4/4 Qing Ming Holiday

Hey y'all!

Sorry for that sad post back there... just got a little bit homesick for a second. But of course it's passed and I'm my normal self again all crazy and such. Right now I'm feeling sleepy after going all around in the subway and exploring the Hutong a bit near BeiHai. Today is the Qing Ming Festival, which is actually really sad.. well it's the day of the dead kind of. I mean, the date is 4/4 and 4 is kind of like the number for death so it's just really morbid. For me though, it's just a day off from school, I ain't got no tombs to visit, Although I do think about the dead. Weirdly enough this death day is also my dead Pepere's birthday, so Happy Birthday Pepere. haha love you!! :)

So I'm having lots of fun here in Beijing, I love ittt. The city life is so fun, I don't know how on earth I will go back to living in the sticks in Maine!!! It's going to kill me to not be able to grab the 地铁 to go all over the place. So sad. I love the subway man, it's one of my favorite parts of Beijing. For those of you who know me, I get obsessed with strange things. Many know me as the girl who is crazy about The Weather Channel, and while I still love my good old TWC, it ain't in China, so I had to find a new obsession for the time being, which is Beijing Subway. Being the longest subway in the world, I'm blown away and I just want to ride it all day. I like to go to the first car and look out the window in the front to see where we are going. I like to lol at the crazy Chinese people I see there. I like to change lines and beep my card and even pushing through the people when I'm trying to 下车 is fun. It's cool that you can just go anywhere you want to, just get on and go go go! And only costing 2 Yuan, why would you go any other way?!?! (Like 33 cents man!!! and you can go anywhere!). So yeah, I am going to miss this wonderful thing when I have to go back to Maine. Oh, and here is a map of this crazy subway which I love, Jinsong is my home station yo! It's on line 10, can you find it?? :)

Lets see, I didn't talk about my trip to the Forbidden city did I? Well there isn't really much to talk about, I saw it and it was pretty cool, took my pictures and what not. It's still crazy though that I was in the place where all those emperors walked! I even got to see the throne man, though that was a challenge. I really wanted a photo though so I pushed those 中国人 out of my way and got a photo. :)

Pretty awesome, huh?? I thought it was cool. Too bad I couldn't actually go sit on it.. haha. And then there was this thing that your are not supposed to be touching but everyone touches it for good luck, so here is a photo of me doing as the Chinese do and touching the lucky thingy!

Oh yeah! Now I'm a lucky girl! :) Look at that old LaoWai in the background. :D Oh and here is a dragon turtle!!

So overall the Forbidden city was cool. These days they weather is getting warmer and warmer, so much warmer than it is for you folks back at home, ha-ha!!! It's around 60 in the afternoons on some days which I'm happy about. I'm about ready to ditch that winter coat and actually look cute when I take pics.

Class is pretty good, but I'm glad we are having a break. I have a test next week on 100 characters which I pretty much forgot them all, so this weekend it's STUDY TIME. Only China isn't very generous, while we get Thursday and Friday off for the holiday, we have class on SUNDAY. Man, that's like a crime in the US. So that's pretty craycray, ganna have a 6 day school week. >.< At least I like my classmates. I can have a good time in class, especially during 休息一会儿！That's my fav (break time every 45 minutes). By the way, sorry for the Chenglish.. I love this language, talking English and then just throw some Chinese in there. Of course it's better for those who know both languages but hey, I want to express myself in this manner.

Well, I suppose I will end the post here. I may or may not study now. Bye Bye. :)

我一点儿想家

Well here I am sitting in my room, and I found that I wasn't being productive (when I should be) so I thought it would be a good time to drop a line or two to the world out there. Just want to say that I'm still surviving in Beijing, thriving actually. I'm getting used to the life here and I embrace the differences of China. I love this place. But despite the fact that I feel I have finally settled into Beijing life, I am for the first time in my life feeling a little bit homesick. I'm not talking like I want to go to my physical house, I don't know, it's weird. I just feel like I miss my home at odd times. When the wind blows and the trees make some noise, it reminds me of home where on a warm summer day the breeze will give us relief and the leaves sound like music to me. Seeing a pine cone now a days I go crazy and I just want to stare at the green trees that I sometimes can find around the city. I'm a nature girl at heart so I miss the times when I can just lay on the grass near the trees with the birds and blue sky and little animals and all those wonderful things. City life is a lot of fun but because I grew up around trees at times I just miss it so much that I could just sit here and think about it, relive the feelings I have while I am in my home, Maine. I can feel everything in my heart like I'm there now, sitting in a green field with dandelions, though I'm just sitting in a dorm room in an overcrowded and polluted city. I don't want to sound all sad but it's just how I feel these days. I don't just miss home because I'm a nature freak, but I miss my home meaning being with the people I love the most. Life just doesn't have the same glow when you can't bask in the presence of the person you love. While I have not shed a tear since arriving here, I feel perhaps my heart is crying everyday. You can imagine the last thing I want to do is study Chinese characters.

