A Long Week

Well, the weekend has passed well for me here. It was an intense week of classes. With my schedule fully worked out it looks like I have International Business classes for about 8 hours each week and then intensive language courses for 17 hours. The classes are well mixed so the week seems to go by quickly. Honestly the class schedule has come as a bit of a surprise. Originally I was only expecting half of my present class load, but on a different level I am thankful to be involved in such an intensive language program. It really makes me notice that I have HUGE room for improvement.

The Mandarin language classes are arranged in a very nice way. Instead of going through one thick textbook with one teacher, our classes are differentiated into their topical learning styles. Thus I am taking: Speaking. Listening, Grammar, Reading, and Test Prep. All of these courses have different teachers so even though we are in class most of the day. It doesn't really seem too troublesome. What is even more fun is the makeup of the student population. So like most language learning schools this department is comprised of a wide variety of international students. Most of my classmates are from Russia, Kazakhstan, Korea, and Mexico, with a little Singapore and Filipino mixed in. Needless to say that of all things Mandarin is the common language between us so it means we have to push ourselves to speak and listen to one another.

My business classes are an interesting thing all on their own. They are all internationally based courses that are taught in english. The coursework is very comprehensive and for the most part on par with the classes stateside. However, I have noticed that while all the textbooks are in English, a significant portion of some classes are in Mandarin. On the one hand it makes sense, because the teacher needs to help out the Chinese-born students with less english experience. On the other hand, there is only so much I can decifer about International Trade Practices in Mandarin...haha. Oh well, I think it will just be a challenge and for the most part-- I like it. I think I'll do just fine... I hope.

On a technical note. There appears to be chronic problem with my internet connection and loading pics. So it looks like you will have to wait a bit to see all the fun stuff. In the meantime may I interest you in a witty comment or a pun?

Pictures-a-plenty

I woke up to a nice blanket of snow. Taken from my apartment Window. 

Remember that street food I was telling you about. This is some of the best of it!!! Egg Crepes 

The main building on campus

The classic Tian-an-men square. It was really cold and quite far to walk to. 

It was so cold in fact that the rivers froze over. Yes, a whole river.

Lol!!

Now THIS is a street lamp.

I think I should make a point here. Take a look at this sky. The sky is blue.
That might seem like a no brainer, but I am in Beijing and the sky is blue.
I couldn't believe it (It's b/c of the snow)

Hump Day

So the first week has been passing by and there a quite  number of things going on.

Primarily, I am pretty much finished settling in. I know where the best place is to get groceries and where I can find some great street food. The food on campus is really good and really cheap. Keep in mind that this statement is coming from me. I’m kind of a freak when it comes to trying new food, so you might not like some of this stuff so well.  It is definitely all Chinese and all pretty, well, unhealthy. Most of it is rice of some sort and different spiced meats and such. That is fine every once and a while, but I can tell that eating all of that all the time might not be the best. So yeah, I should probably search for some of the more green options in food.

Oh, and on the subject of food and its close relatives. I have found what I have been looking for. COFFEE. Now of course they have plenty of coffee over here. There are a number of coffee shops; but what surprises me about these shops in China (a traditionally cheap country) is that the coffee is even more expensive over here. It is sold at a slight premium to our prices back in the states. I suppose that is due to the rising middle class and their desire to seem as American or refined as possible. So, while I am spending a whopping $1.00 on lunch every day, I would end up tripling that for a cup’o’joe. Somehow that just doesn’t sit right with me. So this process has led me on a search of Coffee beans to use in a French press in my apartment. And what do you know NOBODY has them. All the supermarkets sell is the little premade powdered coffee flavored stuffs. I’m not a terrible coffee snob, but premade coffee in little packets should be a federal offense. Anyway I stopped by the olefaithful Starbucks and got me some Esspresso Roast, and I am set. It may not seem like much, but –man- a cup’o’joe and some toast in the morning is just the thing for this guy!

