Meh. Nothing special going on today. Had one class that was a waste of time because the professor spent almost the whole first hour trying to hook his computer up to the projector so we could watch everyone else's movies. After class I grabbed food and then headed back to the dorms to do homework and start reviewing for my exams. Around 4:30ish, Melissa and I went to check out the area around Ming Zi Da Xue only to find out that a bunch of buildings had just been torn down and there weren't as many shops as the last time we visited. We ended up getting bubble tea and then heading back to Beida. We had a fantastic hot pot dinner at the place with the giant budda outside the southwest gate. I think we ate enough food for 3 people easily haha. After dinner it was back to the dorms and I spent the rest of my night studying for the impending exam.

Here it was...the fated day...the day I must give my first Chinese speech. I was kind of exhausted since I was up for most of the night memorizing my speech. Well....I got to class and after listening to other people's speeches, decided I didn't like my topic. So instead of using the one I had prepared, I just winged it. I am proud of myself for coming up with a 5 minute speech on the spot. I decided to talk about my experiences in China and the people I met. So glad the speech is over with.  Tuesdays are my long days so next I went to the CIEE office to relax and study. Grabbed lunch and then went to writing class and received the last homework assignment for that class. Then onto Hanyu class. By now I was really really tired. After class I met up with Loomis and Chelsea at Paradiso and we all went to eat at the neighboring cafeteria. Sadly, they didn't have the chicken I really like. After dinner I headed back to the dorms and spent the rest of my night working on the review for my Hanyu test. I hoping to do much better this time around. I dont' think it will be too bad. Chelsea ended up coming over to talk for a while and we had a nice chat, but it started to get late so we both went to sleep. Thankfully I only have one class tomorrow so I'll have a lot of time to study!

So it's Monday. And that means it's my birthday! First birthday away from home. Sadly China doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, so I had to go to classes on my birthday. Thankfully I only have one! After classes I met up with my tutor to start reviewing for my Hanyu exam. She got me a Chinese dictionary for my birthday. That's right. Chinese. Not Chinese-English. It's quite an interesting dictionary. After eating lunch, I went back to the dorms to continue memorizing my speech. Around 5 I headed over to Wudaokou to meet up with Mona and eat a sushi dinner together. It was a lot of fun to just sit and talk and eat sushi. I don't know why I have such a crazy appetite in China. I just eat and eat and eat. This is the only place where I can clean my plate and still be hungry! After dinner we both headed back to the dorms and I went to Paradiso cafe to meet with my language partner. We were studying together for about 3 hours. He didn't want to work on English today. He told me he really likes teaching Chinese because he likes the sense of accomplishment it gives him. He told me he's impressed with how far my Chinese has come in just 2 months. When I first met him, I could barely understand him and he had to speak slowly for me. Now he can talk at his normal pace and I have no problem understanding him except for a few words here and there. What a big difference from when I first landed in China! Towards the end of the review session, he realized it was my birthday and started apologizing for making me study on my birthday. I told him it was no big deal and I had to review for my exam anyway. We were both a little hungry and I had been talking about chicken wings earlier (which he is a big fan of) so we decided to go to out and get a midnight snack. I LOVE how some restaurants in China are still open at midnight. He took me to the restaurant outside the SW gate where I had my Thanksgiving dinner and we ordered a ton of skewers. It was nice to just sit and talk and drink tea while eating chicken wings. Sadly they don't have buffalo wings in China, but the ones that he ordered were really good. We also got some lamb, potato and eggplant skewers. And since it was my birthday, he insisted on treating me. It was a lot of fun, but I didnt get back to my dorm room until around 12:30 and stayed up for most of the night memorizing my speech.

Woke up around 8 am and couldn't sleep anymore. Grabbed breakfast at Bride with Jon and Chelsea. I started to feel really tired after getting back to the dorms, but Chelsea convinced me to drag myself outside and we went to see the Lama Temple. It was a lot smaller than I expected and we only needed about an hour to walk around. Afterwards, we perused the shops around the area and looked for things to buy. I bought a few souvenirs and some youtiao type stuff that had like a cinnamon nut mixture inside them. They were pretty tasty. Headed back to the dorms for a little and then at 5 met up with a Chinese friend from my dance class to get dinner together. He took me to a really good restaurant in zhongguancun. The food was fantastic. We got some kind of cold eggplant dish with a vinegar kind of sauce, hot and sour veal and a malaxiangguo type dish. He's from Sichuan Province, so we of course had to get spicy food. He was really excited when I told him Sichuan food is my favorite kind of Chinese food. After dinner I headed back to the dorms and spent the rest of my night doing homework. I have to get this speech memorized by Tuesday...about 1/3 of the way done before I called it a night. At least I have off all day tomorrow to catch up with my work. This week is going to be crazyyyyy!

Slept in late today on account of returning from the concert so late. Took a shower and headed out to eat food and run some errands. I've been out of money all week so I finally had time to go to the bank. Worked on a little homework and reviewing for my test. Around 6, got dinner with Blair, Chelsea and Jon at a hole in the wall restaurant near the dorms. Then Chelsea, Jon and I headed over to the Southwest gate to meet with Li Jiao and one of her friends. We walked to Zhongguancun to do karaoke at a place where Li Jiao had already made a reservation. There was a bit of debating over times and such. There was some kind of special if you stayed for 3 hours, but 3 hours was a little too expensive and we didnt have a card to get a discount. Li Jiao managed to borrow a membership card from someone else who was coming to do karaoke, so we got the better deal, which also included a bottle of whiskey and some snacks. Karaoke was a lot of fun. Chelsea surprised me with a cake so we ate tons of food while we were singing. I through it was a fun night, although I had to keep coercing the 2 chinese girls to sing. It was a little hard because they didnt know any English songs and all of the Chinese songs were in traditional, so it was hard for me and Chelsea to read. Also, the 2 Chinese girls didnt speak much English and Jon didn't speak much Chinese, so it was a little awkward. Apparently Li Jiao had never tried whiskey before. So she took the bottle and poured herself nearly a full glass! I could tell from the face she made that she didn't really like it. I tried to tell her it was strong, but maybe my Chinese isn't good enough for that yet because I dont' think she understood. We actually ended up staying for the 2 hours. Then we all went our separate ways. Me Chelsea and Jon went back to the dorms to drop off our stuff and then Chelsea convinced me to go dancing with her in Wudaokou; also Jon wanted to go out since it was his only weekend in Beijing. So we went to the club and it wasn't too bad. Much better than other nights I've gone out...and we only went out for 2 hours...not as long as previous weekends. Finally managed to find Chelsea and Jon and then we headed back to the dorms.

