I took classes on them with a professor who is a Harvard grad :O So I know my stuff :P. Carly is still feeling a little under the weather so I went out to a malatang place by myself with some bread I bought at Carrefour. When I was done I scanned the stationary store and went back.
I totally took a wrong turn off the elevator when I got to my floor (18th again, hoohoo….) and ended up in Andrew’s room. I noticed the door was open and we often keep ours open, so I figured Carly was up. I just casually walk in and note the music is playing (some RnB stuff) and thought oh, she’s feeling a lot better. I walk into the room and bit more and notice clothes folded everywhere and Andrew sitting on what I thought was her bed. I was like, where is Carly and why are you in our room-OH CRAP. So I played it off and made small conversation (we’re all pretty used to just walking into each other’s rooms if the door is open, so it was no biggie). I told him later on of my mistake and he laughed it off :D
It was a pretty short day. No offense to our language partners, but it was good to stay on campus the entire day. They often like to take us out around the city which is cool but exhausting as well.
I really need to jog again. All of this GOOD bread is getting to me, methinks :O
Oh wow, I’ve caught. I’m typing this up on the actual day of events. GO FIG. I took my second quiz on the words 晚会，刚才，门口，礼貌， 使用，保持，文明，服务 and maybe one other. I got a 105 J We get five extra credit points if we write the pinyin.
In my downtime I looked up some Asian horror movies and came across Men Behind the Sun. The video link was broken or something, so I watched the first hour of Philosophy of the Knife (or of Knives…can’t remember). Both are about Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII and the human medical experiments they conducted. It really says something when true events and/or films based on true events are listed in the horror genre. They got to teeth pulling in the latter film and I cut it off (that and because it kept freezing). Humanity at its worst, indeed.
We had a lecture on Chinese religion and philosophy, all of which I knew because I took classes on them with a professor who is a Harvard grad :O So I know my stuff :P. Carly is still feeling a little under the weather so I went out to a malatang place by myself with some bread I bought at Carrefour. When I was done I scanned the stationary store and went back.
I totally took a wrong turn off the elevator when I got to my floor (18th again, hoohoo….) and ended up in Andrew’s room. I noticed the door was open and we often keep ours open, so I figured Carly was up. I just casually walk in and note the music is playing (some RnB stuff) and thought oh, she’s feeling a lot better. I walk into the room and bit more and notice clothes folded everywhere and Andrew sitting on what I thought was her bed. I was like, where is Carly and why are you in our room-OH CRAP. So I played it off and made small conversation (we’re all pretty used to just walking into each other’s rooms if the door is open, so it was no biggie). I told him later on of my mistake and he laughed it off :D
It was a pretty short day. No offense to our language partners, but it was good to stay on campus the entire day. They often like to take us out around the city which is cool but exhausting as well.
I really need to jog again. All of this GOOD bread is getting to me, methinks :O
All over the place for serial
6/16/2010
Dragon boat festival! That means no school :D Carly and I went to Carrefour and totally loaded up on bread. As soon as I get the food blog I’ll post pics and comment on the tastes and stuff. I LOVE THE BREAD SO MUCH. We got this one bread that had this custard type filling in it (with dates or raisins?). It’s SO good. The bread is generally sweeter than American bread. Carrefour has a ‘western bread’ section, but we generally pass that by, haha. I also got a fried, braided bread that’s really good, and maybe three other kinds. I’m still looking for the “little piggy” bread, the one that looks like a pig <3 We also bought some yogurt <3 strawberry and peach, and some peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter we bought has something like mini rice crispy treats! 很有意思！We DID look for Nutella, but to no avail. I think I’ll start putting rice crispies in my peanut butter now, haha. Two different types of crackers were bought and we made out way to the line. 一共一白三远。About 15 USD for a fair amount of stuff. We cut through the neighborhood on the way back and bought some fruit (nectarines, bananas…they look different, like..oblong…, yang mei berries, some other fruit, two peaches…) all for about 5 or 6 USD. So cheap~. Carly keeps saying how amazed she is at the prices in China, heehee. I’m just glad that other people are enjoying themselves :)
Aaannnddd~ I bought zongzi~~~~~~!!!! What can I say, I love the stuff. I saw a stall selling it in the apartment area so I didn’t buy any at Carrefour. I just went for the one that had the ‘meat’ character in it “肉“. It turned out to be sooo yummy! Not of that icky Chinese sausage nonsense! It had sticky rice (what it’s mainly made of), a bean of some sort, and beef, methinks. I wanted to go back for more! It was only about 1.40 Yuan, so 0.20 USD. I can seriously stock up on those~
Anywhizzles, after some downtime, I took Carly, Ryan, and Naomi to Qipu lu by taxi. We went to one of the stores and didn’t really get to look around that much because Ryan suggested that we meet every 45 minutes. The place is HUGE and crowded and like a maze, so I didn’t understand why we had to keep meeting. I saw another store with the shirts I wanted but they wouldn’t go down much. I think the next time I see a store like that, I’ll just risk paying “too much” and load up on them. Why? Because there are shirts that fit my decidedly large American frame (lengthwise and bust wise, heehee). I really do like the designs on those shirts. And the matching purses~~~I’m generally not a purse fiend, but they kind of remind me of the cute purse I got in Zhengzhou (with the help of Christa’s persuasion :D ).
As I said, we really didn’t get far. We only went into the first floor-ish of two buildings so we have much more exploring to do. There are also Mario shirts floating about! I want them~! I guess I have to go shopping in the guy’s section because I know those will fit me. If not, then that’s just…sad.
UGH. I REALLY want those shirts (and purse)! Mingyali, I think is the name brand. I’m also not a brand girl, but when I know I can’t find something in my home country, I like to stock up :P Oh well. BUDDHISM SAYS BE DETACHED. So I will. I did buy a black skirt for 35远, so 5USD. That’s the price I set it at, but after a few seconds, I thought “I genuinely don’t want this anymore”. I started walking away and they called me back twice, the second time with the price I set :/ Maybe I can give the skirt away? Haha. I need that type of nonchalance with my shirts! ARGHA.
We get back to the dorm around 7pm or so and I stay in for dinner. I’m trying to stay hydrated. I’m also not sick yet! It’s been about a week, so I’m being really conscious of my health. I’m drinking water and taking a multivitamin. Carly has a cold of some sort. She’s been feeling kind of miserable and I know that feeling a little too well. *The last time I had a cold was the DAY BEFORE my Chinese final at Tech. It was hell.*
Same ol’ same ol’ settling in to bed after that. I’ve gained the habit of leaving the door open so people generally walk in. I’m talking to a lot more of the program mates this time around, and *most* of them are really cool. I like that we’re comfortable enough with each other to just leave our doors open. People also know I’ve been on this trip before so they sometimes come in asking for advice about this or that. They’ll even swing by (as do I to their rooms) to ask if we want to all eat together or something J I really like it and this is someone who values her alone time. Ah well :O
Oh yes, I believe I called by dad for the second time today. It was good to hear his voice :) I missed cooking today because I’m usually cooking on some Chinese holiday or another. Ah well, again.
还有, the Chinese really like Lady Gaga, apparently. I kept hearing her songs in the bargain market.