Of course everyone knows I am a very happy person, and I am happy here. I love living in this city and I have had the chance to meet great people, and my Chinese is getting better, I'm surprising myself on how much I can learn in such a short period of time, I like it. I even find myself thinking in Chinese before English! So I guess it's good that I can address these sad times, because after I can push forward. I just need to focus on why I am here, to have an experience of a lifetime, and it will be over before I know it, so I want to make the most of it. I will work hard, 努力学习, and I will keep on going, 加油！

This Sunday is Easter. I will go to Church and out to eat Easter dinner at a restaurant which has American food with others who celebrate this holiday. So I'm not completely missing out on America. :) Happy Easter all! 

So where was I?

Oh yes, so Monday was the first day of school. Here's the thing though, I was tested into level one since the test was crazy hard, but when I went to that class I was so bored. It was learning tones, and guess what we learned to write!? 你 (you) and 好 (good) and get ready for this... 你好 (hello)!!! hahaha man I was like, "we gotta get out of here" to Kate, my friend from Ukraine, and Jade, a girl from the US. So for the next period we went to level two. This one was much better because I was having some trouble so I knew it was better for me. And before long I was getting used to the teacher's voice. She was only speaking Chinese, and I thought it was so cool that I could understand her. So I knew I needed to ask to be let into the level two. I went and asked the teaching affairs office and the lady was trying to make me think I wasn't good enough for it because my "test" score wasn't high enough. Well lady, I ain't paying for 你好!!! So in the end I got into the 202 class, which was great. Only too bad for me, at the end of the week they made me switch to 201 because there were too many students in 202. It's the same teacher and same course, just different times. I was a little mad because first I need to change my room twice and then I need to change my whole schedule. In the end it's fine though, I'm warming up to my new classmates and the schedule isn't that bad. I can sleep in on Friday morning. So class is good but I know I will have to study a lot because it's faster than in the US. I really feel good though. I don't like Thursdays though because I have class from 8am-11:30am and then again from 1:30pm-3:05pm. That's so long man, but we get breaks every 45 minutes which I enjoy. Then we can regroup and focus for 45 more minutes. This is really a good idea in my opinion, but I still get restless at my little desk. It's actually really cool to be in a class with foreigners. In my class I have people from Russia, Korea, Vietnam, America, France, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Germany, and others from other places, but my Chinese isn't good enough to know what their country was in Chinese. It's interesting because classmates will chat in native language for explaining somethings, so all of the sudden the Russian speakers are talking and the teacher says, “听不懂，听不懂！” (literally "listen don't understand, listen don't understand"). What a place. And during the break people go out and get food because we have from 9:35am-9:55am break and people visit other classrooms and it's great. I just can't believe it though, when I'm sitting there and I just look around and think, "we're all foreign". I mean, I live in a building with hundreds of foreigners, but to just think about it from time to time it's interesting. My classes are on the tenth floor of the classroom building, so we all pile into the elevator and the elevator makes weird sounds because it's old and sometimes the light shuts off. Normally though I use the stairs after class because waiting for the elevator takes too long. So that's just a brief note about my classes in general, and here is a photo I took on the first day, enjoy:

