Liuyang!

Talking with my mother last night (Skype is a beautiful thing!) I realized it had been almost a week since my last update. A few things of note have occurred.

I went to a party for the Australian Grand Final. This is the equivalent of the Superbowl or the Grey Cup and the celebration also consists of copious amounts of food and alcohol. Australian Football is a weird beast, but a hell of a fun game to watch. I proceeded to embark on a night of drinking the likes of which have not yet been seen. I remember most of it, including making an arse of myself in front of a bunch of Aussie and English guys at a little bar. Ah well, mostly a fun time.

After a day of recovering in which I rode my bike for 3 or 4 hours to clear the system, I then spent time studying and relaxing. Did I mention that after a whopping 4 days of classes, the entire University has a week of holidays? 9 days worth. Everyone is travelling; I know some who are going to Malaysia, some to Xian and some to Mongolia.

Me, I'm going to Liuyang to meet with a company called Aurora Fireworks and Export Co. My contact there has been patient and wonderful, including agreeing to drive the 160km round trip to pick me up at the airport, book me a hotel and arrange 2 factory tours and some product demos! This should be _fun_.

Would have been fun yesterday, which is when I was supposed to leave. I booked my ticket online with Hainan Airlines, a reputable and well-known airline for domestic service. Through some technical and human errors, I ended up not having a seat last night. They also didn't have a seat today. I have applied for a refund, but the process takes about 20 days and they said they didn't know whether the refund would go through. The charge has though, and if I don't hear from them in a week I'm contacting Visa.

Long story short, Aurora had met me at the airport in Changsha and were panicking that I wasn't there. I feel pretty bad that they wasted their time and resources, but they were very kind and patient and understanding.

Long story shorter, I bought another ticket last night and changed the trip from the 30th-3rd to the 1st through the 4th instead. I hope no more problems arise. I'm 518 bucks CAD into the hole than I would otherwise have been (ironically, this was almost exactly how much I had budgeted for the rest of the trip, hotels/cabs/meals and misc.).

I'm a little frustrated, but am leaving in about 3 hours to take the subway to the airport. Hopefully, as mentioned, things go smoother. I cannot spend much more money, and if this refund doesn't go through then I am not able to buy anything fancy for myself in China without dipping into my Line of Credit. Money isn't everything though, and I'm having a good time of it aside from all frustrations.

Thanks for your e-mails and your comments. Nice to know the folks at home at keeping up.

I hope everyone is well and all is going okay in Calgary.

Love and regards,

Nathan

A photo of the gymnasium at Bei Da (the Beijing Normal University) where they held gymnastic and weight events for the Oympics. Shot at about 6:30pm; gets dark really quick here.

Classes

Well, Classes have begun!

After taking my placement exam last Friday, they saw fit (in their infinite wisdom, I guess) to put me into the 102 level. This is one above 101 and just below 201. This was where I fit based on an exam I left mostly blank, excepting the essay portion (it's easy to fill 100 characters when you know how to make basic sentences).

I got to class on Tuesday (Monday having been an 'off' day for some reason...) and attended a confusing day of being spoken to in rapid Mandarin. My classmates, about 12 of 'em, seemed to have a grasp of what was being said, but I felt like something of a fool for catching about 2 in every 10 characters; not enough for comprehension much less learning.

I sat in that day on a 101 class during the afternoon. This class was for people who had zero experience with Mandarin, meaning that they started absolutely bare bones; pronunciation and pinyin learning that we did in the first 2 weeks of class at home.

A couple days later, I'm WAY out of my league in 102 and a significant amount ahead of the 101 class. I've been told varying things by varying people. From 'stick it out and catch up!' to 'go with the one where you'll learn _something_ instead of wasting time'.

I'm going with 101, I've decided. I spoke with my teacher and there's another guy from another 102 class in the same predicament. Both the professors at the 101 level said to stick it out until Friday (when we have to 'lock in' whichever class we will stick with), then make the decision. They also said they would be happy to help us figure out where we were in terms of the curriculum and they would try and make sub-lesson plans for us to work on while the new students caught up. That and it's interesting to be one of those students other kids (I use 'kids' loosely here) can ask for help.

Anyways, in other news, my trip to the Fireworks City of Liuyang is in jeopardy. I have lost all contact with Matt Palazynski of Pyro Innovations. As Matt had previously agreed to help me make travel arrangements, hotel arrangements and host me on a couple factory tours I had been counting on him HUGELY to help make the trip work. I know nowhere NEAR enough Mandarin to comfortably go to another area of the country with no English and communicate complex ideas without the support of a University behind me.

