With the departure date slowly approaching, I've noticed I'm going through stages of both denial and excitement. One minute I would get super excited and plan out what I'm going to pack, but the next I would dread the physical action of packing. I still don't really believe that I'm going to China. By myself. I guess I just feel a rush of excitement, fear, and anticipation. Although I'm going there for an intensive language program, I know I will learn a lot more about myself and of course China.

Predeparture todos:
Print out all info forms
Pack
Buy backpack
Secure finances
Get traveller's checks
Call bank to make sure I can use my credit card overseas
Get psyched!

Stuff to bring:
Walking shoes
Clothes
Formal outfit
Flip/flops for shower
Toiletries: deodorant, hair stuff, pads, bath stuff, toothbrush/paste, towels
Bug spray and anti-itch cream
Meds: ibuprofen, cold/anti-diarrhea, cough syrup, allergy
Ziploc bags
Flashlight/duct tape
Nalgene bottle
Wet Naps and Antibacterial gel
Converter
Required: ID, passport, flight info, cash, travellers' cheques, credit card, cell phone, loose change

More..
Sunblock!!
Chinese Books+Lonely Planet
Contact lens stuff/glasses
Eyedrops
Laptop
Lockpad
Camera
Snacks?
Nail clippers
Bottle and can opener?
Metric system conversion chart
Swiss army knife (luggage, not carry-on)
small compass

written by  jlu on June 13, 2008 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: Study Abroad in China
tagged First and PreDeparture
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The next time I blog will probably be from Beijing. I don't know how the internet situation is over there in the international dorms but I'm sure it'll be fairly easy to gain access to the internets. I'm also bringing my DSLR (which I had difficulty deciding whether I should bring this $700 camera to a land of pickpockets), but since my cheap 2.0 megapixel camera with video recording capabilities died on me, I have no choice. I'm refraining from bringing expensive items I'll regret losing, so I'm keeping them to a minimum. The camera is probably the most expensive item I'm bringing--besides my laptop. But that's a piece of crap anyway.

Here's an unrelated moment you might enjoy...
(watches some soccer/futbol sport on tv)
me: (looks at scoreboard) isn't it funny how all the teams are European? they must like their futbol there.
phil: um, it's the Euro Cup?

written by  jlu on June 23, 2008 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: Study Abroad in China
tagged PreDeparture
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For those who don't know what simplified and traditional characters are all about, the traditional form is more difficult since there's more strokes. I don't really know much of the history, you can wiki it, but from what I know, China standardized all Chinese characters to be in simplified form to increase literacy at some point when they reformed. Traditional characters are used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. So here's a sample sentence, first in simplified, then in traditional, and finally in English:

我们的衬衫着火
我們的襯衫着火
"Our shirt is on fire."

Notice only some of the characters are different.

What I'm really anticipating on the plane ride is boredom, so I brought a few books: Lonely Planet for Beijing (of course, I put a book cover so people don't know I'm foreign), Pastoralia by George Saunders (satirical book from class that I never really finished), and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Yep, that is all for today.

written by  jlu on June 25, 2008 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: Study Abroad in China
tagged PreDeparture
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I felt a bit of culture shock and was pretty miserable until I went out of my bubble/dorm room and went on an adventure exploring some of the nicer parts of Beijing today. Instead of blabbing on, I'm just going to compile a list of what I did...

-Figured out how to use the subway system
-Ate McDonald's
-Walked A LOT
-Having fun talking to locals in broken Mandarin and using the excuse that I'm a GuangDong ren (Cantonese)

The people here are really nice if they know you're a foreigner (but it can be bad if you're haggling). It's kind of frustrating sometimes. I look Chinese so the people here expect fluent Mandarin out of me. When I look at them with my blank "huh?" face because wo bu dong (I don't understand), they get impatient. Most of the people in the area around Beijing Normal University (Bei shi da, short for Bei jing shi fan da xue) or maybe just Beijing in general talk really fast and have a really strong accent--they add "ar" to everything. But I did get one compliment from a local, she said my Chinese was pretty good for a foreigner. Yay! I'm not that much of a noob after all.

