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.