Filed under: Travels | Tags: Beida, Beijing, China, Forbidden City, Learning French, Lush, Tiananmen Square, Wudaokou, Xidan
青期四 : 5 月 10 日 (Thursday, 10 May)
Our morning classes are held in the new School of Government Administration building. It’s nice and has air conditioning, but it’s a bit sterile (no windows it doesn’t help that the 北大 students aren’t in classes at the moment) and far away. We live about a five minute walk from West Gate (西门 xī mén) and the Beida (北大 běidà, short for 北京大学 běijīng dàxué – “Beijing University”) campus is huge. The School of Government lies outside of the campus walls so we have to walk across (not a straight path, minimum ten to fifteen minutes) to the East Gate, leave, and walk another five minutes to get there. I would much rather go to class in one of the older buildings with character, even if they didn’t have air conditioning (all you need is some air circulation). The building I have afternoon tutorials in does not count. It is a foreign student dorm (très random place for a tutorial, no?) and our classrooms are three very tightly packed rows with very little air circulation.
I think I like the way classes are going. The pace is good, our teacher is good, and the class dynamic is pretty good (there are less than 20 of us, which is probably the amount of students who regularly attended classes at McGill through the past year). Lesson of the day: Kicking doors, people, and kittens is not good. (踢 tī – to kick) (more…)
Filed under: Travels | Tags: Beida, Beijing, China, Electronics, Huguang Theatre, Language partners, Peking duck
青期日/一 : 5月 6/7日 (Sunday/Monday, 6/7 May)
Flying was all right as far as flying goes. I slept through the entire Toronto-Vancouver flight but barely slept on the Vancouver-Beijing flight. At Pearson, there were already plenty of Mandarin-speakers in the waiting area; I think there might’ve been some Chinese exchange students on the flight (teenagers dressed very Chinese) where the Chinese P.A. announcements also began. On the way to Beijing, I was seated pretty close to my classmates (同学 tóngxué), I sat beside a man named Paul. He was Korean-American man flying to Nanjing as part of an orthopedic surgeons “without borders”-type mission. We talked a bit at the beginning and kept our peace for most of the flight which was cool.
We arrived at our hotel a couple hours after landing (luggage, boarding the bus, transiting). My roommate is LML. She is from South Shore and francophone. She is cool to live with so far. We were given an hour to move in and then met Wang Laoshi （王老师）to go for dinner at a local restaurant. Peking duck! (北京烤鸭 běijīng kǎoyā) Afterwards (以后 yǐ hòu), a tour of basic campus locations that was supposed to last 15 minutes but ended up lasting an hour while we stood around waiting for 王老师 to buy a sim card (没关系 méi guānxi – whatever). All’s well that end’s well though, I slept like a rock (except for the times I woke up of course) and rose early and haven’t really been very jetlagged. (more…)
这个夏天我去北京. Says the official pre-departure checklist:
1. Passport: doesn’t expire ’til 2008
2. Airplane ticket: it was expensive, blah
3. Cash: I still need to buy some more RMB
4. Insurance: covered
5. Emergency contact info: yes?
6. Documents: picked up my visa yesterday
7. Clothes: crisse I have no summer clothes (this is what I get for hanging out in a swimsuit and work uniform all summer)
8. OTC meds: I’ll pick up the pharmaceutical-types tomorrrow.
9: Allergy meds: I’m so congested, it’s not even funny. (what do I take for that?)
10. Alarm clock: cell phone? (which reminds me I’ll either need to get mine unlocked or buy a new one)
11. Vaccination: Covered for measles (grade 4), hep A (last week), hep B (grade 8), DPT (grade 9), and typhoid (last week); I will do my best to avoid malaria and Japanese encephalitis.
I leave Sunday morning. I’m so excited but apprehensive but so excited and hoping I’m not missing anything that needs to be done before I leave. I’ve been able to hang out with most of the girls who’re in town and a few of the guys. Plans are to see Spidey tonight with a few tonight (FL, AL, JW, and RJH) so yay seeing friends.
P.S. Today’s blog title was a googlism. Remember way back when we thought it was so cool? O interweb…
[backposted from March 08]