I have e-mailed a number of other fireworks companies here in hopes of getting some new arrangements in place. This includes Dancing Fireworks, if anyone from the industry in Canada is reading, and I hope especially to visit one of their factories.

Who knows what's happening. The holiday begins on Saturday though, so I need to figure out if I'm going or not and make those arrangements.

Wish me luck! Thanks for reading and thanks for the e-mails. Miss you all!

Love and regards,

Nathan

P.S.: Mayan, no Tiffany stuff in sight yet. I'll still keep an eye out whenever I'm in a market.

Tomorrow

First off, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who said some words of support or encouragement. I appreciate them very much; every little bit helps.

Tomorrow my classes start. Apparently 2 semesters of Chinese in Canada gets me into the 102 (Beginners) level Chinese here. This is as opposed to the 101 (Introductory) level, which is for people who haven't studied Chinese before or have VERY little. Judging by how I think I did on that placement test, I have a feeling that I'll be shifting around my classes after the first week or so.

Either way, should be fun. I have classes from 8:00am-11:40am Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Class from 1:00pm-4:40pm Thursday and Friday. I'd rather it be the opposite, but there's no changing that. I can change levels, not schedules.

I'm looking forward to seeing how different the system is here! I'm MORE interested in learning how better to communicate. I'm getting a little tired of having to lean on people who have more Mandarin than me. I'd much rather be able to communicate what I mean myself, though the help is always appreciated.

Anyways, I'll let you all know tomorrow how the first day of classes went.

Thanks again,

Nathan

The Beijing Flu

Hey all,

This won't be a long entry as I'm not feeling 100%. I'm barely feeling 15%.

I've seemingly got a pretty wicked case of bacterial gastroenteritis. Montezuma's revenge for those more familiar with the common name.

Coupled with the obvious symptom, I'm running a fairly significant fever, have chills and hot spats and am nauseous to the point of not eating.

I have some nuke-tastic antibiotics that my doctor prescribed for just this eventuality, but I'm going to give the other drugs some times to work before I use up one of my two doses.

Just running on no sleep right now and feeling a little crummy since yesterday afternoon. Been confined to my room, as I'm not sure running around Beijing on a Saturday is going to do me any favors.

I, like all men, hate being sick.

Hope you're all well in the land of filtered/treated water.

Nathan

P.S.: Mayan, now would be a great time for you to pay me back for all the times I brought YOU ice cream when you were sick.

On the Culture Shocked Mind

I'm going to come right out an say it.

Over the past few days to a week, I've been struggling with a bit of depression. Not to compare myself with those truly combating the clinical ailment, of course. Just feeling generally down, agoraphobic and unwilling to get out of my room because I don't know what I'm going to do out there. This entry is an attempt to analyze the why and the how of these problems and feelings. Enjoy the rare opportunity to read something like this.

Humans are social creatures. By nature, we want communication and understanding from our peers. I'm of the opinion that when a social mind is deprived of outlets and interaction problems begin to surface.

Case in point: for the first 4 or 5 days I was in China I was away from a comfortable home environment with easy access to loved ones and friends to provide those social aspects of life we all crave. Arriving across the world with a bunch of material possessions, I was excited at first to explore my surroundings.

Qinghua is a massive university. It's about 2-3 times the size of the U of C's campus and has roughly the same number of students. It's lush, it's green and it's almost entirely alien.

It's not nearly big enough to prevent a 'trapped' feeling when you're inside the (guarded!) gates.

After the first few days, I met my roommate; Cristoff. A German MBA student from Aachen he is a fairly well traveled student fluent in English. Talkative when you engage his interest, he's mostly a private person. Saw very little of him the first few days we shared the small hallway between our rooms and the common bathroom, other than a 'hello' and 'goodbye' here and there.

Before going on, I'm going to let you in on something not many people know about me. Hell, I don't really know it about myself; this is something I'm discovering more and more that is an annoying trait. I'm cripplingly shy about forcing myself into someone else's social life or scene. If I'm invited, I'll usually go and have a great time. Once that invitation is extended, I'm happy to join the fold and will have no trouble socializing when they make the first gesture. I always feel awkward (to the point of inaction) when asking if they have room for one more.