Oh yeah, and I just realized...if you see a random "J", that's supposed to be a smiley face emoticon. It was when I typed it on Word, but I guess it didn't translate well :(
Dragon boat festival! That means no school :D Carly and I went to Carrefour and totally loaded up on bread. As soon as I get the food blog I’ll post pics and comment on the tastes and stuff. I LOVE THE BREAD SO MUCH. We got this one bread that had this custard type filling in it (with dates or raisins?). It’s SO good. The bread is generally sweeter than American bread. Carrefour has a ‘western bread’ section, but we generally pass that by, haha. I also got a fried, braided bread that’s really good, and maybe three other kinds. I’m still looking for the “little piggy” bread, the one that looks like a pig <3 We also bought some yogurt <3 strawberry and peach, and some peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter we bought has something like mini rice crispy treats! 很有意思！We DID look for Nutella, but to no avail. I think I’ll start putting rice crispies in my peanut butter now, haha. Two different types of crackers were bought and we made out way to the line. 一共一白三远。About 15 USD for a fair amount of stuff. We cut through the neighborhood on the way back and bought some fruit (nectarines, bananas…they look different, like..oblong…, yang mei berries, some other fruit, two peaches…) all for about 5 or 6 USD. So cheap~. Carly keeps saying how amazed she is at the prices in China, heehee. I’m just glad that other people are enjoying themselves :)
Aaannnddd~ I bought zongzi~~~~~~!!!! What can I say, I love the stuff. I saw a stall selling it in the apartment area so I didn’t buy any at Carrefour. I just went for the one that had the ‘meat’ character in it “肉“. It turned out to be sooo yummy! Not of that icky Chinese sausage nonsense! It had sticky rice (what it’s mainly made of), a bean of some sort, and beef, methinks. I wanted to go back for more! It was only about 1.40 Yuan, so 0.20 USD. I can seriously stock up on those~
Anywhizzles, after some downtime, I took Carly, Ryan, and Naomi to Qipu lu by taxi. We went to one of the stores and didn’t really get to look around that much because Ryan suggested that we meet every 45 minutes. The place is HUGE and crowded and like a maze, so I didn’t understand why we had to keep meeting. I saw another store with the shirts I wanted but they wouldn’t go down much. I think the next time I see a store like that, I’ll just risk paying “too much” and load up on them. Why? Because there are shirts that fit my decidedly large American frame (lengthwise and bust wise, heehee). I really do like the designs on those shirts. And the matching purses~~~I’m generally not a purse fiend, but they kind of remind me of the cute purse I got in Zhengzhou (with the help of Christa’s persuasion :D ).
As I said, we really didn’t get far. We only went into the first floor-ish of two buildings so we have much more exploring to do. There are also Mario shirts floating about! I want them~! I guess I have to go shopping in the guy’s section because I know those will fit me. If not, then that’s just…sad.
UGH. I REALLY want those shirts (and purse)! Mingyali, I think is the name brand. I’m also not a brand girl, but when I know I can’t find something in my home country, I like to stock up :P Oh well. BUDDHISM SAYS BE DETACHED. So I will. I did buy a black skirt for 35远, so 5USD. That’s the price I set it at, but after a few seconds, I thought “I genuinely don’t want this anymore”. I started walking away and they called me back twice, the second time with the price I set :/ Maybe I can give the skirt away? Haha. I need that type of nonchalance with my shirts! ARGHA.
We get back to the dorm around 7pm or so and I stay in for dinner. I’m trying to stay hydrated. I’m also not sick yet! It’s been about a week, so I’m being really conscious of my health. I’m drinking water and taking a multivitamin. Carly has a cold of some sort. She’s been feeling kind of miserable and I know that feeling a little too well. *The last time I had a cold was the DAY BEFORE my Chinese final at Tech. It was hell.*
Same ol’ same ol’ settling in to bed after that. I’ve gained the habit of leaving the door open so people generally walk in. I’m talking to a lot more of the program mates this time around, and *most* of them are really cool. I like that we’re comfortable enough with each other to just leave our doors open. People also know I’ve been on this trip before so they sometimes come in asking for advice about this or that. They’ll even swing by (as do I to their rooms) to ask if we want to all eat together or something J I really like it and this is someone who values her alone time. Ah well :O
Oh yes, I believe I called by dad for the second time today. It was good to hear his voice :) I missed cooking today because I’m usually cooking on some Chinese holiday or another. Ah well, again.
还有, the Chinese really like Lady Gaga, apparently. I kept hearing her songs in the bargain market.
Oh yeah, and I just realized...if you see a random "J", that's supposed to be a smiley face emoticon. It was when I typed it on Word, but I guess it didn't translate well :(
在上海...All over the place
6/15/2010
Class as usual :O I got a 105 on my first quiz. I knew most of the words already, though :P I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it before, but the class seems a LOT more lax than last year’s. We only study 8-9 characters at a time (at least a few of them I know already) and get tested on a random five. That’s a far cry from an entire lesson’s amount of vocab a day and being tested on a random five by writing it on the board in front of class D: I sort of wish the professors were going a bit quicker. It seems that at this pace we won’t be anywhere near the end of the book within four weeks L People are kind of all over the place when it comes to the advanced level of Chinese. Some of them know mostly pinyin with knowledge of few characters, one guy knows the traditional 汉字 but not simplified. Another girl can speak and hear fluently but can’t read or write characters. We’re a medley language learning, haha.
Around 1:30pm we head to the CPC site where the first Communist Party conference was held. I’ve been there already so I went through at a brisk walk. The New World place, though…WOW. That art district type thing we went to has been totally turned around! If that’s the same place we went to last summer, it’s been given a total facelift. There are SO many restaurants now. Like, high end restaurants for business people and stuff. We saw a Coldstone’s that sold ice cream for 80 Yuan (11USD) a pop L. Dr. Meng told us that this is where business people come to take their business partners and stuffs. I say take them to the arcade :D I think there was also a Hong Kong festival of some sort. Too expensive, so I didn’t take entirely too much interest.
We went to Nanjing Rd. next, but Carly and I went to the bargain market a few blocks down. We didn’t come away with anything, but I did see those shirts with the girl’s faces that I really like…with matching purses! They were too pricey and wouldn’t go down so I left L But it was a WHOLE store with them! I could seriously blow a lot of cash there, but the vendors can’t know that I want it D: We decided to come back later because we had to meet up with the group. We took a different way back so we just looked for the crab claw building. On the way we took the “back roads” and I stopped when I saw this bakery. We bought this AWESOME cake (I took a picture) for only 4 Yuan ( 0.58 USD heehee). We walked to the big mall on Nanjing and sat in their food court to eat.
After we returned we just settled in and eventually went to sleep. Other group members went to a club. I don’t remember the name. I think it had the word “Ice” in it. All I know is that interesting things went down and I saw some pictures that one person managed to take. Nothing incriminating, but something funny to look at in hindsight.
Class as usual :O I got a 105 on my first quiz. I knew most of the words already, though :P I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it before, but the class seems a LOT more lax than last year’s. We only study 8-9 characters at a time (at least a few of them I know already) and get tested on a random five. That’s a far cry from an entire lesson’s amount of vocab a day and being tested on a random five by writing it on the board in front of class D: I sort of wish the professors were going a bit quicker. It seems that at this pace we won’t be anywhere near the end of the book within four weeks L People are kind of all over the place when it comes to the advanced level of Chinese. Some of them know mostly pinyin with knowledge of few characters, one guy knows the traditional 汉字 but not simplified. Another girl can speak and hear fluently but can’t read or write characters. We’re a medley language learning, haha.
Around 1:30pm we head to the CPC site where the first Communist Party conference was held. I’ve been there already so I went through at a brisk walk. The New World place, though…WOW. That art district type thing we went to has been totally turned around! If that’s the same place we went to last summer, it’s been given a total facelift. There are SO many restaurants now. Like, high end restaurants for business people and stuff. We saw a Coldstone’s that sold ice cream for 80 Yuan (11USD) a pop L. Dr. Meng told us that this is where business people come to take their business partners and stuffs. I say take them to the arcade :D I think there was also a Hong Kong festival of some sort. Too expensive, so I didn’t take entirely too much interest.