Okay so what else can I tell you about. I need to remember what activities I did on what days but I am having a really hard time to do so. During the week I met with Vince again and we ate hotpot. It was very good since I was having a hard time to find some foods that I like, so I ate a lot that night. I enjoy spending time with Vince because he talks about interesting things that really make you think about life and simple things instead of being distracted by modern things. I will meet him again maybe next week. Also over the past two weeks I have met with Amy again and ate together in the dinning hall, and also with Michelle I met in the dinning hall and I spent time with Kate, my friend from Ukraine, as well as some American girls, Jade, Stephanie, and Briana. They are all so nice. And Stephanie and Briana introduced us to their friend Sam, also another American girl who works here in Beijing. She is sooo nice!! But that's what I say about many people, but she really is a sweet girl. And I have been having great times having with the Americans because after a long day of Chinese you just want to talk to the people who can understand your jokes and you can have a good laugh and eat American food. Believe me, we have had many laughs thus far, laughing until we are crying in most cases. It's my favorite. <3 haha.

Something that really gave me a laugh was last Friday night when I decided to take Jade and Kate to 后海 even though I wasn't quite sure how to get there after getting out of the Subway station. It was so spur of the moment, so we got out of the subway and I asked a Chinese girl for the directions and we found it. We walked around and since there are many bars around there were guys trying to get us to go into this bar or that one (it's their job to drag in customers). Kate was mad about them since they were annoying and pushy, but I just said, "不要" (don't want) and kept walking away. Later though, after eating some fried chicken, we went in one to just sit and I wanted water and Kate wanted a 可口可乐 (Coca Cola). Okay side note, I think this is so cool. The meaning of Coca Cola in Chinese literally means like "tastes good and makes you happy". hahah I think it's crazy though because the way you say it is "ke kou ke le" which sounds like Coca Cola. I was blown away by this even though I hate Coke. Anyway, we sat for a bit and then went out and walked around and I saw a funny old man on the ground playing an instrument and singing. Here is an image of what I saw:

Pretty awesome, right??! haha he was a funny guy. So then more funny things happened. We went back to the subway to go back to the school and we were just on one of the lines minding our own business. We were standing chatting and then we noticed a guy was filming us with his cell phone camera, trying to discrete but we knew what he was doing. So then there were some seats available so we sat down and he turned the camera towards us there so we knew it was true and he was really making a video!! hahah. Then Jade was turning her face away and I said, "what are you doing?" and she said, "I don't want to be on Youku!!" (Youku = Chinese Youtube). That's when we lost it laughing like mad. I was crying too!! And the old Chinese were looking at me all angry like. Thennnnn I said to Jade, "I AMMMM on Youku!!!!!!!" because when I did a dance at UMF it was filmed by our Chinese friend Jiaxin who uploaded it to Youku. So then we laughed even more about it. I felt so tired from laughing by the time we got back to the dorm. It was just awesome, until the morning when I was sick from what I think was the chicken I ate (boooooo I love this one and now I'm afraid of it!!!). So I didn't go on the trip to the Temple of Heaven because I stayed in bed all day. Well actually at night I met Sam for the first time because we went out to get food and met her.

I was in bed again on Sunday because I was still sick. I would share the details but maybe you don't want to know about them. I did homework with Kate though and then later I decided to go see Wu Yiyu, our Chinese friend who came to UMF last year. She invited me to dinner at her uncle's apartment. So her cousin and his girl picked me up at the school and took me there. I was so happy to see her. We were on like the 19th floor there. It was a nice little apartment, and her family was all so nice and smiling. We ate dinner, and I ate something that I LOVED. Well there was a plate of meat and I asked what it was since it looks like beef but I'm not sure. Wu Yiyu didn't want to tell me, but I said if she won't tell me I won't eat it. She said, "In China we raise dogs for eating". I said, "I want to eat it!!" and she said, "really????". I was excited to try it, and she took a video of me eating and also a photo. Here is the photo:

IT WAS SO GOOD. SPICY DOG, WHO WOULDA THUNK IT!? Yeah I would eat it again. :)) Sorry, Rocco! <3 So we ate the meal and I spoke some Chinese a bit and they were all happy. Then I came home later trying to buy the flight ticket home. Man, them banks are crazy! They blocked my transaction and I had to call them with Stephanie's Skype credits and sort it all out. But after many hours of this I have my ticket and things are good. I will fly back from Vietnam with Huy on August 27th and will be home on August 28th, just in time for school.

Let's see what else happened. I went to the school hospital on Monday with Amy because I was still sick in the morning. They gave me medicine to clear my system of whatever was in there, and I was back to new in no time. And it was so cheap to go to that doctor, like $2.50USD.

