Relaxing day. Woke up early to double check the art district trip was canceled and then went back to sleep for a few hours. Woke up around 10 and then went to Bridge Cafe in Wudaokou to get breakfast. We stopped to check out a super market on the way since I was craving some 小吃(small snacks). Stayed at Bridge Cafe to study for a few hours, but ultimately the Internet started sucking, so headed back to BeiDa to check out the culture festival. The American booth was sadly pathetic. I was kind of embarrassed. They had face painting for an activity in light of Halloween. To decorate the booth, they pretty much just colored pages from a coloring book and hung them up. I wish people would have contacted me and my classmates to do something for the booth. I would have definitely been up for helping out with the booth.

Talked to some interesting Japanese and Australian people. My shoulder started hurting so I ran back to the dorms to drop off my backpack and then came back to the festival. Apparently while I was gone, someone started playing Gangnam Style, so a whole crowd of people jumped up on the stage and started doing the dance, but midway through the dance the stage collapsed under all of the people. So by the time I made it back to the festival, they were starting the clean up and closed the festival early. A few people stopped me to take pictures with me and this one interesting guy came over to talk to Chelsea and me. He said he was a tour guide that takes Chinese people to other countries so he was looking to make contacts with people from all over the world so he can get to learn new places and expand where he can take people on tours. He gave us a really good information packet about foreigners living in Beijing and his business card. He said in return for answering any questions he has, he can connect us with people who are looking for English tutors and language partners. I think that's a pretty fair trade off. I actually want to find some tutoring work since the going rate in China for English tutors is 100-150 kuai an hour (16-25 USD). Not a bad salary at all. I think I might also try putting up flyers around Beida to see if I can find some students to tutor.

I was supposed to meet up with a person I met the other day, but after an hour they didn't answer my message or pick up their phone, so I headed back to the dorms. I'm still feeling a little under the weather. The sore throat seems to be turning into a head cold despite all of the vitamin C I've been devouring for the past few days. Melissa and I went to one of my favorite restaurants outside the Southwest gate and got soup. I got a shredded tofu and noodle soup that was pretty good. We decided during our whole outing to only speak Chinese. I'm so glad that she agreed with me! So many of my classmates aren't up for that. After dinner we grabbed some hong kong waffles and then headed back to the dorms. I started working on my presentation for my kouyu class on Tuesday. I made some pretty good headway, but I stil have a headache, so focusing was tough. I decided to stay in the dorms tonight so I can get a good night sleep and then return to my homestay tomorrow. I just wasnt up for biking all the way back to my homestay. I've been on my bike a lot this weekend, my legs are pretty sore! I don't like having a bike that only has one gear! Though the seat on the back is so cool! I wish we had them in America!

Well that's all for now. I'm starting to fall asleep, so it's bed time for me. Thankfuly I only have one class tomorrow, so I'm hoping I can rest up and fight off this discomfort before it turns into a headcold. I mentioned to a few of my Chinese friends that I'm feeling under the weather and they're ready to stuff me full of all these Chinese herbs and medicinal remedies haha. It's quite interesting. I might give some of the remedies a try! All in all, not to great of a weekend. I feel like it was a wasted weekend. Oh well, I'll just have to make up for it some other time. I still have so much that I want to see and do in Beijing. Teh leaves are changing so I realy want to go to some of the parks and take pictures of the tress before all of the leaves are gone. I want to explore Beida's campus too!

Saturday! Saturday! Woke up early and headed back to the dorms to shower and do internet work. I was supposed to go to another dancing class, but decided against it. Skyped with Jeu hee and the Schaller Family for a while until my classmate woke up and then we went out to grab lunch at Lush. I got a Hamburger and it was delicious. Afterwards, we biked back to BeiDa to drop off our bikes and headed to Xidan to do some shopping. We got to Xidan and walked around for a while, but the people there were trying to rip us off so badly that we decided to leave. It wasn’t even worth haggling with them. One woman tried to charge me 400 kuai for a sweater. After we got back, we gathered our things together and went to the bridge café in wudaokou to study. Met up with someone Chelsea met at the Halloween party the night before and studied for a while. He wasn’t in a terrific mood, so that put me in an off mood as well. A few hours later, Chelsea and I left to go to Xiabu Xiabu to get hot pot for dinner. We went to the one outside the southwest gate and it was not a great experience. The people here were super rude to us. Next time we’re going back to the one at Carrefore, they were a lot more friendly there! Went back to the dorms to chill and decided not to go out tonight. I was feeling a little under the weather from the pollution that’s been in the air lately. At least today was pretty nice. Ended up skyping with my parents for about 2 hours. I hear there’s a nasty storm about to hit the east coast! All in all, not too bad of a day. I just wish I was feeling a bit better..can’t shake this headache. Supposed to go to the art district tomorrow, but we ended up canceling since Chelsea wasn’t feeling that great and wanted more time to study for her exams. Hoping the weather tomorrow is nice!

Finally Friday! I’ve been so tired this week, I was looking forward to the weekend. The pollution today was horrible. I forgot to close my window last night so I woke up with a sore throat from breathing in too much smog….not fun. Had 2 classes today and got assigned a ton of homework for the weekend. Not looking forward to doing all that. I was supposed to go with my classmates to check out the Lama Temple, but I had such a headache that I had to go home and lay down instead. After taking a nap, I felt much better and went back to campus to grab some lunch. Met up with someone I recently met and chatted for a little. He’s a masters student at Beijing Sports University and he comes to Beida to teach dancing classes. So after talking for a while, he said he had to go teach his class and invited me along. I had nothing better to do, so I figured I would check it out. It was an interesting experience. I could tell the other students there didn’t know what quite to make of me, being a foreigner not to mention arriving at the class with the teacher. I definitely got a lot of looks and some of the guys were actually arguing over who’s dance partner I could be haha. I’m pretty sure random foreigners don’t typically appear in their class. The guy I went with (who taught the class) turned out to be an amazing dancer. The first 90 minutes of the class was ballroom dancing and the second half was more like a salsa style. I had a lot of fun, even if I’m not that great at dancing. He invited me to come back tomorrow morning for another dance class…I guess he teaches them several times a week at Beida. If I wake up early enough, I might give it a try. It’s fun and it’s also a good way to meet people. Although the class was pretty difficult since it was taught only in Chinese. I had an idea of what was going on, but not much. I felt bad for the guy I was dancing with…he kept trying to explain things to me and I only understood a little more than half of what he said. At least the people were patient and willing to wait for me to understand what they were saying. Once the other students realized I could speak Chinese, they were a lot more talkative. I asked one of my other Chinese friends about that and they said most Chinese people think foreigners are on vacation in China and therefore, can’t speak the language. I guess that could be true in most cases. Just means that if I want to meet people, I guess I’ll have to make the first move since the sterotype seems to be the foreigners can’t speak Chinese. Well that’s all for today. I’m staying in tonight. My classmates are going to a Halloween party in Saniltun, but it’s way too expensive for me. Just to get in the door is 100 kuai ($16USD) per person. Plus I don’t have a Halloween costume. I have a lot of homework, so I figure I’ll get that done tonight, go to sleep early and wake up tomorrow hopefully feeling well rested. The homestay family seems surprised that I’m not going out tonight haha. Still having mixed feelings about the homestay. Tomorrow, planning to go to dancing class and then hopefully shopping in Xidan to buy a few things. Also my classmate introduced me to taobao, which is the Chinese form of ebay. I think I might be buying some clothing off there in the future…it’s super cheap and I really like some of the stuff! Also trying to set up a gig tutoring English for 2 hours on Sunday mornings. I hope it works out! The pay is $25USD an hour! Maybe I should give up being and Engineer and come to China to teach English hahaha! 

