All Moved In

Well here is my first post on this new blog in China. There have been a lot of new experiences already in this first week, so I’ll see what I can remember.

First thing is some general information about my study abroad program. I’m with the CET Beijing Language Program and we’re staying at the international student campus at the Beijing Institute of Education. There are 47 of us and most of us have a Chinese roommate that goes to a nearby school. We are all just taking Chinese language class, so our day is broken up into different hours of grammar, discussion, reading, one-on-one, etc.

After we arrived we started orientation bright and early at 8am last Thursday (That would be Wednesday night for those of you in the US. The time difference is 12 hours ahead of EST). The orientation lasted until Sunday which was nice because we all had time to get to know each other using English before our language pledge began with class on Monday.

Culture shock began to set in during the orientation with multiple occurrences. One of the first things I saw after getting off the bus from the airport was a Beijinger spit on the street, which is now one of the most common things I see and hear everyday. They spit really loud too. I’ve been in my third floor room that over looks a small street and have been able to hear it.

Another really funny and awkward moment was when the Public Security Bureau (the police) came to tell us about safety and security. When he was on the subject of pickpockets he mentioned that to exchange our money we shouldn’t get black money. He then showed us a picture of a black man sitting at a table. He said, “This is a black man… from Africa. Um... don’t trust them.” He said all of this with a big smile on his face. I think he meant to give a little more information about what this guy was selling, but it didn’t come across too well.

One of the hardest things to do is to go to the grocery store and try to buy food or other miscellaneous things. I needed shampoo, but I didn’t know how to say it and I couldn’t tell the difference between the shampoo and conditioner. I found a bottle with English on it and had to do some character matching to get what I wanted.

Another thing is interacting with Chinese people. I really do get stared at all the time, but that doesn’t really bother me at all. A couple of times an old man or someone has come up to me and drawn that invisible line from his head to my upper arm and gasp. There are different reactions when we speak Chinese to people also. If I’m just passing by and say something they are completely surprised. If I’m at a store sometimes they’ll laugh, but they’ll usually understand. What surprises me is when they speak back to me assuming that I understand everything they say.

Our dorms are pretty nice because we aren’t in Chinese dorms. We have normal US toilets instead of the squatters, but there is one for Chinese students to use. The plumbing is really bad so we can’t flush toilet paper and to reinforce how bad it is, today a sewage truck came and put a big hose in the ground to suck all our sewage out. My bed is in fact to short, so I might just have to deal with that. Our rooms are pretty clean, but the dirty Beijing air gets everything pretty dusty. My roommate is from Beijing, which is nice because he has been able to show me some restaurants. His English is pretty good and he’s usually able to tell me if I ask about how to say word. I’ve never had a roommate before so it’s something I’m not completely use to yet.

On Monday, we started class and our language pledge. There was a mistake with what books I had used in the US, so I was put into a harder class at first. I switched to the level below it on Wednesday so I have to make up the two lessons I missed, but I don’t have to take our test in class tomorrow. I do have to do it over the weekend though. Our classes go really fast and if the rest of the semester is anything like the last two days we are going to be really busy. Last night we had to do the following: study 66 new words for a quiz, a sheet of homework, and write a 400-character essay.

I’m also finding the language pledge to be quite difficult. Right now most of us can’t really carry interesting conversations. We mostly talk meaningless things (in my opinion) such as daily occurrences, schoolwork, etc. I like to talk about more interesting things and I think most people agree that we are all fairly boring right now. There are too many holes in my vocabulary to talk about things that I would normally talk about at home. I’m also friends with some of the level 100 students who have never taken Chinese before and it’s fun to teach them stuff, but it’s almost impossible to talk to them. They seem pretty frustrated at times too. Of course we’ve spoken English and from talking with the summer students the general consensus seems to be that we will speak a lot of English when we are away from campus.

Well I’m hoping to keep this updated because I think people are interested in knowing what it’s like here. Hopefully the next posts don’t take as long because this one sure did (not to mention the poor quality of the internet). For now I’m stressed, but having fun. Good luck to everyone with what they are up to.