It's still weird to think that I am in Beijing, China right now. I feel so used to the place in a way, like it's normal to be here. It's a really weird feeling, though I did have one day where I felt like I hated everything here because I was so frustrated. And I do miss my UMF life a little bit, and of course my friends and my honey, but I'm enjoying myself here. Everyday is an adventure and I don't know how I will feel when it's all over, so I am enjoying everyday, going places and seeing people and getting better with my Chinese. Well, I met a girl and also a guy from Vietnam, my classmates, so I hope they can help me learn some Vietnamese before I go there. It was funny in class today because the guy was telling me when I meet Huy's parents to say to them, "Hi mom, Hi dad (in Vietnamese of course)" and then girl was like, "noooo!!!" and telling me the respectful one to say which I already knew about this. Anyway, sorry I wasn't good at explaining that just now because it's rather complicated but I found it was funny and I hope they will teach me things to really say. :)

I don't know what else to say right now, so I will just end this post and go study. And I will update this more often for sure, I promise!!!

我太忙了！！！ (I'm too busy!!!)

Hi everyone!!

Sorry for the delay in posting here. I actually got my own wifi here now so the internet is a bit better so I don't have any excuses besides the fact that I am super busy these days. I'm a little disappointed with myself because not only do I want to share my stories of Beijing with all of you, but I also want to have them for me to look back at, and I just feel like there are not enough hours in a day to write about the things that I have been doing lately. Also despite the good internet, the pictures still take FOREVER to upload, but I will try again in another photo post shortly. Also I will try to add tons on Facebook since I have a lot of photos already.

So what have I been up to??

I left off on the Saturday I was going with Vince and Amy to climb a mountain. That was a fun day. First they took me to have breakfast in the dinning hall before we left. I ate a weird tofu soup thing that I didn't like, something called  油条 (you tiao) , and baozi. The we headed for the west of Beijing to the Black Stone Mountain (I think that was the name, but honestly I'm not so sure about it...). We had to drive a long time and Amy was getting car sick, and I wasn't feeling the best either. Vince was driving and it was very congested traffic on the freeway so we had to stop and go a lot. We finally got to the mountain and I used the bathroom before climbing. I was so shocked in there man!!! I walked in and saw some woman squating at the holes, NO DOORS, NO PRIVACY, SO STINKY!!!! hahahaha it was very strange to me, but I had to pee. Took me like 2 minutes to finally go because I was hoping no one is looking at me. It's actually funny to me now, but before I was not laughing as I was squatting over a hole with some old ladies around holding my pack of pocket tissues.. hahaha. I got out of there quick and then we went up the mountain. I saw some goats there, they were cute but they pooped everywhere, little jelly bean pellets. We chatted and climbed up the mountain, and when we got to the top we took some photos. I thought it was really cool even though the pollution was covering the city a bit, but honestly the air wasn't that bad. It was also a warm day. I can't imagine mountain climbing in Maine in February with only a sweater, but man even on the top of the mountain there was only one tiny piece of snow! This place is crazy. Okay well let me see if I can add a photo here in this post, what a miracle it would be....

Oh!!!! Well would you looky here!!! It went almost as fast as a turtle as opposed to a snail! Yeah, that's my on the mountain top with Beijing behind me. I also took photos wit Vince and Amy but I will not add those ones because I just need to write this before I get too lazy! So after the photos we made our way down the mountain and then Vince wanted to take me to a restaurant that serves "delicacies". Don't listen to a Chinese person when they use this word. It means "food that Americans are going to hate with a passion because it's so out of this world because it's insides of animals and yucky bean/tofu mixtures with weird sauce". Just beware!!!!! So yes, I tried everything, which included sheep stomach and pig intestines... They were all very terrible. So after this time of Vince eating almost everything and even Amy didn't eat many of them because she didn't really like it like Vince does. After we went and I got some chicken elsewhere which was good. :) Then we went to a place called 后海 (hou hai), which is a little place near a small pond with bars and food stands that young people like to go to on the weekends. So it was just the afternoon and we went into a little bar and got hot chocolate and listened to a girl playing some music which we were chatting for a few hours. Then it got later and Vince took up home. I really had a lot of fun though, I felt like I made some great friends, they both are so nice and helpful to me. Okay here is a photo of my day which is from Amy:

hahahah look at me suffering through this jelly soup thing!!!! hahhahaha. Oh, and Amy! <3 

