Don't Trust the Art Students

This weekend our program took us all to the Forbidden City. Once inside the city some local chinese got the attention of our group and told us they were from the Beijing Art School and were holding an exhibit. My friends and I went along with the large group from our school to check it out. Once inside, Igor (one of my friends here) commented on what kind of art exhibit tries to sell all of their works of art. I also found this strange but I guess quite a few of the students didn't. After this realization, Igor and I decided to bail and retreat into the shade to wait for the rest of our friends to leave the "exhibit." One of our friends ended up buying a scroll painting for quite hefty price. They told her that all of the art in the "exhibit" was original and done by either students or professors at the school. The painting included 2 pandas that looked like a 4 year old had drawn. It got quite a few laughs out of us at the time but it was even funnier when we discovered the exact same paintings later on at the Pearl Market--so much for the supposed original work of art at the exhibit. Other students got ripped off even worse and paid as much as $100 US for these paintings. So if you ever go to the Forbidden City, remember, don't trust the art students...

InterestingThings in China part 1

Deodorant is virtually nonexistent -- my roommate had to prepurchase it at the store and then someone went in the back and retrieved a tiny stick.

Pirating is socially acceptable and the viewpoint is why would you pay for it if you can acquire it for free. For example, in the US equivalent of Wal-Mart people were watching a stolen recording of the Expendables like it was no big deal and there was no risk of punishment.

Couples often wear matching shirts or clothes to signify that they are dating.

All of the cellphones have preprogrammed ringbacks on them that change every time you call someone instead of hearing the usual ringing sound.

I'll add some more when I think of them but I wanted to get a list started

First Full Week Done

The first week is officially over. All of my classes went pretty well. I'm enjoying my language class a lot and its much nicer to be able to learn the language in a less stressful environment. The content classes all seem interesting and I still can't tell how difficult they are actually going to be.

Tomorrow we have our first excursion with our program to the Forbidden City. Since I've visited there before I think its going to be interesting to see if its changed at all. I'm also panning on looking for a night market to go to after our excursion. I have a lot of things on my list I still need to get like a dvd player, a clothes rack, and more clothes in general.

The food here all looks good but I haven't found much I like so far. My stomach has definitely shrunk since I've been here and it takes much less food to make me full. It's nice that I'm starting to adjust to it though. We still haven't figured out how to do laundry--right now we're just hand washing things and hanging them up to dry. We're going to try to figure out a better system over the weekend.

Soccer

We found endless pickup games of Soccer today. The Chinese play very differently than the game I'm use to and focus heavily on making short passes, it's a nice change. It's extremely easy to go to the field and play whenever you want to. In the US I can never find any games so I plan on playing here almost daily.

We went to Xidan yesterday, it was a very cool place but we only had a few hours to spend there. I plan to go back in the next week or so and explore more. It was interesting to see the mixture of a real western like mall next to a market mall. The pollution here is absolutely terrible--at night in the air all around you is extremely hazy and you can easily tell how much pollution there is due to the lights. We're going to Wodaoku tonight--its a foreigner friendly place and it will be interesting to see how different it is from Xidan. Still working on pictures--it's hard to remember to take pictures everywhere but I'm starting to get into the habit.

End of Orientation

Today was our last day of orientation. It consisted mainly of just picking up our books and getting ready for classes to start tomorrow. I also had to go get some more clothes since I only packed 3 tshirts. My roommates and I went to Carrefour to get clothes and school supplies. It's a huge supermarket located inside a giant shopping plaza. I bought notebooks, pens, pencils, highlighters, shampoo, body wash, face wash, 3 collared shirts, 1 tshirt, some chinese dessert bread, and a soccer ball for a total of $42 us dollars. We can already tell it is going to be hard to readjust to regular prices when we get back to the US.

I'm still trying to adjust to the time change here and can't stay awake past 1030 but I wanted to write a short update before I fell asleep. Once I adjust and can keep awake later I will post more detailed logs with some pictures and be better at updating more frequently.

Orientation day 1

My first full day in Beijing was focused around how much Mandorin I have forgotten. We had our language placement exams and I couldn't recall a lick of Chinese. Stopping for a year after taking it truly made me forget the language. I expect relearning the language will come quickly though since you are constantly being bombarded by it. Peking University is absolutely enormous--it's like our own private part of Beijing.

My roommate and I wondered out into the city this afternoon--it is astonishing how much it has grown even since the last time i was here 2 years ago. We walked through the local stores and you could tell people were wondering why we were in there. I'd occasionally try to speak the little Chinese I can recall to the workers but then they think I know more than I actually do and would instantly start speaking extremely fast making it impossible to communicate. I think the speed of the language is going to be the hardest part about trying to use it while I'm here.

Crossing traffic in the city is insane! Imagine trying to cross the street in New York or Chicago but add as much bike traffic as there is car traffic and then couple that with the fact that many of the drivers are recently from rural parts of China and have no regard to common traffic laws. It's intense and makes you feel like the frog in frogger-- you just have to go for it when you get an opening and cross little by little haha

I aim to start using my camera here once I get situated and will post pictures when I can.