Today was ok, nothing special going on. Had 2 classes this morning and then a short break before my tutoring session. Got to sit in the office and chat with the teachers for a while to practice more speaking. Grabbed baozi for lunch again although I waited until after the lunch rush to go. I hate fighting the crowds to get food.  Had my tutoring session and got all of my Hanyu homework out of the way, which is a relief. Had dinner with Chelsea and then headed back to the homestay for the night. I found out that a lot of people stare at me in the cafeteria because foreign students typically go off campus to eat for some reason. I don’t get why they would do that when the cafeteria food is delicious and cheap. I guess that explains all of the staring. My tutor told me she had a meeting with the other Chinese language tutors and apparently Chelsea and I and a few other students are the only ones going out and trying to make friends with Chinese people. Apparently most of our classmates have just been hanging out together. I thought everyone was trying to meet Chinese people, but I guess not. I’m looking forward to this weekend! I really like meeting new people. I could use a few more Chinese friends. Most of the people I meet tend to not answer my messages. Here, it definitely takes a long time to make friends. Although, once you make one good friend, you’re in. Our friend Haibo was telling us that he was talking about us to his friends and his friends want to meet us so we might be going out to a karaoke event in the near future. I’m excited! I want to karaoke! Better start learning some Chinese songs! Tonight the weather is gross. I can smell the pollution in the air and I don’t like the smell. My homestay house is freezing…still have another week before the government turns the heat on. At least my dorm room seems to be pretty well insulated.

Ended up staying in the dorms Tuesday night because I forgot that Chelsea and I had a presentation today. So late Tuesday night I went to the dorms to work on the presentation and then fell asleep. Woke up early to shower and send out some emails. Currently trying to find a co-op position in China and sort out my schedule of classes for winter term as well as trying to figure out how I can fit in all of the classes I need to graduate on time. I think it should be manageable since I have a lot of free space in my Senior year.

After getting ready, headed off to my first class of the day. The class dragged on forever. I’m really not a fan of my kouyu class. After class, grabbed some baozi for lunch and relaxed in the office until it was time for my tutoring session. This week is language commitment week, to encourage students to use more Chinese. Every day they’re featuring a new poster in the office. Today was a picture of me from the rural trip. The professors like the picture so much, they asked me if they could turn it into a poster. I kind of hope I get to keep the poster…it’s pretty epic. I forgot to snag a picture of it! At tutoring, I was glad to get my presentation out of the way. After the group session, I was supposed to have tutoring but I canceled because I didn’t have any work to go over. Chelsea and I headed to Wudaokou to the bridge café to study for a while. Our friend was supposed to join us, but he never showed up. He only messaged us several hours later saying he fell asleep. After studying we grabbed dinner from a cafeteria on campus and then I headed home.

Happy Monday! Woke up to beautiful weather following the storm. I love days in Beijing after rain storms! The air is so clean and beautiful! Ran off to my first and only class of the day and got my Hanyu test back. I didn’t do horrible, but I couldn’t have done better. I made some stupid mistakes which was because I think I had my 2 exams back to back and my brain was already fried before the test even started. Overall I’m pretty sure my monthly average is a B or B+, so I’m happy with that. It will depend on my scores for the essay and presentation tho, which I still haven’t gotten back. After class, I was waiting around in the office because I was supposed to have lunch with a classmate, but she canceled on my so I ended up going home and sleeping for 2 hours because I was so tired. It was a much needed nap. Ran back to campus to grab food, but the baozi place had already closed, so I grabbed a Taiwan Pancake instead. So greasy and delicious! I need to learn how to make these. After my quick food break, I met up with my tutor and had her help me review grammar. Grammar is definitely the thing I struggle with the most when learning languages. I think it’s because I never really bothered to learn much about English grammar. She did a great job of helping me understand how certain things work. Now I just have to work on remembering the patterns. She’s a really great tutor. I’m so glad I got placed with her. She brought a book along for me to try reading. It was pretty low level, so it wasn’t too hard, but my reading out loud skills are lacking, so it was good practice. I brought along the Hunger Games to check out for me. She said it was a little on the difficult side, but as long as I have a dictionary handy I should be able to manage it. One of these days, I’ll actually start working on it beyond the first paragraph. I think it’s a good way to learn new words and grammar structures. I need to start watching movies too. Wish there was more time in the day!

After tutoring, I headed back home and started working on the test corrections for my hanyu exam. The teacher marked things wrong but didn’t say why, so our homework is to go over all of the mistakes and explain why they were marked wrong. I also had to learn 29 new words for my quiz tomorrow. Thankfully vocab is getting easier and easier to learn since words are starting to combine characters that I already learned. So now, it’s becoming more of deciphering the meaning when combining different characters together. Not so bad! Got to have dinner with my homestay family and it was delicious! He is such a good cook! It makes me miss my Dad’s food. We had some kind of stirfry that consisted of peppers, mushrooms, black fungus, tofu and some kind of meat as well as the salad. I really like salad dressing in China. I have no idea what kind he put on, but it tasted really good. It wasn’t super overpowering like most American salad dressings. After dinner I headed back into my cave to study and answer emails. Practiced magic for a little bit. I’m hoping to go out this weekend and do some street magic! Starting running a virus scan on my computer. I’m so worried that it’s crawling with spyware! Time for me to head to bed and get ready for a long day tomorrow!