My mornings-ummm!

I think you might be interested to know that things in my classes at the University are interesting to say the least. We (the roommate and I) are the pioneers (guinea pigs?) for this new program from State. It is a really great program set up, but between you and me and the rest of the internet, it has been pretty frustrating getting all of my information for classes. In short not too far from a goat rope. But hey that is what I signed up for and I’ll keep you up to date on all the crazies going on.

Oh and I thought some of you might like to know that I found a group of believers over here for Sunday mornings. The meeting place is on the other side of Beijing and it is strictly for passport holders (ie, foreign visitors), but it is really neat. This Sunday I will be going there again and I will be sure to get some more pics for ya.

BICF.org

Snow!!!

 So this past Saturday was really neat because we woke up to a good deal of snow. I had heard that it might rain a bit the night before but I really didn't consider this much snow. It ended up being about 3 inches and it really made everything seems picturesque. Plus, living in this kind of city the most important thing snow does for us is cleaning up the air. All of that air pollution attaches itself to the snow as it falls and as I now write the air is unusually clear and pretty fresh.

 So the roomate and I had a day of it. It was a saturday so we really didn't have anything to do. As all such days begin, we got breakfast. This fancy little setup is the food stand right outside of the apartment. They sell street food for cheap. We usually get an egg crept which is a little spicy and very delicious. They sell for about 3.5 yuan or 50 cents.

 This official-looking building is the welcoming center to campus, I think. Either way our campus is pretty big and there are a number of buildings that look just like this. So yeah I've gotten lost once or twice.

 And this is Tian'an'men square at the heart of Beijing. We decided on a whim to go check it out.  It took  about  45 minutes  by subway ride and then a pretty long walk to get there, but I think it was worth it. However, we didn't go inside because it was really really cold and we wanted to get back in the subway as soon as possible.

 Fancy street lamp.

Overall, it was a nice Saturday and I got back to the apartment in time to crash for my second round of jetlag.

Running Errands

 So this past Friday a lot of stuff went down. Charlie my roommate from MSU came into town around 10:00am and it seems like we were going non-stop from then on. We had a number of things to do and it would have been impossible / a huge pain to do them if we didn’t have help from one of the Faculty here.

Once Charlie got settled in we headed over to the police station to register our residency on campus. Technically it should be done within the first twenty-four hours but they let it slide. However, everyone must register and it seemed a pretty complex process with the shuffling of passports and all. But now that I think about it it wasn’t really all that intimidating. But maybe that was because I’m the tall American or whatever.

**side note: while it may seem  that stereotypes hold true over here with the small Asian caricature and all, in reality I have seen quite a number of tall Chinese guys. Kudos to them.  

However, it turns out that I was much more intimidated by next errand. We had to get cell phones and it turned into quite a trip. I know that back in the states trying to get a phone plan and such is quite a hassle, but over here I think the whole event left my head spinning a little. The cell phone store was right on campus but afterwards even our Chinese faculty member told us that she was confused with all the phone options and plans. It didn’t help that the cellphone attendant was literally the fastest talker I have ever encountered. But hey it was kinda fun and I chuckled a little bit afterward. 

It turned out that I had to get a cell phone from another carrier or whatever so this was the fancy display shop with a ton of fancy Asian phones. Oh and this is the cool graduate student who took me there. He wants to go to Los Angeles to see the Lakers play. Just thought you should know.

Funny Anecdote of the Day: In all of the craziness of the cell phone purchasing I was kind of on edge wondering what else could go wrong. Well it turns out that later that night I had a strange message in Mandarin on my phone. I thought it was about my phone plan being invalid or something terrible like that. Well, after a solid 30 minutes of translating this text message it turns out that they were just trying to sell me ring tones…. haha. 

Arrival

Hi from Beijing. Currently I am sitting in my apartment enjoying some pretty interesting Chinese television. Everything has gone well in getting here even though there were a few parts that I could have honestly done without.