I miss you people (sometimes) :D, so please comment and let me know how you're doing and/or ask questions about my experiences/the weather in Beijing/if I'm getting traveller's diarrhea/etc.

-What's McDonald's like there?
It's pretty much the same except the portions are smaller. A super-sized meal in China is equivalent to a normal meal in the US, fries and drinks. The burger itself is pretty much the same. I ordered a crispy chicken and it was actually way better than the US version, it was crispier and they didn't use crappy chicken (It wasn't really completely ground up chicken)

So the past few days I..
-Took my placement test and got placed in level 9 class. The highest is 11 and lowest is 3. I'm kinda scared I might not be able to handle it.
-Ate some food that made me go number 2 a couple of times. That was fun. (Not really)
-Met my Chinese tutor, she's really sweet and gave us a tour of the campus. I also found out she's the same age as me.
-Bought a sim card for my phone for local calls.
-Supposedly ate the best Peking duck from... Peking! (aka Beijing)
-Went to traditional old Beijing streets (Hutong)
-Went to a tea house where we got to sample some delicious tea. I <3 tea.
-Rode a rickshaw
-Took a boat around Shisha Lake. The boat had a lady playing music for us.

So anyway.. school starts tomorrow!

Besides being a bit homesick for the first couple of days, I've learned to enjoy the time I am abroad 'cause I'm only here for a month or so. I wasn't used to the weather being so hot and humid in additions to everything being so dirty here, but food and goods are cheap so that's a plus. Also, I watched this video in class and it made me feel lucky to be here in Beijing during the Olympics, so I'm coping well.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QFQ1JDw-d70

I got sick a couple of days ago and I'm slowly getting better. Being sick in college sucks, and being abroad is no different. I might've caught a cold from eating food family-style (which is how Chinese usually eat.) Basically there's a bunch of plates of food and everyone just has their own bowl of rice and share the other foods, so yay germs galore.

Yesterday, I went to Tian an men and Forbidden city. We took the subway and it was very very hot, humid, sunny, and crowded. There were MASSES of Asian people and I wondered, why are there so many Asian people here? Why would they come to their tourist trap sites when they already live here..? One of life's unanswered questions..

I also think my English is deteriorating, so excuse the bad grammar and such! Also, please excuse the multiple tourist pictures of me. My parents were wondering why I hardly had any of myself and wanted me to post some so they can see it. HI 媽媽，爸爸！

p.s. i really hate how the image quality is decreased when it's uploaded

-Are there a lot of tourists there because of the Olympics? I've seen only a few (maybe a handful) but I'm in the more, uh, ghetto part of Beijing, so most of the tourists are in the "nicer" part, that is geared towards tourists.

-Is your dorm dirty too? Have you met any natives? Nope! my room is soo clean :) Fu wu ren 服務人 come to clean it everyday! I've met my tutor, who is a native.. but haven't really met too many natives.

-Are they friendly or are they like people in Chinatown? They're pretty friendly, but sometimes they're just frustrated cause they expect me to be able to speak Mandarin. But if you're white with blonde hair and blue eyes, I heard they'll be super friendly and want to take pictures with you.

This weekend I went to Chengde, some temples (Puning and some other one) and the Jinshanling Great Wall. We stayed at a really nice hotel for the first night, I say 'nice' because the next night, we stayed at some shanty-ass 'hotel' in Jinshanling where my bedsheets were yellow and covered with specks of mysterious green/black bug-like guts. The bathroom looked like someone died in it. I didn't shower that night because I was too scared and it seemed like other people's rooms sucked as well. (whine) I really wanted to shower too, I was so gross and sticky (end whine). Now you can gauge how scary it was.

For the first two days of the weekend, we went to the Chengde Summer Palace, rode an electric boat, walked a lot... went to the Puning temple and some other temple called 'Pu hua zhong cheng' something or other. Then we visited a Hebei Tourism Vocation College (where students train to become tour guides) but I didn't really know why we went there. All we did was talk to Chinese students and watch some tea ceremony demonstrating how to drink tea (but not actually drinking it) sadness.. way to tease. So maybe we were there because the tour guide company we were traveling with had employees who graduated from there?

