Some of my posts in the past have been kind of hard to write for one reason or another. Some weeks I don't have a lot of material to talk about, and other weeks I'm just kind of tired and depressed. Living in another culture wears you out; this is part of what is known as "culture shock." Having been here for over two months, I've definitely felt that for the past couple of weeks, and it has been quite frustrating. This post, however is not nearly as hard to write. This is because, in the past week, I think I may have finally turned a corner on my culture shock; I'm now feeling like I can actually do this "living in another country" thing for real. This feeling came about as a result of several events.
The crux event surrounded my Chinese learning; I realized that my class has a study period/tutoring session scheduled with my favorite teacher for two hours every Friday, and almost nobody stays for this class. I kind of knew this before, but suddenly it violently struck me: "I can basically have a one-on-one tutoring session with a great Chinese teacher EVERY WEEK! Why am I not using this to more of my advantage?" So I stuck around for the entire time (and it was basically a tutoring session) and this teacher in that time helped me really GET how characters are constructed in Chinese. Remembering the meaning of characters, and how to pronounce them has always been very difficult for me, and I think that this might be the breakthrough I need to really get some traction on this problem.
Next, through a couple of different ways, I was reminded of the purpose behind why I'm here, and how it relates to my calling. If I have not told some of you what that calling is, this video (and the others on that Vimeo channel) explains it pretty well; remember that I am a Christian, and my other major is Linguistics. Watching these videos helped to refocus myself, and a couple of speakers I heard this weekend helped to cement things in my mind as well.
All that said, I'm not out of the woods yet; I'm still tired, and I still have a cold (though not as bad as before). But, with those two things figured out, a lot of the other stuff is falling into place. So, I can post happily, and now I can tell you about some funny stuff that happened this week!
First off, I've been to McDonald's a good bit in the past couple of weeks; in a really weird way, it's comfort food (I never really liked McDonald's in America), and one of the big coping mechanisms for culture shock is seeking out familiar comfort food. Plus it's the only place open past 10 PM or so, and I've been up REALLY LATE a couple of times in the last few weeks (usually coming home from events with friends elsewhere), so sometimes I literally HAD to go there. So, I'm in McDonald's at midnight, buying a Big Mac meal (or comparable), and I look around, and there's like eight or nine people (no really, I counted) SLEEPING in McDonald's. Not just dozing off over their meals or textbooks, but stretched out across a bench, or curled up in a chair and sleeping. Some of them were college students, but some of them weren't, and I really don't understand why you'd do that. Sure it's the only place open that late, but 1) don't these students have dorms that they can sleep in? and 2) wouldn't the management kick them out? I'm going to have to figure out what exactly is driving that particular cultural difference.
The other thing I noticed recently, hanging out with a Chinese friend. He's got very good English because he studied in the UK for several years, but it's always sounded just a bit strange to me, which I assumed was Chinese/his particular dialect of Chinese interfering. Then I suddenly realized; he's got a BRITISH accent! THIS is what British English sounds like when spoken by a native Chinese speaker! Which means that almost all of the English speaking Chinese people in America have and AMERICAN accent. As a linguist I found this hilarious because 1) British/Chinese hybrid accent is just a funny concept and 2) I've been hanging out with him for TWO MONTHS and I only just now figured this out. I am both amused and feeling very silly. You may not find this super funny; I guess it just goes to show how much of a language nerd I am.
That's all from China for now!
24 November 2013
18 November 2013
Vacation
So it's finally gotten cold here in the Northern Capital (北京=Beijing=Northern Capital), and that means that I've come down with a pretty unpleasant sore throat. I'm drinking lots of hot tea with honey, and I think it's helping somewhat, but it's no fun, and I'm hoping to beat it soon.
Someone asked me about this in my last post, but I'll just say it here as well; Beijing definitely gets snow, and apparently significant amounts of it; I'm told that the city actually uses cloud seeding to get more precipitation in the winter as a way of reducing the pollution. Winter is apparently the worst time of year for pollution because people start using significant amounts of coal to heat their houses; thus any sort of reduction in pollution is a good one.
Last week we had midterms on Monday and Tuesday, and a break Wednesday through Friday, but there were still class activities planned. On Wednesday we went to dinner and a Karaoke place, on Thursday we played the card game Mafia (杀手, shashou, hitman) for two hours, and on Friday we went to the Olympic Park for about 5 hours. It was a very tiring week, despite being a break week; I kind of wish it could have been a little less planned, but most of it was all right; the Olympic Park was pretty, though a bit rushed, and Mafia is pretty fun when you're only allowed to speak Chinese. The karaoke...might take some explaining.
Karaoke in China (and most of East Asia, from what I understand) works VERY differently from the states, and it's a MASSIVELY popular way to spend an evening out. There are entire...establishments (?) devoted to it; instead of going to a bar or restaurant and singing in front of a bunch of people you don't really know, you get a group of friends together, rent a room with comfy couches, a karaoke machine, a big-screen TV, and huge amounts of alcohol, and sing whatever you want (Seriously; they have a massive selection of Asian and Western music), while watching the music videos that go along with the songs. It's kind of weird, and I imagine it's a lot more fun if you're not entirely sober; It was still kind of entertaining, but people mostly picked songs I didn't enjoy listening to, so I'll have to try it again with people with more similar tastes in music.
Now that you know way more than you ever wanted to about Chinese karaoke, I'll be going to bed; class comes early tomorrow, and I want to beat this cough as soon as possible. Oh, except I've just drunk three cups of tea...shoot; I'll be trying to go to sleep.
