MichaelRogan

We went to the night food market a couple of days ago. They didn't have any Dog (it turns out that eating Dog isn't as popular here as it's made out to be in the West - I still haven't found anyone here who says that they eat it). But I tried Scorpions, Snake and had some deep fried Ice-cream, so good! Scorpions actually taste just like fried chicken! Seriously! We went for some Karaoke, apparently a very Chinese thing to do. Even made an attempt to sing 朋友, the song our class is meant to 'perform' at the closing ceremony. Came back at like 12 to make our 8am Mandarin class... the next day there was only ONE student in some classes. It's embarrassing for us... putting the UK in such a bad light. It's ... read more

Today I climbed the Great Wall of China! It was fantastic, lived up to the hype. The scenery was great, almost up in mountains, but it's not something to listen to me describe, just something that you have to do yourself! Quoting a sign from one of the many shops there, Mao Zedong himself apparently said: 'he who doesn't reach the Great Wall isn't a true man!' This was on a shop selling souvenir certificates, but still! :P Obviously we could only visit a small part of the ridiculously long wall - we went to the Juyongguan Pass, less than 2 hours drive from Beijing, the site of many great battles apparently... but my Chinese history is very sketchy. I'd definitely like to see other parts of it though, some of the parts without all of ... read more

Our teacher stopped speaking English today. And as I start to write this my hand tries to make the first few words into Chinese characters (I wrote this in my notepad first!). Wow. Making progress! haha We went to this pottery and craft place today to the North-East of Beijing. Got to paint some plates and attempt to make some pottery on the spinning plate things (the correct terminology eludes me). I attempted to draw 福, the character for happiness/good luck. One of the Chinese said I should learn more characters because I am a natural haha, I expect he was just trying to be nice, but I am looking forward to our calligraphy classes. To my surprise I was amazing at the pottery at first, until I tried to be too flash and it all ... read more

If my past travels have taken me to other countries, China is a different world. When I stepped outside of the international student halls this morning I finally stepped into China. I'm too tired to explain... it's just so different. The only problem I have found is the dryness of the air. I have never experienced anything like this before. Just walking around campus I fell all the moisture leaving my body! Especially the mouth and throat, but my skin is drying out so quickly. Beijing has this every spring apparently; I am not sure of the reason. In summer the heat causes further problems with the city's pollution and winters can be very cold... I don't think I will ever want to settle here for an extended period of time! Apart from the small inconvenience ... read more

I love going to new places. I though of a whole list of great words to describe the feeling, but after numerous attempts to sleep and being woken by the never ending gate announcements, (from which my knowledge of Arabic has grown from the simple 'thank you' to include the numbers 1, 2 and 3 ~ it's hard to hear something so many times and it not slide into your brain) it has left my mind. Aside from Egypt, where I was kept very much on the tourists' trail, I have not had much had much exposure to Arabic. I curse myself for the fact that the idea of learning Arabic has already popped into my mind. One crazily hard language at a time Michael! Yet I've made a mental note to look into it when ... read more