After getting back, I realized that one of my earrings was missing. I was really sad because it was my favorite pair of earrings. I actually got really lucky. One of the people at the club that I knew called my phone and told me that during the night they noticed my earring fell out, so they picked it up and forgot to give it to me before I left. They were really sweet and took a cab all the way over to my dorm to give me back my earring. I never thought I would get it back! Although it looks like it got stepped on, so I have to get the clasp fixed once I get back to America. I'm just happy I got it back!

Finally Friday! Kind of a lazy day today. Had two classes in the morning and then met my language partner for lunch. We ate together at one of the cafeterias on campus. I have no idea what food he ordered for me, but it was delicious! Afterwards, we headed to Paradiso Cafe to study together for about 3 hours. I really really like working with him. I feel like I learn so much. Today I was supposed to help him with English, but we mostly ended up working on Chinese, which I was completely fine with. He also took me to what he considers to be the best bubble tea joint on campus. I told him to order me whatever he usually gets and......it was really interesting. I was super confused when I was drinking it haha. It was a black milk tea, which was normal, but then it also had pudding pieces, peanuts and black beans in it. Quite the interesting combination, but super tasty! After studying for a while, he had to get ready for basketball practice, so he left and I headed back to the dorms. I dropped off my backpack and packed my shoulder bag before heading off to the CIEE office to meet with everyone. For dinner, we went to a restaurant outside the southwest gate. We ate SO MUCH food! We had Beijing duck, eggplant, fried pumpkin, and a ton of other things. After dinner, most of us went with the group to a small club just outside zhongguanxinyuan for a rock concert. It was an interesting experience. The first group was pretty decent. They sang all of their songs in Chinese because they said they thought they could express themselves better. The second group sucked. They never introduced themselves or their songs. The drummer was fantastic though! He even had a solo song. The singer really sucked. They had no stage presence and no idea how to work a stage. Also my classmates were having a debate because they couldn't decide if he was male or female. I'm pretty sure it was a guy. His hair was long and cut like a girls, he was wearing tight leather leggings with platform boots and wore a long denim shirt with a scarf. Probably the most feminine looking man I've ever seen. But yea. Except for the drummer, the band sucked. Oh and all of their songs were in English. The third band was the best by far! They had a mix of Chinese and English and opened with ACDC Back in Black. By the end, no one wanted them to finish, we kept asking for encores haha. It was a fun night. I didn't get home until around 1 and then promptly went to sleep....it's been a long day

Happy Thanksgiving from China! Not much of a Thanksgiving here, as China doesn't celebrate the holiday. Had 2 classes and then worked with my tutor for 3 hours reviewing for my upcoming exam. Returned to the dorms and then joined a few friends to have dinner together. There's not really turkey in China, unless you're willing to pay a lot for it, so my options for dinner were limited. We ended up going out to a restaurant outside the Southwest gate, the same one CIEE took us to for the dumpling making activity. We ordered so much food! I think we got about 8 different dishes to try. Since there was no turkey, our main dish was a large fish that was delicious! We also got a few of my favorites, such as jin man tou, fried green beans with chili peppers, eggplant, fried potato stick things, kung pao chicken (which really didn't have much chicken), and for dessert we got this dish that consists of chunks of potato that are deep fried and then covered in a thick sugar glaze. It sounds weird, but it's absolutely delicious! After dinner, I returned home to skype with a few family members and then eventually headed to bed. I really don't feel like going to classes tomorrow. I wish today was Friday. I'm looking forward to tomorrow though....Beijing Duck with CIEE and then a Chinese rock concert afterwards!

Wednesday is going much much better albeit very busy. Slept in a little today since my first and only class is at 10 am. After class, I ran off to the CIEE office to use my lunch break to skype with a friend and after that, I was whisked away to Paradiso Cafe for the rest of my day to work work work. First I met with the group for my Kouyu class and we finally worked out a script for our video. We're filming on Saturday and I really hope it only takes one day to finish. I just want it to be over with!

So I worked with them from 1-4 and at 4, one of my Chinese friends/language partners met me at the Cafe to practice speaking; I practiced Chinese, he practiced English. The only problem is he ends up asking questions that I don't have the vocabulary for, so my Chinese ends up having a lot of English mixed in, but it's still a good experience. I also noticed if someone speaks English, I respond English. If someone speaks Chinese, I'm more likely to answer in Chinese. We were both hungry, so we took a break to eat dinner together at the nearby cafe. It has the best chicken I've ever had. I have no idea how it's made, but I intend to find out and master it! After dinner I went back to the cafe since Chelsea was saving a table then her and her boyfriend went to grab lunch. I made a quick run back to my dorm room to drop off some books and then returned to the cafe, picking up bubble tea along the way, to meet my other Chinese friend/language partner. Like I said, busy day.

Met Haibo at the cafe at 7 and we were at the cafe from 7-11 just talking to each other and studying. He wanted me to practice Chinese today, so most of our conversation was in Chinese. I really like how patient he is with explaining things and making sure I understand. Usually he'll explain something to me in Chinese and then I'll explain the English equivalent to him. It was really interesting and I learned so much! He actually made a point to have me speak Chinese. If I wanted to say something in English, he told me to give it a try in Chinese first.We were also working on one of the passages in my Chinese book. He had me read it and helped me with my pronunciation and helping on words I didn't know and then I helped him translate it to English. It was a really good exercise for both of us. I'm actually really impressed with how well it worked. Although I realized something DO NOT translate from Chinese to English. One of the sentences, 你的那句话，就像虫子一样，爬满了我的心头，pretty  much translated to English as "when you speak in this way, it is like you are a bug, and my heart is crawling with bugs" which apparently in Chinese means you feel uncomfortable. So then we were making jokes all night about hearts crawling with bugs and now I learned that some things just do not translate at all! Although what I find really interesting is that I can read a sentence in Chinese and understand the meaning, but have no idea how to translate it to English!

There were a few words that I didn't recognize and he explained them to me using Chinese. After both of us struggling to help each other understand, we realized the words were part of the vocabulary for the lesson. I was impressed because the words he had explained to me, I was able to guess the correct meaning without looking at the English. All in all, it was a fun night. I also showed him a few of the new magic tricks I was working on, which he thought were great...even if I'm not very smooth with them yet. It was a really good way to relax after a long day of working nonstop. I didn't even realize how much time had passed.