We went to Nanjing Rd. next, but Carly and I went to the bargain market a few blocks down. We didn’t come away with anything, but I did see those shirts with the girl’s faces that I really like…with matching purses! They were too pricey and wouldn’t go down so I left L But it was a WHOLE store with them! I could seriously blow a lot of cash there, but the vendors can’t know that I want it D: We decided to come back later because we had to meet up with the group. We took a different way back so we just looked for the crab claw building. On the way we took the “back roads” and I stopped when I saw this bakery. We bought this AWESOME cake (I took a picture) for only 4 Yuan ( 0.58 USD heehee). We walked to the big mall on Nanjing and sat in their food court to eat.
After we returned we just settled in and eventually went to sleep. Other group members went to a club. I don’t remember the name. I think it had the word “Ice” in it. All I know is that interesting things went down and I saw some pictures that one person managed to take. Nothing incriminating, but something funny to look at in hindsight.
生词..or whatevs...
6/14/2010
Ah~~~ I went running in Lu Xun Park today :D I did a non-stop jog on the route Ashley from last summer mapped for us (I’m mildly surprised that I remembered it). There are certain portions of the park that have flowers and decorations for the Expo, and of course, Haibao the mascot. My run took all of ten minutes-ish (I’m going to try and shave that down to 7 or under, said the gym rat). SO, by the end of all this it was still…7 in the morning? Yeah, I do things early. I’m very much pleased that the weather is so nice (so far). It’s been pretty overcast/drizzly for the past week or so with no sun. I came here expecting Dante’s Inferno like last time; it was either an ungodly amount of hot, or an annoying amount of rain. Presently, it was so manageable that during my run, I hardly broke a sweat.
Well, not to brag, but a mile run doesn’t make me sweat anymore (GYM RATS, UNITE!). ;D
But really, last summer when Christa and I jogged, I was loosing more water than calories in the amount of perspiration. I guess global warming works in reverse in some places (wah wah waaaahh…).
9am was the start of class so we headed over there. It was the usual class, except on Mondays and Tuesdays we have a different teacher. I like her :D She’s really nice, funny and SO cute. Like, Asian-cute. Her voice is kind of high pitched and she’s always smiling :D Prof. Gu is her name, methinks. The other professor, Prof. Zhou, is an older woman but still nice. They’re both good at breaking down words and sentences and writing characters that we don’t know (both characters we’ve learned and forgotten and ones we’ve never come across before.
After some downtime (I took Naomi out to get some of those wraps that Anna found last summer) I went out with my language partner. We took the subway to People’s Square and went to the giant bookstore downtown. On the way, I re-found the hole-in-the-wall bookstore that Christa originally found (damn me for looking at the ground all the time, ahha) with all the art books and manga :DDD I only glanced around as I wanted to take my time later on and we made our way to the bookstore. We went up to the fourth floor where the foreign language learning books where. We spent a fair deal of time trying to pick out a good HSK (汉语 水平考试) study book for me.
Wang Ni told me that the Chinese usually pay attention to which publishing company made the book. The top three were Beijing University, Dalian, and another that I can’t remember at the moment :O I kind of want to say Qinghua, but I’m not too sure. Anyway, I kept bouncing back and forth between books, unable to decide which one was good for me, so I asked her for advice. We deducted that I was at 初级 , the elementary level, as opposed to 中级 and 高级, intermediate and advanced. The levels were broken up into 6 (over all, I think? Or maybe each section had 6 subsections). Anyway, Level 1 was definitely too easy for me, so I bounced between 2 and 3. Wang Ni suggested 3, but I really wanted to cover my tracks with 2. I flipped through it and saw a few characters I didn’t recognize (and sometimes it’s the ones you think you know that you forget…).
The book I ended up getting was a “Chinese Proficiency Test syllabus, Level 2” that cost 40¥ ( a little under 6USD…much less than what Amazon was going for :P ).
After that we went back to the dorms. We took the subway and it looked more or less the same than last year (as far as prepping for the Expo).
As I was walking into the dorm, Cherith catches me and asks if I want to hang out with her and her friend. I agreed, thinking it was her language partner and assuming she didn’t want any awkward one-on-one time. His name (I eventually found out) is Anderson. His American name, anyway. He was pretty cute looking. Not adorable cute. Like, good genetics-cute. He didn’t know a lot of English so it took us a while sometimes to translate from English to Chinese and vice versa. We ended up at this restaurant where we ordered a few things. Somewhere along the way he asked us something about ‘coming out’. We assumed he was asking when do we go out, of if we go out, like to parties or what we do in our spare time at night.
Cherith and I started chuckling and tried to explain to him what “coming out” means in the States。Cherith explained in Chinese “When a guy like s a guy or a girl likes a girl.” She drew a picture of two guys together and two girls together. Anderson looks at it for a moment, then goes “Ohhhh!!” and just collapses back in his seat, laughing. He’s like, “No no! I like girls!” At this point Cherith and I are laughing as well, saying we knew he liked girls, we were just explaining what “coming out” meant. Heh.
I later find out that it was the guy Cherith and Naomi were talking about, the one Naomi met at the park. He’s apparently trying to learn English so they offered to hang out with him and help. But the moral of this story is: Dude was cute ;D
After that we head back to the dorm. An hour-ish later Ryan comes in and wants to go out and eat and get a beer, so Cherith, Sarah, and I agree to go with him. We go to a new two story restaurant (that has a cat :D ) Sarah dipped out early to call her husband, so the three of us were left to chat. Eventually the subject of drugs and alcohol came up, haha. It was…an interesting conversation. I can elaborate somewhere else if you want me to, but the conversation was pretty funny as people were getting a little tipsy, haha. We also had a pretty interesting conversation on religion. I feel like I’m meeting more and more non-religious/agnostic/atheist people, or maybe they were always in my social circle and I never thought to ask them their beliefs. Either way, it always makes for interesting conversation.
Nothing worth noting really happened after that. My sleep hours are regulating still, so I’m still getting sleepy around 9-ish and waking up around 6-7am :O If only I could keep that schedule…well, the waking up early part :D
Ah~~~ I went running in Lu Xun Park today :D I did a non-stop jog on the route Ashley from last summer mapped for us (I’m mildly surprised that I remembered it). There are certain portions of the park that have flowers and decorations for the Expo, and of course, Haibao the mascot. My run took all of ten minutes-ish (I’m going to try and shave that down to 7 or under, said the gym rat). SO, by the end of all this it was still…7 in the morning? Yeah, I do things early. I’m very much pleased that the weather is so nice (so far). It’s been pretty overcast/drizzly for the past week or so with no sun. I came here expecting Dante’s Inferno like last time; it was either an ungodly amount of hot, or an annoying amount of rain. Presently, it was so manageable that during my run, I hardly broke a sweat.
Well, not to brag, but a mile run doesn’t make me sweat anymore (GYM RATS, UNITE!). ;D
But really, last summer when Christa and I jogged, I was loosing more water than calories in the amount of perspiration. I guess global warming works in reverse in some places (wah wah waaaahh…).
9am was the start of class so we headed over there. It was the usual class, except on Mondays and Tuesdays we have a different teacher. I like her :D She’s really nice, funny and SO cute. Like, Asian-cute. Her voice is kind of high pitched and she’s always smiling :D Prof. Gu is her name, methinks. The other professor, Prof. Zhou, is an older woman but still nice. They’re both good at breaking down words and sentences and writing characters that we don’t know (both characters we’ve learned and forgotten and ones we’ve never come across before.
