Another Week, Plus Trip #1

Hello everyone,

Jeez, it seems like forever since I've posted on here.  And the reason why is a mixture of my being busy, and my being lazy. :P So, as the title says, another week is down in our four month trip to China.  The time seems to be both going very slow when I'm in any given moment, but also very fast when I look back and realize I've almost been here a month already.

Things have started to get a bit better with both of my major struggles from last time.  Our internet connection has mostly stabilized.  There are still some moments where the internet doesn't want to work at all, but for the most part I can log in whenever I have time to.  The language issue is still a struggle, but we are learning more of the language every day.  We can now understand prices, and when people ask "What do you want?" Any questions beyond that are still mysteries, but at least we're getting the basics down.

We have also started to meet more people here.  The professor with us from Kearney is living in an apartment off campus, and has introduced us to some of the people living in her building.  She is also Indian, and invited us over for a homemade Indian meal one night.  That was entertaining, and really did give us the chance to talk to and connect with our professor.

As far as actual schooling goes, we have started both of our other classes:  literature and history.  Both classes are taught in English by Chinese professors.  Both professors speak relatively good English, and have created very comprehensive PowerPoint presentations to help with anything they may not be able to say accurately.  I am very interested to get more in depth in those classes, as so far we've only had introductions in both.  I will keep you all updated with interesting facts I learn in these classes.  For example, in literature class, I have learned that one of the most famous Chinese literature pieces, when translated into English, is over 2300 pages long.  Even as an avid reader, that is a massive book that will take a long time to get completely read.

Now, with all of the basic living things out of the way, we took our first trip this Saturday!  The trip was to Baiyangdian, or the largest man-made lake in China.  It took almost three hours to drive there by bus, and the place we were going was on an island in the lake, which took another half hour by boat to get to.  The lake is so large that they have had to put "street" signs up to tell boats where to go:

Now, as you can see from this picture, the smog in China is thick. And yes, that's smog, not just fog. I've gotten a little more used to it since I've been here, but looking out my window on sixth floor and not being able to even see all of campus is a little scary still...

When we arrived at the island, we found out that it was just a small center where they put on shows. If any of you have been to Branson, Missouri, its a lot like that, except all in Chinese.  We watched two shows there, one performed all by midgets and the other performed on a stage that was a foot under water.

After the shows, we went to the Lotus Garden, which was about ten minutes away by boat again.  This was a very nice place, and had many cool things to look at.  Below are pictures of lotus flowers, and one of me with a giant Buddha statue that was in the center of the garden.

 After the garden, we had another boat ride and bus ride back to the dorm.  Overall, the trip was interesting.  I wish the tour guide had spoken English, however.  I wish I could tell you more about the history of the lake, or about some of the site history at the lake, but you know as much as I still do.  Hopefully, as we go on other trips, we will get guides that speak English.

That's about it for this post.  I hope I didn't bore you all too much with the wall of text here.  It's been a week since my last post, though, and I wanted to get everyone caught up to where things are.  Thanks again to anyone who reads this, and I'll be updating again when I have more to share.

Adam

A Necessary Update

Hello everyone,

Sorry it has taken me this long to update things.  I've had quite the week so far, and it hasn't even been a full week yet. :P So, lets get everything all caught up, shall we?

To begin, was the plane ride.  I knew 11.5 hours was a long time to be in the air, and to be quite honest, I still didn't think I was quite ready for it.  However, once we took off and I realized they provided free movies for passengers... I had a much better time.  Four movies and an hour long nap later, I was landing in Beijing, China, halfway around the world from everything I was used to.  We stayed that night in a hotel, which had really spotty internet, meaning no blogging there.  End day one.

Day two started out with a five hour long bus ride to our "town," Shi Jiazhuang, and the Hebei Normal University.  Now, this wasn't a bad bus ride.  We were the only people on the bus.  The university had hired the bus just for us, which made the ride more relaxing than anything else.  After we arrived, we got a quick tour of the important buildings around campus, but none were more important than the Cultural Exchange Building, which is where our dorms and classrooms are as foreign exchange students.

As a quick aside, when I talk about "dorm rooms" I really mean something more akin to a hotel room.

These three pictures show the fact that I have a little entrance hallway, two beds, two dressers, two desks, and a bathroom, all to myself.  No roommates.  Which is insanely impressive, and far more room than I figured I would have.  Also, the Cultural Exchange Building stands at twelve stories tall, almost twice as tall as the tallest dorm/building at Kearney.  My room is located on the sixth floor of the building.

The weekend after we got all moved in, I struggled a little. We didn't know any of the language, and we didn't have any way to get that information.  Our rooms, as nice as they are, don't have internet unless you pay for it, and even once you do, the internet doesn't start until September first. Fourth floor has internet, but only at certain times during the day, so getting on to check translations and things like that was very difficult.  I remember thinking that if the rest of the trip was like that weekend, it may end up being a very long four months.

But, as they usually do, things got better. Monday and Tuesday brought the start of Mandarin Chinese class. I can't even begin to express how good it is to know even just a few words in the local language.  For example, I cannow say hello, goodbye, how much is this?, I would like to buy this, and a few other extremely useful phrases in Chinese.  Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will bring more of that class, and next week we start our other classes as well, which include Chinese History and Chinese Literature.  I am just as excited for both of these classes as I am to continue learning more Mandarin.

Hopefully it won't be as long to my next post as it was getting to this one.  I will do my best to get things updated as things happen.  Thanks again for reading this blog, to anyone who does.  I hope I can entertain at least a little with the experiences I'm having half a world away.

Adam