Men,

I like you. You are some of my best friends, my boyfriend, and my family.

But you see, if you stop me in the street, the intimidation/annoyance factor usually outweighs the any-desire-I-might-have-had-to-speak-to-you factor.

If you stop me in the lobby of my dorm and try to chat me up while I am trying to leave, you should know that I won't go out of my way to speak to you again.

If you continue to try to convince me to break my language pledge so I can make aimless small talk with you in English, you are far too sure of yourself and I already don't like you.

If you follow me to the cafeteria despite the fact that I am only speaking Chinese and doing my best to get rid of you, you are a certain kind of special and you can rest assured that we will not become friends.

Also, to women and men alike, if you live and study in China, you should probably at least attempt to speak a little.

Now, that I've vented, the question is do I make up a topic for the 300-character essay that is due tomorrow, or do I ask the teacher to tell me what I'm actually supposed to be writing about? I'm leaning towards the latter because it is 2 am and I have class at 8 am. I was not a very good student this weekend. But the good (/terrible if I want good grades) news is I finally got internet in my room! Anyway, a more substantial update will come when I shouldn't be sleeping or studying. I can't believe 1/8 weeks is already over. I think I'm getting the hang of classes (though maybe not the homework) and I really do feel like I'm making a lot of progress. I do miss home, though. Harbin weather has been nice this week, but strange: sunny and breezy for most of the day with out-of-nowhere, massive thunderstorms (I have never in my life witnesses such loud, long bursts of thunder. Sometimes it sounds like gunshots). California will always be the place to be. But it's bedtime. I'm happy I finally learned how to say goodnight so my roommate and I don't fall asleep in silence. 晚安！

Fast Post! Fast Post!

I will write much more later, but I'm supposed to be going to dinner shortly, so I should probably leave this coffee shop soon.

Harbin is wonderful. I really like it here. The weather's great and...

Well, it's ridiculously windy and I think raining outside now so maybe I won't be rushing this post to make it to dinner. My computer and all. But! Harbin's summer weather has been pretty nice up till now (I don't want to discourage any other potential visitors).

Today was our third day of classes and our third full day speaking only Chinese. We began on Sunday afternoon, just after our lunches with our one-on-one class professors - in which it was highly suggested that we only speak Chinese, so I guess our language pledge started around 12 pm that day.

The lunch was...a scary start, I have to say. I'm definitely doubting my topic now because I think it's going to be even more difficult than I initially thought. I was too embarrassed by my lack of skills to ask my professor anything really illuminating, so I mostly listened to him talk about things like 东北人's taste in food and...well, I didn't understand a lot of what he said. What made the whole thing even more awkward was he told me at the beginning of the meal that he didn't like how I held my chopsticks, assuming I guess that I hadn't used them much before. He showed me his grip, and instructed me to hold them like that. We were eating 饺子 and I was dropping them all over the place trying to hold the chopsticks the way he wanted me to instead of the way I usually hold them. Big, fat FAIL. My normal grip isn't bad! Oh well. It gave me a reason to laugh instead of looking lost, I guess.

Anyway, the first day of classes was ok. Hard, but mostly because I didn't prepare properly. Now that I know what to expect, and now that I've had a few class meetings to get used to classroom Chinese and being a student again, I think I'll be ok. I'm taking a 4 person conversational Chinese class, a 5 person newspaper reading class, a 2 person pronunciation class, and my one-on-one class about 相声 (see first post) - which I still haven't had my first class in, actually. It was moved so that we could finally move out of our hotel and into dorm rooms on HIT's campus.

Speaking of, our hotel room:

Tory said it.

The hotel was nice - free breakfast and pretty much on campus - but I'm really glad to be living in the dorms now. Aaaand I met my Chinese roommate last night! She's very nice - a bit soft spoken, but she doesn't speak crazy fast or anything so I can mostly understand her. Or, I can mostly decipher words, I should say. I definitely don't always comprehend what's being said. But we had a very long conversation last night, which was constantly amazing to me. About three times during the conversation it was like I pulled out of what was going on and was astounded by the fact that everything that had gone on wasn't in English. It was a weird feeling, sort of like: since I'd comprehended so much (...a moderate amount), I felt like the conversation must have been in English. But it wasn't. And I was amazed. But then I'd focus in again because if I didn't I'd really lose what what going on. Very strange...but comforting to know, I guess, that such a thing is possible. I just hope I'm not giving her incorrect impressions of America with my poor ability to explain things.

