Yesterday wasn’t extremely exciting, so I’ll keep it short. My mom’s cousin picked me up at my place and she treated me to lunch and took me to her place for dinner. Along the way we picked up a really sweet electronic dictionary, but sadly for 2000RMB (waving to money flying out the window). It’s really nice though because it can switch between simplified and traditional Chinese. English, Mandarin, and Cantonese spoken pronunciation, and has 10 languages to Chinese and reverse. I could have gotten a color one for 100 bucks more but the only difference is that it was in color.

I’ve realized that I’ve spent more money on calling cards than I should calling home so I need to watch my minutes. They only sell 100rmb cards and calling home is about 1rmb a minute. And 10 minutes goes by pretty fast…

So far the first week I’ve been in Beijing I’ve spent a total of 1400rmb, so 60rmb on school food, 130 on grocery related stuff, 600 on phone related stuff (140 sim card, 560 on phone cards), and the rest on like miscellaneous stuff like street food, drinks, and my sunglasses. I haven’t even added the tuition, plane ticket, or housing fees cuz I don’t want to make myself cry…

This morning there was someone knocking on our door for a couple minutes and I finally got up and opened and it was someone I didn’t know, and in Chinese he asked me if my roommate was sleeping and Andy came to the door and told me he didn’t know the guy…weird, but both of us were annoyed because it was 7am on a weekend morning..ugh…

Later on, I went out and wandered around some more and found this small mall area with a bunch of clothes and shoes for sale and I bought myself a notebook for writing down words and characters that I see and hear in class but aren’t part of class just to extend my vocab a bit, and a folder for papers and stuff, both were 15rmb. Above the mall was the fitness center I was looking for because since the gym at school had to close because of the Olympics (???) people have to go to this one. It seemed ok but its 1100 rmb for 3 months, so right now I’m trying to decide if I should spend my 160 on working out for the first time since before finals in November or spend it on food which will in turn make me fat…decisions decisions…

Always nice to see a bit of home here

I caught a Trojan on my computer 2 nights ago and couldn’t get rid of it until yesterday morning when I figured I could just do a system restore and get it back to how it was on Wednesday. I got rid of it, but in turn I reset the internet settings and couldn’t get back online through the school server all day yesterday and this morning I finally went to the Cernet office and they got it working for me again.

Yesterday was…interesting….

Woke up at 7:45 not really realizing that results were being posted at 8. I kind of didn’t think that there was actually going to be class but I figured I might as well go on time and find out how badly I did on my proficiency test.

Andy (my roommate) and I left at the same time and split off. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to building 3 for his results. This is my mistake more than his but the building I went to was building 3 but I didn’t know it myself, I just thought it was the international studies building. I ended up testing into Level C, which was pretty much what I was aiming for which was good, but the thing said that my class was in building 3 room 215. So I assumed it wasn't building 3 and walked outside and looked at my map. I walked around and walked into the adjacent building, it was 8:10 so I was sort of in a hurry and I didn’t check the building number even though it crossed my mind. I went into room 211 and the teacher asked me what I wanted and I apologized for being late, but everybody laughed and she said that it was level D but for the full year…eya…

I walked back outside and I had my “WOW I'm an idiot!” moment and ran back being a mere 15 minutes late to class. On the way in Andy was checking his results on the board and I ran by and punched him in the arm cuz at that point in time I was blaming him more than myself for being late.

I felt really weird in my class, definitely not a classroom setting I was used to because there are 14 people in my class. 4 people from Italy, 2 from Moscow, 4 Koreans, 2 Japanese, 1 from England, and me…the ABC…

We got our books and I scanned through them and I seem to have been placed at a good level. I know probably 30% of the vocab and grammar and the rest is either vague review or brand new stuff. It's definitely going to be a challenge nonetheless.

