A Brief Epiphany

Today, one of our 单班课 teachers asked me why I was always so tired. I told her, I had no clue, as I wasn't sleeping that much less than I usually slept at Yale (seven, as opposed to eight hours).

Then it hit me: at Yale, I have down time. I can watch TV, I can chat with friends, I can nap, I can go to the gym and listen to Lady Gaga, and still have time to go to class and do my homework. Lack of relaxation time means that I am overloading my sleep hours with excessive tiredness and exhaustion, meaning that those seven hours, which would ordinarily suffice, are not nearly enough.

That's all.

Good evening to you all.

The Emperor of China lived in a nicer place than everyone in the world

Yesterday, I went to the Forbidden City. To quote (well...paraphrase, as I can't remember her exact wording...) my dear friend Emma, with whom I was g-chatting on Friday night "that had better be an excellent place, because it has an awesome name!"

It was incredible. Words can't really describe how lovely it is. First of all, it is a UNESCO world heritage sight--and deservedly so, as it, like the Great Wall, is a testament to the skill and power of the Chinese Emperors. It was the center of power during the Qing and Ming dynasties. It is also, naturally, incorrectly portrayed in the Disney movie Mulan (one of my all-time favorites), but I still found myself singing "I'll Make a Man Out of You" most of the time--in my head, of course, because it would have violated the language pledge.

(Lion suppressing Cub? Demon? Not too sure....)

Everything was insanely detailed, and spending over two hours there, we didn't even get to see everything. What we did get to see were some of the Emperors' many thrones, the living quarters of the Emperor, and where Dowager Empress Cixi lived during the end of the Qing Dynasty.

(just your average wood paneling in the Forbidden City)

I wish that we could have gone on a clear day, as I can only imagine how the golden roof that signifies an imperial residence would have glowed.

(Golden Roof...and one of the HBA flags held by each of our teachers.)

Our plan for the rest of the day had been to go to 北海公园--Beihai Park, a staple of Yale's first year Chinese packet. But the Forbidden City was so massive that we were completely exhausted and ended up returning to Beiyu for lunch and naps. We plan to go sometime soon, hopefully with our classmates who are participating in the Duke and Princeton programs.

Today, I met up with many friends from high school. First, I went shopping with my friend Melanie, who is in Beijing visiting her family. She took me to a more-western style mall (although a nicer mall than I have ever seen anywhere in the west), and then to a nearby Chinese shopping area. Together, we haggled for earrings, and scouted out bags, shoes, and odd-bits. It was a very interesting place, and one that I hope to go back to at some point. What was kind of annoying was most of the shopkeepers assumed that I couldn't speak Chinese and would address themselves to Melanie, who speaks Mandarin at home. I could understand most of what they were saying, although sometimes they spoke a little too quickly for me. After we finished shopping, we walked around, and she showed me where her grandparents live; we tried to find where her father grew up, but were not able to do so.

Second, I had dinner with a group of students from my High School, who have been in China for the past three weeks, traveling and studying and experiencing a different way of life. They leave for the US on Wednesday, and they all thought it was very odd to think that they have been in China longer than me. It was so lovely to see them all, especially after a very difficult week--educationally and emotionally--that has made me miss home very much.

But I can already feel that next week will be better. Things are moving incredibly quickly, and I can only imagine they will move even more quickly now: we all now know where we will be going for our 5th week social study research project. I will be spending the week leading up to my birthday in Inner Mongolia, and I am so excited I can hardly think straight!

(I feel as though this is where I could be living...except I am not...)

Moving Toy People

I was asked a few days ago, in an email, why I don't post more often: the answer is that, mostly I am just going to class during the weekdays. If something interesting/non-routine occurs, then I will share, but I feel as though writing about my daily life would be (at least to me) remarkably tedious after a while.

Weekends are much more fun.

To round off a rather tough week, a group of us went to see 玩具总动员三--Moving Toy People 3 (AKA Toy Story 3). We saw it in English (but with Chinese Subtitles!) and it was a wonderfully heartwarming movie. Because we were seeing an American movie, some of us went and ate at a McDonalds that was just across the street from the movie theater. It was exactly the same as American McDonalds, unlike Pizza Hut, which looks like a nice, sit-down restaurant with waiters and wine.

Following the movie, we tried to take the subway back to Beiyu. I say try. The first time I took the subways in Beijing, I was very impressed. The stations are clean, the routes are clear (because of the 2008 Olympics, according to the HBA secreatry.) Perhaps I am a spoiled New Yorker, who expects subways to run at all hours of the day and night, but the subways in the part of Beijing where we were stopped at 11PM, which seems to me unreasonably early. I understand 1AM, I even understand midnight, but being trapped a 45 minute walk away from my bed when I was tired was an unpleasant situation to be in. Luckily, I was in good company.