So that was Saturday, what happened on Sunday...? I don't even remember man!! .................... I'm really thinking about this. What did I do..??? Oh!!! It was the lantern festival. I don't know what I did during the day, but at night I went with a woman named Loraine, also a professor in UMF and we went to see the lanterns on the street for the festival. Here is a photo:

Yeah look at those lanterns man! I thought they were really cool and I have tons of photos, but this is the only one I will include here. So we just walked and talked and saw the lanterns and took photos with Chinese people, which is a bit odd. They just come and say, "hello, can we have picture with you???". hahaha aww man. Also there were a lot of fireworks/firecrackers booming everywhere. We almost walked on firecrackers! And when I went back in my room at 11pm there were girls outside shooting some off outside the window. I could see them so well man! But I had to go to bed so I could go to class in the morning. 

Now sorry, I am going to stop this here, but I promise to write another post later to continue the story. Right now I will go to the dinning hall for dinner with some Americans. :)) So bye!! 

The place is jumping!

10:33pm Friday night:
Trying to sleep right now without a fan is like trying to sleep in a night club... there is music blasting in the room next door of remixes of awesome songs which I would appreciate under normal circumstances, but not now. I can hear the music so clear like I'm in that room. This is almost worse than dead silence. Also there are people yelling outside my door, same as every night. This is nuts. I need that fan stat! Where are the CAs to enforce the quiet hours when you need them?!??!

*Written last night while laying in my bed dying. Surprisingly I fell asleep.

Tallest building in Beijing!

Hello everyone! So I have been rather busy these days, and actually I'm kind of tired now but I want to update this and tell you what I've been up to, since this weekend is going to be super busy and full of adventures! So later on Wednesday, Maeve came to my room and we decided to go try to find some food. Maeve said we should bring Robby since he has good Chinese but I thought we would be fine. We went over to the outlet place because we wanted McDonald's. So we got there and it was really crowded in there and I got nervous about ordering the food, so then we walked out!!! haha the language barrier is so bad, I always want to order food but I don't have enough vocabulary for that, so I have decided to learn some vocab that will help me with this! Well sometimes you can point to pictures but it's not the best option. Anyway, so we were still hungry. We were walking back to the dorm and we called Robby. He said he would come help us, so we met him and he took us to the other McDonald's. I had my usual, chicken nuggets and fries, and it was pretty much the same as in the US. The difference is that we don't have to throw our trash away, someone else does that! haha.

So after eating Robby said he wanted to show us the tallest building in Beijing since Maeve was going to leave in the morning. So we took the bus to Jinsong metro station and took the metro like 3 stops. Then we walked for a long time. We got to see an indoor ice skating rink which I hope to go and try sometime. Then we finally got there, and that was so tall!!! We took some photos and Robby said, "now we go inside". We thought he was kidding but he wasn't. Within 2 minutes we were in the elevator shooting up to floor 80!!!!!! And that elevator was FASSTTTTTT it zoomed up there in less than one minute man!!! My ears popped and I could not hear anything. By the way, I used to be deathly afraid of elevators but I decided to overcome the fear because I knew I would face the elevator in Beijing at some point, turns out I was VERY RIGHT about that! We got out and up there was like a fancy restaurant and I really don't think we were supposed to just wander up there but we did. I took some photos but they didn't come out very good. I will post them in the next photo post.