Since it was a full day of class, my schedule was from 8-12 then 2-4. I finally gathered enough courage to face the unruly mob in the cafeteria for lunch. For all meals in the cafeteria you need a RF card that you place on a box like thing on the counter and they deduct from the amount on there. So the way lunch works is that you have a plastic lunch tray like in high school and it has 3 small squares and a large square, meaning you can order up to 3 side dishes and rice. The crazy thing about lunch is that there are no lines and there are about 6 or 7 different stations you can get food. People basically shove each other while trying not to spill and the person that places their card on the register first gets food, it’s a crazy process I know…

The two teachers that I have are pretty good, one of them has been teaching at BLCU since 1979 and reminds me of the old detective guy from The Incredibles but Chinese. He gave us his house and cell phone number in case we need any help or if we want him to join is in Karaoke. The other one is a young looking girl and smiles and laughs at all the random stuff we say in mandarin. So obviously, the guys were bold enough to try to ask her personal questions, like one of the guys from Korea asked her how old she is and if she had a boyfriend, and she laughed got red and said she was more than 20 and he looked excited…- -‘’ Another Ge laoshi I suppose lol.

It was pretty cold and rainy the whole day but I was determined NOT to stay in my dorm the rest of my Friday night. I packed my tripod, grabbed my camera and umbrella and set out trying to find a mall or something where I could snap some pictures.

I learned this the hard way, but if you can avoid it, never walk around Beijing while its raining especially at night, although I do hear that it rarely rains here. This is because all the sidewalks/roads aren’t paved evenly so every few feet there’s a puddle that’s a foot deep. So if vision is impaired, prepare to walk around with soggy shoes.

The entire time I was trying to figure out how to catch a cab in the rain and I saw an older couple across the street but nobody would stop for them so I figured that my luck wouldn’t be any better so I turned around. The busses were even worse because they were even more jam packed than usual and the windows were all foggy so I assumed that it would be hot and humid in there not to mention someone probably jabbing me in the kidneys with their elbows.

At this point I basically had one of those “What the heck am I doing here?!” moments, to be in a country where I am maybe 25% proficient in communicating and know absolutely no one. Lucky for me that didn't last long

I went back to my room to mope about my friday night failure and saw that Nathan’s room was open. The way we met was sort of funny because two days ago I walked into the elevator and a girl asked me in mandarin if I could wait a minute while she holds the door for someone. Nathan walks in and she asks him the same question and he says ok, then turns to me and asks “what did she just ask me?”

Anyways, I walk into his room and met his roommate from Korea. I hang out with them for a while and then go back to my room and the door across from mine opens and I meet my 2nd friend of the night from Germany. He hung out with me for a while in my room and I learned that I should have taken a right where I took a left when I went out earlier and I would have found the subway, tech mart, supermarket, and college hang out places. Somewhat disappointing but definitely a place I’ll have to visit tomorrow afternoon. My new friend from Germany (I can’t remember his name) took me down a couple of doors to a Lost marathon going on. I met Aaron, Stephen, and Lisa. Aaron’s from Alabama, Stephen from Norway, and Lisa from Italy.

Aaron is totally going to be my new best friend here in Beijing. He’s been here since August and his room was full of cheap pirated movies and horribly low priced electronics. I didn’t know these even existed, but he has a 300RMB dvd player with a usb port where you can plug in a flashdrive and play any AVI movie directly from it. He also got a subwoofer and couple of speakers for 120rmb from the place down the street. I wasn’t interested in his Lost marathon but he heard that I had all the episodes of Scrubs on my Ipod so we’re going to have a Scrubs marathon sometime soon.

Taking the proficiency test and other mis-adventures

I made sure today that I walked around and took more pictures of the area to get to know the city better since I'm staying here for the next 3 months.
The past two nights I haven't been getting more than 3-4 hours of sleep, I think its due more to my bed than the remaining jetlag that I have. Its just hard to sleep when you're laying on your side and the surface you're laying on makes you think that maybe the floor would be a better idea.

Placement tests were today, I don't know where I got the info from, before I left home, but I thought that the placement tests were the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi). It was moderately easy, but I think that I would have done a lot better if I had just come out fresh from last semester's Chinese. It was 3 parts, first I was in a room with about 20 people and they gave us a worksheet with several columns on it. There were a total of 120 words which consisted of 2-3 characters, and the objective was to write in the pinyin with the correct tones....eya I haven't really paid attention to tones since the beginning of 2nd yr Chinese.