Until I'm driven stir-crazy enough and lonely enough that I finally asked him if I could tag along when him and his friends went to the Silk Market. I went, met about 10 Germans who all speak fluent English (a common thing, apparently) and had a great time. Nice people, one and all.

Met a few Aussie's too whom I have hung out with quite a bit. That was a random 'my name is x, my name is y' thing in class, and then we were all eating in the Foreign Student Cafeteria and they invited me to their table when they spotted me. Note the similarity; the first move was made by them.

I think I'm rambling. I always write more when I'm in a 'down' state of mind.

I've been trying to fill my days with distractions, but it's not working so well. 3 hours of studying, a 3 hour bike-ride and lunch fills 6-7 hours out of the 14 I'm usually awake. I play video games on my laptop, but I feel crummy when doing so and it never lasts long.

Coherency bedamned, this is another attempt to fill my time with a distraction. I've been riding my bike a lot. I've probably ridden around the northwest near campus for about 10-12 hours total over the past 4 or 5 days. It's uncomfortable and my bike has just about bit the dust. Besides which, I've explored a lot of what can easily be accessed in this area. I've taken my camera with me, but I don't feel motivated to take photos.

Motivation might be my problem. Maybe when classes have started (Everyone else I have met is in class already) I'll be able to find something to do with my time or some group I can regularly spend down-time with.

I'm bored and a bored mind is a vicious one. I need cheering up, but more than that I need social interaction.

In closing, I don't really expect anyone to have read all of this.

Thanks,

- Nathan

p.s.: Here's a crummy photo of someone fishing in a canal on campus.

A Long One

So I've been away from this thing for a few days, just like last time. It's been an odd couple of days, but busy and for the most part fun.

Going back to mid-last week. I had a 'placement exam' so they could determine my Mandarin abilities and pick which class I would be put in. I got the paper, and it was all in Mandarin so difficult I couldn't even decipher the instructions. I muddled my way past about 20% of the test, leaving the rest blank. Then the instructor stood up in front of the class and rattled off about 15 minutes of rapidfire Chinese, which everyone else SEEMED to understand.

I had an inkling that all was not well.

After everyone but a couple students had dispersed and I went up to the front, I learned from another girl (a Belgian who spoke VERY good Chinese and flawless English) that there are two programs. There is a Chinese Language and Literature Program (where I was) and a Chinese Language Program. Turns out, I had registered for the CLP, but they put me in the CLLP.

Problem: CLLP is for advanced learners, and includes study of classic literature, calligraphy and other such. Not what I signed up for.

Either way, my program is switched to the CLP as originally intended. A whole NEW crop of problems comes up now. My classes in the CLP don't start until the 23rd, a full week and a day after everyone else. It's also an 18 week course versus the 16 weeks in a traditional Tsinghua semester.

What this all means is that I'm now arriving back home 4 days later than I originally intended. I also arrive back AFTER the change-add-drop course date has passed for the U of C. This means that I'm totally messed up for my winter semester. I anticipate writing a dozen or so e-mails to a half dozen professors seeing if I can enroll in programs late, miss the first 2 weeks and try to catch up when I return. I dunno though; most might not go for that.

I will be returning with about 2-3 courses MAX left on my degree, provided I am granted the 5-6 courses credit for this exchange. Spring can only cover 2 courses of that, so if Wei Cai decides I only learned 5 credits worth of Chinese here, I'm hooped for that 1 credit until Fall. It's irritating, to say the least.

Other than that, Mom should be proud. I did laundry last night and today! I washed everything I owned except for the cold-weather clothing i haven't worn yet. I have to wash half at once in the tiny machine (it's only 3 yuan per wash, about $0.50CAD), and then air dry it because the drier doesn't have heat. It worked though; the first half is dried (overnight) and then machine dried to loosen the stiffness.

It's not perfect, but it'll do.

Sort of seems to be the motto for my stay so far.

Here's a couple photos:

This here is a photo of one of the lakes on campus. There are about 3 of them, and they're filled to the brim with lilies and decorative statues and whatnot. Tsinghua used to be the gardens for the Summer palace (very close nearby)

This is a photo of the Main building and the grass islands leading up to it. One of the more picturesque areas on campus.

And this is my room with laundry everywhere!

That's about it for today, but I'll be a little more vigilant about posting more often.

Hope you're all well,

Nathan

P.S.: You suck, Mayan. I wanted to go to Wil...