Someone asked me about this in my last post, but I'll just say it here as well; Beijing definitely gets snow, and apparently significant amounts of it; I'm told that the city actually uses cloud seeding to get more precipitation in the winter as a way of reducing the pollution. Winter is apparently the worst time of year for pollution because people start using significant amounts of coal to heat their houses; thus any sort of reduction in pollution is a good one.
Last week we had midterms on Monday and Tuesday, and a break Wednesday through Friday, but there were still class activities planned. On Wednesday we went to dinner and a Karaoke place, on Thursday we played the card game Mafia (杀手, shashou, hitman) for two hours, and on Friday we went to the Olympic Park for about 5 hours. It was a very tiring week, despite being a break week; I kind of wish it could have been a little less planned, but most of it was all right; the Olympic Park was pretty, though a bit rushed, and Mafia is pretty fun when you're only allowed to speak Chinese. The karaoke...might take some explaining.
Karaoke in China (and most of East Asia, from what I understand) works VERY differently from the states, and it's a MASSIVELY popular way to spend an evening out. There are entire...establishments (?) devoted to it; instead of going to a bar or restaurant and singing in front of a bunch of people you don't really know, you get a group of friends together, rent a room with comfy couches, a karaoke machine, a big-screen TV, and huge amounts of alcohol, and sing whatever you want (Seriously; they have a massive selection of Asian and Western music), while watching the music videos that go along with the songs. It's kind of weird, and I imagine it's a lot more fun if you're not entirely sober; It was still kind of entertaining, but people mostly picked songs I didn't enjoy listening to, so I'll have to try it again with people with more similar tastes in music.
Now that you know way more than you ever wanted to about Chinese karaoke, I'll be going to bed; class comes early tomorrow, and I want to beat this cough as soon as possible. Oh, except I've just drunk three cups of tea...shoot; I'll be trying to go to sleep.
11 November 2013
Autumn in Beijing
Beijing, for all the pollution, is actually quite a pretty city in the autumn. There are significant numbers of trees on almost every street (other than raised highways), and they all start to turn beautiful colors right about this time of year (see picture below). The air is crisp, and if it's not always clean or clear, it still looks very beautiful at certain times.
My campus is quite a pretty place too:
This is the main street that all of the dorms are on, about two or three days ago. This day was rather windy, and at this point, a big gust of wind hit and started blowing lots of leaves off the trees. It was gorgeous, and everyone (myself included) stopped to ooh and ahhh and take pictures! Coming after a hard day of study, it was a very pleasant relief.
This is one of the other great things about autumn that I have discovered here! It's called a "冰糖葫芦, bīngtánghúlu," which my dictionary informs me is "candied hawthorns on a stick." Having never eaten hawthorns before, or even knowing that they were edible, this delicious discovery made me very happy. They are a kind of crunchy-shelled fruit, tasting a little bit like apples, but with the inside more the consistency of...strawberries, maybe? Not quite right, but that's the closest I can come. They get lightly coated in some sort of syrup (not caramel, but maybe corn syrup), air-dried, and then eaten. They are delicious! They seem like a Chinese version of a candied apple; same basic idea, same time of year, but they're somewhat healthier, since the coating is not nearly as thick. Anyway, I discovered these a week or two ago, and since there's a booth that sells them right on my way home from class, it has been very difficult not to buy one every day I when I come home.
03 November 2013
I'm still here!
Ok, after a long hiatus, I am back to posting again! First things first: I think I've figured out a way to share pictures; I'm going to post a link here to a publicly accessible Google Drive folder that has some photos in it; you should be able to view them (but not edit them) here: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0BwIlhxzg7ZrueEY1SVhZbnZBYkU. The one disadvantage is that this requires you to have a Google account, but it's the best I can do at the moment, and I assume most of you have one anyway, what with all that newfangled cloud computing internets technology you young'uns have nowadays!
On that note, my birthday was a little over a week ago. I am now 22; unfortunately this is a kind of boring age. I don't get to do anything new except for...look down on all you 21 year olds, I guess? In honor of this being an uneventful age, I had a rather low-key birthday party; basically, my friends and I went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I then went home and went to bed fairly early; I feel so...middle-aged, and I kind of like it.
I just finished studying with my language partner; we were talking about her little brother, who will be taking the "Gaokao" (高考) this coming year. It's a standardized college entrance exam, like the SAT, but that comparison makes it sound far too benign; it came up because my partner mentioned in passing that her brother is preparing for it. The test is in June. He is studying for it RIGHT NOW. This is a three-day test that determines what college you get into, and basically controls ALL of your last year of high school. For all of our complaining about high-stakes testing in America, I'm pretty sure high-schoolers here have it MUCH worse. That is one thing (of many) that I am grateful for about the US.
On that note, my birthday was a little over a week ago. I am now 22; unfortunately this is a kind of boring age. I don't get to do anything new except for...look down on all you 21 year olds, I guess? In honor of this being an uneventful age, I had a rather low-key birthday party; basically, my friends and I went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I then went home and went to bed fairly early; I feel so...middle-aged, and I kind of like it.
I just finished studying with my language partner; we were talking about her little brother, who will be taking the "Gaokao" (高考) this coming year. It's a standardized college entrance exam, like the SAT, but that comparison makes it sound far too benign; it came up because my partner mentioned in passing that her brother is preparing for it. The test is in June. He is studying for it RIGHT NOW. This is a three-day test that determines what college you get into, and basically controls ALL of your last year of high school. For all of our complaining about high-stakes testing in America, I'm pretty sure high-schoolers here have it MUCH worse. That is one thing (of many) that I am grateful for about the US.
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