I dont' know where my time has gone! I can't believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving already! First Thanksgiving away from home too. But in China, tomorrow is just a normal day. Getting dinner with a few friends probably. Friday night is when CIEE is celebrating Thanksgiving. We're all getting Beijing Duck together and then going to a rock concert. I think Saturday night we're going to do karaoke. I also have a lot of things to work on this weekend since next week is the second round of midterms for me. I'm just glad I'm feeling a lot better today! My language partner also wants to meet with me tomorrow night. I'm really glad that I found great people to study with. I definitely learn more from chatting with them than I do from most of my classes. It's really interesting to have friends now who don't really speak English. Quite an experience. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Sorry for the long post :)

Well, Tuesday didn't go well either...I guess this is just going to be a bad and stressful week for me. Managed to wake up on time and get to my first class, but I did not sleep well at all. The stupid radiator started making noise around 4am, making it impossible to sleep. It sounded like someone was in my room dumping buckets of water into the radiator. The constant trickle and gurgling was too much. I felt like I was on auto pilot today. I was so disorganized and couldn't pay attention in class. Starting to think maybe I'm missing something in my diet..I really haven't been feeling well. I'm sure the lack of uninterrupted sleep is part of it. I have a lot of things to handle right now, so the stress of that isn't helping much either. Thankfully I already finished my essay so that's out of the way. Next Tuesday I have to write and give a speech and have my video for kouyu finished. The video is not going well...we barely have an idea or a script. I think I might have to step in a take charge, as much as I don't want to. Next Friday I also have a big monthly exam as well as I need to revise my essay and put my entries together for the calligraphy or photo contest. Wayy too much to handle. Oh and I have to make a presentation of the art district as well and interview requests for A round come out on Thursday. I still haven't heard back from the head of my department regarding my situation with the heat transfer class at Drexel. 最近的压力太多！ Is the only way I can think of expressing this situation. On the plus side, my Chinese continues to improve. I now have several more Chinese friends and 3 language partners. Well that's all for now. I'm working on going through my textbook and figuring out what I have to study for my monthly exam. Hopefully calling it an early night tonight.. I definitely need the sleep. Tomorrow, 1 class then meeting with my kouyu group in the afternoon and my language partner in the evening. My tutor wanted to get together...I feel bad she had a whole day planned out for us, but I have to get this video out of the way since my other 2 classmates only really have time on Wednesdays. Sigh. I'll be glad when all of these projects are past me. On a sad note, I have less than a month left in Beijing T.T I'm not ready to leave yet!!!!!

Monday sucks. I was so exhausted that I slept through my alarm and woke up at 8. Quickly got dressed and ran to campus, only to find that my bike was broken. Someone broke the chain on my bike overnight, so I had to run to class. Guess I’ll have to fix my bike later today. Managed to get there, but I was 30 minutes late and missed the quiz….I am not happy today. After class, I went to the office to relax until Chelsea finished with class. We're planning to check out the Forbidden City today. After lunch I met up with her in Paradiso and had to wait for her and her boyfriend to finish up things. Stopped in to visit Li Jiao at the shop and then finally headed for the Forbidden City. Sadly the Forbidden City closes at 4:30 this time of year since the sun sets by 5, so I only had an hour to look around. I guess I'll have to go back sometime in the future and check it out again. Took the crowded subway back to BeiDa and then met up with Mona and Robbie to get dinner. After eating our fill of Baozi, we stopped at a restaurant outside the Southwest gate to get some slammin' Jin Yin Man Tou. Headed back to the dorms. I fixed my bike and then after finishing up my homework, went to sleep early (For once!) This lack of sleep is starting to get to me. Hoping to sleep well tonight and feel more rested tomorrow.

Slow start today. Pattra and I are still trying to get video games to work, but it keeps telling us the servers are full, which I find hard to believe. I’m starting to think it’s the internet connection since that has been absolute crap this week. Got baozi with Pattra for breakfast. She went to take a nap because she wasn’t feeling great. I worked on studying Chinese and fixing up my computer. I was wayyyyy overdue for a defrag. My computer is running much better now thankfully. Around 2, Chelsea and her boyfriend got back from the great wall. I got lunch with Chelsea and then the 3 of us went to Nanluoguxiang, which is a super famous hutong in China. On the way there, we ran into a few of our CIEE teachers in the subway coming back from the Shanghai conference. Apparently they took my potato picture with them and now I’m super famous hahaha. They told me a lot of people at the conference were stopping to take a picture of my poster. Anyway, we went to Naluoguxiang…It was originally destroyed by the Europeans,b ut then rebuilt and became a famous tourist attraction. I didn’t get to spend as much time here as I would have liked. There were so many neat shops to see and food places and restaurants, bars and clubs. I definitely need to come back here to explore again. After a while, we searched for a place to eat dinner. The first few we stopped at had waiting lists. We finally stumbled upon this shady noodle place that had amazing cheap food. It was soooo good. I hope I can find it again in the future. We wandered around for a bit on the northern side of houhai, trying to find a subway station. Returned to Beida. I had homework to do and then went to bed. Forgot I had an interview to perform, so I was scrambling trying to find people on QQ to interview. Thankfully I was able to find 2 people to help me. I’m exhausted, so it’s time for bed. 

Start of another weekend. Woke up early to have breakfast with Ai and then we went to dance class together. This class wasn’t as fun. My shoulder was bothering me, so I ended up resting for part of the class. There weren’t a lot of people so most ended up without partners. After class, Ai and I were going to have lunch with one of the Chinese girls from the class, but I forgot I already had lunch plans with another Chinese friend. He took me to a really great restaurant outside the South Gate. The food was delicious. I felt bad though..I thought we would be eating on campus, so I didn’t bring my wallet. He insisted on treating me to lunch since I helped him out with a few things last week. Afterwards, he asked me what I had planned for my day. I told him I didn’t have any plans so he asked if he could take me to Yuanmingyuan, which is a park near Qinghua University. I had nothing better to do, so I agreed to go along. The park was really really cool. It used to be a garden for the emperor, but then somewhere along the line the French and Europeans came and burned parts of it down. There are 3 lakes and the park is super huge. I could spend multiple days there and not get to see everything. One section that we walked through had a really cool stone labyrinth. Another had the ruins of several of the buildings that had been destroyed. It’s interesting to see structures in China that are supporting a European influence. Quite a sight to behold. I was quite annoyed that I didn’t think to bring my camera along with me today. I definitely have to go back and get some pictures. It was unlike anything I had seen before. Returned home and got hot pot for dinner with Chelsea and her boyfriend and then returned home to the dorms to do work, study and relax. Ended up skyping with my parents as well and talking to a few of my Chinese friends on QQ. All in all, not too bad of a day!