Paralympics and Electronics

Hey hey,

It's been a few days, but they've been a busy few. I've just stepped back into my room from a very long day of wandering Beijing, attending a few hours of the Paralympics and helping a new friend shop for an electronic dictionary.

I initially bought 5 tickets to the Olympics because my roommate and his friends from Germany said they wanted to go. Then, of course after I had purchased them, he told me that they had instead signed up for a tour of the city and wouldn't be using the tickets. So I was stuck with 250 yuan (about $40CAD) worth of tickets and no one to go with. So I called up a few random people I met last evening and they agreed to take 3 of the tickets (which I sold them for 30 yuan apiece; taking a hit of about 110 yuan on the whole shebang). So I attended for about 18 bucks versus the 7 normally, but it was all good. The Olympic facilities are simply stunning; the birds nest National Stadium and the Swimming 'Cube' in particular.

Anyhow, we're all going for dinner here. I'll elaborate more later.

Hope all is well! Miss you, hun.

Nathan

Acclimatization

Day... 5?

Yup, 5. Feels like longer already. It's about 10:30am and I don't have anything to do today except for study for a placement test I THINK I'm writing tomorrow. I dunno.

Yesterday and the previous day were fairly eventful in a weird, vacation-y sort of way.

2 days ago (Sunday):

I spent an hour or two wandering around campus looking for the place to get my meal card. No such luck. I then spent another hour wandering back to the dorms, where I found out that I was IN the building where you get the card, but on the wrong side of it. By that time I had already bought a couple snacks from the market on campus, and was frustrated.

I decided that I would do what many women have done since time immemorial to relax and blow off steam. I would go Shopping. That's right, I would spend money I cannot afford to spend in order to get my mood up.

I kid, I needed 2 things. A cell phone, since I was dumb enough to forget the one Ervin gave me at home, and a bike. If you've ever even seen a picture of Beijing, you'll get why I need a bike.

Anyways, I asked the desk reception girl in broken mandarin where the best place to find a bike was. She replied in broken english that 五道口(Wudaokou) was a good place to start. I shrugged and went to catch a cab before one of her friends ran out and said he wanted to sell HIS bike. I agreed to look. It's a grand, stylish, touring sort of piece-of-shit that wouldn't even be allowed on the road in the West. Still, it's better than about 40% of the bikes on the road here, and it works. It was also only 18 bucks, with a heavy-duty chain lock, a basket and a back seat.

I decided I would _ride_ my bike to Wudaokou then and there. I got on the newly purchased wheels and headed off with a vague notion of where to go. It turns out that 15cm on a wall map is really a LONG distance. About 4km of desperately unused bike muscles later, I arrived. I shopped. I didn't find anything. Then I decided on another route home, resulting in my getting lost for an hour in this crazy, dilapidated back street full of (you guessed it) bike shops. New bikes, mountain bikes, electric bikes (which are VERY popular) and so on. All for less than what I paid.

Buyers remorse. I got my bearings, I came back to campus and I fell asleep. On my way into the gate though, what did I see but a man selling brand new bikes (nice, dual-suspension mountainbikes) off the back of a trailer to other expats. I laughed my way back the dorm.

Yesterday:
I went to 中关村 (ZhongGuanCun). This is the electronics district of Beijing. Boy is it ever. I hopped a cab this time.

Did you know it was possible to get saddle-sore from a bike? My ass is black and blue, I swear. Still can't con my new roomie (Cristoff, a German MBA student) into checking for me though.

Anyhow, 中关村 is home to dozens upon dozens of electronics markets and shops. Untold THOUSANDS of laptops, computers, hardware (more motherboards than I've ever seen), cameras and anything else digital under the sun. It's downright unbelievable. I wandered through 5 of these mega-malls. 5 Storeys at a minimum, here I found some of the pushiest salespeople I've ever come across. They aren't allowed out of their store though, and there is a central walkway past the booths, so it's a lot like walking through a gauntlet of clamoring shills.

I had my noise-isolation headphones in, with some nice music in. They only came out when I needed a response to a question.

Anyhow, today's rainy and VERY overcast. Muggy as all get-out.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing.

Thanks for listening, folks,

- Nathan

Decipher This

红薯干. For those of you who see that as a bunch of little boxes, that says 'hong2shu3gan1" or "Red Sweet Potato".

It's what I am eating for breakfast on this, my second day in Beijing. It's oddly tasty, especially for someone who isn't a huge fan of Yams.