I went through it twice and ended up filling out about 80% of the words, it was hard for me because I'm used to reading/writing in traditional characters, and I rose my hand to ask if they had a traditional character sheet, they sort of laughed at me and said no. I mean I it was a stupid question seeing I was in China and not Taiwan but I had to ask anyways. Overall this part was ok, I know my letters were right but I'm pretty sure my tones were all way off. I did look around the room before I turned in the worksheet and a large majority of the people had pretty blank pages with maybe 20-30 characters down. I would have done a lot better and would have been more confident if it was in trad. char. but I gotta get used to not having nice teachers like Liu Laoshi around here

People are really trying to push for learning Simplified characters because they say that its a lot easier than traditional. In my opinion, traditional is a lot easier because if you've studied enough, you see patterns and can kind of guess relationships between similar meaning words, where simplified is kind of just taking shortcuts. Everybody is open to their own opinion, but here it doesn't really seem like I have a choice to do it my way haha

The 2nd part of the proficiency test was to read some lines in pinyin and then random characters. This was pretty easy, I didn't find any trouble with it.

The part that made me feel really dumb was the oral part, the teacher asked me really simple questions like introduce myself or what am I doing in china, and I answered her with simple grammar patterns and tripped up on really low level vocab...

The good part was that she said I was definitely not going to be in Level A, but probably in Level B. I was counting on being placed on C or D, but she said that I should wait for the results tomorrow morning and discuss it with them.

The proficiency test was scheduled at 8:30 and I was out of there at 9, so it went fairly quickly. I kind of just wandered around a bit around campus and tried to pay my room fees but my check card didn't work this time.

Lunch was pretty good today. I got a huge bowl of noodles with some tomato and pork sauce smothered all over it, and I finally found my favorite thing to drink while i was in Hong kong, Nestea Ice rush, this lemon flavored ice tea that makes your mouth feel cold. Both the noodles and the bottle of nestea cost 6 rmb so less than a buck, and I couldn't even finish the noodles, I felt bad but they burned my tongue so they got what they deserved...

At 1:30 I decided to go wander around the area looking for good shopping places or something that would keep me busy for the afternoon. I took some pics and found a store that sold glasses, so I walked in to check out their sunglasses selection.

Geeze, ok I don't know if I should consider this harassment or just good customer service, but right when I walked in, I was greeted by a woman and led to the sunglasses area, another woman popped up behind me and handed me a pair saying I looked good in them,and then the first lady already had a mirror ready. I wanted a pair with darker lenses but I don't think they understood me and started shoving sunglasses with black frames my way. And then another woman that worked there walked up and said I looked very good in the pair they handed to me.
I'm definitely a fan of good service, but this was ridiculous and I politely thanked them and told them that I'll think about it, the price for one that looked ok was 199rmb, so not bad. But still they kind of scared me away...

I walked another mile down the street and found a smaller looking store and again I ran into the same ordeal, but these sunglasses were polarized and looked similar to a pair that I had at home that broke, I am really really bad with sunglasses because I tend to lose, drop, or scratch any that I own so the cheaper the better. The price tag said 169rmb, so I went with them. The lady used a machine that I've seen jewelers use to clean rings with, so I was getting them all clean and shiny. I handed her 200rmb but she said that it was only 96. So yah I paid about $14 for a pair of sunglasses that I'm going to lose or break in about 2 weeks so that's a deal for me.

Shoot it looks like I missed dinner again, but I have to go to the corner grocery anyways to buy more wang lee hom water, and another phone card.

Longest day ever

I met my roommate this morning, he seems pretty cool, but the weird part is that his name is Andy, he just graduated with a degree in Management Information Systems, and he speaks Cantonese! We like the same kinds of tv shows and video games and the cool part is that he speaks 6 languages and even puts me to shame. Indonesian, Japanese, English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Fujian dialect. He brought his xbox 360 and PSP so I think we’re going to get along just fine…

Today was a very productive but long day. Breakfast was at 7. I’m not quite used to the Chinese idea of breakfast but it was filling and cheap. A bowl of rice water, hard boiled egg, and a steamed bun with meat for 1.30 rmb.

