Our semester has finally gotten underway (after 3 weeks of completely paid for vacation)! I never thought I’d be so glad to give up traveling for schoolwork. We had our first classes today, and honestly it doesn’t seem nearly as intensive as classes I’ve had before (the summer program I went to last summer really ruined my perception on how long the average Chinese class should last).
Class begins at 9am with Professor Wang from the University and lasts until 11 (except on Wednesdays when class ends at 10) and then we have Professor Ying. The morning is followed by a lunch break and then our director teaches one of the two culture classes depending on the day. We finish by 3pm every day, except maybe Fridays…so we have plenty time to get out and around. Too bad I’m still more tired than I have any right to be.
Currently it sounds like there’s a war going on outside thanks to the non-stop fireworks and crackers that have been going off since nightfall. We’re told its going to last all night since it’s the last day of New Years. It’s actually kind of nice. I imagine if they were real rockets it wouldn’t be so nice, but as I know that they’re just gunpowder with lights it’s ok. The biggest downfall of all this celebration (aside from the noise) is that there is a thick layer of soot in the air. Makes everything seem just a little more polluted than it actually is.
Even so, Beijing is mostly like I remember it. It’s not as clean as when the Olympics were going on, but we could see blue sky when we landed on Saturday. The others have mentioned that the tap water smells. Personally I could care less since the shower is hot through my entire shower.
Funny story. Tram and I did laundry yesterday which badly needed to be done. The tricky thing about it is that there is no dryers in our dorms. People can either choose to have their laundry done for them (which includes the drying) or do it themselves and hang it. Seeing as just to have one piece of “undergarments” washed and dried costs 10 kuai, we went for the do it yourself. Readied with string and hooks we went to stringing our room full of Christmas lights in the form of colorful clothes. It kinda worked for a while…under the weight of the clothes pulled the sticky hooks from the wall. I happened to be sitting under them when the first strings came down. I looked like a clown, but at least none of the clothes hit the tile floor (the Chinese don’t believe in carpeting as far as I can tell). The other strings followed shortly after but we preserved and finally found a way to hang our clothes without them all falling down.
We had a similar experience setting up a bank account. If you want to pretend you’re a celebrity, go to the bank. They stamp everything, make you sign your name everywhere, and you hand over all the money you have.
The first time we went to open Chinese accounts we failed entirely to communicate effectively with the woman at the desk. It wasn’t that we didn’t understand her (which made us feel a little better about ourselves), the problem lay in the fact that we didn’t know our address, phone number, or number of our director. We had been told we really only needed our passports. After trying to fill the forms out (which we couldn’t read) we gave up and went to go get our director for help. Now we have debt cards with a cute green cow on it.
Everything is cow-ifed. Our director went and bought a humidifier for her room and guess what it was? Yes, a cow shaped humidifier. It even had swiveling horns. This is easily blamed on this Chinese Year being the year of the Ox (or Water buffalo if you’re Vietnamese). Too bad I hate cows.
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