I pretty much love living on campus. It's exciting to be an international student, and it's exciting to be getting to know a whole new school. Chinese supermarkets? Amazing. There's one on campus. Plus smaller stands selling food everywhere. I love it. And, of course, I love how cheap food is everywhere. Today I had a fantastic breakfast for 2.5元 - and I mean fantastic in the sense of I bought it because it was something I'd never seen before.

Turns out it was like a cinnamon roll minus the cinnamon plus red bean paste with a savory meal on top. I expected it to be gross but was pleasantly surprised. Delicious.

I had ice cream for 1元 and then a giiiant 包子 for another 1元 (China also is full of AMAZING ice cream bars, for the record). Love, love, love. Some more food:

We all went out for a meal and the CET people ordered this 东北 delicacy. A hunk of meat + bone that came with gloves and a straw with which to suck out the bone marrow. Bones kind of gross me out, but I did try a little. It was like...grainy fat. Not my favorite, but not gross.

Hot pot, or 火锅. Before...

And after.

Finally, because I need to get dinner and start my homework and the rain has let up, the notebook I bought for class yesterday. I really bought it for the cover.

"This is the most comfortable note book you have ever run into. Buy me!" it said. And I obeyed.

Reliable Internet Access, Strings Attached

Just to let you all know, those last two posts were brought to you courtesy of 5+ hours of fiddling with stuff and finding workarounds for China's Great Firewall. Blogger is blocked in China. GLadder + Picasa + more coding than should be necessary enabled me to put pictures in. I'm still working on embedding that video. Arg.

Anyway, we took a sleeper train overnight and are now situated in our hotel in Harbin (due to swine flu precautions we're not allowed to move into the dorms just yet). We took a quick tour of the HIT campus after a meeting about academics and the oral segment of the placement exam (!!! So glad that's over!). Afterwards, a smaller group of us went exploring/food hunting for a little bit. So far, I really like Harbin. The weather's much cooler than in Beijing, the streets less packed, and the whole place feels much friendlier. I also like that people here don't really speak English. In Beijing there were people everywhere who spoke English, often cutting off my (admittedly few) efforts to speak Chinese. This is what I came here for.

Also also, now that we're finally kind of settling in, I think this will get much less expensive - relatively, of course, because China's not really expensive anyway. I had 6 包子 for lunch for 2元, which is less than 50 cents American. Excellent.

Here Begins My Summer Adventure in China

So on the 4 hour flight from Narita to Beijing, I ended up sitting across the aisle from another student headed to my program – Bram, from Vanderbilt College. This is extra surprising because contrary to some incorrect idea I had, there are actually only 24 kids on this program. It was really nice to have someone to talk to on the plane. We planned on getting a taxi together once we landed, but we were met almost immediately by CET staff there, so we didn’t have to worry about it after all. We waited together in the airport as more and more students arrived, and finally about 8 of us got on a bus together to our hotel – but not before I ran into Chris Young on my way out! Amazing, Yale, amazing. You are everywhere. I wish we hadn’t been leaving so I could have stopped to talk to him for a bit.