Dreary ugly day in Beijing. It rained all day long. The plans to go to the 798 art district and shopping had to be canceled. Woke up a little late and had an easy morning. Went with Chelsea and Mona to Wudaokou to get breakfast at The Bridge café. They had amazing French toast and hot chocolate. I was happy. Headed back to the Global Village to relax a little. We were planning to go with Haibo to someplace to study together, but he never contacted us when he was free, so we ended up just staying in the Global Village. I did a little bit of studying, but not much. I don’t really have much to review since the midterms are done. Got to video chat with Steve for a bit which was nice because I haven’t talked to him in forever. Around 6, we headed out to grab dinner and then I returned to my homestay. The weather is wet, dreary and cold. Everywhere is cold. I was talking to my homestay family and they told me that the government doesn’t turn the heat on until November 1. Looks like I need to start bundling up a little more….and stop forgetting my umbrella. I think I need to go shopping and get a few warmer shirts for winter. I’m tired of not having a large selection of clothes to pick from. Wish I would have packed a little more with me. Oh well, I guess that just means I’ll have to go shopping and pick some stuff out. At least prices here aren’t too bad, but I spent wayyyy too much money this last week/weekend. Gotta take a break from spending for a little bit! Planning to relax for a few hours and then head to bed early. Don’t have much to do tonight, so I’m just relaxing. Hoping the weather is nicer tomorrow! The pollution the past few days has been horrible. 

Lazy Saturday in Beijing. Kind of tired from the exams, so my day had a late start. Went with Chelsea to grab some baozi from campus. Couldn't decide what we wanted to do. We threw a few ideas around, but didn't end up actually doing any of them. Just sat in the dorms and relaxed. Around dinner time, Chelsea and I biked to the supermarket to pick up snacks since we were thinking to have a pocky popcorn pastry movie party. We ended up eating at the hotpot place in the shopping center attached to the super market. The waiter was flirting with us the whole time we were there. It was kind of adorable. He was a really nice guy, but we had trouble understand what he was saying. It's nice that he actually tried to talk to us, though he laughed at us because we forgot how to ask for a spoon in Chinese haha. After dinner, we picked up snacks and headed back to the dorms. Got ready to watch a movie, but at the last minute decided we wanted to go out dancing instead, so we walked over to Wudaokou and met up with our classmates at a bar. Met a few interesting people here, including a guy from France and another from Singapore. After a while, we all went next door to the club for some dancing. It was ok. I'm still not a huge fan of dancing in clubs. It was super super packed. I met a guy there that asked me if I could be his English tutor. I seem to be getting a lot of people asking me that lately. After a few hours, I managed to find Chelsea again and we headed back to the dorms to get some sleep. All in all, not a bad night. I have way too much energy though, I haven't been able to sit still all weekend. Kind of disappointed that I didn't get to do much today, but I guess it was good to take some time to recover from exam week.

Woke up early and headed to campus to take my exams. I had 2 exams today and neither of them were easy. It was actually a lot harder than I was expecting. I wish I would have had more time to study. I forgot how to use simple grammar patterns, so it was pretty bad.  After the exams, I grabbed lunch with a few classmates and then headed back to the dorms to shower and relax. Chelsea and I headed over to the courts to play some basketball. My knee was still bothering me so I couldn’t play, but I ended up talking to one of the guys there who happened to be a kouyu teacher. He was really nice. After a while, the other basketball players decided to get dinner. I got to meet a few people from America who were studying at Beida which was pretty neat. We met at the East gate and headed to sanlitun to get dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The food was a bit on the expensive side, but it was so delicious! Definitely the most expensive meal I had in China so far, but worth every penny. After dinner, we all went next door to one of the clubs and had a few drinks. It was a nice night out. We ended up going to a nice, classy club, not the kind of club where you have to worry about someone taking your bag or anything like that. We stayed there for a few hours, just chatting and playing games. I showed off some magic tricks and they really really liked them. A few of them invited friends to join us. For one of them, it was her birthday so we had fun celebrating that. It was interesting to hang out with a few people who couldn’t speak English. I’m kind of starting to like the situation where it’s Chinese or nothing. After a few hours, one of my classmates started to get tired so I agreed to go back to the dorms with her. It took forever to find a cab. The guys all kept trying to overcharge us. Good thing I can haggle now! Got back to the dorms and grabbed some ice cream as a late midnight snack. Time to sleep and rest up for tomorrow. Not sure yet what my plans will be, but I’m trying to go to a few places on my list of stuff to see while I’m in Beijing. Think I’m going to go to the zoo market on Sunday and try to get some more winter clothes. It’s starting to get pretty cold here! I’m liking it!

Did not want to wake up this morning. Finally dragged myself out of bed and went to my first class. We spent the whole class reviewing for the exam. Afterwards, I went with a classmate to the café by the gym to study before grabbing some lunch from the huge cafeteria on campus. I had never been there before. I couldn’t believe how much food they had! There were so many options that I didn’t know where to start. I ended up getting the same thing as her and we bought a sweet potato to share. That’s right, we bought a whole sweet potato. It tasted so good! After lunch, she ran off to meet her tutor and I went to the global village to get some work done. Worked my way through all of my emails and catching up with all the stuff I had to do online with a vpn and then started studying. Spent several hours studying before grabbing dinner with Melissa. Then I ran off to meet a BeiDa student who was looking for foreigners to use in their research. I got to participate in this really cool experiment where they measure your brain waves as you perform a task cooperatively with a Chinese person to see if there is any differences or similarities. It took a while because the first time, they didn’t do the experiment setup right, so they had to start over from scratch, but I made an easy 180 kuai (it was reward based. better performance = more cash). After the experiment I headed back to my homestay and spent the rest of the night studying for my exams and then sleeping late. Not looking forward to taking these exams tomorrow.

            Today definitely had it’s ups and downs. I woke up early to go back to my dorm to skype a relative. I got there early, so I had time to take a shower and relax. As it got later, I realized I had told them to skype me on Wednesday, forgetting that my Wednesday is their Tuesday. Studied for a while and then headed to my kouyu class. Class seemed to drag on forever. After class, I planned to meet up with a few class mates to have lunch. Apparently now I’m considered to be a real BeiDa student since I had my first bike accident. I was riding to meet my classmates and got T-boned by someone else, so I fell down on top of my bike. My left knee is now a pretty shade of purple and doesn’t want to bend. Sigh. Met up with my classmates for lunch and then went with Chelsea to meet one of our Chinese friends at the East gate and rode our bikes to Wudaokou to study together at a café. It was a really nice experience. Our Chinese friend was studying English and we were studying Chinese so we were able to ask each other questions if we had problems. I find it really interesting that China teaches British English..people end up having interesting accents! We had some nice conversations while we were studying. They were interesting conversations considering one of them was about a zombie apocalypse. I think those are useful words to know hahaha.  I showed them some new magic tricks I had been working on and we talked a lot. It was really good practice and I learned a lot. I feel like my Chinese has really started improving since I moved in with the host family and started talking to more Chinese people. We were at the café studying for probably 4-5 hours and then grabbed dinner from a restaurant in the basement of the building we were in. We got sushi. It was delicious! A little bit on the expensive side…about 40 kuai for the meal (I find it funny that 40 kuai, about $6 usd, is expensive) but it was absolutely delicious. I really like this Chinese friend. He’s super super nice and I like that he’s willing to repeat stuff until I understand. I like hanging out with him and Chelsea.