Finally Friday! I'm so ready for the weekend....I need some rest. After my classes, I didn't even have time to eat lunch today. I signed up to learn how to do Peking Opera face painting, but no one had yet told me a location, so I ran over to the CIEE office and by the time I tracked down the teachers, it was too late to eat anything before the class started. The class was a lot of fun...we started off learning some kung fu moves that they use in Peking Opera and learned a little fighting skit....with swords :) I like swords. After playing with swords for a while, we started on the face painting. Today we learned how to paint a monkey face. The teacher walked us through the process step by step and we got to paint the face of one of our classmates. It was a lot of fun and the faces turned out kind of scary looking haha. We all took tons of pictures. I didn't want to wash off the paint, but I was going to my dance class after the face painting and didnt' want to walk around with my face painted like a monkey for the rest of the day. It took forever to wash all of the paint off. At least I know how to paint faces now if I ever want to do it again in the future. After cleaning up, Ai and I ran over to the sports building for dance class. We were a little late today from the face painting. They were teaching a new step today and I was kind of lost since I didn't make it to the 2 classes last week. Learning the new steps was fun, but my partner wasn't that great. He didn't have anyone to dance with when I got there, so I had to work with him. He's kind of the class clown, always talking when the teacher is and joking around (which I don't understand because it's not a free class) so he had no idea how to do the new step and he just wanted to talk. He was a little strange. Him and his friend kept trying to joke with me. I understood what they were saying, but what they were saying didn't make sense to me. I didn't find it to be funny so I'm not quite sure what point they were trying to get across. His friend kept trying to make fun of him in front of me, but I wasn't quite clear how it was funny. Guess I still have a ways to go as far as the cultural aspect of things. I didn't get to practice much because my dance partner wanted to chat more than dance, so I just stopped talking with them. After class, Ai and I got cornered by the creepy older guy who wanted to solicit us for phone numbers so he can practice his English. I was so happy when Tian Xin came over to pull us away. Grabbed dinner with Ai at the cafeteria and then headed back to the dorms. Nothing going on tonight. Pattra and I ended up setting up an adhoc internet connection so we could play league together, but after our games finished patching she had to restart her computer and we were unable to get the network working again. I finally decided to call it quits and head to sleep. I need to get some rest after this week!

Another busy day for me. Had class from 8-12 and then a short break to grab food before I had to meet my tutor. Worked with her for a while on fixing up the essay for my Hanyu class, but I was glad to get that out of the way a day early. After tutoring, I had to meet up with a group from my Kouyu class because we have to make a video to submit for the contest as part of one of our grades. We worked for a while on coming up with an idea and trying to plan it out a little. I was so tired. I have not been sleeping well this week. After working for a while, I went to grab food from the cafeteria and then went home. Relaxed and studied for my quizzes and then went to bed.

I love Wednesdays because I get to sleep in. Really love it. Did some computer work this morning before running off to class. After class, I grabbed some quick lunch and then met my tutor outside the South East Gate since today is our field trip to the 798 art district. Chelsea came too and she brought along one of her language partners, Loomis. He was a really chill person and easy to talk to. We were talking for most of the bus ride to the art district. I really love all the strange looks I get from people while I'm going around Beijing and speaking Chinese. They just have this incredulous look on their faces. It took a while, but we finally got to the art district and walked around for a while. It looks like some sort of art festival recently ended, so a lot of the places were in between changing exhibits or had construction going on. So we walked around for a while and looked at a lot of the stuff that they had. We really didn't get to walk in and look at many galleries or stores, which I was fine with. I was just happy to walk around. I got some really cool pictures. There were about 3 couples here running around taking wedding pictures, which was pretty cute, although they looked freezing haha. It was a little on the chilly side today, but sunny so it was comfortable. Chelsea made friends with a cat and kept playing with it...it was adorable. After walking around for a while, we decided to head back to Beida and get some dinner. Our Chinese friend took us to a hot pot restaurant outside the South Gate that was pretty tasty. Also if you use your phone to take a picture of the food and post it online they give you like 20% off of your bill. So cool! The food was delicious. Although he was trying to convince me to get some kind of hot pot that contained pigs feet. I passed on that one and got a sweet and sour soup instead. Still tasty. And the restaurant had my favorite dish - jin yin man tou! Definitely a good restaurant...and it wasn't that expensive. Our Chinese friend's roommate also came to join us. I guess both of them are language partners with Chelsea. We had a fun meal together talking in Chinese and a little English. Our tutor doesnt really speak much English, so we didn't want to be rude and tried to speak as much Chinese as possible. After the meal, they insisted that I show them a few magic tricks. I loved the look on their faces when I did magic for them. They were intrigued. After dinner Chelsea and I returned to the dorms. I happened to get a phone call from another Chinese friend who wanted to meet up tonight. Chelsea was tired, so she decided to stay in the dorms. I biked over to Wudaokou to meet up with Haibo and exchange stories. He wanted to tell me about his trip to Shanxi last week and just catch up a bit since both of us have been busy. He said he can tell that my Chinese has improved a lot since the last time we had time to chat. I ended up ordering a cup of coffee, which seemed like a good idea at the time. We sat and talked for a few hours, just chatting and talking about school and finding work and sharing pictures. I think this is the best way to learn a language. It started getting late, so we both headed back to campus. The coffee was definitely a bad idea. I'm so hyper now that I have no idea how I'm going to sleep any time soon. Haha I have to remember that for next time....coffee at night is a bad idea. At least now I have the energy to catch up on a few things...like my blog...before heading to sleep. At least I only have a few classes tomorrow, so it shouldn't be too bad if I'm not able to sleep a lot tonight. Haibo asked me to be a language partner with him, so I'm looking forward to that. He's a really easy person to talk to, so I think he will be a good language partner for me. Well that's all for now! I have to finish up a few things and then try to get some sleep hahaha!