We learned two things as we stood outside the subway stop for 30 minutes, trying to hail a cab. The first was that Chinese people are vicious when it comes to getting cabs on a Friday night; on at least 3 occasions, we hailed a cab, and someone else took it right as we were opening the doors to get in. The second was that the cab drivers have a bias against foreigners. We were blatantly foreigners standing on the street, and, while we were plainly all trying to catch cabs, the drivers would move past us, a little further down the block, to where other Chinese people were standing. It was exceedingly frustrating. But it wasn't until about 11:30, after waiting for half an hour, that we got really annoyed. We were all basking in our joy at having seen Buzz Lightyear in Spanish mode.

I'm sure that I will have more to post later this weekend, as I have a lot planned.

Now, to bed!

加油

There is a Chinese phrase, 加油 (jiayou--add oil) whose closest equivalent that I can think of is the French phrase "bon courage." It is something that our 老师s always say when we head off to do our hours and hours of Chinese homework every night. And, because it sounds so alike, I always thing of the song from Slumdog Millionaire "Jai Ho."

This week, I heard some very distressing news from home, and have been having a great deal of difficulty focusing on my work. Indeed, yesterday during class, I could hardly understand what my teacher was saying because my mind was so completely elsewhere. Feng laoshi and Hu laoshi asked me if everything was all right, and after explaining the situation to them, they were very supportive. I was grateful that they understood what was going on in my head.

Now of course, I must 加油, because I have to make up for work that I was unable to focus on given my state of mind--a task that is unbelievably daunting given that I have a test in a day and a half, and a personal philosophy that sleep and mental health come before all else...

Of course, I have the thought of the weekend to keep me going: this weekend, HBA is taking us the Forbidden City, a place I have been dying to go ever since seeing the movie Mulan (one of my first "introductions" to China) when I was about eight. I already caught a glimpse of it this past weekend. Siodhbhra, the HBA secretary, took a group of us out to 天安门广场 (Tiananmen Square) last Sunday, on a day that was unbelievably hot and wonderfully clear. Now, I can't wait to go through the gate and see the inside. I wonder if Disney got any of it right...

(Me, in Tiananmen Square, beneath the bountiful gaze of the good chairman.)

Alors, on se bat, 好了。

So, something very strange is going on in my head. One of my favorite movies in the world is the French film, "L'auberge espagnole," which I watched for the first time during my year in France. It is a film that perfectly captures what it means to study abroad, and what one goes through on an emotional and psychological level when returning home. At some point in this movie, someone tells another person that something isn't a big deal, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember exactly what she says. In my head, I hear her voice saying “没关系，没关系." It is weirding me out. A lot. Whenever I don't know a Chinese word, I search through my head and, instead of looking through my English Lexicon, I look through the French one. I keep trying to let people know that my French and my Chinese are mixing and muddling, but I don't know how to say that just yet, nor do I know how to say that they are fighting each other. All I can think of is the French phrase: "Alors, c'est la guerre..." which, of course, I am not allowed to say aloud on this program, as it is not Chinese.

(Me on the Great Wall of China, courtesy of HBA, photo Credit Stephanie Brandon)

Today was the weirdest. HBA took us to the Great Wall. It was particularly hot today, and by the time we reached the wall (after an extremely long hike up) most of us had drunk at least one of our 3 bottles of water. Almost instantly, all around, I could hear English (for the first time in a week) and French (for the first time in a few months) and my brain started whirling and whirling. It almost made the experience of walking along the wall less painful, because I was so in my own head.

(Andi tries--and fails--to pick up a Butterfly)

I say almost. It was a grueling walk, filled with steps and steep climbs and people. It was also extremely hot. Our teachers had warned us that it would be particularly hot today, but we weren't expecting the sun to be as powerful as it was. The guard towers that pop up every now and then were surprisingly cool, but not enough to last.

(Stephanie on the Wall...it was a long climb...)

Of course, the ever-present haze covered the scenery. If the light had been different, if it had been later or earlier in the day, if it had been cooler, the haze would have looked like mist.

(The haze...)

At the base of the wall, there were tons of tourist stands, and, of course, many of us just had to try our haggling skills. I bought a Mao t-shirt, a Lenin cap, and a painting for about a tenth of what the salespeople were trying to get out of me. Most of them were impressed that we were haggling in Chinese instead of English.

By the time we returned to the BCLU, we were all so tired that we immediately went back to our dorm rooms, 休息休息。

Structure and Whatnot

So, as I was skypeing with my mother earlier this afternoon, I realized two things:

The first is that my first of eight weeks of classes (+one week of 社会调查--Social Study Research) is over.

The second is that I haven't yet given a really good explanation for the structure of the program that I am on.