After some downtime (I took Naomi out to get some of those wraps that Anna found last summer) I went out with my language partner. We took the subway to People’s Square and went to the giant bookstore downtown. On the way, I re-found the hole-in-the-wall bookstore that Christa originally found (damn me for looking at the ground all the time, ahha) with all the art books and manga :DDD I only glanced around as I wanted to take my time later on and we made our way to the bookstore. We went up to the fourth floor where the foreign language learning books where. We spent a fair deal of time trying to pick out a good HSK (汉语 水平考试) study book for me.
Wang Ni told me that the Chinese usually pay attention to which publishing company made the book. The top three were Beijing University, Dalian, and another that I can’t remember at the moment :O I kind of want to say Qinghua, but I’m not too sure. Anyway, I kept bouncing back and forth between books, unable to decide which one was good for me, so I asked her for advice. We deducted that I was at 初级 , the elementary level, as opposed to 中级 and 高级, intermediate and advanced. The levels were broken up into 6 (over all, I think? Or maybe each section had 6 subsections). Anyway, Level 1 was definitely too easy for me, so I bounced between 2 and 3. Wang Ni suggested 3, but I really wanted to cover my tracks with 2. I flipped through it and saw a few characters I didn’t recognize (and sometimes it’s the ones you think you know that you forget…).
The book I ended up getting was a “Chinese Proficiency Test syllabus, Level 2” that cost 40¥ ( a little under 6USD…much less than what Amazon was going for :P ).
After that we went back to the dorms. We took the subway and it looked more or less the same than last year (as far as prepping for the Expo).
As I was walking into the dorm, Cherith catches me and asks if I want to hang out with her and her friend. I agreed, thinking it was her language partner and assuming she didn’t want any awkward one-on-one time. His name (I eventually found out) is Anderson. His American name, anyway. He was pretty cute looking. Not adorable cute. Like, good genetics-cute. He didn’t know a lot of English so it took us a while sometimes to translate from English to Chinese and vice versa. We ended up at this restaurant where we ordered a few things. Somewhere along the way he asked us something about ‘coming out’. We assumed he was asking when do we go out, of if we go out, like to parties or what we do in our spare time at night.
Cherith and I started chuckling and tried to explain to him what “coming out” means in the States。Cherith explained in Chinese “When a guy like s a guy or a girl likes a girl.” She drew a picture of two guys together and two girls together. Anderson looks at it for a moment, then goes “Ohhhh!!” and just collapses back in his seat, laughing. He’s like, “No no! I like girls!” At this point Cherith and I are laughing as well, saying we knew he liked girls, we were just explaining what “coming out” meant. Heh.
I later find out that it was the guy Cherith and Naomi were talking about, the one Naomi met at the park. He’s apparently trying to learn English so they offered to hang out with him and help. But the moral of this story is: Dude was cute ;D
After that we head back to the dorm. An hour-ish later Ryan comes in and wants to go out and eat and get a beer, so Cherith, Sarah, and I agree to go with him. We go to a new two story restaurant (that has a cat :D ) Sarah dipped out early to call her husband, so the three of us were left to chat. Eventually the subject of drugs and alcohol came up, haha. It was…an interesting conversation. I can elaborate somewhere else if you want me to, but the conversation was pretty funny as people were getting a little tipsy, haha. We also had a pretty interesting conversation on religion. I feel like I’m meeting more and more non-religious/agnostic/atheist people, or maybe they were always in my social circle and I never thought to ask them their beliefs. Either way, it always makes for interesting conversation.
Nothing worth noting really happened after that. My sleep hours are regulating still, so I’m still getting sleepy around 9-ish and waking up around 6-7am :O If only I could keep that schedule…well, the waking up early part :D
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
四川北路
6/13/2010
*fast forward to language partner because nothing really exciting happened before that*
We walked to North Sichuan Rd. 四川北路/ Cultural Street that has a bunch of antique stores and such. I’d been to a before but it’s a really nice place to take a stroll through (and buy stuff). My partner treated me to some milk tea as we walked back to the dorm. It was a lot easier talking to her this time around, probably because we were out in public and not awkwardly in the dorm room. We walked through the park and I spotted an open lot selling books and stuff. I found a bought a book that’s apparently for teenagers. I just wanted it because the guy on the cover looked cute AND to learn some Chinese, heh heh. The cover art is manga-style, by the by. I figure if it’s for teens, the sentences and vocab are somewhat manageable for someone at my learning level. I’m familiar with a lot of the characters, I just need to string them together into a coherent thought.
Ah yes, and the book was 6 yuan, so a little under a dollar USD :D It came with a calendar from 2006, a mini address book, and bank book, and two things of mini stationary paper. Hehe. There was one book where the guy on the cover (the 2D, completely fictional guy who will never exist) looked really hot, but my partner pointed out that it was the second volume and we couldn’t find the first :PPP
I bought the book, we talked for a little while and then we parted ways. I ate hotpot with Jana since I couldn’t find Eddie and Amy L I still have no idea where they went. And now it’s only 8:53pm and I’m sleepy L I’ll study a bit more and then off to bed-sicles. :D
*fast forward to language partner because nothing really exciting happened before that*
We walked to North Sichuan Rd. 四川北路/ Cultural Street that has a bunch of antique stores and such. I’d been to a before but it’s a really nice place to take a stroll through (and buy stuff). My partner treated me to some milk tea as we walked back to the dorm. It was a lot easier talking to her this time around, probably because we were out in public and not awkwardly in the dorm room. We walked through the park and I spotted an open lot selling books and stuff. I found a bought a book that’s apparently for teenagers. I just wanted it because the guy on the cover looked cute AND to learn some Chinese, heh heh. The cover art is manga-style, by the by. I figure if it’s for teens, the sentences and vocab are somewhat manageable for someone at my learning level. I’m familiar with a lot of the characters, I just need to string them together into a coherent thought.
Ah yes, and the book was 6 yuan, so a little under a dollar USD :D It came with a calendar from 2006, a mini address book, and bank book, and two things of mini stationary paper. Hehe. There was one book where the guy on the cover (the 2D, completely fictional guy who will never exist) looked really hot, but my partner pointed out that it was the second volume and we couldn’t find the first :PPP
I bought the book, we talked for a little while and then we parted ways. I ate hotpot with Jana since I couldn’t find Eddie and Amy L I still have no idea where they went. And now it’s only 8:53pm and I’m sleepy L I’ll study a bit more and then off to bed-sicles. :D
Carrefour is love
6/12/2010
Carly and I woke up early (no surprise there) and went to Carrefour. I really do love that store :D I love being around food in general, but now that the closet nutritionist in me is clamoring its way out, I’m paying more attention to the food (how it’s advertised, the Chinese spin on American products, etc…). We were in the yogurt section when Carly spotted some “ethnically diverse yogurt”, haha. One had a native american, another had a generic Hawaiian girl…and of course one had a black girl on it. It was kiwi flavored, but quipped that it should have been chocolate a-fufufu…
On the way to the market, we stopped by this street vendor that was on the way and got one of those wraps that Anna pointed out to us last time. They are SO good :D I have no idea what the crispy bread thing is, or the type of sauce, but it’s not like I could ever accurately recreated it…or could I? *Austin Powers eyebrow arch*.
This was all followed by us being a minute or two late to the first lecture about Chinese history (something I’ve heard a million times over). We had to bring our stuff from Carrefour to the lecture :/ I drew a portrait of the people sitting in front of me, heh heh.