Wasn't feeling well when I woke up since I didn't sleep too well the night before. Tuesdays are always difficult days for me. Spent the entire day going from class to class. Spent a lot of time working on my essay for the competition that's coming up soon. I have to write a 700 character essay...not too terrible. After class, I grabbed dinner with Chelsea. While we were sitting in the noodle place, our friend Li Jiao happened to notice us and decided to eat dinner with us. I was really happy that she came to join us. The people sitting around us were definitely staring at us....2 white girls sitting with a Chinese girl chatting happily away in Chinese. Chelsea headed back to the dorms early, but I stuck around to talk with Li Jiao until we were both done eating. Then we both walked back to the South East gate together before parting ways. She was going to Wudaokou to use a computer and I was heading back to my dorm for the night. Ended up hanging out in Chelsea's room and doing work together until I started to get tired. I wanted to stay up and have a little fun since I had been working most of the day, but the Starcraft servers were done for repairs, so I ended up calling it an early night

Another busy day in Beijing. After my class, I ran off to the CIEE office to meet with the delegation who is coming to visit us in Beijing before they go to the conference in Shanghai next week. I waited around for an hour and studied while waiting for them to return to the office for lunch. Once they returned, we chatted for a while before going to have lunch at one of the restaurants on campus The food was fantastic! but then again, with ciee, the food is always amazing. I ate SO MUCH FOOD and it was delicious. We talked throughout the whole meal and then afterwards I escorted them back to the Global Village so they could attend a lecture about the program. With that finally done, I ran back to Shao Yuan to get my bike and then returned to the Global Village and my dorm room. I was feeling pretty tired, so I took a nap and overslept because I forgot to turn on my alarm. When I woke up, I went to dinner with Mona. We had trouble finding a place to eat since by the time I woke up most of the cafeteria's on campus were closed. So we ended up having dinner together outside the South West gate --- it was also delicious. Then I came back home and tried to get some sleep. I was tossing and turning for most of the night...and for some reason people kept ringing our doorbell. I was not a happy camper

Overslept today, so I didn't get up in time to meet Chelsea for breakfast. I was supposed to go with her to meet 2 of her new Chinese friends. Took a slow easy start today. The weather is absolutely beautiful! The sky is super clear, but it's cold and windy. Grabbed baozi for breakfast with Lizzy and Mona and then we headed into Beijing to check out the Purple Bamboo park. Chelsea and Mariah were busy doing something with the CIEE delegation visiting Beijing for the CIEE conference this week. I guess the conference is in Shanghai, but they're visiting Beijing to get a taste of the program here. I have lunch with the group of them tomorrow.

The park was really nice. I think it would have looked better a few weeks ago before the snow and cold weather set in. The bamboo still looked nice since it stays green year round, but the lakes looked kinda crappy with all of the dead lotus plants floating around. Overall it was a really nice place to visit, lots of nice scenery. We ran into a person that randomly started talking to us. I was proud of myself..I was able to handle the whole conversation without having to ask him to repeat anything...I was impressed. After we were  done walking around the park, we stopped at the Zoo market since it was close by. Lizzy finally got a pair of boots. I bought a nice pair of fur lined gloves for 30 kuai, so I was super happy. After our shopping endeavor we headed back to Beida and started doing homework. Tonight I grabbed dinner with Ai to catch up with her a bit since I havne't had the chance to talk to her much. It was a lot of fun. The rest of my night was spent studying, catching up on internet work and studying for my quiz tomorrow. Tomorrow should be another busy day with this lunch event, but at least most of my afternoon and night are free. I decided I really need to be using more of my free time during the week to travel around Beijing. I still have quite a few things left on my list, but only a few are must see items.  I'm definitely not going to go to every temple and teahouse on my list. Well that's all for now. I hve to update my Drexel blog and then get ready for sleep!

Woke up to a massive rain storm and crappy weather. My tutor messaged me and decided to cancel our field trip to the art district since the weather was so poor and we rescheduled it for next Wednesday. I've been sleepy lately so I slept in fairly late and then once I woke up, went to campus to get food. The weather is absolutely miserable. The only plus side is that I know tomorrow's weather will be beautiful. Spent most of the day doing work and studying. I finally started my essay that's due Friday. At least it's only 700 words...not too bad. After studying with Chelsea in the cafe, she went to the gym and I waited for her to finish so we could go grab dinner. Mariah ended up joining us so I was super happy! We got hot pot from a restaurant outside the Southwest gate. It was absolutely delicious! I really love hot pot.

After dinner, we all headed back to the dorms. Mariah and I decided that we wanted to go out dancing. Mona and Lizzy decided to join us. So we spent a few minutes getting ready and then headed over to Wudaokou. Thankfully it wasn't raining anymore, but it was still windy and cold. The leather jacket I bought is a perfect windbreaker. The first club we went to kind of sucked...they weren't playing any good music and the people there didn't know how to dance at all. There was this one guy that kept hanging around the group of us, which was a little creepy. After a while, we decided to go to the next club. This one wasn't much better. The music was kinda slow and they were playing songs from the late 90's. Ran into my friend that is the dance teacher here and he joined our group. It was kind of funny...at one point we were all dancing and then this nickelback song came on and we all stopped. My friend was so confused! He couldn't understand why we stopped so I had to explain to him that it wasn't a good song for dancing. He was amused because apparently it's a very popular song in China. The music didn't get much better so we decided to switch clubs again. My friend was trying to explain to me that today was some kind of holiday, but I didn't quite understand what he was trying to say.

Third time is the charm! The music was way better, but it was a little on the crowded side. We ended up dancing for several hours. I went outside to take a break..the club was too warm for my liking. Lizzy ended up going back early and I stayed a little later until the other 2 girls were ready to leave. And then after that we headed back to the dorms and had an awesome taxi driver on the way back. He was scolding Mariah because her tights were too thin for the weather. I love when I get nice taxi drivers! Shortly after that it was time for bed. Definitely another long day and night in Beijing, but at least it was a lot of fun. Although after talking to each other I finally figured out what today's holiday was....turns out it's Single's Day when all the single people in China go out to parties and try to meet other single people -_- No wonder the clubs were all packed and filled with strange people. Wish I would have known that before I went out...I would have definitely picked another night hahaha. At least the night ended well even though the first 2 clubs were a wash!

