Advertisement
Published: August 28th 2015
Edit Blog Post
012
Hall of Benevolence and Longevity I know I've been REALLY bad at updating this blog, so this semester I'm going to try really hard to write one blog post a week. However, we'll see how that goes. I left Taiwan on August 26th, but Katie and I left Tunghai University on the 25th. The last week there was filled with presentations and tests, it was somewhat stressful, but manageable. On the last day of our program, we all went out to dinner with our Chinese teachers and the staff from the Chinese Language Center. We ate a lot of delicious Hakka food and received our certificate of completion along with a Tunghai mug. It was sad to say goodbye to the staff and teachers, but I hope to see them again someday. I had a really great experience there and I think it helped me with my transition to Beijing. A major difference I've noticed between Beijing and Taiwan is the way Chinese is spoken. Here in Beijing, the people use more of a local accent that I find harder to understand. They also don't pronounce words clearly compared to the people in Taiwan. China also uses Simplified Chinese characters, so it's hard for me to
016
Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace read things here because I have only studied Traditional Chinese characters. However, I have heard it is easier to switch from Traditional to Simplified, so hopefully that's true!
Katie and I had quite an adventure getting to campus from the airport. Because our plane landed later than the time frame Alliance (the program I'm studying abroad through) said they would be able to meet us at the airport, we had to take a taxi. Before we left for Asia, we were warned not to take a black taxi because the drivers would charge WAY more than the official taxis. Once we got our bags and changed/withdrew money we went out of the airport to look for a taxi. We saw this huge line, but we weren't sure it was the taxi line so we asked these two people who worked at the airport. They brought us past the line to the sidewalk and asked us where we wanted to go. We showed them the directions Alliance gave us before we left, but they weren't sure how to get there. Speaking with them was also very difficult. Both Katie and I weren't used to the dialect and they
045
Bird Nest hardly spoke any English so we probably spend around 20 minutes trying to figure out what each party was saying. They kept saying 發票 fāpiào (receipt) and then saying something after that we couldn't understand. So then we said we didn't understand, but then they kept repeating fapiao and not the rest of the sentence. Then, they brought this guy over so said he could get us a taxi for 280 yuan. Because it was getting pretty late by this point, I think around 9PM, we decided to go with him. He took us to a black taxi but we really needed to get to campus so we decided to take it. On the way there the driver got lost so he tried to call the Resident Director, but the phone number we had didn't work. We ended up reaching another person who worked for Alliance and in the end she met up with us and took us to the dorm. The driver was going to charge us 400 yuan, but we told him someone told us it would only be 280 yuan, so we settled for 300 yuan (about $50). After all of this, I think Katie and I
ended up getting to campus around 10:30PM.
For the first day of orientation, we talked a lot about the program and how to stay healthy and safe here in Beijing. While it was good information, I thought it was a little long and boring. However today we got to go off campus and see some tourist sites, but not before taking the Chinese Language Placement Test. I thought this test was pretty hard because it was listening, reading, writing, and speaking. I don't think I finished half of the test, but I hope I'm in at least a 200 level Chinese class. I think we get to know our scores tomorrow, so I guess I'll see then... First we went to the Summer Palace. I didn't know it would be so big! I thought it was really cool to see all of the traditional Chinese structures and to learn a little more about the history. We took a walking tour and took lots of pictures. Because a lot of the people in our group are Caucasian, African American, or Hispanic a lot of people wanted to take pictures with our group without us knowing. Other people would
047
Water Cube just take pictures of us when we were posing for a group shot. I thought it was really interesting because that doesn't happen to me because I look Asian. After walking around we took a dragon boat back to the entrance. After the Summer Palace we went to look at the Bird Nest and the Water Cube. Because the World Championships for track are being held at the Bird Nest, we couldn't look inside, but I did hear the loudspeaker for the event. We didn't go inside the Water Cube either, but we did see the outside from kinda far away. I might go back and look at them more later in the semester.
The air quality has been surprisingly nice here. Our Resident Director kept saying that it was the clearest he's ever seen the Bird Nest and he's been there multiple times. He also told us the air is better right now because factories are shut down and the amount of cars that are able to be on the road are limited. The weather is still hot but not humid. That's a nice change, but I still don't like the heat... On the other hand, I really like my roommate. She's from Wisconsin and is a Music Ed major. She plays the cello, piano, and does voice as well. Our schedules are very similar too which is good! The dorms are WAY nicer than the ones in Taiwan, I like them a lot. We get our own private bathroom and maids come in and change our trash for us every day. I think they might also wash our bedding once a week! I think I'm going to really like it here in Beijing. I've also decided to practice in the laundry room since there isn't a place for me to play. Anyways, that's all for now! Hopefully I'll blog more here than when I was in Taiwan...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0387s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb