Ni Hao from Beijing!!!

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NI HAO!!!!

I am so excited to be connected to the outside world again!! For those of you that happen to see this, this is my new blog that I was forced to start, since blogspot is inaccessible here in zhongguo. We just got internet in our apartment tonight, so I'm pretty excited. I'm not even sure where to begin. China is a lot of fun and definitely an interesting experience... I think this semester is going to be great!!!

The plane ride from Chicago was 13 or so hours, which was kind of long but we arrived safely!! And I got through the temperature scanners! We got in on Friday night, were jetlagged over the weekend but were busy all the time doing orientation things so we were still jetlagged and worn out when classes started on Monday. We took our language pledge on Monday, too-- we can only speak English on the weekend! It's only Chinese the rest of the time... which makes for some pretty interesting and frustrating conversations sometimes.

My classes (all Chinese language (reading, writing, speaking)) are lots of work, but my professors are all nice. I'm in class (three other students) from 9-5 Monday through Friday (although I think we get out early on Friday hallelujah!) and then there's a calligraphy class and a Chinese culture/social issues/something else class that I'm going to take with my awesome apartment mates. We had our first calligraphy class this afternoon-- China is actually 13 hours ahead of east coast time, since they don't do daylight savings-- and I'm pretty sure I missed my calling to be a master calligrapher. But not really. My paper looked a bit like a Dalmation.

I live in a nice apartment with three other girls and a teacher, which is a lot of fun, contrary to how it may sound. We're a thirty minute walk from campus (Beida, which is huge and I still get lost) but we live in a great area called Wudaokou that has a lot of restaurants, bars, stores, shenmede ("etc"). Beijing has been freezing and "cloudy" (when they say it's cloudy, its actually "polluted", but I'm pretty sure that "pollution" doesn't exist in Chinese vocabulary), but everyone's been nice and helpful when I've looked lost or puzzled, which happens frequently.

I'll post pictures later and catch up on the past week, but now it's time to 学习(study)!

Much love from Beijing!!

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