What a day today! I can't believe it's still Friday! Had trouble getting up this morning... I haven't been sleeping too well. Had two classes and then ran back to the dorms to shower and change. At 2, I went to the subway station to meet a fellow Drexel student who is studying abroad in Hong Kong and visiting China for the weekend. We had planned to go for lunch, but he had contracted food poisoning the day before, so instead of going for hot pot as planned, we went to a different restaurant for lunch to get something lighter. Afterwards, we walked around campus for a while and I showed him around. The campus looked really nice today with all of the leaves changing. He got a few good pictures to use for his blog. As it got later, we went to my dorm so I could pick up the directions to get to the directions for the hotel and then got on the subway. The subway today was super crowded. It was so packed that I didn't even need to hold onto anything. I felt like a sardine. It took us a little time, but we finally managed to get to the hotel (which was thankfully right next to the subway stop) and I got to meet the study abroad director and the study abroad advisor for graduate students. They also had a Chinese woman with them who is working for a professor at Qinghua University and has a joint program with Drexel. They were all really interesting to talk to.

The two of them had picked out a restaurant in a hutong in the area, so we embarked on our journey to locate the restaurant. It was quite an excursion as we just had a small map that was hard to read. Thankfully we eventually found it and got to eat dinner. The food was amazing. They had picked the fare from a menu earlier so we didn't have to worry about ordering, but they didn't have any idea what we were eating. They said they just picked the mid price range selection. It was delicious nevertheless, so I'm happy with that. We got to talk a lot about the study abroad experiences and the work that they're doing around China and the world, solidifying Drexel's connections with other Universities and organizations. They said they have some information about co-oping abroad so they might be able to get me into contact with a few people for that.

As it got closer to 10pm, we decided it was time to head back. The 2 Drexel women headed back to their hotel and I grabbed a cab with the Chinese woman and Rich. We had the cab drop Rich off at his hostel and then Jane and I rode the cab back to Beida. I had a nice talk with her on the way back. She says my Chinese pronunciation is very good. I can never tell when people compliment me if they're being sincere or not. I'll probably never find out haha! It feels nice to be home. I'm definitely tired after today and this week. Hoping to get some good sleep tonight and then heading to the 798 art district with my tutor tomorrow. A little sad that I didn't get to go to dancing class today, but I guess there's always next week!

Thursday again already...where is all of my time going? Had 2 classes today. I got back my writing test and I really didn't do well on it. I can't be too hard on myself though, I did get sick in the middle of the exam so there's not much I can do about it. Grabbed some lunch from the cafeteria on campus and then met up with my tutor. After tutoring, ran back to the dorms to get changed and met up with Melissa. She had a teacher from her old school district coming to Beijing as part of a delegation and wanted to meet up with her. So we bundled up and adventured out into Beijing to find the hotel. It actually wasn't too bad. Took the subway most of the way and then switched to a cab. The cab refused to use the meter, so we had to haggle. We got a pretty good deal...they didn't manage to rip us off as much as they had hoped. Got to the hotel and had to play games to find her teacher. The people at the desk were not super helpful and seemed like they were getting tired of us. After many charades and tracking down various people, we finally found her teacher. She was a super nice Irish woman. She ended up treating us to a glass of wine from the hotel bar (which was amazing, I might add). We sat and talked for awhile. Initially we had planned to take her to DongZhiMen, but because of a few things going on, she was required to stay at the hotel, so we ended up eating there. The food wasn't bad. I got to try dragonfruit and it was pretty tasty. Today was definitely a test of our Chinese skills and I think we passed with flying colors. Grabbed a cab from the hotel and took it back to the subway station. Turns out on the way to the hotel, we only paid 10 kuai too much, so we were proud of that. Grabbed the last train of the night and rode back to the university. What a day! and it's just the beginning! Tomorrow a  Drexel student and the study abroad director are coming to Beijing, so I'm meeting up with both of them and then saturday is my trip to 798 art district. Definitely going to be busy for the next few days....and it's supposed to snow as well! Supposed to do karaoke tomorrow night, but I dont' think i'll be making it back from the dinner in time. Going to be busy busy busy!

Wednesdays are pretty nice. Slept in fairly late then woke up and talked to my mom for almost an hour before heading off to class. Had to do a presentation for class, but it wasn't too bad. Afterwards, grabbed some food and then went back to the dorms to rest and study. I was supposed to get massages with my classmate, but their phone was turned off when I tried to call them. Eventually got in touch, but they weren't in the mood to go for massages today. Instead, I met up with Chelsea and we ran around BeiDa's campus to grab some pictures of the foliage before all of the leaves change color and fall off. Some trees are bare already, but others still have green leaves. The lake was especially nice although we had these random guys come over and talk to us. The one guy  had a different Chinese accent from Beijing hua and I couldn't understand a word he said. When we finished with the pictures, we took a cab to Wudakou and got sushi for dinner. The food was delicious. Really really delicious. Grabbed some milk tea on the way back and returned to the dorms. Most people were going out tonight to celebrate and a lot of places were giving out free beer. I've already been pretty sleep deprived this week, so I stayed up late studying and then went to bed!

Ugh. I really dislike Tuesdays. Today was SUPER busy. I had my first class of the day and then had a break for the next few hours, in which I hung out in the CIEE office and studied. At lunch, I met up with Mariah and we went together to eat at a cafeteria and chat for a good hour or two. Afterwards, I had my writing class, which I don't think is going well. The teacher asked me to stay after class to talk to her and she wanted to know if I could understand what she was saying, and what I thought of the course material and just so I know, if I have any questions I can ask her. I think this means I didn't do too well on my midterm. Though I'm not going to hold it against me...I was pretty sick the day I took the exam, so I had a feeling I wasn't going to perform very well. I had another class that day, which seemed to drag on and on, but it was a lot of fun. I really like my Hanyu teacher. After class, I had to sprint over to the Southwest gate to meet up with a few of my classmates for a CIEE dumpling making activity at a nearby restaurant. A few of the CHinese teachers joined us and they showed us how to make dumplings. After we made the dumplings, teh restaurant cooked them for us and then we ate them for dinner with a bunch of other chinese dishes. It was soooooo tasty! The teachers were amused because I knew the name of almost every dish that they ordered and I got really excited when the fuwuyuan brough them to the table. Although it was fun, I actually was really annoyed. The purpose of the event was to get together and only speak Chinese. Somehow I ended up with the lowest level speaking group and I got super annoyed because they kept speaking English. Some of them got annoyed with me because I kept telling them to speak Chinese. The teachers were getting annoyed too. I don't like how events are designated to be Chinese only and then no one wants to follow the rules. It's really kind of annoying. Met up with Chelsea afterwards and went to the cafe at the global village to drink milk tea and complain about our schools trying to give us a hard time about next term. Returned home and went to sleep. Glad I get to sleep in tomorrow!