We had about two or so hours to kill, so I think we went and got something to eat? (I’m typing this two days after it happened…). Afterwards we went to the Pudong area to the Oriental Pearl. It’s my third time being there, but this time it was crowded because of the Expo. The tunnel that goes under the Huangpu River now has a spiffy little over hang, I guess you could call it? It definitely wasn’t there before. I’ve got pictures to help describe it :P
On our way up the to the Pearl, someone wanted a group picture (Dr. Meng, I think?). So we, a bunch of foreigners, gathered together and Chinese people stopped and starting taking our pictures. This happened a bit after we first got off the bus as well, ahha. There was such a large crowd taking our photos and filming us :O
Anyhoozlebees, my main point of interest to going to the glass floor in the Pearl *for the third time around* was to see the Expo grounds from above. I could only see a few buildings, but from what I did see they were pretty cool. There’s Expo stuff all around the city, so I’m pretty excited. I looked over the website and it seems there’s not way we’d get to every single pavilion, so I think I’m just doing Zone A, B, and C which are all on the same side as the river. Hopefully I can get at least those in, and maybe even go in a few. The lines are horrendous, I’ve heard, but my language partner told me I can cut in line because I’m a foreigner. I couldn’t do that in good faith. If I can’t get in, I can’t get in. I do want to go into Japan’s, though. I’m still convinced that DDR machine is somewhere in there.
After that, we go the Shanghai history museum (my second time there) and I speed walk through it after taking just a few pics. Dr. Meng treats us to some snacks when we get out (I know I changed tenses there, but I’m sleepy. Leave me alone…). I got this cool dough puff filled with ice cream from a place named “Beard Papa”, haha.
Next was the Huangpu River cruise which, on my third time, is still breath taking. I saw some of the Expo buildings closer up and lit up :D I was a little tired at that point and zoning out a bit. On the bus ride back I saw a couple streets FULL of street vendors with my (and Christa’s) beloved meat on a stick :DDD BUT, we were in the bus and I only got the name of one of the streets, but I don’t know which intersection we were on (it was at night and I have 20/80 vision).
We had a group dinner at some place we ate at last time and we returned to the dorm :O
Carly and I woke up early (no surprise there) and went to Carrefour. I really do love that store :D I love being around food in general, but now that the closet nutritionist in me is clamoring its way out, I’m paying more attention to the food (how it’s advertised, the Chinese spin on American products, etc…). We were in the yogurt section when Carly spotted some “ethnically diverse yogurt”, haha. One had a native american, another had a generic Hawaiian girl…and of course one had a black girl on it. It was kiwi flavored, but quipped that it should have been chocolate a-fufufu…
On the way to the market, we stopped by this street vendor that was on the way and got one of those wraps that Anna pointed out to us last time. They are SO good :D I have no idea what the crispy bread thing is, or the type of sauce, but it’s not like I could ever accurately recreated it…or could I? *Austin Powers eyebrow arch*.
This was all followed by us being a minute or two late to the first lecture about Chinese history (something I’ve heard a million times over). We had to bring our stuff from Carrefour to the lecture :/ I drew a portrait of the people sitting in front of me, heh heh.
We had about two or so hours to kill, so I think we went and got something to eat? (I’m typing this two days after it happened…). Afterwards we went to the Pudong area to the Oriental Pearl. It’s my third time being there, but this time it was crowded because of the Expo. The tunnel that goes under the Huangpu River now has a spiffy little over hang, I guess you could call it? It definitely wasn’t there before. I’ve got pictures to help describe it :P
On our way up the to the Pearl, someone wanted a group picture (Dr. Meng, I think?). So we, a bunch of foreigners, gathered together and Chinese people stopped and starting taking our pictures. This happened a bit after we first got off the bus as well, ahha. There was such a large crowd taking our photos and filming us :O
Anyhoozlebees, my main point of interest to going to the glass floor in the Pearl *for the third time around* was to see the Expo grounds from above. I could only see a few buildings, but from what I did see they were pretty cool. There’s Expo stuff all around the city, so I’m pretty excited. I looked over the website and it seems there’s not way we’d get to every single pavilion, so I think I’m just doing Zone A, B, and C which are all on the same side as the river. Hopefully I can get at least those in, and maybe even go in a few. The lines are horrendous, I’ve heard, but my language partner told me I can cut in line because I’m a foreigner. I couldn’t do that in good faith. If I can’t get in, I can’t get in. I do want to go into Japan’s, though. I’m still convinced that DDR machine is somewhere in there.
After that, we go the Shanghai history museum (my second time there) and I speed walk through it after taking just a few pics. Dr. Meng treats us to some snacks when we get out (I know I changed tenses there, but I’m sleepy. Leave me alone…). I got this cool dough puff filled with ice cream from a place named “Beard Papa”, haha.
Next was the Huangpu River cruise which, on my third time, is still breath taking. I saw some of the Expo buildings closer up and lit up :D I was a little tired at that point and zoning out a bit. On the bus ride back I saw a couple streets FULL of street vendors with my (and Christa’s) beloved meat on a stick :DDD BUT, we were in the bus and I only got the name of one of the streets, but I don’t know which intersection we were on (it was at night and I have 20/80 vision).
We had a group dinner at some place we ate at last time and we returned to the dorm :O
Bananas
6/11/2010
We had our language classes today which was comparatively easier than last time. I didn’t enjoy the adrenaline rush I got every time a random five characters were picked out for us to write on the board (we learned average 20 a day for the first two weeks). The teacher I have is really nice and caters to our pace of learning. She’s good at giving examples and repeating things in Chinese so that we understand it. The dictations are every other day (manageable, I must say). We only learned the first 8 of the lesson, the majority of which I’ve learned already, and we’re going to be tested on a random five.
After that, we had a little over an hour before we met our language partners. My partner is 杨霓。I asked her if we could stay in my dorm room because we needed the internet guy to come up and set up our internet and at least one person had to be in the room. It felt really awkward at first because I really didn’t know what to ask her and we sitting in such close quarters. She kept speaking a lot in Chinese, which is good, but she’d go at a native speaker’s speed and I wouldn’t be able to understand anything L
Dr. Meng set up a new system where after we’re done with our situational Chinese with the partners, we (the American students) have to fill out a sheet that our partners have to turn in as proof that we met and talked with each other.
After that, Carly, Jana and I went out to one of the restaurants Jana and I were familiar with from the last trip and ordered some good food :D We then returned to the dorm, studied a little, and went to bed. My internal body clock is slowly shifting to normal sleeping/waking time, but I’m still getting sleepy around 9-ishpm and getting up around 5:30-ish a.m. :/
We had our language classes today which was comparatively easier than last time. I didn’t enjoy the adrenaline rush I got every time a random five characters were picked out for us to write on the board (we learned average 20 a day for the first two weeks). The teacher I have is really nice and caters to our pace of learning. She’s good at giving examples and repeating things in Chinese so that we understand it. The dictations are every other day (manageable, I must say). We only learned the first 8 of the lesson, the majority of which I’ve learned already, and we’re going to be tested on a random five.
After that, we had a little over an hour before we met our language partners. My partner is 杨霓。I asked her if we could stay in my dorm room because we needed the internet guy to come up and set up our internet and at least one person had to be in the room. It felt really awkward at first because I really didn’t know what to ask her and we sitting in such close quarters. She kept speaking a lot in Chinese, which is good, but she’d go at a native speaker’s speed and I wouldn’t be able to understand anything L
Dr. Meng set up a new system where after we’re done with our situational Chinese with the partners, we (the American students) have to fill out a sheet that our partners have to turn in as proof that we met and talked with each other.
After that, Carly, Jana and I went out to one of the restaurants Jana and I were familiar with from the last trip and ordered some good food :D We then returned to the dorm, studied a little, and went to bed. My internal body clock is slowly shifting to normal sleeping/waking time, but I’m still getting sleepy around 9-ishpm and getting up around 5:30-ish a.m. :/
The second-ish day :O
6/10/2010
Up at 4:30, blah. I’d almost forgotten about the Beijing Standard Time :P We were both up around that time so we decided to get ready for the day. It’s rainy so far (as to be expected…). Our placement test is today, as well as a trip to Yuyuan Garden.
Around 7-ish, Carly walked around campus and I showed her Carrefour (sort of like a mini super center Target/Walmart). She loved it (as I still do) but I hadn’t gotten to exchange my money yet and she only had her debit card and wasn’t sure if she could use it there. I really want to do a bit of research on food in China (it’s the closet nutritionist in me talking…). We saw an almost-fight over some yang mei berries, eh heh. We think a woman dropped her bunch of berries and there was some angry yelling. People were crowded around the bin that held the fruit. It’s pretty popular, I guess. We decided we’d return once we figured out exactly all we needed and had money. Ah, and we saw some pretty funny Engrish shirts >:D
Next was the placement test and following campus tour.
I placed in the advanced level :p They switched it up a bit from last time. We went two at a time into a separate room that had two teachers. I introduced myself and the teacher asked me how many years I’d been taking Chinese. I answered 两年，two years and she asked me if I could read any characters. I answered yes so she had me read out a sentence (it was a really simple sentence in my opinion). There was only one character I didn’t know. She placed me in the second level :P
After that we took a quick campus tour (the layout of which I already knew…) and headed back to the dorms to eat something. Around 1:30 we left for Yuyuan Garden. It was pretty crowded as usual and not much had changed since the last time I was there (save for a few advertisements about the Expo).
We returned to campus around 5-ish and unwound in our dorms for a bit. Close to 6, Carly and I headed to a 麻辣汤 place I wanted to show her. I couldn’t find the original one I had in mind (with the kitten). In fact, that side of the street’s restaurants got a bit of a facelift (essentially for the Shanghai Expo…everybody’s got to took pretty). There were some restaurants I couldn’t recognize because they changed so dramatically. The one Christa and I frequented with the kitten (Fancy Buddha, was it? ;D ) is either still there and looks completely different, or they got replaced with another restaurant. I haven’t gotten a chance to really stop and explore it yet. I’ve seen one or two restaurants that have cushioned benches and nicely tiled floors (a lot of dark and grey schemes).
Carly and I befriended these two Chinese students who were studying English. We got to talk a little and exchange information about our cultures. We got on the topic of boyfriends and we asked them what they thought of the ideal husband (or what the traits of an ideal husband should be). They insisted on dating/marrying an American man because they “tend to be wealthier” and, in their opinion, take better care of their wives than Chinese men do. They definitely wanted a guy who could financially support them. I taught them the phrase “trophy wife”, eh heh. Carly asked them why having a husband specifically *with money* was so important. One girl explained that working was their life and that the goal of working was to get as high an income as possible (not in a ‘so I can afford a Benz‘ manner) in order to make names for themselves and get at least a living style of basic comfort.
So of course I ask them “Have you ever heard of Georgia Tech?” *insert laughter from the Georgians* And Carly added on Southern Polytechnic ;D I told them a lot of the guys fit the mold they described. We also told them there’s a high Asian population at Tech, so there are guys who are used to being around (or prefer) Asian girls.
One of the girls (Jenny, methinks) mentioned she wanted a man who was at least 40 years old (I think she was 29) which isn’t too entirely much of an age gap (I’m keeping Celine Dion and Mariah Carey in mind, here…). She explained that an older man knows how to treat a woman better and is more established in life (career wise and stuffs). This is about the time we threw in Tech and Southern Poly., haha.
I dunno, from what I’m familiar with (as decidedly limited as that may be), you have ‘traditional minded’ men in some cultures who believe a woman’s place is in the house with the kids, etc. I’m not saying this in a man-hater tone-that’s really how it was back in the day and even now in some cultures. This, I think, is where they get the “an American man will treat me better than a Chinese man.” You’ve also got a lot of Western influence on Chinese women of American women who have all these rights and can do all of these things while Chinese woman are so limited.
On the flip side, some Chinese (and Japanese, while I’m at it) women are taught to be ‘dainty little flowers’, if you will. Speak when you’re spoken to and do it quietly, accept whatever the male kin say and do, etc. The Western influence, I believe, has made Chinese women want more respect like their western counterparts *theoretically* receive.
I dunno, I promise I have more coherent thoughts on this. I just need the subject to roll around in my head a bit more. More at 6!
Up at 4:30, blah. I’d almost forgotten about the Beijing Standard Time :P We were both up around that time so we decided to get ready for the day. It’s rainy so far (as to be expected…). Our placement test is today, as well as a trip to Yuyuan Garden.
Around 7-ish, Carly walked around campus and I showed her Carrefour (sort of like a mini super center Target/Walmart). She loved it (as I still do) but I hadn’t gotten to exchange my money yet and she only had her debit card and wasn’t sure if she could use it there. I really want to do a bit of research on food in China (it’s the closet nutritionist in me talking…). We saw an almost-fight over some yang mei berries, eh heh. We think a woman dropped her bunch of berries and there was some angry yelling. People were crowded around the bin that held the fruit. It’s pretty popular, I guess. We decided we’d return once we figured out exactly all we needed and had money. Ah, and we saw some pretty funny Engrish shirts >:D
Next was the placement test and following campus tour.
I placed in the advanced level :p They switched it up a bit from last time. We went two at a time into a separate room that had two teachers. I introduced myself and the teacher asked me how many years I’d been taking Chinese. I answered 两年，two years and she asked me if I could read any characters. I answered yes so she had me read out a sentence (it was a really simple sentence in my opinion). There was only one character I didn’t know. She placed me in the second level :P
After that we took a quick campus tour (the layout of which I already knew…) and headed back to the dorms to eat something. Around 1:30 we left for Yuyuan Garden. It was pretty crowded as usual and not much had changed since the last time I was there (save for a few advertisements about the Expo).
We returned to campus around 5-ish and unwound in our dorms for a bit. Close to 6, Carly and I headed to a 麻辣汤 place I wanted to show her. I couldn’t find the original one I had in mind (with the kitten). In fact, that side of the street’s restaurants got a bit of a facelift (essentially for the Shanghai Expo…everybody’s got to took pretty). There were some restaurants I couldn’t recognize because they changed so dramatically. The one Christa and I frequented with the kitten (Fancy Buddha, was it? ;D ) is either still there and looks completely different, or they got replaced with another restaurant. I haven’t gotten a chance to really stop and explore it yet. I’ve seen one or two restaurants that have cushioned benches and nicely tiled floors (a lot of dark and grey schemes).
Carly and I befriended these two Chinese students who were studying English. We got to talk a little and exchange information about our cultures. We got on the topic of boyfriends and we asked them what they thought of the ideal husband (or what the traits of an ideal husband should be). They insisted on dating/marrying an American man because they “tend to be wealthier” and, in their opinion, take better care of their wives than Chinese men do. They definitely wanted a guy who could financially support them. I taught them the phrase “trophy wife”, eh heh. Carly asked them why having a husband specifically *with money* was so important. One girl explained that working was their life and that the goal of working was to get as high an income as possible (not in a ‘so I can afford a Benz‘ manner) in order to make names for themselves and get at least a living style of basic comfort.
So of course I ask them “Have you ever heard of Georgia Tech?” *insert laughter from the Georgians* And Carly added on Southern Polytechnic ;D I told them a lot of the guys fit the mold they described. We also told them there’s a high Asian population at Tech, so there are guys who are used to being around (or prefer) Asian girls.
One of the girls (Jenny, methinks) mentioned she wanted a man who was at least 40 years old (I think she was 29) which isn’t too entirely much of an age gap (I’m keeping Celine Dion and Mariah Carey in mind, here…). She explained that an older man knows how to treat a woman better and is more established in life (career wise and stuffs). This is about the time we threw in Tech and Southern Poly., haha.