Right, so as I said in my last post. I flew from New Orleans to LAX , from there to Korea, then from there to Beijing. Flying from NO was no big deal, but may I take a moment and say that LAX is a terrible airport! The terminals are not intuitive and you always have to go outside to change flights, which means going back through security. It didn’t help that the International terminal was not intuitively named like say a number 4 or 5, but was named after some random guy. Anyway, once I got on the plane to Korea everything went very well. I flew Asiana air which is always a nice airline. The flight was a little under 14 hours and seemed to go by pretty quickly. Upon my arrival in Korea, I made the quick switch to the Beijing flight, and that was that. May I also take a moment to say that as opposed to the LAX airport, the design of both the Korean and Beijing airports are incredibly simple and useful. Neither was a hassle. It didn’t even matter that I couldn’t fully read Chinese, and I certainly can’t read Korean.

It is presently Thursday here in China and I am kind of amazed by that fact. I think in total my Wednesday lasted somewhere around 8 or 10 hours. I wasn’t too tired when I got off the plane in Beijing and the taxi ride to the apartment was no problem. I was even able to pull off a couple nice conversations on the way. It was about a 45 minute taxi ride from the airport and it was good to have a look at the city. Plus the cab fare was around 14 bucks, which might sound a little steep but was worth it to not have to deal with the trains while toting around all of my luggage.

A note on Beijing: I will be doing a lot of talking about the city itself, but there is no getting around a couple of key things. One, It is winter in China now and that means that everything is grey. While in the U.S. things may be a nice 75 degrees a times, here it is still down in the 20’s at night. That means that any pictures I take will be pretty unflattering. (well at least until spring). Secondly, Beijing is huge and is in the middle of a bunch of other cities. For all effective purposes and for many other secondary reasons this means that Beijing has smog and air pollution. There is no getting around that either. I will have to take care and dust my apartment often. However, it isn’t so bad so far. I could tell that the air wasn’t really clean today, but it wasn’t unbearable. We’ll have to see how it all turns out.

However, for the time that I have been here things have been going well. A faculty from the school came a showed me my apartment which was nicer than I expected. We have two functional bedrooms , a kitchen, bathroom, and wireless internet. I am pretty well pleased since a lot of things in China are a gamble on a good day. Plus it is right on campus which makes it all pretty convenient.

I will be sure to post pics soon and let everyone know how it looks over here. Until that time I’ll be trying to get some sleep.

I am bound... for Beijing

Hello again. And welcome to Round 2 of my travel blog. This time I am part of the MSU BIT exchange program for the spring 2011 semester. That means that I am going to Beijing, China for the next five months. I will be a fully enrolled student in the business center of BIT or 北京理工大学 (The Beijing Institute of Technology). The Spring semesters in China lasts from early March to early July; that means that I will have a full class-load and a lot of opportunities to meet people.

As of now I am busy packing everything I can think of to get my bags ready for the trip. It wouldn't be so bad if I could have enough foresight to know what I will be needing in June. Even so, I am pretty excited to have the opportunity. It turns out that I am one of the two students going to BIT from MSU. Charlie (the other student from MSU) and I are the first students in this new exchange program. Needless, to say this means that there are bound to be some funny stories on this blog later on. We both know a moderate amount of Mandarin (Chinese), but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So, logistically I leave Tuesday the 22nd and arrive in Beijing on the 24th via Los Angeles, CA and Inchon, South Korea. I am actually looking forward to the flight. It seems I have a thing for trans-oceanic flights where all I have to do is read and watch movies. The flights aren't so bad if you look at them that way I guess. Plus, all the free time will give me plenty of opportunity to think about all the stuff I need to do on my arrival.

I hope you guys are able to tune into this blog once in a while. I'll update as needed, and I'll definitely respond to any comments/requests you guys leave. I look forward to it!