Went to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and stuff because I know that I’ll be up late tonight doing stuff so naturally I’ll be hungry.

My Chinese was put to the test today while looking for the Agricultural Bank of China. People here are either really nice and helpful or really rude and won’t even talk to you. After walking about 15 blocks and asking 4 people for directions, I found out that the bank was only 3 blocks outside of the East gate, but to my disappointment I got there at 8 and expected banks to be open at 7 in the morning like at home but apparently Chinese banks open at around 9:30…

I know I could have opened up my checking account in Chinese but since I’m dealing with money, I’d like to have the least amount of confusion as possible. 45 minutes later I was finally out of there. I walked over to the finance office on campus to pay tuition and found out that they take American credit cards and my US Bank check card worked fine.

The bank exchange rate right now is 6.95rmb/ 1 usd, and tuition cost about 1,800.

Walked over to the Cernet building right next to the west gate to get legit internet on my computer, cost 140rmb a month plus a 50 rmb fee. I didn’t have much cash on me so I only paid enough for 2 months. Unfortunately its through Ethernet cable, but turns out my roommate doesn’t have a laptop so we don’t have to get a router.

I haven’t paid my room fee yet but I think its about 60rmb a day, but by this time at 5 I was really tired from walking and scrounging for Chinese vocab so I went back to my room and fell asleep watching Harry potter and the Goblet of Fire with Korean subtitles, wish I stayed up to finish it cuz I like that movie.

Tomorrow we have the placement test, I’m hoping to place in Level C or D so I can get challenged and take something out of this trip.

Several realizations occur that I wish someone told me ahead of time

Not all phone cards work. I bought a 100RMB phone card for 35rmb but it was with some other company and I already scratched the back so I couldn’t return it.

I think Chinese people are grumpy in the way they are because they haven’t experienced the feeling of drying their clothes with a dryer and the amazing smell of dryer sheets or sleeping in fresh blankets that just came out of the dryer. China desperately needs the fresh scent of spring rain.

Pretty much everything shuts down during lunchtime for about 2 hours, so between 12-2 you can’t get anything done around school.

People think something's wrong when you step aside and let them through the door first.

Here it never seems like I can bask in the glow of self accomplishment because after I finish one seemingly difficult task in Chinese, I have to literally walk half a mile and take care of something else on my huge list of things to do.

Almost spending the night as a hobo

The plane arrived a little late due to some taxi issues or something, but fortunately customs was quick and I had just enough juice in my ipod to get to the baggage claim and grab my bags and then it died. There were soooo many people waiting for people coming out of the airport, apparently the person that was supposed to be waiting for me was there half an hour early at the very beginning of the entrance so I missed him because I was thinking “wow thanks for running into me with your cart random guy” and “yes that would be a fantastic idea to stop walking when you’re in front of me short lady”

So after half an hour of searching I just bought a phone card for 50rmb to call him.

He finally found me and took me to his car and I’m like wow you drive an audi?

What’s cool is that I actually had a 20 minute conversation with him without any awkward pauses and not too many times where I asked “can you repeat that?”

What really surprised me is that I was able to compare Audis with Jags and BMWs IN mandarin which is totally not in the textbook.

Honestly, without Zhang xian sheng’s help, I probably would have spent the night as a hobo out in the streets because he drove me right to school and figured out my room situation, tuition, and food (which is always most important).

Ok so here’s the lowdown on my dorm, there’s parts about it that impressed me like the fact that I have 60 channels 90% are in Chinese, a Spanish channel, French, Korean, and a channel from HK. The room is locked with a keycard, sort of like the ones you get for your hotel room, but when you walk in, the electricity will only be activated in the whole room when you put your keycard in this glowing blue slot on the wall. If you take the card out, the tv, lights, and anything you have plugged in will shut off. Cool huh?

