Classes Begin & We Go to the Olympics

DAY 4, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8TH

I slept a little better last night! This morning we went to breakfast at a canteen (dining hall) on campus that we haven’t been to yet. Food in the canteens still consists of pointing at things and eating unknown but yummy food items. Today I had a hard boiled egg, a bao-like thing (dough with meat filling, pork maybe?), and a rice soup (kind of tasted like plain oatmeal but made of rice) for breakfast. After breakfast we headed to class. We had Chinese language class from 9-11:30 that consisted of learning the different syllables, vowels, and tone pronunciation. It was fun yet very humbling, it is definitely a difficult language to learn!

We had a break for lunch where we tried a new floor of the 4-floor canteen we went to yesterday. This time we went to the fourth floor where everything was order-based rather than set out for you to point at. Therefore we had no idea what to ask for and how to ask for it. A BNU student took pity on us and told us the name of a dish to order, and after we all poorly tried to repeat the name of the dish to the cashier (who kindly laughed with us), we ended up with a noodle dish that turned out to be my favorite dish yet! After lunch we headed back to the classroom for one last session of language class. Then we headed to another room for a Chinese calligraphy lesson! Our teacher was obviously extremely artistic and talented and we were all awful in comparison, but enjoyed the experience a ton.

After calligraphy class we headed back to our dorms to drop off bags and then we met up to head off on our excursions for the night. Our first stop was Hutong. It is the traditional part of Beijing where people still live in a more traditional manner. And there is a huge lake and walking/shopping street. We got a rickshaw ride around to get the lay of the land, and then we stopping in a private courtyard. This is the most traditional setup where a family, of many generations, owns a courtyard with separate buildings for the living room, kitchen, etc. It was awesome to be able to see into the courtyard and we got to go into the family’s paper-cutting shop. The downside was that it did seem it was more of a business transaction for the woman who lived there and she expected that we would purchase her work. A cool experience nonetheless.

After that we had 30 minutes to walk around the busier are with a bunch of shops, street food, restaurants, etc.

After Hutong our next stop was the main arenas from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Olympic park. We got dropped off and we walked down the “Olympic park” which is just a big emptied out area in the middle of the city. Eventually we got to the Birds Nest which is actually cooler in person than I was expecting, the architecture was spectacular. This is the arena where the opening ceremony in 2008 was held along with several of the sporting events. Right across the street from it was the Water Cube which is where the swimming and diving events were held in 2008: aka we were feet away from where Michael Phelps made history. Though it was cold walking around, the buildings were beautiful at night.

After seeing the Olympic arenas we headed to dinner as a group where we had another traditional Chinese dinner- several dishes served family style on a table with a lazy Susan. Packed days + jet lag means we are exhausted by 9 so after dinner we headed back and went to sleep.

DAY 5, THURSDAY, JANUARY 9TH

Today we went to breakfast at the same canteen as yesterday before heading to class. In class today we continued work on pronunciation which is still just as difficult. We got lunch in the same canteen as yesterday- floor 2 this time, and got help from a language partner to order a ramen-like dish, it was good just like everything else thus far! We had calligraphy class again in the afternoon. Today we picked our Chinese names- for the last name we just chose a common family that is most similar to our real last names, for our first names we picked from a long list of characters & their meanings. So my Chinese name is: Mèng Wân Lían. The first name (last two words/characters) means tactful/elegant lotus. Our teacher wrote our Chinese names in beautiful calligraphy for us which was awesome.

After class we had some free time so my friend Sarah and I stopped in a student supermarket to grab some snacks and then stopped at another shop on campus to try boba milk tea- pretty good!! Then we headed to the 23rd floor of the library on campus to get a cool view of the city.

Then we met back up with the whole group to head to our excursion for the night- a Chinese acrobatic show! We got on the bus to go but then got stuck in a ton of traffic so to have any chance of making the show on time the bus pulled over and we got out and took our chances with the Beijing metro! It was chaotic yet fun to try out the crowded metro PLUS we made it on time!!

We arrived at the Beijing ChaoYang Theater at 7 PM for the show! It was a bit odd as it was off season so the crowd was tiny, probably about 50 people, and it created a weird performer-audience interaction. However, the show was amazing!! There were several different acrobatic acts like chair-stacking, hat-tossing, and bicycle-riding, and they were all incredible. After the acrobatic show we went to dinner nearby at a popular Beijing restaurant where we had another traditional/typical Chinese dinner. This place seemed to adjust the menu for foreigners/large groups as we had a chicken nugget like dish that they don’t usually serve and watermelon. It's a tad disappointing to be in China and not get the fully authentic food, however I can't complain as we're a group of 25 Americans so there's only so many restaurants we can go to. The food on-campus and off has all tasted so good, though!