Sunday, we woke up at 3 a.m. to climb the wall at 4 a.m. So I hiked on the wall for about 4-5 hours and covered 10.5 km (maybe 6 miles). My knees are still killing me. I ended up hiking with one other friend because I originally wasn't going to hike all the way, so I went really slow and took lots of breaks. But the wall was so treacherous that I did not want to climb back down after I worked so hard to get up the damned wall. Some parts of the Great Wall didn't really have walls, so you can just fall off the side. I was also obligated to buy things from random farmers traveling the wall to sell things because I was scared they would kill me. Serious. They didn't threaten me, but you never know... one push off the wall and you're gone. Anyway, I have many stories about the wall but I'll save those for real conversations.

Class starts again tomorrow and I also have a calligraphy class. Yay. :(

P.S. once again, excuse the weird fob pics of me by myself. I feel so awkward in those pics.

After lunch I went with a bunch of EAP kids to xi dan 西單, where I spent too much moneys and walked around for about forever. and later that night, we had an interesting clubbing adventure. Today I went to the Olympic park and a shopping place called 五道口. ...Walked way too much and tomorrow I'm going to 王府井商業街。

and..

OMG I'M SO DARK NOW :(

Yummy noodles!

Front of BNU

Bird's Nest ??

security guards everywhere. the US athletes are housed at my university

Water cube

Bus ride

I love Mcdonald's here!! They have crispy coconut and taro pie!

Real chicken!!

in front of the main building

my dorm/apartment but it's really more like a hotel

entrance of dorm

mc donalds!!

gym where the olympic athletes will be training at my school

school logo

lots o bikes

ice cream everyday!

convenience store right down from the dorm

orange chips ahoy

water cube! (pic stolen from jenni)

Luckily, we stayed at a decent hotel after desert fun so we still could shower. The next day, we went to the Da Zhou temple 大昭 and wandered around for an hour or two... and had lamb hot pot. Normally I would enjoy hot pot but the weather was already hot, the restaurant had no air conditioning or fan, and stupid me forgot to bring the fan I bought from some other temple, so you know what all this means... it equals teh sux.

After lunch we traveled to the grasslands 煇騰錫勒 where we stayed in a yurt 蒙古包 and didn't get to shower. They had community restrooms but they were so rancid that I decided to pee in the fields. That night we had roast lamb, which was better than I expected because I normally hate lamb, had a bonfire party and watched performances. We went to sleep pretty early because we wanted to wake up for the Sunrise.

My friends and I woke up at 4 am to watch the Sunrise.. which didn't really come until 5:15 am, so we freezed our asses off because it was freakin' cold in the morning. We rode horses in the afternoon for an hour and got ready to leave Inner Mongolia. We took the train back to Beijing and I took the best shower ever.

Inside our yurt

Fireworks and bonfire at the grasslands

inside a temple

our yurt neighbors

inner mongolian performances

i thought the clouds looked nice

me in front of horses and possibly stepping on horse poop

outside the hohhot train station

sunrise at the grasslands

horsies!

the moon shortly before sunrise

windmills were everywhere at certain parts of grasslands

sparklers at the bonfire

i took this while riding a lift at the desert/sand dunes

me embracing my darkness

the hotel we stayed at the first day in inner mongolia

i rode a camel

camels

shadows!

the surfing cars!

sand dunes

taking the lift

inside the train!

inside the trainstation!

foods (and feminine products) i bought for the trip

beijing train station

railroad

So things to look forward to... this weekend we're going to the Beijing Zoo, xi dan for shopping, wang fu jing for more shopping and eating scorpions, and KTV for karaoke-ing. Then on the 11th, I'm going to the Olympics to watch archery! After that.. final exams, and our graduation performance and luncheon.

Karaoke!!

Camels!!

Sleeper train!

Train station!

Grasslands and horses!

Bon fire at the grasslands

Camel ridin'

Desert!

Grasslands!

Some temple

Sunrise at 5 am

Sunrise at the grasslands