I dunno, from what I’m familiar with (as decidedly limited as that may be), you have ‘traditional minded’ men in some cultures who believe a woman’s place is in the house with the kids, etc. I’m not saying this in a man-hater tone-that’s really how it was back in the day and even now in some cultures. This, I think, is where they get the “an American man will treat me better than a Chinese man.” You’ve also got a lot of Western influence on Chinese women of American women who have all these rights and can do all of these things while Chinese woman are so limited.
On the flip side, some Chinese (and Japanese, while I’m at it) women are taught to be ‘dainty little flowers’, if you will. Speak when you’re spoken to and do it quietly, accept whatever the male kin say and do, etc. The Western influence, I believe, has made Chinese women want more respect like their western counterparts *theoretically* receive.
I dunno, I promise I have more coherent thoughts on this. I just need the subject to roll around in my head a bit more. More at 6!
Ai yi yi...
Hey guys, sorry for the delay. China likes to have everything BLOCKED, so I had a bit of difficulty getting sites up and running. I have no idea why Google isn't blocked, but sites linked with Google are....ARGHA. Anynoodles, I'm going to include the date that things actually happened in each blog. I had effort in mind to keep the blog up, but censorship got in the way :P And no, I haven't forgotten about that food blog :D Carrefour and street food give me the reason to live :D
6/8-6/9/2010
I’m in a plane as I type this :O Currently flying over Canada. I almost stayed up the entire night…sort of planned to, and then I started to feel really tired. Not sleepy tired, but exhausted tired. I finally went to bed around 2am (I really should have stayed up because I needed to be up by 4:30am). I was really regretting staying up so late when I had to get up. My bed is so comfortable :O I had to say goodbye to it for five weeks with a promise of my return.
I fell asleep on the way to the airport (I knew this would happen) but I feel kind of bad that I didn’t get in a last minute conversation with my dad. We ended up getting to the airport an hour early (Dr. Meng wanted us to meet at 8:30am). I went ahead and checked in and waited for them, then realized I didn’t have Dr. Meng’s number with me so I had to wait for Jana to call L I’m really mad at myself for that since I know they waited on me, thinking I was late. I could have sworn I brought that sheet of paper :/
I talked to some of the group members a little bit when they arrived and managed to calm some *rightfully so* anxious nerves. I also wrote in the journal I started during my last trip (it’s nice to not write in it out of obligation or a grade, a-fufufu)
We flew from Hartsfield to Detroit with no delay. We had a little over a two hour layover so Whitney and I wondered around. They had this cool overhead train inside the airport (it was a mini train). That’s about the only thing that set it apart from other airports I’ve seen, eh heh. We eventually rode it to make it to our terminal on time and we stood next to these two boys speaking Japanese to each other. Whitney asks them something in Japanese and the older boy snaps his head to her and replies “Woah, that is so creepy.” We sort of laughed it off. I couldn’t tell if that was the decidedly ‘introverted’ nature of Japanese culture hard driven into them for millennia or the ‘American’s don’t have any culture and only speak/understand English’.
We boarded the flight to Shanghai without much delay (thank goodness) and I even managed to catch some precious moments of sleep :D Now let’s see if I can achieve that on the way back to the States :O
There’s been a major technological update since the last time I’ve flown internationally (last year…). We had t.v. sets in the seats in front of us before, but now they’re touch screen with movies/music/t.v./games. I also noticed the major facelift in the Delta check-in at Hartsfield. I remember back in the day *old lady voice* when there was no kiosk. No self check-in. No online check in or print out your ticket ahead of time. Everything was done manually by the airport staff by waiting in ungodly long lines. Now it’s “scan this, print it, check your luggage, okay bye.”
And does anyone besides me remember the in flight meal on DOMESTIC flights? The food was nothing to brag about, but at least they fed you.
Anyway, not the point.
I’m ready for this flight to be over L At least we’re flying over pretty almost Alaskan mountains but they’re not because we’re still in Canada. This time I can take pictures of them because I’m not stupid like last time and pack my camera away in my check-in luggage *learns from her mistakes*. I must say, being able to see the ground on a relatively clear day is pretty cool. In my travel experience, the sky is all “HEY, I’M GOING TO BE CLOUDY AND FOGGY.” I think it would be cool to take helicopter rides over the mountains of China.
Hey, I grew up on the Piedmont Plains of Georgia. Any type of landform other than a plain excites me :P.
It’s a bit of a drawback that it’s continuously daylight. That’s what I get for traveling into the future (wah wah waaaah….).
Nine hours and forty minutes left D: Miso restless.
The flight *finally* ended :/ I got some awesome pictures of Western Canada and Alaska :D And a little of the southern islands of Japan. We left the airport close to 8pm (China time) and headed to the dorms.
I paired up with Carly to be roommates with. She’s really nice and fun to be around. I was excited to show her around the campus and city ( I feel like some old fogy…haha). She’s doing this interesting research project based on the differences and similarities between Chinese students in America and Chinese students in China according to body image (what is considered beautiful, etc).
After talking a bit (and me taking a much needed shower) we went to bed around 11-ish. I predicted I was going to be up around 5am. I was a little off. I was up at 4:30 /:O
6/8-6/9/2010
I’m in a plane as I type this :O Currently flying over Canada. I almost stayed up the entire night…sort of planned to, and then I started to feel really tired. Not sleepy tired, but exhausted tired. I finally went to bed around 2am (I really should have stayed up because I needed to be up by 4:30am). I was really regretting staying up so late when I had to get up. My bed is so comfortable :O I had to say goodbye to it for five weeks with a promise of my return.
I fell asleep on the way to the airport (I knew this would happen) but I feel kind of bad that I didn’t get in a last minute conversation with my dad. We ended up getting to the airport an hour early (Dr. Meng wanted us to meet at 8:30am). I went ahead and checked in and waited for them, then realized I didn’t have Dr. Meng’s number with me so I had to wait for Jana to call L I’m really mad at myself for that since I know they waited on me, thinking I was late. I could have sworn I brought that sheet of paper :/
I talked to some of the group members a little bit when they arrived and managed to calm some *rightfully so* anxious nerves. I also wrote in the journal I started during my last trip (it’s nice to not write in it out of obligation or a grade, a-fufufu)
We flew from Hartsfield to Detroit with no delay. We had a little over a two hour layover so Whitney and I wondered around. They had this cool overhead train inside the airport (it was a mini train). That’s about the only thing that set it apart from other airports I’ve seen, eh heh. We eventually rode it to make it to our terminal on time and we stood next to these two boys speaking Japanese to each other. Whitney asks them something in Japanese and the older boy snaps his head to her and replies “Woah, that is so creepy.” We sort of laughed it off. I couldn’t tell if that was the decidedly ‘introverted’ nature of Japanese culture hard driven into them for millennia or the ‘American’s don’t have any culture and only speak/understand English’.
We boarded the flight to Shanghai without much delay (thank goodness) and I even managed to catch some precious moments of sleep :D Now let’s see if I can achieve that on the way back to the States :O
There’s been a major technological update since the last time I’ve flown internationally (last year…). We had t.v. sets in the seats in front of us before, but now they’re touch screen with movies/music/t.v./games. I also noticed the major facelift in the Delta check-in at Hartsfield. I remember back in the day *old lady voice* when there was no kiosk. No self check-in. No online check in or print out your ticket ahead of time. Everything was done manually by the airport staff by waiting in ungodly long lines. Now it’s “scan this, print it, check your luggage, okay bye.”