Those three characters, with the exception of 红 (hong2 or 'Red'), took me over 25 minutes to decipher so I could figure out what the hell I was eating. Whatever, it's a victory. I figured out a system for deciphering some of the characters I don't understand or even recognize.

I've had a rough day yesterday. I spent over 4 hours walking around campus (which, by the way, is MASSIVE) trying to find the building where I can buy a meal card so I can access some of the scary/interesting looking food in the dining halls. There are like, 15 different dining halls, and all of them (except for separate restaurants, of which i've found 5) need the card because they don't take cash. I FINALLY got enough english out of someone to tell me that it was Building 15 (a dorm) that could dispense these, and that they opened at 2. It was noon at that point and I was starving. I went and bought pizza. It was good pizza, and for it +2 bottles of water I paid all of 11 bucks. Expensive here, cheap in Canada.

Then, I figured I would take a nap, because I was tired. I ended up waking up at 12:00am because Dustin was MSNing me repeatedly. I totally messed up that whole sleeping pattern thing and tried to force myself to sleep until morning. At 4:30am, I was woken up by continuous, rolling thunder and amazing lightning.

I've been up for 5 hours now. I'm hungry, but it's another 4 hours till I can get a card and I'm not eating pizza again.

Anyhow, who wants a tour of my living conditions? Everyone? I figured as much. Here are my 'digs', sans roommate who has yet to arrive.

My 'Kitchenette'. Consists of cupboards, microwave and sink. Pretty swanky.

My Bathroom. The shower and toilet/sink combo are all in a common cubicle. The shower drains through an open hole under the sink.


My Room. Yes it's a mess; I didn't have hangers until 5 minutes ago. Don't judge.

My room from the 'common area'. By common area, I mean a shared area the size of a washroom stall that has our two doors, the can and the kitchenette.
My Desk. The jeans in the bottom left are resting on the TV (with a whole ONE English channel). That orange bag is my 红薯干。

Anyhow, till next time. I need to go find some chopsticks for my noodle cup.

再见！

Here

Well... I'm here.

It's currently 6:00am I'm sitting in a somewhat spartan room on campus at Tsinghua after a very, very restless night of sleep. We're talking maybe 3 or 4 hours tops, broken into 1 hours chunks. I've never really had serious jet lag before, but hopefully it'll dissipate in the next day or so.

I'm in China. Bloody hell, it's just sort of hitting me now. I am the only Caucasian person I have seen so far on campus (except maybe for a runner last night). It's a totally new experience being a visible minority in a country where you don't have a decent command of the language. I've been to a few different countries before, but always with my hand held or with fluency in their language.

Here I'm sort of on my own. I've used Mandarin a lot over the last 10 or so hours since I arrived. It's difficult because my spoken mandarin is decent enough in that everyone I've talked to understands me, but their responses are damned near impossible for me to make out. I say something nice and simple like

Ni3hao3, ce2suo4 zai4 nar3? (Hello, where is the washroom?)

They rattle off something that's about 15 words long and I catch 1 word. I ask them to slow down and I get a look like they are scared of me.

It's frustrating to be this helpless, but I'm guessing it'll get better. I'm curious about what the campus looks like in the daytime. I wandered around for an hour last night looking for toilet paper of all things. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to mime 'toilet paper' to a group of 18 year old girls because you don't know the words?

I'll hopefully get a bike today and a bank card. I'm also hoping to snag a phone so text messaging is a reality.

Anyhow, lots on my mind and more to do.

Hope everyone is well,

Nathan

T-Minus 1 Day

Tomorrow morning I check into my airline at 8:00 am after what's definitely going to be a sleepless night. At 10:00, I take off for 'the adventure of a lifetime' as so many have described it.

I'm nervous and more than a little apprehensive right now. I always get this way when I'm going on a trip, no matter the duration. It's that sort of 'shit... what if I forget the little dongle to charge my camera batteries and can't find one over there. Wait, do I have enough shirts? 5 months... should I have some spare contacts or not?'

It's driving me a little batty right now.

I do love my new apple remote to go with the Macbook Pro though; I like being able to surf through my tunes while I pack.

My bloody moneybelt is a little uncomfortable, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Working diligently,

- Nathan

T-Minus 2 Days

I'm a moron; I had blog set up with a couple posts...

Then I pressed the button marked 'delete' instead of okay. Being impatient, I just clicked okay through the warnings and confirmations.

Ah well; it's not like I lost months and months of stuff.

Anyways, back to the preps.

- Nathan