The room is quite small but honestly it has pretty much everything you need, shelf space, mini fridge, desk, rock hard concrete bed, small patio to hang your clothes, and a bathroom.

It took me about an hour and a half to get settled in and organized. I guess the last person that used the room didn’t do a good job defrosting the fridge because there was this big puddle of water in the middle of the room. The bathroom shower head was broken off so after I put everything away, I pretty much showered using a garden hose. Water was really warm though so that made me very happy.

I missed dinner just because I wanted to get everything put away, so I decided to do a little exploring at around 7ish. Found a nice grocery store about 3 blocks east of my apartment. I ended up having Mcdonalds for dinner, yah I know I go all the way to Beijing to eat something I could have down the street from my house, but its seriously a must for me seeing I’ve had Mcdonalds in Hong Kong, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and a couple other countries, but they all seem to have their own little unique flair compared to the one back home.

Before I left I got the unlock code from T mobile on my phone. At the grocery store I got a sim card and 100 yuan phone card for about $30 US. That thing works like a charm, but the phone card only lasts about 10 min calling out to the US since its only a 100 yuan but its definitely better than nothing.

I'm sad though because I had a feeling that some sites were going to be blocked and blogger was one of them. It was a good thing though that I wrote a post earlier on here so I still had the URL to make posts but I actually can't see the finished product, still...that's better than nothing.

Busy day tomorrow, So I’m just gonna go to bed now seeing I’ve been awake since technically 5pm yesterday China time.

Post Easter traveling= bad idea

Pic I took over the North Pole

Last night I didn’t get much sleep, I don’t know if I actually planned to get 2 hrs of sleep before my flight or I just didn’t feel like sleeping but either way I was checking and double checking that I had everything in my luggage.

My parents, sister, and I left the house around 5am to make it to my 7am flight to Newark. When we got the airport, I came to the sudden realization that it was the day after Easter/spring break, therefore hordes of people would be returning to school or their homes.

Waiting to get my boarding pass and going through security made me feel like I was already in China because of the pushing and short-tempers of people who had to wake up at 4am.

Once it was ok to use electronic devices on the plane, I popped open my laptop but to my demise, somehow the sound card driver was missing. Seriously, an 18 hr travel day and no laptop to listen to movies, and since I ripped all my dvds at home, there were no subtitles.

When the plane landed, I pretty much ran to my gate so I could sit down and try to connect to some kind of wireless in the airport. The gate my flight was at was packed with people, and I found a spot across from an elderly man, but a minute later someone kept going *pst pst hey china* and it was this big black African guy telling me to get out of my seat because he was sitting there first…I didn’t really want to deal with more stuff so I just picked up my stuff and went somewhere else.

By some act of God, the wireless in the Continental elite club was unsecured so I quickly got on and downloaded my drivers and got sound so that made me very happy.

There was no one sitting in the middle seat, and I tried to have a conversation with the person sitting in the isle seat, but after a while he decided to switch to English just to make the conversation more interesting I suppose haha…but seriously I was stammering and scrounging for words which makes me feel all the more in trouble once I get to Beijing.

Right now I’m sitting on the plane with not much to do. I watched a movie on my ipod and slept for about an hour or so, the movie selection on this flight weren’t great so I’ve been trying to review my Chinese book instead of watching Becoming Jane - -‘’

Once I get to Beijing, I need to get to the Agricultural bank of China and open an account and have the money from my Wells Fargo account transfer over, but it won’t be available till tomorrow, but there’s no fee for it so that’s really nice.

Then I have to go to school and register for housing and pay tuition, not exactly sure of the process of that but I have an inkling that I’ll have a taste of pointless bureaucracy while I stand in lines, fill out papers, and get stuff stamped, verified, and re-verified.

Donald gets ready for departure

Ok so I figured that I'll be taking lots of pictures while I'm there with my new nifty Canon Rebel XT 8mp DSLR cam with a 28-88mm lens (thanks again Scott for the lens). And since I'm the one taking the pics, I won't be the one in the pictures unless I do the whole tripod and self timer thing, but the effect just won't be the same without 10 or more continuously frustrating tries. I am bringing a tripod though. INSTEAD my friend Donald here will assist me for he is adventurous, daring, and oh so stunningly handsome.