And does anyone besides me remember the in flight meal on DOMESTIC flights? The food was nothing to brag about, but at least they fed you.
Anyway, not the point.
I’m ready for this flight to be over L At least we’re flying over pretty almost Alaskan mountains but they’re not because we’re still in Canada. This time I can take pictures of them because I’m not stupid like last time and pack my camera away in my check-in luggage *learns from her mistakes*. I must say, being able to see the ground on a relatively clear day is pretty cool. In my travel experience, the sky is all “HEY, I’M GOING TO BE CLOUDY AND FOGGY.” I think it would be cool to take helicopter rides over the mountains of China.
Hey, I grew up on the Piedmont Plains of Georgia. Any type of landform other than a plain excites me :P.
It’s a bit of a drawback that it’s continuously daylight. That’s what I get for traveling into the future (wah wah waaaah….).
Nine hours and forty minutes left D: Miso restless.
The flight *finally* ended :/ I got some awesome pictures of Western Canada and Alaska :D And a little of the southern islands of Japan. We left the airport close to 8pm (China time) and headed to the dorms.
I paired up with Carly to be roommates with. She’s really nice and fun to be around. I was excited to show her around the campus and city ( I feel like some old fogy…haha). She’s doing this interesting research project based on the differences and similarities between Chinese students in America and Chinese students in China according to body image (what is considered beautiful, etc).
After talking a bit (and me taking a much needed shower) we went to bed around 11-ish. I predicted I was going to be up around 5am. I was a little off. I was up at 4:30 /:O
Monday, June 7, 2010
一天
Only a few hours more and all I can think of is how much I'm probably not going to sleep on the plane and the dreadfully hot weather :O Haha, I bet there will be a cold snap. If there are 80F days in December in the States, I can hope for at least one cold day in the summer of 上海 Shanghai.
I didn't really want to leave the house today, but I went out and bought two new shirts (one Pac Man and some tank top for really cheap) and a new pair of shorts.
As a brief aside: I noticed a lot of video game graphic tees in the Juniors section. At first I thought "Hey, that's cool. Girls finally have respectable shirts without a cat, Tinkerbell, or 'I'm a Brat/ I'm a Princess' on it. And then I realized "Oh, gaming tees are becoming a fad and half the people that wear them probably can't name the character that's on their shirt."
Ah well!
I have to be up by 4:30 this morning to leave by 5am, and I'm considering not sleeping at all. I'm not entirely doing this so I'll be nice and sleepy on the plane (with Benadryl as my aid) but I dislike parting with my bed for long periods of time, haha. Get over it, I know. It won't kill me to be dramatic every once and a while :P Nyah.
For now, I will eat some homemade mac n' cheese, Tilapia, and broccoli. Yeah, I had to go southern with at least one of them :P
I didn't really want to leave the house today, but I went out and bought two new shirts (one Pac Man and some tank top for really cheap) and a new pair of shorts.
As a brief aside: I noticed a lot of video game graphic tees in the Juniors section. At first I thought "Hey, that's cool. Girls finally have respectable shirts without a cat, Tinkerbell, or 'I'm a Brat/ I'm a Princess' on it. And then I realized "Oh, gaming tees are becoming a fad and half the people that wear them probably can't name the character that's on their shirt."
Ah well!
I have to be up by 4:30 this morning to leave by 5am, and I'm considering not sleeping at all. I'm not entirely doing this so I'll be nice and sleepy on the plane (with Benadryl as my aid) but I dislike parting with my bed for long periods of time, haha. Get over it, I know. It won't kill me to be dramatic every once and a while :P Nyah.
For now, I will eat some homemade mac n' cheese, Tilapia, and broccoli. Yeah, I had to go southern with at least one of them :P
Saturday, June 5, 2010
哈哈哈。。。
I will be arriving back in Hartsfield at 2:54pm on July 12. Not at night. This gives me the will to go on. And I get a window seat (on the way over there).
My shopping for the trip will be officially done tomorrow. I'm waiting for the 6th for my $25 cashback thing at Sports Authority so I can get some free running tops/shorts (granted I keep the total under $25...).
I do enjoy exercising :D
再见
Edit: I'm also stopping by two new airports (new to me, anywho), Detroit and Seattle. I have half a mind to jump a plane to S.F. :P
I've also failed at not making Chinese food in my last few days here :/
My shopping for the trip will be officially done tomorrow. I'm waiting for the 6th for my $25 cashback thing at Sports Authority so I can get some free running tops/shorts (granted I keep the total under $25...).
I do enjoy exercising :D
再见
Edit: I'm also stopping by two new airports (new to me, anywho), Detroit and Seattle. I have half a mind to jump a plane to S.F. :P
I've also failed at not making Chinese food in my last few days here :/
留学！！！！
Well, here I am all over again. Another trip to China in...three days? Yes. I will admit though, I've thoroughly enjoyed my time at home (I had more than a week of downtime this time around). Now that I know the basic layout of the city (Shanghai) and such, I can do a bit more in depth exploring.
I may still do a separate blog for food. We're returning to the Night Market in Beijing and I'm pretty excited. What's not to be excited about is that blasted thirteen hour flight where I may or may not fall asleep. I'm bringing a Benedryl (heh, did that last time and only got woozy), but I'm rather desperate to level out my internal clock.
We're flying Delta which means Skymiles~ ~ ~ after the punks stripped me of my 47,000-something miles because there was no "activity" on my end. I had a feeling they would do that after me not flying on their airlines for a year or two, but I never got a notice :P I am still decidedly faithful to them. Bah, loyal capricorn I am.
I'm bringing a more competent camera with me, so expect many pictures of the *drum roll* Shanghai 2010 Expo~. I've read up on it a little and people (tourists) are mentioning 3-4 hour waits to enter some of the pavilions. We only have one day designated for the Expo (I could always go again apart from the group) but I'd rather go with other people for peace of mind. Anywho, from what people have said, the Expo sounds like an all-day trip (literally) because there's so much to see. I do want to go into the Japan pavilion to see if they have a DDR machine (yuk yuk yuk). No, seriously.
And of course, the Engrish :D
All that's left now is some packing and more mental preparation for the blinding heat and humidity. Darn you, monsoon season. I guess the hot weather lovers have the advantage in this scenario :P My love of the cold will not change! I can't help it if I like climate that matches my personality, a-fu fu fu....
And now, a cute picture:
I may still do a separate blog for food. We're returning to the Night Market in Beijing and I'm pretty excited. What's not to be excited about is that blasted thirteen hour flight where I may or may not fall asleep. I'm bringing a Benedryl (heh, did that last time and only got woozy), but I'm rather desperate to level out my internal clock.
We're flying Delta which means Skymiles~ ~ ~ after the punks stripped me of my 47,000-something miles because there was no "activity" on my end. I had a feeling they would do that after me not flying on their airlines for a year or two, but I never got a notice :P I am still decidedly faithful to them. Bah, loyal capricorn I am.
I'm bringing a more competent camera with me, so expect many pictures of the *drum roll* Shanghai 2010 Expo~. I've read up on it a little and people (tourists) are mentioning 3-4 hour waits to enter some of the pavilions. We only have one day designated for the Expo (I could always go again apart from the group) but I'd rather go with other people for peace of mind. Anywho, from what people have said, the Expo sounds like an all-day trip (literally) because there's so much to see. I do want to go into the Japan pavilion to see if they have a DDR machine (yuk yuk yuk). No, seriously.
And of course, the Engrish :D
All that's left now is some packing and more mental preparation for the blinding heat and humidity. Darn you, monsoon season. I guess the hot weather lovers have the advantage in this scenario :P My love of the cold will not change! I can't help it if I like climate that matches my personality, a-fu fu fu....
And now, a cute picture:
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