There are four kinds of classes that meet every day at HBA. The first is 大班课, a larger drill section of about 12-15 students. The first one was a little bit traumatizing. The Harvard students were all used to that style of class, as it was something that they experienced at Harvard. The teacher (one of three, who rotate every day), without any warning, will ask you a question, and you have to answer quickly or they move on. Most of the Yale students the first day were so tense and out of our element that it was very hard to respond. They have since gotten much better, especially since we are now more acquainted with teaching styles and the textbook we are learning out of.

After 大班课, we break into smaller sections (小班课) of about 4 or 5 and have a twenty minute read-aloud class. Then we have two grammar classes, taught by local teachers who change every day, that round off four hours of Chinese classes. Then we have an hour and a half for lunch (in my case, two and a half hours) and then have an hour of 单班课--one-on-one tutorials with our local teachers. Since there are more students than teachers, there are two time slots.

Every Friday, we have a written and an oral test. Both were different from what I experienced at Yale, but not necessarily harder.

Apart from classes, HBA has language partners and host families. Most students met with their host families this evening, but the host mother I share with two other students couldn't make the meeting. Next week, we will start extra-curricular activities, something most of the students (myself included) are extremely excited about. The biggest problem is that I want to do four extra curricular activities, but there are two pairs that meet at the same time, so I don't know if I will be able to do both.

Let us talk briefly about the weather...

This is the third night in a row that it has thundered and lightninged in Beijing. There isn't much rain, just noise and light. And the lightning is purple--something which amuses me greatly, which in turn amuses Yoonji in whose room I study for a little while each night. Every time that the purple lightning crosses the sky, my head jerks around and I stare out the window, and Yoonji laughs at me. I think that it is the haze that covers Beijing that gives the light such a strange color. Or else China is magical. Either or.

Today is Yoonji's birthday. We were in our second semester of Yale Chinese together, and we are in the same 小班课 (Small class), so I see a lot of her every day. On top of that, her room is right next to mine. A group of Yale-HBA friends went out to dinner to celebrate Yoonji's birthday. Four of us from our second semester class, and a few others, went to a Mall and ate at a rather nice restaurant. At first we thought that we were spending a ton of money on our dinners (about 30-45 RMB) compared to what we usually eat for (less than 10), but when we converted it to dollars in our heads, we realized that we were spending about six dollars at a fairly nice place. It was an astounding realization. The restaurant was really fun. The waiters were very patient with our broken Chinese, and, noticing the birthday present that Andrew (another 老同学 from Yale) had given her, brought her a piece of free cake and played birthday music. It was a really wonderful and relaxing experience, and allowed us to take our minds off of our first piece of free-response written homework that is due tomorrow.

Last night, I met with my 中国朋友 (Chinese Friend). HBA arranges BCLU partners for us, so that we can really talk to someone who is not a teacher and who can help us if need be, or show us around. We went to a Muslim (Xinjiang Province) restaurant on campus that was absolutely delicious. As 67% of my conversations tend to do, we wound up talking about Harry Potter, which made me very happy. It was very fun, but I struggled with bits of vocabulary, which I found highly frustrating.

What's the most fun thing so far about this program is it's incredible how each day, it gets noticeably easier to talk in Chinese. The sign-language and facial communication of level two students is steadily decreasing in a very heartening sort of way.

Of course, there is still tons left to do learn...

我在北京

I am currently sitting in the BCLU, and I am so glad to be here. The actual travel was very stressful. Our flight out of JFK was delayed by about an hour, and, by the time we (Stephanie and Paul—two other Yale students who are on the same flights as me) got to Shanghai after 15 hours in the air, we had to sprint to our connecting flight, which we boarded at Last Call.

Then, after we sat down, the pilot informed us that there was a Sandstorm headed towards Beijing and that we would have to wait 5 hours to fly out, which would mean that we would get to Beijing at something like 4 in the morning. About ten minutes later, they informed us that we would be taking off in twenty minutes. We arrived at the Beijing airport at the same time we were supposed to…even though we took off 45 minutes after our scheduled departure.

We arrived at the BCLU at 1:45, I got into my room at 2, prepared for bed, lay down and, after over 20 hours of travel, was no longer tired.

(My room)

I did fall asleep though, and woke up at 7:40 for my placement test.

What I find to be the most astonishing thing about Beijing thus far is how smoggy it is. I knew that the pollution was incredible after the controversy surrounding the Olympics held in Beijing two summers ago, but I hadn’t anticipated not being able to know where the sun was in the sky. At a Light Fellowship mixer at the end of the school year, one of the students I met told me that it would be the most astonishing thing, and he was right.

(The view from my room)

We took our Language Pledge a few hours ago, and already the second year students are finishing most of their sentences in shrugs and “ugh!”s. It is very bizarre to be in a state where I can’t say what I want to say. When I went to France with SYA three years ago, my French was good enough that I could understand everything and communicate most things. Not the case now. My French also has a tendency to invade my head when I am searching for a word that I feel I should know, but I don’t…