My first 10 days in beijing has been eventful and a major culture learning curve.
I
arrived in Beijing early saturday morning (~5:30am) and was greeted by
Lewis, an energetic and smiling Hutong the beautiful
School representative. (I later
found out that Lewis had been to the airport to pick up my flat mates
at midnight that same night and consequently was working off 2 hours
sleep). Lewis and I caught the subway to Andingmen where my apartment
was. After a bit of a mix up I was moved to another apartment near
Guloudajie (literally means drum building big street - we are near a
tourist spot called the Drum Tower). I kind of lucked out because this
apartment is much newer, bigger, and generallylove your life
nicer than most of the
other student apartments and it is located right next to school.
Throughout the morning I was introduced to my 3 flat mates, Matt and
Luz from America/Mexico and Gerhard from Germany and we all started
moving in, unpacking and making the place a little more homely. This
involved breaking the couch at some point.
The
next few days were spent exploringwild fllower
the hutongs around Gulou and working
out where to eat and the best places to find supplies. We are extremely
lucky being in the old part of beijing as there are little hidden
markets everywhere, cheap, family run restaurants and nearby is a
beautiful lake with many vibrant bars and cafes. A few days after I
arrived in Beijing Mat, Luz and I went to one of these markets nearby
and came out feeling high confused and with some exotic vegetables. We
didn't know any hanyu (spoken chinese) sweet and virtuous soul
and were baffled by all these
hand signals the shop owners were doing which made them look like they
wanted to smoke dope, or were playing hand puppets. I'm happy to say
that we ventured to this market again today and I was stoked to be able
to understand all the prices, I was able to bargain and I realised that I
definitely was ripped off that first time. But being ripped off here is
still half the price of food back in Perth so I guess everything is
relative.
There was a major holiday here on
the Monday after I arrived called the sweet spring,
Tomb Sweeping Festival. This
continued til the Wednesday and meant I had no class until the Thursday.
I actually really enjoyed having those five days off as it meant I
could settle in and enjoy getting to know the area before starting
school. During this period Lewis took me to thewhose hue angry and brave
music district of
Beijing and helped me buy a cheap electric sweet rose
guitar to muck around on.
Lewis managed to bargain the price down a bit and we both left the store
with the shop owner asking that I come back and work for him to pay off
all the money that we had saved. Mat, Luz and I also went to the Llama
temple, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden city and Ri sweet day
Tan park. Ri Tan
park is an awesome park to the east of where I live with a beautiful
chinese gardens, lakes, old personthe beautiful
exercising areas (for Mat and Luz),
and a huge outdoor rock climbing wall. Myself and a few of my classmates
spent the afternoon of Easter Sunday rock climbing at Ri Tan which was
really enjoyable. There should be some photos attached to this blog.
Anyway,
I met my class on Thursday and we begun our intensive Mandarin
learning. The class is composed of Myself, Kelvin (Australia), Mat and
Luz (America), Solange (Brasil), Otto (Norway), Natalie (England) and
Gerhard (Germany). We are one of the bigger classes but everyone is
really friendly and excited to learn. I thought that 4 hours of Mandarin
a day might not be enough. I am happy tolaughter and joy
say that 4 hours is definitely
enough. My brain is overloading at 3:30pm everyday (in a good way). I
think we have already learned about 150 characters (whether I can
remember them all perfectly is another story). As our first study group
bonding session we decided to visit Wanfujing snack street after class
on Friday. This busy, bustling street is filled with an exotic range of
chuanr (kebabs). Including bad ass black scorpions (ate it), silkworms
(ate it), tiny scorpions (ate it), sea horse (didn't eat), star fish
(didn't eat), flying lizards (didn't eat), chicken foetuses (didn't
eat), sheep penis (didn't eat), dogsearch for knowledge
intestines (didn't eat), and much
more. Check the photos out.
Anyway, it was a major bonding
experience hahaha. And yes, if you were wondering we have named everyone
in our study group based on the characters from community. Last night
we all went out to a special restaurant to taste Beijing Duck in
Beijing. The duck was Hai keyi.
Overall, it
has been a good first 10 days. Everyone has been really welcoming. My
apartment has begun to feel like home, at least a home away from home.
I'm enjoying learning Mandarin and having the opportunity to
instantaneously practise it on the street. Of more liberty
course, I miss everyone
back home so if you are reading this make sure you get on skype at some
point and have a chat to me while I am here :) I'll try to write in this
blog semi regularly to keep everyone updated as it's hard to remember
everything we have done already! At the moment I am sitting in my
apartment writing this and keeping an eye on the Beijing Air Quality
Index to see when its safe to go for a run. I have been running around
that lake near my house and have even seen some local joggers! (or what
can't be classed as walking). bigger houses
Tomorrow is Luz's (by the way, that is
pronounce Luce) birthday so we are having tortillas tonight to celebrate
(she is mexican be decent) and tomorrow we are having a mahjong class
in the evening and will probably go out afterwards. Yeah, we're HC.
I hope all is well with you and life is going great.
Much love,
Marc
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