Once in the hotel, I met my roommate, Ali from Georgetown. We relaxed a little bit before meeting up with some others to go out and find dinner. We all ended up in this alleyway behind our hotel at a 小吃摊 kind of place – fast, small street food, basically. The tables are set up outside, with stools surrounding them, and it’s all more than casual. I think I heard from someone that it was 新疆-style food (interestingly, this Wikipedia page is banned in China)? I have no idea. We got kebabs of mutton and beef, some 白菜 in a delicious sauce and shredded potatoes with a few green pepper slices mixed in. Apparently the salt in the mutton was strong for some people, but I really enjoyed it. I only wish it all wasn’t so small – we were all very unsure of what to order (and I think a little scared of how…less than sanitary the place was), so we didn’t get too much. There were enough of us to fill two tables, so we traded some kebabs for some 汤 that the other table had ordered. It was pretty delicious as well, but the extra long noodles made it difficult to eat (long noodles = long life, so it’s bad luck to cut them). I left dinner feeling content but not terribly full, but oh well. We’ll save that for when we’re more sure of the restaurants, I guess.

After that, my roommate and I headed back to the room for a bit before heading out to find a 网吧 nearby. Finding it took a bit because the 网吧 sign was actually on a building a few to the right of where the 网吧 actually was. We climbed three flights of stairs before finding an "Adults Only" sign that sketched us out even more before finding it. Bram and Dung were there to help us login. I typed up emails as fast as I could so as to not hold up my roommate, and then we headed back to get some rest.

This morning, we had an orientation meeting after the free breakfast buffet in the hotel (delicious! I love scrambled eggs + fried rice for breakfast, as I discovered last time I was here with Dr. Zhou). We mostly filled out forms after introducing ourselves. I like that our program is so small – I’m sure we’ll all be close by the time these two months are over. My roommate and I headed back to our rooms to pack up our suitcases (they’re going to be shipped to us in Harbin, and because we won’t get them until Tuesday, we packed smaller bags with essentials), and then headed to the supermarket with a group to pick up some necessities.

The supermarket was an interesting experience. My biggest problem was finding conditioner, because I didn’t have time to find shampoo and conditioner before I left. I really, really, really should have brought my dictionary with me! After finding some hair products with English and Chinese on them I was able to figure out the characters for shampoo and conditioner, but I still couldn’t decipher what each product was for. My curly hair is a little hard to deal with without a good conditioner, I remembered when it took me an hour to comb the tangles out of my hair last night. Eventually one of my friends recommended the same color bottle of herbal essences her sister uses – hopefully it’s the frizz control one. I also got an umbrella and some mouthwash. I’ll worry about shampoo later, since the hotel has a bunch.

After the supermarket Dung and I had to get passport photos taken, and then we all headed to a hot pot place for lunch. It was really good, but we had to eat kind of quickly to meet up with the group for a visit to the Temple of Heaven.

It was beautiful, but today was so, so, so grey and smoggy (my throat hurts. Really. I read somewhere that breathing the air for a day in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes…) it was hard to see things from far away, let alone get good pictures. But here’s what I got:

After seeing all the attractions, a group of us decided to look for the Underground City. We walked through the surrounding park on our way out, and when we heard strange, upbeat music Jeff definitely called "old people ballroom dancing." He was right.

Sorry for nausea-inducing video quality, but this was the best (p.s. see how grey the air was? Yeah.):

Our search for the Underground City took us on a long, ultimately fruitless walk, but I enjoyed seeing the city (despite the thick smog). We decided to research and look for it tomorrow. Some things we saw on our walk:

Physics Bridge?

The entrance to some performance hall.

The beginning of my collection of Engrish:

C’mon, guys. Please be self-restraint.

I went to dinner with Elizabeth from Brandeis at the same hot pot restaurant we went to for lunch. I wasn’t feeling terribly adventurous by myself. Afterwards I went to the hotel’s business center to see if I could get free internet – it wasn’t, so I checked my email very fast and failed at trying to email a post to blogger. Ah, well. When I get my computer access set up in Harbin I can test how well GLadder works. Now I’m drinking jasmine tea (Ross, it reminds me of that restaurant you and Dani love) in my room and about to study for our written placement exam tomorrow. But during dinner I was inspired about my goals for China:

• Broaden my taste in food. Now, I love food, but I’m a little picky about what I eat. There was a peanut sauce for dipping the food in at the hot pot place. Someone at lunch said "everything tastes better soaked in peanut sauce" and in my head I definitely begged to differ – I usually avoid it because I don’t like it too much – but I gave it a try and it was really great. I even ate the green peppers in the potato thing we got last night and they weren’t terrible. The cilantro mixed into the peanut sauce though... I don’t think I’ll ever like cilantro. Blech.
• Lose my self-consciousness about speaking in Chinese. I thought I’d made a lot of progress towards overcoming this during the past year at Yale, but faced with a whole group of people who also study the language and can probably pinpoint my mistakes has made me more nervous again (not to mention the fact that many of the students are at a higher level than me. I’ve been deferring to them, which is not good in terms of me gaining experience). I also think this is pertinent because it occurred to me today that China is not a very self-conscious kind of place. Watching all the old people "ballroom dancing" in the park, I was struck by how much these people could care less about what anyone watching might think. This can be a strength and a weakness – the nuts traffic in Beijing and all over China is also a testament to a Chinese lack of self-consciousness, I think. I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about a whole people, but (in my so far limited exploration of the world) I’ve found that there are salient ideas characterizing every society that, once internalized, provide a powerful lens for understanding many facets of the culture: for example, independence in America or politeness in Japan. I have yet to come to a strong understanding of Chinese culture, which brings me to my next goal...
• Discover what makes Chinese culture tick. I can’t even bring to mind stereotypes of Chinese culture, to be honest. What is it that distinguishes Chinese culture from every other culture in the world? I want to understand. Maybe it has to do with reverence for the government, as per Maoist communism? I don’t know. This will require much observation and thought. I only hope that I don’t shut down from too much schoolwork. I’m still so exhausted from the past year I’m finding it very difficult to look forward to getting back into the grind, even if it’s a grind in an entirely different language.
• Make at least one Chinese friend with whom I keep in touch with. I’m terrible at keeping in touch. This is no good. I also find it pretty difficult to bond with girls in general. But I want to make a friend in China – hopefully my Chinese roommate – with whom it is important for me to keep up with. Someday I’ll figure it out.
• Don’t waste money. I see you, dude. You think it’s ok to spend on everything that will bring you a good experience. Well, if you don’t want to break your bank account, keep it under control, yo. You’ve got to make it to the end of the summer (you also have a savings account to fill). Don’t get too silly. Don’t be afraid of haggling for a fair price. And don’t buy junk you don’t need!
• Have fun! I won’t let schoolwork, money worries, or language insecurities keep me down. This summer is supposed to be about fun while learning a language, right? So I will. I will! There are some really awesome people in this program and I want to have a great time with them. Do it do it do it.

Ok, that’s really all for now. I have to study before I fall asleep!

Tokyo Tokyo Tokyo!

After a lovely last night at home spent with my family and my best friend (and my mom's amazing tacos, and about a pound of frozen yogurt), I got on my 1:20 pm flight from LAX to Narita without too much trouble. We were running a little late so I didn't have time to pick up some last minute items I needed or take advantage of a no-international-fees ATM in LAX, unfortunately. Dealing with money stresses me out :( but oh well, what's done is done.

The flight was pretty nice – not as nice as the flight Claire and I took to Japan and back last year, but still nice. I slept for the first hour or so, then watched Valkyrie, a Japanese movie called The Triumphant General Rouge, and (I don't even know if I should admit to this) Confessions of a Shopaholic. See my only real problems with the flight (I was on Japanese Airlines) were that you couldn't pick when to start the movies, and that the movie selection (in English) was so poor. On my last international flight I took the opportunity to watch a bunch of foreign language films because I figured they'd be much harder to come by than American ones back home. I even lucked out on a 6-hour flight home from Yale once – the plane was a connecting flight from somewhere international, so I had my pick of movies for free instead of the $6 or $7 fee they charge per movie domestically. But on the flight I was on this time, only two Japanese movies had English subtitles; everything else came in only the original language with Japanese subtitles. Disappointing, but not the end of the world. The food was great. Other than watching movies, I slept and read my Chinese dictionary.