            After the meal, I was pretty tired and the café was full, so I headed back to my homestay to work on studying for my exam. Almost got hit by a bus on the way home – not a great experience. Oh! I also signed up to help a research group with an experiment. They’re paying 100 kuai for students to participate in the studies. I have to let them attach electrodes to my head and then they measure my brainwaves as I work cooperatively with a Chinese person at some sort of task. I thought it sounds really interesting and it’s an easy way to make some money! So I’ll be doing that tomorrow night.  Now it’s time to rest my knee and get some studying done. I really feel like I’m not prepared for my exams, but I think I’m ahead of most of my classmates since I”ve been studying since Monday and theyre just starting now. I feel like I have so much to accomplish in a few days. Oh well, I’ll get through it somehow!

I did not sleep well at all, I kept waking up all night. I was not happy when my alarm went off in the morning. It was another slow start.  On top of that, it was raining outside so I got to practice riding my bike while holding an umbrella. Thankfully I had a plastic bag to put over my wet bike seat. I ran off to my first class, which I couldn’t pay attention to. Someone in another classroom was watching starwars for some reason and the music was distracting. After class, went to hangout at the CIEE office, but theyre still painting. I couldn’t stay there long before I got a headache and left to grab some brunch. Then went back to the office to do some work before noon. It’s my classmates birthday today, so we’re all meeting at 12 to eat cake. The cake was delicious (and not a lie!). Although too many people sat on the table and it ended up breaking. Quite an amusing gathering. After cake, I had to run off to my writing class and then to hanyu class. Class today seemed to drag on forever….Tuesdays are always the longest. My tutor wanted to meet with me today, but I just couldn’t do it. Was feeling tired after class ended, so instead of grabbing food, I went home to rest. Felt much better after napping. None of my teachers gave homework tonight since we all have the test coming up at the end of the week. Studied my vocab words for a while, but otherwise had nothing to do. Had a relaxing evening studying on and off and chatting to my Chinese friends on QQ. I really enjoy it. I get so much practice in. Well, kind of. One of them is learning English, so they like to throw in English wherever possible, but the other person can’t speak any English so it’s Chinese or nothing. Between the homestay and chatting with people, I feel like I’m learning so much. I got a few movies and drama recommendations, so hopefully I can start watching some soon to improve my comprehension. Another early night for me! I’m tired! I’m pretty sure it’s the weather. Hoping tomorrow is nicer after all of the rain. Autumn is definitely coming!

Sadly, my weekend came to an end and Monday arrived. I really don’t like Mondays, but at least I only have one class to worry about. I woke up at 6:45, but didn’t manage to drag myself out of bed until 7:15. Rode my bike to school and had my hanyu class. Class seemed to drag on forever. So many grammar patterns to learn! At least most of them were things I had learned before, so it wasn’t too difficult for me.

After class, I grabbed some food from the baozi place and had an interesting experience. A random person sat down at the table across from me, even tho there were tons of other seats open. He proceeded to just look at me the whole time while I was eating. It was……definitely interesting. He never said a word haha. After food, I was done with classes, so I went to the CIEE office to work and start making flashcards to study for my midterms on Friday. Spent several hours here relaxing and working. Stopped to have a lunch break with Chelsea and grabbed some bubble tea before heading back to the office to do more work. I had one of the teachers help me download and install QQ, which is a Chinese instant messaging program. I’m happy I finally figure out how to use it. After a while, I started to get a bad headache because they’re remodeling the office so the whole place smells like drying paint. I don’t like the smell of drying paint. I went to grab some food quick from a cafeteria with Lina and Kyle and then headed home.

Home was….interesting as well. The daughter was not in a good mood. The two of them had some sort of argument with her ending up running off to her room and locking herself in. Then the grandfather came over to try to help with things, but I don’t think they made much progress. She was really not in a good mood. I spent most of my night studying for my midterms and making flashcards. Since I have QQ now, I took the time to mess around with it and added 2 friends I had made. One of them was online, so they promptly added me back and started chatting. It was difficult, but it was really good practice. My reading and writing is pretty good, so I didn’t have too hard of a time. They also knew a little English and that always helps. Glad I had my dictionary because they wanted to talk about movies and I have no movie vocabulary yet. I probably talked to my 2 friends for about an hour or 2. It was fine, until one of them wanted to voice chat me….my listening and responding skills are not very good. It was way more challenging than just typing back and forth. After a while, I had to sign off to finish my homework and I wasn’t feeling well so I went to bed early.

Long weekend for me! Woke up early and went with Chelsea to meet with one of the Chinese friends we made. She took us to XiangShan park, which is a large park located in Beijing. We had an interesting time riding the bus there, it was full of people. We stopped for a breakfast break and then started exploring. We bought 2 tickets at the park, one for the temple and one for the park. First we explored the temple and it was pretty neat to look at. I got a lot of pictures and we had a lot of fun taking pictures of each other throughout the day. And of course, while we were trying to take pictures at the temple, people would just stop and grab a shot of us. It's so interesting! After exploring the temple, we headed over to the park and climbed to the top of the mountain. It was SUCH A BIG MOUNTAIN! I think it took us about 90 minutes to climb to the top. I was so tired. We stopped to rest for a bit and grab some pictures and eat a little before heading back down. There were a lot of neat things to see. I'm so tired after all the climbing.