Monday!  Had one class and then returned to the dorms to relax. Busy day today. Around lunch time, i went with a group of students to meet with the president of CIEE and have coffee with him. He was really interested to talk to us and get feedback from us about how we feel the program is going and any suggestions we had for them. It was really great. Later that night, Mona and I met up with one of our friends from Holland and went to Wudaokou to get sushi together for dinner. It was really tasty and really cheap. Afterwards, Robbie came back to our dorm room and me Mona Melissa and Robbie were up until about 12 chatting wiht each other. For a monday, it wasn't too bad!

Today was an exciting day. Woke up early and went with Chelsea and our Chinese friend Li Jiao to Wudaokou to get breakfast. She had never eaten a traditional American breakfast before, so we treated her to French toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns and bacon. She really liked it. Afterwards, Chelsea had plans, so she went back to Beida while Li Jiao and I went to the National Library. I didn't know I needed my passport to get a reader's card, so Li Jiao snuck me in. We talked for a while and she had some work to do so I was just browsing the internet on the computers. Afterwards, we went to the zoo market to go shopping. I bought a winter coat for 60 kuai ($9), what a steal! I had a lot of fun haggling...and it was super helpful to have her along since my understanding still isn't that great. THe we took the bus to xizhimen and she treated me to dinner at this restaurant. They served noodle bowls, but the noodles were made out of rice flour instead of whatever they're normally made out of. She felt a little uncomfortable at the restaurant because the workers kept staring at me. I guess she's not too used to walking around with foreigners. Finally made it back to Beida and went our separate ways. It's super super cold today! There are puddles of water on teh side of the roads from teh snow melting, but most of them have frozen over so it's actually ice. Relaxed in my dorm room for the rest of the night and talked on QQ with a few of my Chinese friends. I'm so not ready to go back to classes tomorrow!

WHEEEEE weekend! Woke up early and brought Melissa along with me to the dance class. She had a lot of fun. She really liked the experience of having guys swarm you because they want to be her dance partner. In China, no foreigner has to worry about dancing with girls because there aren't enough guys. I'm glad she had a good experience. She got a really good dancer for her partner, so that was nice. The guy I got was...ok. I think he must not have liked me or something because he ended up grabbing a different partner later in the class. I still had a lot of fun. I think I'm getting better and I'm definitely understanding more and more of the Chinese each time I go. It's good practice..for dancing and for Chinese.

After class, I was planning to ask my friend to lunch, but he had another class to teach at his University. He invited me to come along, but since I had plans today, I couldn't make it. One creepy older guy from the class kept following me around and wanted my phone number because he wants someone to practice English with. I could tell my friend didn't like that because he kept pulling me away to talk to him hahaha. It's nice to finally have some friends here. I ended up heading back to my dorm and took a nap until it was time to go to the acrobatics show. The weather today is miserable and rainy. THe show was fantastic. I recorded a few segments of it. It was sooooooo neat. I can't express how awesome it was. I took a lot of pictures too, although I'm sure most of them are blurry since the theater was dark-ish.

After the show, we went together for dinner at a sichuan restaurant nearby. The food was fantastic! I ate sooooooooooo much :) I love when CIEE has sponsored dinners. Fantastically 好吃！The only not nice thing was having to walk through the rain to the restaurant and then back to the bus. It did not help my cough at all...made it a lot worse. FInally made it back to the dorm and get to relax and warm up. Mariah and I decided to cancel our plans for tonight. It's too miserable out to go anywhere. It's a really heavy rainfall. Parts of the streets are flooded (though that may just be because Beijing has poor drainage?).

I had a funny thing happen tonight. I got back from the show and I was online checking my email and I got a message on QQ from one of my friends. The translation of the message was: Do you have a boyfriend? I don't care if you do or dont, but never contact this QQ number again. I am his girl friend."  I found this to be quite amusing since I never have had this happen to me in America. I guess if it would happen anywhere, it would be in China. Well I proceeded to tell her that she shouldn't be talking to me because it's her problem, not mine and if she has a problem with me talking to her boyfriend she needs to work that out with him. I'm only talking to him because he wants help practicing English. She got mopey and said that she will not be his girlfriend anymore. It was quite an interesting exchange.

Also, co-op job searching starts today. As of now, I've applied for 15 jobs. I have to make a second pass through the classified and see if anything else catches my eye. I'm kinda nervous about applying for jobs while overseas, but I guess I'll have to deal with that when I get there. I think B round has better job opportunities anyway. Well that's all for now. I'm back from the acrobatics show and drying off. Going to warm up and relax tonight. Hoping to kick this cough soon!

Friday is as busy as ever. Had 2 classes this morning -- both of which had quizzes and homework due. After my classes, I met up with one of my Chinese friends and he treated me to lunch. We got malaxiangguo, which is kind of like hot pot, but you don't cook the food yourself. There are a lot of different kinds of vegetables and meat and you pick what you want and put it in a bowl and then give it to the chef to cook and then you eat it. And you pay by the weight. It was really tasty and super spicy. I got a huge mouth full of peppercorns with the one bite and it was super unpleasant. But other than that, it was really tasty. After lunch I met up with my other Chinese friend and we sat in the cafe on campus to talk for a little. I felt bad since I'm still dealing with this cold, my Chinese has been super below par the past few days. He doesnt speak much English, but he was trying to. At 2:30, went over to the gym and I joined his dance class again. It's so much fun! I'm really glad he talked me into coming. I got a call from a grad student I met at Beida and he invited me to go out with him and his Chinese classmates, but I didn't have time. After class, I headed back to my homestay. I intended to move out right away, but they had already planned to eat dinner with me. So I stayed there for dinner and watched the news for a bit before loading my suitcase on my bike and heading back to the Global Village. I decided to stay in tonight and relax. It's been a long week. I ended up talking to one of my friends on QQ for a while. He wanted to practice English, so tonight was a good night for that. I'm not in the mood for much Chinese. After a while, I started to get a headache, so I decided to call it a night and head to bed.

