2012年4月25日星期三

Episode 1: Introduction to Beijing

Ní hǎo all!

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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