After the park, we walked around the shops in the area. I bought a few things that I thought would make good gifts for people. They had churros so I was super excited and bought some.....but they were not that great. The churro itself was crispy, but it had no cinnamon or sugar and for some reason they served it with ice cream on top and the ice cream was disgusting! I ended up eating my "churros" and throwing the ice cream away....never again hahaha. And of course, a day of exploring isn't complete without a ton of people asking to take our picture. We had so many people asking us if they could take our pictures or pose with them. I'm still not used to it. I was in a good mood today, so I said yes to most of the requests. 2 college students asked me if I would give them my QQ number. I have no idea what my number was, so I asked them for theirs and told them I would add them later. Maybe I'll have some new Chinese friends now! It was really nice to have Li Jiao along with us today. She was a huge help for getting the tickets and helping us haggle for stuff. Although I have to say after today, my head hurts. She doesn't speak very much English, so pretty much the whole day was just speaking Chinese. I'm glad I got the practice. I have to say, the people around us were definitely surprised when they heard us talking. I'm pretty sure most of them couldn't believe we were speaking Chinese. I always find it funny that when people want to take pictures, they approach us and ask us in English, or if they don't know English, they would ask Li in Chinese. It's interesting how they have this idea the foreigners can't speak Chinese.

So after a long day, we grabbed the bus and headed back to Beida. Grabbed dinner together on campus and then Li ran off to attend a lecture by a famous director and I returned back to the global village to pack up my stuff and head back to my Host family's house. What a long weekend! Now I get to start studying for the quiz I have tomorrow! It's going to be a busy night!

Busy weekend so far! Got up early and skyped a few people. Met with Chelsea to go get breakfast on campus. After a short break, we got our things together and headed over to the zoo market to do some shopping. I bought a new pair of boots..they're really nice. I had fun haggling for stuff :) There were way too many people though and the place was crowded, so after a while we left and headed over to the zoo.  At the zoo, we really only wanted to see the pandas. At first, we could barely get pictures because the panda was sitting at the back of the enclosure eating bamboo, but we waited for a while and it walked over and sat down right in front of us. I got a ton of great pictures.

After the zoo, we headed back to BeiDa and made plans with the CIEE students at Mingzi University to have dinner together and explore Sanlituar a bit. Took the subway there and met up with them. Got dinner at a random restaurant and it was really good. We had spicy chicken, some delicious green bean dish, egg drop soup, fried rice and some sort of meat and vegetable dish. It was all pretty good. We went to "The Place", (yes that is the name of the location) and walked around the book stores and mall that was there. I had my first China Starbucks experience and managed to place my order using only Chinese. I feel like this last week, I've gotten a lot more confident with speaking. One of the Mingzi students brought their tutor along, so I enjoyed practicing speaking Chinese with her. She was really nice.

We managed to catch the last line 4 subway train to Xidan, but by the time we got to the transfer station, the subway had shut down for the night. So we had a fun time trying to hail a taxi cab. They love to drive right past us. Eventually we managed to flag down 2 taxis and headed back to campus. Finally back in the dorm and time for bed. Long day today. Tomorrow I have to get up early to meet up with Chelsea and a Chinese friend we made to check out one of the parks in Beijing. The rest of my day will be spent starting to study for my midterms, which are back to back on Friday. Not looking forward to that. Also going to try to spend more time with my host family since I didn;t get to see much of them this weekend. I wish I wasn't so busy so I had more time to get to know them. At least I have a month with them in their house to get comfortable and get to know them better. Time for sleep! I'm tired!

Today was a good day. I woke up early and made my way to campus. I loveeeeeee having a bike! I took me roughly 6 minutes to bike from my homestay house to my classroom on campus. I got to class 30 minutes early so I took advantage of the time to log onto pku’s internet and check my email since the internet at my homestay house is still not working well. I had my kouyu class and then hanyu class. I was dreading my presentation. At least my teacher acknowledged the fact that we did the first presentation so it was the most difficult. Although one of our group members didn’t show up, so me and one other girl had to do the presentation. I was kind of hoping that the teacher would let us wait until Monday, but no luck. After class, I grabbed lunch with Yoshiko and took her to the baozi place. She only ate there during the orientation week, so she forgot about it. I also got her hooked onto nangua zhou. That stuff is the best!

After lunch, I met with my tutor in Shaoyuan 7 and had her help me revise my essay. I had a few grammatical mistakes I had to fix, such as putting the place words in the wrong part of the sentence, but I actually didn’t have to make many changes, so I was happy with that. I thought it was going to be way worse, but apparently my Chinese is better than I thought. I also got her to go over a few grammar structures that I’ve been having issues with. I’m getting nervous for my tests next week. My tutor also helped me download and install a Chinese keyboard input software program that is 1000 times better than the standard Microsoft one. Typing is SO MUCH EASIER now. I wish I would have had it for my essay. Things would have gone a lot faster.

After tutoring, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I decided to explore the campus a bit since I now have a bike. I found that PKU has a museum at the northwest side of campus. That would explain another reason why they seem to get a lot of visitors. I ended up at the No Name Lake, so I decided to get off my bike and walk around for a while. It’s a really nice area to walk around. I’m hoping to go back on a nice day and take pictures. Today was kind of smoggy. While I was walking around the lake, I happened to walk past a person who was practicing reading English. He looked intrigued by me, so I parked my bike and went over to talk with him. He was a nice guy to talk to. He wanted to read passages to me in English so I could help him with his pronunciation. For only studying English for 1 year, his English was pretty good. It was a nice exchange…I got to practice my Chinese and he got to practice his English. He said he could tell I was American because I speak Chinese very fast. I really don’t feel like I speak that fast but…Idk. I definitely feel like my Chinese is getting better every day, especially now that I’m in my homestay.

After talking with the guy, I biked back home. As I got in, they invited me to eat dinner with them and asked me if I had any plans for the night. I feel bad eating with them again, I don’t want them to go out of their way for me. I have no idea how to say in Chinese that I don’t want to cause them any trouble. I might want to learn how to say that. I’m still not sure about living in their house. I’m not quite sure how things are going to work. Like,  I don’t know if I happen to be home around dinner if they will think I expect to be fed or if they’re always compensating and making more food in case I decide to eat with them. He really is a good chef. The dinner was delicious. We watched the news for a little while after. Just not sure what to do. They seem like a quiet family. I don’t want to pester them, but I also don’t want them to think I’m anti social and just work on my computer all the time. I guess I’ll figure things out. So far no plans for tonight except to sit around and relax! I meant to run back to the global village and grab the Hunger Games so I could work on it, but I completely forgot.

I got a call from my classmate that they wanted to go out tonight, so I biked over to the Global Village. They got tied up with their host family, so I ended up just staying in for the night and sleeping at the global village. Ordered McFlurrys from McDonalds and relaxed with Chelsea and Jasper. Super chill night.