Busy day today. Had Hanyu class first. The teacher was nice enough to let us out a few minutes early since we all have elective class exams today. My exam was horrible. The teacher made the test so difficult….and I know the test was difficult because as I went to hand in my test, I saw that the Japanese students all had blanks on their tests. If they have blanks…there’s a problem! Needless to say, the test did not go well. Afterwards, I meant to go get lunch but today there was a guest speaker from the Nanjing-Hopkins center, so I decided to go to that presentation and check it out. They have a really good program put together, but it’s not quite something that suits me. Afterwards, I intended to get lunch, but I ran into an Australian guy I met the weekend before at the culture festival and we ended up walking around campus for a bit and talking. He’s been living in Beijing for 2 years and is working on his master’s at Beida, so he had a lot of good information to pass on to me. While walking around, I ran into Mariah, so I ended up talking to both of them for about another hour. After a while, I figured it would be best if I started my homework, so I went back to the dorms to study for an hour. This sinus congestion is making it so hard for me to focus on anything! I can feel my balance is off too. And my Chinese is feeling particularly slow today. At 4:45, I had to head over to the Southwest gate to meet with a CIEE teacher, who took about 7 of us out to dinner at a Hunan restaurant nearby---fantastic food! We even got my favorite dessert, Jin Yin Man Tou. I really need to learn how to make that. It’s the best!

After dinner, we walked over to the theater on BeiDa’s campus to watch a play, the Red Detachment of Women, which was one of the few plays that were allowed to be performed in China during the Cultural Revolution. I had a little trouble following it, but overall it was a good show. Since the show let out pretty late, I decided to stay in the dorms tonight. I also have a lot of homework to do and it’s nice to have a quiet warm environment to study in.

 Can’t believe tomorrow is the last day of my homestay. Tomorrow is going to be quite a busy day. I just hope I can get through all this homework. It’s already 12:30 and I still have 1 assignment to go. Lots of exciting stuff happening next week. On Monday, I signed up to meet and have coffee with the President of the organization I’m studying with. I was also contacted by Drexel’s study abroad department because the study abroad director and one other faculty member are traveling to Beijing and asked me to join them for dinner next Friday night. Should be exciting! Hoping next week is better than this week. I think I finally kicked this cold; I started to feel a lot better today!

Wednesday is not going well either. Still have a sore throat and now I have a runny nose and sinus congestion to accompany it. Tried taking some medicine but it didn’t help much. Super tired since I didn’t sleep well the night before because of my coughing. Went to my speaking class and had to give my presentation. It went ok, but my throat felt raw afterwards. I gave a presentation on Pennsylvania. My teacher really liked it. That was the only class I had today, so I ran off to grab some lunch before the crowds got too heavy. Then I had to meet my tutor. I really didn’t want to meet with her today because I wasn’t feeling great, but she insisted on it. All of the talking from the session really made my coughing worse. I tried to talk as little as possible, but that didn’t work well. I started getting a migraine too. Not a pleasant experience. Afterwards, I was supposed to meet up with a friend to study, but my phone’s inbox was full so I missed his text. Texted him after I got out of my lesson, but he never got back to me. Ran off to the library to study for my test until dinner time and then grabbed dinner with Chelsea and Mona before heading back to my homestay. Still feeling like garbage. It’s almost impossible to focus on my test. There’s so much information to cover, I know I”ll never get to it all. It’s one of those situation where I either know it, or I don’t. I’m ready to just wing it tomorrow. With the way I feel tonight, I’m sure I could study all night, learn everything and still perform poorly. Took some time to talk to one of my Chinese friends while I was studying. He was really interesting to talk to. I get a lot of good practice from talking to people on QQ. I just wish they would correct me a little more, but as long as they can understand what I’m saying, I think I can accept this level of Chinese for now. I had such a headache that I was relying heavily on google translate to help me through the conversation. After a while, I started to get a migraine, so I signed off my computer and I’m getting ready to sleep. I think that’s all I can do at this point. Clearly my studying isn’t helping me make any progress, so I guess I should just rest. Hoping to feel better in the morning, but I think my throat will feel even worse. I’ll be happy if this runny nose just stops. Ugh. Don’t want to take this test! Back to the dorms on Friday! Can’t wait to have a working heater! (Heat here isn’t turned on until tomorrow).

Today did not have a great start. I feel terrible, have an itch in the back of my throat and no voice. Went off to my first class, where I was supposed to give a presentation, and had to ask the teacher for an extension because I couldn’t talk. Feeling miserable all day, and Tuesdays are my long days. After class, I headed to the office to rest for a little during my break and then grabbed zhou for lunch with Melissa. Ran off to my writing class and nearly flipped out because our teacher thought the midterm was today and didn’t tell any of us. Thankfully we were able to use the syllabus to prove to her the exam was supposed to be Thursday. I’m really nervous about this exam….there’s so much information on it that it’s impossible to cover it all. It’s going to be difficult. Finally headed off to my last class of the day and suffered through it. I was so glad when class was over! Didn’t have much of an appetite, so I headed home and started on my homework. Later in the evening I had dinner with my host family. Can’t believe my homestay is almost over. I move out Friday or Saturday. I thought I had another week yet. I’m kinda looking forward to moving back to the dorms. After dinner, I had my homework finished, so I was surfing the internet and managed to find Spirited Away in Mandarin on youku. I was super excited and spent most of my night watching the first 2/3 of the movie. I was really surprised by how much I could understand, though I’m not sure if I was actually understand what they were saying or I knew what they were trying to say since I’ve seen the movie in English so many times. I guess I’ll have to experiment with a movie I haven’t seen before, or one I haven’t watched as much. As I was watching, since I had an idea of what the characters say in English, I was trying to translate it to Chinese myself and I didn’t do too bad of a job. My new goal is to watch all of Miyazaki’s movies in Chinese. So far I also found Totoro, which I find super amusing because they translated it as “dragon cat” hahaha. Gotta love translations. After watching part of the movie, I headed to bed.

Monday,.  Monday. Monday again! Not feeling well today…I think my Fall allergies are slowly turning into a head cold. Thankfully I only had one class today and then I returned to the dorms to rest for the remainder of my day. Took a break around lunch to grab some food, but other than that I just stayed home and worked on my various homework and projects. Around dinner time, I headed back to my homestay and went to sleep shortly after. Nothing too exciting