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Published: November 15th 2009
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I don't have much to write about this time, but I thought I'd give a quick update. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but a couple weeks ago I bought a tailored suit from the Silk Market. It is very nice. I got a 3 piece design with the best fabric they had. I didn’t get silk because I don’t think I, or anyone else, should wear an all silk suit. It has silk lining though so that is nice. A few days ago I put it on and Lihau and Zach took some pictures of it, so I will post those on this blog. When buying a suit, they measure you and get your money on your first trip. Over the next couple days they send the fabric to their factory where a team of people work on your suit through the night, then send it back to the market. I had to go in again a couple days later to get the exact fit in my half-made suit, and then they send it back to the factory. A few more days and I picked up my finished awesome suit. I’m excited about it, I plan on ushering at
church as much as possible around Christmas, and now I have something to wear.
I also realize I have mentioned some Chinese friends of mine, but I haven’t said much about them. The first person I met was 丁锐 (ding ree). She is my original language partner that the program gave to me. We meet once a week, and once in a while for random things like going to the buffet I talked about previously. She’s a Math and Finance double major so she is pretty busy. She has eight hours of class on Saturday alone, so I don’t usually see her on weekends. We usually meet at a café on campus and go over my Chinese lesson, which is good because she is very picky about pronunciation and that’s what I’m trying to focus on. I figure I can learn vocabulary on my own, but while I’m still in China I want to improve my verbal Chinese as much as possible. After some Chinese we usually just chat in English for a while so she can practice too, because she plans on going to grad school in the US.
Another one of my friends is 穆童(mu tong)
she is the good friend of Zach’s language partner. Zach’s language partner is actually in high school, but he is taking English classes here at PKU, which is very impressive since this is the best University in the country. He recently went to Hong Kong to take the SAT and plans on going to college in the US. Back to 穆童,she is the one that took me to the spicy food restaurant. She also recently took me to see a movie on campus. We saw This is It, the new Michael Jackson movie. It was awesome! And it only cost 10 kuai, which is about $1.50. She is very nice; she got the tickets and figured everything out since I still don’t really know what I’m doing as far as on campus events. We got pretty good tickets, we were on the ground floor and there was a balcony section above us in the large on-campus auditorium. Here’s another crazy thing Chinese people do: When the movie starts all the people with bad seats rush up to the front and sit in other people’s spots. The crazy thing about it is that the ushers actually help them find open seats.
zach made me pose
i didn't wear the tie because it didn't match but zach wanted to use it for something It’s very distracting and I can’t imagine that most Chinese people have ever seen the first 5 minutes of any movie, because there’s too much commotion. The lesson here is: If you ever go to a show in China, don’t be late, in fact, be early.
Last Saturday we went to the modern art district in Beijing. It was a trip organized by the program so most people went. Also, another Chinese friend went. Her name is 乐天 (luh tian) English name, Amelia. She is friends with Jamie, who is Lihau and Monica’s language partner. I don’t have too much to say about the art district, other than all of us really liked it. I was with Amelia, Zach, Lihau, Monica and Nigel most of the time. I think the best way to see what we did is check out the pictures. We also saw a lot of painting galleries but you couldn’t take pictures in those. There were also some small shops with artsy souvenir things, but I didn’t buy anything because they were all pretty expensive as far as Chinese souvenirs go, more like American prices. We liked it so much that we went back this week
again on Saturday.
It’s been getting colder here in Beijing. From what I hear it is actually colder here than back in Minnesota. It has snowed multiple times, and there is actually still some snow on the ground, and many snowmen and snow bunnies all around. I have mentioned this before, but the government induced this snow again. I still can’t believe they can make it snow, but I guess it’s good for Beijing, because they have a huge water shortage problem so any precipitation is good.
Today I volunteered for a program my friend Toni started. She made a program with a Chinese teacher she knows to help teach kids English. It was only the first week but we had a lot of volunteers, actually more volunteers than children. It was great to just play and sing songs with the kids. They were very cute, but it makes me feel stupid because their Chinese is better than mine and they are just little kids. We basically just taught them some easy songs like the Hokey Pokey and The Wheels on the Bus, drew some pictures and told them how to say the animals and plants they drew,
and taught them some basic English phrases. It was a lot of fun, next week we will meet them again and go to the Olympic Stadium; they all seemed very excited for that trip. Since most people will go home after this semester, I and a few others will have to keep the program going next semester.
That’s all I have this time, nothing too exciting but I’m still having fun.
Peace, and God Bless!!
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Interesting stuff...
It's always fun reading your blog posts - most objective views on things I am so used to! Well I have to say this is the first time I've heard of the movie theater thing too! I guess I haven't really been to a college auditorium back home so I wouldn't have known... And no reason for feeling stupid for not speaking Chinese as well as kindergartners do! Our teacher told us in high school that our vocab was probably, probably comparable to that of American first graders, not to mention oral English... And nice work on the suit! I've only been in that market once and it just scared me to no end for some reason - I got out as soon as I could. OHHH I didn't know you were staying for a whole year! I'm going back for Christmas. Maybe I'll see you in China!