Had another early start and still a headache…just can’t seem to shake it. Had my hanyu and writing class this morning. I was so unfocused. I think my hanyu teacher noticed because he kept picking me to answer questions in class. Writing was easy as always. I’m still not sure what the point of that class is haha. I can’t wait to get my homework assignment back. I hope she was as amused with my writings as I was. Hoping for a good grade since most people I talked to didn’t do nearly as much work as I did. After class, I grabbed lunch with 2 of my classmates and biked back to the global village to pack the rest of my stuff into my suitcase. I stopped by a fruit stand to pick up a gift for my host family and then started the adventure of finding their house. I thought I remembered how to get there, but didn’t have much luck. I went out the west gate instead of the west side gate and ended up in the wrong area. I had to call my teacher for directions, but once I got to the right street, I recognized the area and was able to walk from there. I made a wrong turn in the apartment complex, but eventually managed to find my way to their house.

I’m living with a man and his daughter and the grandfather lives across the hall. I hear the man I’m staying with (ceng laoshi) is a very good cook. He’s making dinner right now and it smells delicious. I chatted with him for a bit and then unpacked my stuff and started on my homework for a little. They’re doing some kind of work on the building because someone was banging hammers and had drill guns going for a while. I moved out into the living room are to work on my homework since there is more light. Then the daughter came home. She’s really interesting. I haven’t gotten to talk to them much, but they seem like really nice people and they’re easy to talk to. He said my Chinese is pretty good, but I’m not so confident about that. So far I’m surprised with how much I’m able to understand and speak in their house. Still not fluent, but I’m better off than I thought I would be. I think it also helps that one of my classmates was staying here before me, so they probably have a good idea of my skill level and what I can and can’t handle. We just finished eating dinner and it was delicious. He made a stir fry with noodles and some kind of beans and we also had tomatoes, tofu and a type of bread. It was really really tasty. I’m surprised I ate as much as I did. We’re watching the news right now and it’s really good practice for my understanding skills.  Having internet problems here though. For some reason, I can get a basic connection which will allow me to access my email and google, but I can’t activate my vpn or access any other websites. So I’m kinda stuck. At least I can get to google translate so I can manage my homework. I have the rough draft of my essay finished and just have to get my tutor to edit it for me tomorrow during my tutoring session. Glad to have that out of the way so far in advance. That will save me a lot of time this weekend. Now I just have to finish studying for my quiz and figure out how my group is going to coordinate for our presentation tomorrow. I was so busy in the past few days that I haven’t been able to get together with them to put stuff together. I hate being so disorganized, but I can’t help it that I was so busy over the past few days. I’ll be glad to have this assignment behind me. Also, no vpn means no blogspot, so I’m going to be writing my posts in word and then uploading them once I get on campus or get the internet here working. 

I was so tired that I completely forgot to upload my post yesterday. Yesterday was a busy day for me. I had my kouyu class from 10-12, which wasn’t too bad. The teacher explained how the test is going to work. The first 2 parts seem easy enough, but it’s the 3^rd part I’m worried about. The first part is just vocabulary words and the 2^nd part is making sentences with given words and grammar structures. For the 3^rd part, the teacher gives us a topic based on one of the conversations from the text book as well as certain words and grammar structures and then I have 7 minutes to come up with a dialog using all that he gives me. I think it’s going to be a little nerve wracking.  After kouyu, I had my lunch break and went to get some Baozi and Zhou. It’s becoming my daily lunch/snack everyday. I really really love the Nangua Zhou. Definitely have to learn how to make that when I get back to America. After lunch, I had a break, so I went back to the dorm to relax for a little and work on my essay. At 3, I met up with Lina and she came with me to buy a bike. I’m so happy that I finally have a bike! I got a pretty good price too…it was 250 kuai for a bike, basket and lock (around $40USD) for a new bike, not too bad! After buying my bike, I ran off to one of the shao yuan buildings to have my tutoring session. I had to get her explain a few grammar structures to me that I’ve been having trouble understanding and I got to practice some reading skills. Chelsea had her session right after mine, so I didn’t get any extra time today. Headed back to the dorms and I wasn’t feeling too well. I’ve had a headache on and off all day…really annoying. Ended up relaxing and taking a shower since I finished all of my homework at the tutoring session. Ran to the store to get some food for breakfast and ran into a bunch of classmates talking to a group of students from Kansas city who were in China for a symposium. After going back to my room, I went to sleep. I had too much of a headache to study and a busy day the next day.

Ugh, what a day. I'm definitely still in vacation mode...I don't think those 9 days off did me much good, even tho I did have an amazing experience. I had the misfortune of having class today from 8 am to 8 pm. My day did not have a good start..I forgot that my kouyu class is in a different building on Tuesdays, so I went to the wrong classroom, causing me to be 10 minutes late for my class. Thankfully the teacher was late as well. I had a little break to grab some food with Kyle and start my homework in the CIEE office and then grabbing a quick snack before heading to my writing class. I'm so glad to finally hand in that writing assignment. It took me so long to finish. I'm kind of bitter that it took so long. I looked at a few other student's papers and they didn't put nearly the amount of effort into it that I did. Hoping to get a good grade for it. I was so tired that I fell asleep towards the end of class. Thankfully, I'm allowed to sleep in that class....as long as I don't snore!

After that, I went off to my Hanyu class. The classroom door was locked, so we had to wait around until someone could come and unlock the door for us. Thankfully class went by rather quick. I had enough time to grab a quick dinner with 2 classmates at the cafeteria before Melissa and I ran over to the Russian building for the calligraphy class we signed up for. It was an interesting class. I probably only understood about half of what he was saying, but I got a good idea of what he was talking about. There were supposed to be 5 of us in the class, but only Melissa and I showed up. I found it to be a relaxing experience...tho my calligraphy looks not pretty at this point.  After the class, I finally got to go home and start my laundry. I set up my homestay move in date to be Thursday. I just have too much to get done to worry about it at the moment. My homestay contact was really great and he said he wants me to move in whenever is most convenient for me. I'm glad I have a little more time.

Procrastinated for a while and then managed to get started on my homework. Finished up learning the words for my quiz tomorrow and now I just have to review it one more time before going to bed. Finished writing my dialog homework assignment as well. I only have 1 class tomorrow, so that cut out having to start my Hanyu homework. Although I did finally start my 600 word essay. I'm trying to get 100 characters done tonight. Tomorrow should be much easier since I only have Kouyu and tutoring. I have to add money to my phone and I'm hoping to have time to go bike shopping. My group tutoring session was canceled, so I don't have to worry about rushing to make a power point for that and my other powerpoint got an extension until tomorrow night. Looks like I'll get to bed at a decent hour tonight! Hoping to get some rest so I can stay on top of my stuff. I'm trying to catch up so I can start doing my independent study work again. I haven't been able to start on the Hunger Games yet because I've been so busy. Looking forward to that! Not looking forward to my exams next week.......