We got into Narita around 5 pm, and by 6 pm I had a bus ticket to Shinjuku and was figuring out how to contact my parents. Turns out I had my watch set for Chinese time and forgot to remind myself that Japan time is an hour later, so I took a bus an hour later than necessary, but it worked out ok. I had an adventure trying to use a Japanese cell phone to text John and then met him at Shinjuku station with the help of payphones. Because it was raining pretty hard by then (rain season in Tokyo), we headed straight back to his cute little house near Shinjuku. John wins for getting my embarrassingly heavy suitcase up the two narrow staircases to his room. Tatami mats! Shoji doors! So wonderful. We did some catching up and some planning for Tuesday and then went to bed.

Tuesday was amazing, in one word. We started off in Akiba for some wandering and found a really cheap, fast, and generous curry place for breakfast/lunch. After some more wandering (Yodobashi Camera!)(did you know they make puzzles of Kingdom Hearts? And Final Fantasy? I was amazed and covetous), we stopped at a bakery for Japanese-style pastries. So good.

Melon Bread with whipped cream, melon custard, and melon jam-ish-stuff inside. So gooood.

After a little more wandering, we headed to SEE THE GIANT GUNDAM HOMG!!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy when John suggested we go see it – I thought Odaiba was too far away, but I was wrong! I don't think they're entirely finished yet but…wow.

Gundam towering over the people.

We also saw another Statue of Liberty? Does France just give these away for kicks?

???

Then we went to Roppongi looking to hit up the Tokyo Tower. It took us a looong time to find it, so by the time we did dusk was falling and it had just lit up. Beautiful, and worth the effort (but not worth the ¥800-something to go up to the observing deck).

Upshot

We were assaulted there by middle schoolers who wanted a picture with the exotic Americans. "Herro?" is not a stereotype of their accent, it was actually that thick. But speaking of herro,

We also saw this there. Japan = cute embodied.

From Roppongi we headed to Harajuku, for precisely the reason I came to Japan: absolutely delicious food.

KYUSHU JANGARRA RAMEN. THE. BEST. EVER.

So it was raining a little when we left Harajuku station to head for ramen. While we were at Jangarra, it started pouring harder than I think I've ever seen it. But this did not keep us from our final destination: crepes, Japanese-style!

Mixed berries and frozen yogurt + chocolate ice cream, caramel, and cinnamon. Oh my, so worth the wetness.

We huddled under an overhang to eat, and continued huddling for a while trying to wait out the rain, but it was not to be. I tried to take John to Kiddyland, this really cool store with floors and floors of toys, but it was closed :( Since it was still pouring, we decided to head back home.

I thought about heading to the Tsukiji fish market for amazing morning sushi since Claire and I didn't manage to wake up early enough on our last trip, but I decided against it. I didn't want to risk missing my flight. I want to come back to Japan sometime within the next year with Light, so hopefully I'll be back soon!

The next morning I left John's house around 7 am to get to Shinjuku station for my 85 minute bus trip to Narita.

John's cute little house. I'm mad jealous of it.

Realizing I hadn't taken any pictures of myself here, I tried to get one using the self-timer on my camera. My battery died before I could get a non-blurry picture, though.

Sorry, Mom.

I had epic misadventures trying to get from where John lives to Shinjuku station, and pushing my suitcase all over was not too much fun. I made it to the bus about an hour later than I intended, but thankfully security at Narita didn't take too long. I did have a rough stop, though: after making it on to so many flights with me, my little pink pocket knife finally got confiscated. R.I.P. little buddy, I'll miss you :(

I'm going to end this entry here and start a new one regarding my adventures so far in Beijing – after this, my Light Fellowship summer abroad begins for real. Goodbye, Japan! Be back soon!

To-Do List

More as a reminder to myself than a real entry:

• Go to the bank (overdraft charge refund, exchanging money (get yen too!), turn off savings thingy)
• Photocopy passport and things
• Check CET and CIE websites...
• Pack. Holy cow. I'm so tired of moving stuff around
• Get some snacks - for the flight and for in China (gifts too?)
• Fix computer????
• Put some shows/movies on computer
• Study study study
• Set some goals for China

7 days! 7 days!