So then after we took the Subway and bus and walked back to the dorms and I called it a night. Thursday was also a long day. Well, I woke up at 6am because I had to go to some medical exam where they were going to take my blood. I am not fond of this so I was worried about it all night and not looking forward to it. I got up and dressed and ready and at 7am I was down on the bus waiting to go to the hospital. Then the guy was checking the passport and visa and he said if you have an F visa you don't have to go. That's what I have, so I ended up waking up for nothing!!! But I guess it was okay because I went back to my room and Skyped Huy. :)) Then later I was getting hungry so I told Michelle because we were chatting online and she sent her friend to come take me to get something to eat. Her friend is Stephanie and she is also American, and has been here on semester already. Stephanie said she had been trying to find me to meet me but the front desk kept telling her different room numbers (gee I wonder why..). So she was SUPER NICE and I was really happy to meet her. We went out to this noodle place called 一家面馆, and it was really kind of nice in there. I enjoyed my noodles with beef and broth, mmmm. Then we went back to the dorm because I needed to go to the campus tour. That was fun because I got to actually learn about my surroundings officially. After the tour I went back to my room for a while and relaxed until I was supposed to head to Jinsong station to meet up with my friend Tracy. I met Tracy on interpals.net and so it is the first time meeting. I was kind of nervous about it, and I only saw one photo of her so I was hoping I would find her. It was my first time to take the bus alone to get there, and only my second time at Jinsong. So I was waiting for her to come out, and then I saw this beautiful girl looking at me kind of excited, and I knew it was her! :)) I was so happy. We met and then she asked me where I want to go and we checked the map. I let her choose and so we got on the subway and went to a place called ... well I don't remember what it was called, I can ask Tracy and get back to you. Anyway, it was in the center of the city, and there were a lot of old buildings there. We were walking around and we got some food. We got this triangle pie thing that was sooo good, I want to eat it again, and we also got some chicken that was amazing too!! Then we walked for a long time and got cold so we got some milk tea. So the names of the three things we got were 三角烧 (the triangle)，第一佳大鸡排 (the chicken)，and 薏米仙草奶茶 (the milk tea which had rice and black jelly balls inside..). I want to eat them all again because it was so good. After we got the milk tea we went into the metro station and sat down and we were just drinking the tea and chatting there. We talked for a long time, and finally at 9pm we decided we had better catch the subway. She needed to take me back to my stop to drop me because she can go back to her stop, and she needs to ride one hour to get to her stop. So we rode for a long time to get to my stop. Then she got out at my stop to say goodbye. She gave me a hug, also she gave me a gift of packaged chicken wings and duck feet..... I have yet to taste them. I gave her some gifts too, cigarettes that she requested, chocolate, and moose key chain with Maine on it. It was great. I was so happy on the way back catching the bus and then walking to my dorm, and I slept well because I was happy.

Today was busy as heck too but I don't think I want to say too much about it because I'm getting sleepy. I went to the orientation which was the international office people telling us about the school and other random things. Then we had the welcome lunch at the restaurant on campus. That was cool because I sat with 9 other people at a round table with the spinning thing in the middle and so many dishes, all of which I didn't recognize. I ate many things, some I don't want to eat again, and others I really enjoyed. I chatted with the people there and they were all nice. After chatting I wasn't as shy, and my craziness came out a little bit and I was yelling like my old self, and those people seemed to enjoy it. :D I was happy. We ll laughed a lot together. Then after the lunch I bought my books for class. I ended up not having to pay for them though because of the program with UMF. Yay! :)) And they put me in level 1 for Chinese but the teacher said I might be able to do level 2 since I know everything in the book already. So then I came to my room and then Robby and I went to walmart to get a few things. I still have not bought a fan yet because they are hard to find, but tomorrow for sure I will get one. I need it!!!!! Walmart was pretty crazy, different than in USA but still similar. haha. After shopping I got some noodles to go at a restaurant and came back to my room. I ate noodles and watched Pretty Little Liars online (I needed something American!). And now here I am sleepy as heck. Tomorrow I am going to climb a mountain with Vince so I will take a lot of photos.

Starting to miss everyone back home, but still really having a blast here!!!! :)

First Photos

Here are a few photos I have taken on my camera. I have more on my phone, only I am having trouble getting them out of there. I will share them as soon as I can.

So here's a plane with a cloud! I was lucky enough to have the window seat and literally nothing to do for nearly 14 hours so I actually took a few photos:

This one was later near the north pole!!!! There was ice down there and we were flying towards the sun (30 minutes before this photo it was dark out).

Look at that arctic snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first view of China, some mountains in the North!! I thought this was amazing. <3

Here is a giant bottle of Chinese water! If you know me you know I love water so I just couldn't resist this photo opp!!!

My official room, I love my blanket so fluffy! That floor is where the roach was roaming! I died!

Okay well, unfortunately I'm having technical difficulties and so the rest of the photos don't want to upload at this time. I will put them up later. :)