Shanxi/Hebei Province Trip Day 3/4

Woke up early to a lovely breakfast of zhou (a kind of rice porridge), potato bread and hard boiled eggs. It was super tasty...and apparently we got lucky because most people were served dinner's leftovers for breakfast. After we got all of our things packed, it was time to start the hike. We dropped off unnecessary things on the bus and got to take a ride on donkey carts to the point where we would be starting the hike. I think the initial climb was one of the hardest parts of the hike. The view from the mountains was absolutely amazing. It was a super long hike....probably took 6-7 hours to walk all the way through the mountains to the village at the other side. During the hike we actually crossed from Shanxi into the Hebei province. Kinda neat thing to do. The hike down was definitely the hardest part. My legs were really hurting by the end of the descent. It was pretty much a 90 minute hike straight down the side of the mountain. Looking back up, I couldn't believe some of the stuff that we climbed down.

Once we reached the village, we grabbed some food at the local restaurant and settled down in the hotel for the night. I ran out to grab some snacks for the bus ride the next day and had an interesting time talking to a few people around the supermarket we stopped at. The hotel claimed it had hot showers, but the water was not very hot. I guess I should just be glad I got to take a shower at all.

In the morning, we woke up early and drove to a small village that has a huge catholic church. It was really interesting to see because it's definitely not something you expect to see in China since it's almost the exact opposite of the government here. We weren't allowed to go inside because you need to be granted permission and we were not able to get it. They're not a fan of letting westerners into churches around here in case we would cause trouble or something of that nature. We were able to walk around the outside of it though. After exploring the church area, 4 vans were waiting to pick us up and drive us about 30 minutes up the creek bed. Although our bus driver was awesome, it was just not a drive a bus could make. My van actually got stuck on some rocks at some point and we had to leave the van behind and continue on foot. We climbed up the side of a mountain to visit an old broken down Buddhist temple. It was a really neat place to explore and it also had an amazing view, though it was quite a hike to get to the top. Very steep inclines here, but totally worth it. Relaxed and explored here for a while then headed back to the vans and then to the bus.

Stopped in a small town nearby for a delicious lunch and then started the ride back to Beijing. The ride back was.....interesting. I actually fell asleep shortly after the bus left and woke up just as we were getting to Beijing. It did not feel like I slept for 4 hours at all! Grabbed some food and headed back to the global village to unpack and do homework.

Today I had 1 class from 8-10 and spent the rest of my day slaving over the remainder of my homework. I have so much to get done in these next 2 weeks that I'm really stressing out about it. For tomorrow, I have to finish my writing packet, study for a quiz, do a book exercise and set up a time to move in to my homestay as well as having class from 8-8 with a 1 hour break for lunch. For Wednesday, I have to make 2 powerpoints, give a presentation and do whatever homework I get assigned tomorrow. I have another presentation on Friday and on Monday I have a 600 word essay due followed by a midterm the following Friday. And I have to find time to buy a bike before I move into my homestay. It is not going to be a fun week. I already had trouble sleeping last night because I have so much work to do. I will be quite glad when things settle down. Tomorrow is going to be a tough one. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep well tonight. Also hoping the pollution tomorrow isn't as bad as it was today....today was absolutely horrible and it did not help to improve my mood at all!

Shanxi/Hebei Province Trip Day 1/2

Just got back from my trip to the Shanxi, Hebei Province area. I'm going to break this down into a few posts because otherwise this post is going to end up way too long.

My trip started on Thursday morning. We caught an early bus and left the Global Village around 9am. It was supposed to be a 4 hour drive to our first stop, but because of traffic, it took an extra 90 minutes. The first stop was a little village in rural China near an unrestored section of the Great Wall. The villagers are the descendants of soldiers sent to control the area and man the wall. Not much remains of this section of the wall besides a crumbling dirt watch tower and dirt wall. Over the years, the bricks from the wall were removed by the villagers and used to build parts of the village. It was a neat place to explore and take pictures. Chelsea and I were playing a few games with the village children. It was really cold up in the mountains....it was quite a nice change from Beijing weather. After the exploration, we boarded onto the bus and drove to the town we would be staying in for the night and grabbed some dinner. The dinner was fantastic and there were so many dishes to try. We had a variation of Peking duck that I could not stop eating and also got Jin Yin Mian Bao, which is one of my favorite desert dishes. It consists of fried dough dipped in condensed milk -- so tasty! After dinner, the group headed to the hotel to check in and settle into our rooms. Funny enough, the hotel was in the same building as the police headquarters for the area. The beds here were so soft! I did not know such soft beds existed in China! After settling in, we had the option of going to the local hot springs to relax and take a shower. It was really really nice. Then it was off to bed since we would have an early start in the morning.

After waking up, we grabbed a simple breakfast from the hotel and got on the bus to drive the rest of the way to the village. I have to say, our bus driver was the best bus driver I've ever seen. We were off-road driving....with a tour bus! It was quite an adventure. Finally after an hour or so, we arrived in the village we were be spending and next day and night at. It was a very small village in rural china, they only have about 25 villagers. Mostly it consists of older people and younger children. The young adult aged villagers all leave to go into the cities and make money to send back to their families, but a lot of people had come home to visit for the holiday. We were split up into groups of 3 and placed with a family. The family I stayed with had 4 daughters and a son as well as a friend's daughter that they watch while the father is farming every day. The eldest sister is married and no longer lives with the family and the youngest daughter is living in another village with her mom's mom. The dad's mom lived in the village a few houses down. I didn't see much of the parents or the son because they were working for most of the day. We mostly got to hang out and talk to the daughters. We got to settle into the house and they made lunch for us. The house is really small. It consists of an entry hallway and 1 room which is used as a kitchen, dining room, sitting room and bedroom. There is a raised platform ~2 feet off of the ground which is a sitting area, add a table to make it a dining area, or add blankets to make it the bed. Very austere accommodations. For cooking, they have a giant wok-type pan thats sunk into a counter. It's used for cooking, as a kitchen sink, an oven and storage for dishes after meals. The house has no running water, shower or bathroom.

The eldest daughter still living with the family does all of the cooking herself. I was impressed. She made about 5 different dishes for us to sample during lunch. I couldn't believe how extravagant they made things, just for our visit. I talked to the daughters and they said they normally just get to eat potatoes every day and don't really get to eat much else. For them, it was such a feast! They even bought soda for our visit and refused to drink any of it. In the end, we were finally able to convince them to share it with us as they normally only drink water. I could not believe how generous they were to us. They also kept trying to stuff us full of fruit, which I know is not cheap to buy, but they had no shortage of it for our visit.