Basically I'm ready to go right now, but i've got another 20 hours to go.
Packing was pretty easy actually, all I did was make 4 different sections, Clothing, Electronics (because I'm a nerd and I have lots of this), Toiletries, and Misc. Then just put 2 check boxes on each item, so I could keep track of how many shirts or pants I was taking and then checked it off once it got in the suitcase.

I've got 2 weeks worth of clothes and 2 luggage and a sweet swiss army backpack my dad is lending me that has like 50 different compartments and things in there. Both luggages are like 45ish lbs, so I think I might knock out some of my shirts cuz I hope I'll have time to go shopping for new threads. Backpack has my ipod, laptop, camera, and my chinese book.

Off to a rough start

Just two more days and I'll be getting myself on an 18-hour flight to Beijing.
Kind of funny that I've been thinking about this trip for over a year and in the blink of an eye I'm packing up my stuff to leave.
I was going to wait to leave before I started writing but I could wait to chronicle my feelings (scrubs quote)
Basically I'm just doing this to let those people out there who are in my position and want to go to BLCU know what they're expecting. I'm glad that the people that have gone before me were gracious enough to do the same so now I'm not absolutely petrified in leaving the comfort of washing machines, air conditioning/heating, and clear blue skies for whatever I should be looking forward to in China-land. For those who don't know, BLCU stands for Beijing Language and Culture University (Beijing yuyan da xue)

Monday morning I'll be getting on a plane at around 7am and will be arriving to Beijing Tuesday at 2pm (Monday 1am home time).
I love to travel and the thought of being able to just sit on a plane for hours on end is fun to me, probably torturous to everyone else. I definitely have to bring my Chinese book from class to review some stuff just so when I get off the plane, I won't be scrambling for words even though I probably won't be ordering hot and spicy soup or debating the pros and cons of recyclable materials at the airport.

Ok well I applied back in December, about a week before Christmas. The application fee is $75 US to the school, but I wanted to get everything done asap, so I went through US Bank and they have a wire transfer fee of $50, so total comes to $125. My advice, find somewhere cheaper or if you know someone there in Beijing, have them pay the fee and just pay them back when you get there.
From what I've heard, BLCU accepts everybody so don't be nervous about not getting in, unless you're not planning on giving them money ^_-
I got an answer from the school 3 weeks later, which was quick, and I had applied to the Spring intensive 30hrs/wk program which went from February to July.
About a week later, I got accepted to a job that I applied for this summer which starts in June, So I had to change plans and do their shorter program still 30hrs/wk but it goes from late March to the middle of June.
The change worked out pretty well but when I let the school know after I applied to their longer term, they wanted me to re-apply and pay the fee again...If you're not 100% sure of what program you're going to apply to, figure it out! Otherwise you'll end up losing out on another $125 *cry*

Doing the shorter program actually works out for me because I can work an extra month and I'll be saving a month's worth of food and living over there.
The Feb-July program costs about $2,700 where the Mar-June program costs $1,200. Of course being able to stay in Beijing for 5 months instead of 3 would be awesome, but I just can't make it there for that long.
At this point, I honestly don't know anything about living expenses, just cuz the resources on the BLCU site are so vague, but I know that I want to live with a roomie and with my own bathroom and hopefully my own bed...
So far plane tickets were $1,100 which was nice, visa was $165 (it took 2 weeks to get my visa sent to Chicago and back), and I had to put a down payment on dorms which was $370.
So with everything this whole trip will be boiled down to around $6,000, which is totally awesome because school tuition costs about that much.

As of right now, weather in Beijing is 60's and sunny whereas here at home its 30's and 2-3 inches of snow fell last night haha
Packing is taking longer than I thought it would probably because I'm still writing this blog post but it'll have to get done eventually I guess because I don't know any normal people who pack for a trip more than 10 hours before their departure.