It was a little challenging to talk to them, since they speak a different dialect of Mandarin than I do. For the most part the language is the same, but some words have different pronunciations or are completely different altogether. I felt bad for the one girl in my group because she just started studying Chinese when she came to China, so she couldn't really understand anything that was going on. I had to do quite a bit of translation work over the course of the day. The girls really liked my wrist bracelets, so I ended up giving them away. After lunch, we got to sell all of the animals they had at their house. They had a kitten, 8 month old puppies, 2 other dogs, a mule, a donkey, a pig, a few roosters and a small herd of sheep. We got to play with the puppies for a while, which was so much fun. The little girl that they baby sit was hilarious. She was 5 years old and nicknamed us "gugu" (which is what you call your father's eldest sister, meaning she thought we were really old). She didnt' speak mandarin, so she just kept repeating back to us what we said. She would just follow us around saying Ni Hao over and over. After looking at all the animals, it was time to get to work. That day the family we were staying with was working on finishing up the harvest for one of their fields. We had to help pull all the plants out of the ground and put the vegetables in a pile. Then the vegetables had to be placed into bags for storage. Some of the veggies were being saved to eat and others were going to be replanted. After that, they had to hitch the plow up to the mule and drag the plow back and forth over the field. We had to pickup any veggies that popped out of the ground and bag them as well. It took most of the day to get the field cleared. It started to rain, but there was no stopping for weather here. Thankfully the storm blew through fairly quickly.

After all the work was done, we went back to the house and started to cook dinner. Again, they made a feast. We had 9 different dishes to sample and they all were delicious. Most of the ingredients were vegetables they had picked or grown themselves. It was really tasty. We got to help make some sort of potato bread. You had to boil the potatoes and then put them through this masher type thing, then it was mixed with rice flour and rolled into logs which we then broke into smaller oval piece and put on a tray for baking. At dinner, the potato things were used to dip into the sauces of the other dishes. It was really tasty. After cleaning up, all of us headed outside to one of the fields and we started a fire to roast potatos on. I definitely ate too much during this trip. We had a lot of fun around the campfire, talking and singing songs. Our bus driver was crazy and made a couple of passes at jumping over the fire. When the fire had burned down, we finally got our potatos. The skin was charred, so I had to take a brick and rub off the black charred skin before I could eat it. Shortly after, we all headed back to the house to sleep. It was really late and cold! It was so cold up in the mountains!

For bed, the small table was taken off of the dining area and all of the blankets were spread on top of it. In this area, the people sleep on Kangs, which are slabs of stone with a stove underneath to provide warmth. It was sooooooo nice and warm crawling inbetween the blankets on the kang. I slept pretty well, except for the cat that kept walking over my legs. This day was quite an interesting experience!!

Trip to Bei Hai Park today with Chelsea and our tutor. Well, first we grabbed some hot pot for lunch from one of my favorite restaurants here. Then, we had our first experience riding on a bus in Beijing today. It was super cheap, but I think I like the subways...there aren't traffic jams on the subway. We met a nice teacher from Ming Zi University who we were talking to during the ride. Chelsea convinced me to do a few magic tricks for the people on the bus. It was kinda nerve-wracking, but I managed ok. They were impressed. We ended up getting off the bus a few stops early and walking because the traffic was so bad. Finally arrived at the park....and it was packed with tourists traveling for the National Holiday. We were trying to get pictures of us with our tutor, but so many people kept butting in because they wanted to take pictures with us. After a while, we managed to escape and rented a pedal boat to ride around the lake. It was fun in the beginning....but then people started intentionally running into our boat to get our attention, which I thought was super super rude of them. One boat was just following us around shouting "hello" to get our attention. I've gotten good at ignoring these kind of people.

After we finally managed to park our boat and get off the lake, we walked around the park for a little. We saw people doing calligraphy with brushes and water on the sidewalk. Apparently this is common practice in China. Also, old people dancing in parks, but we didnt see any of that today. We walked around a bit more and then sat for a while to look at the lake and eat some fruit. Once again, we were pestered by groups of tourists wanting to take pictures with us. After a while, we had to get up and walk away because it was getting ridiculous.

Took the bus back to BeiDa....had to wait for forever for the one we needed to come. Grabbed some milk tea and pastries and then headed back to the dorm. Tried to start my homework, but I just wasn't in the mood. Went exploring with Elliot and tried out a Wang Ba (internet cafe), but none of my NA accounts work on the asian servers. It's kind of hard to set up stuff on the computers when everything is in Chinese. Back to the dorms and now time for sleep! Have to go shopping tomorrow to pick up last minute things for my trip and probably spend a lot of the day doing homework. I have such a headache from speaking Chinese all day. I'm still a little frustrated. I feel like my reading is improving, but my speaking and listening skills are going no where. Guess I need to start studying more. Leaving for my trip on Thursday, so I will not be online for the next 5 days. Updates to come after I return to Beijing. Can't believe I've already been in China for 1 month!! This semester is going wayyyyyy too fast!

Didn't get much done today. Woke up late and headed to Eastern Beijing to try and find a Dim Sum restaurant that was supposedly over there. Sadly Beijing's street system still does not make sense to me, so we weren't able to find it and ended up eating at a different restaurant (although the food was very good). Afterwards, we were planning to go check out the 798 art district, however there are no subway stops there and I didn't know how to say the name of the district in Chinese. Then we were planning to go see the drum and bell tower, but just ended up heading back to campus. After resting for a while, we went on campus to play some basketball. The line for tourists to get into BeiDa was huge! I could tell they were unhappy when I was able to bypass the line with my student ID. Was going to play basketball with a classmate, but he was tied up in a game and they clearly did not want girls to play, so we ended up playing with another group of people that Chelsea knew and we got to meet a few new people.

After basketball, I headed back to the dorm. I was planning to go walk around Ming Zi University and grab some dinner, but one of my classmates said there was something going on in the square for the holiday. So a bunch of us got together and took a subway to the square only to find out that there wasn't anything going on. The place was decorated and there were tons of people milling around, but no event or attraction. We walked around in search of food. I got a lamb skewer and some you tiao, so I was happy. The others grabbed food from a small restaurant on the side of the street. With nothing to see or do, headed back to campus slightly disappointed. Started watching a movie with Elliot, but I'm suddenly super tired, so that movie will have to get finished tomorrow. Time for me to get some sleep! Heading to Bei Hai park with my tutor tomorrow and hopefully planning to do some karoke tomorrow night with one of the Chinese friends I made.